Claudio Monteverdi: Vespro Della Beata Vergine

Alessandro Grandi (ca. 1586–1630) was Claudio Monteverdi’s Vice-Kapellmeister at St. Mark’s in Venice for seven years, before he was elected Kapellmeister at the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo in 1627. He improved the musical conditions there in a very short time, however already in 1630 he and his entire family succumbed to the plague. The musical height of his tenure as Kapellmeister were the elaborately celebrated Marian feast days, for which the musical forces were doubled. Through their publication Grandi’s works were widely disseminated and document the fact that as a composer he proved to be a lasting influence in shaping the rapid developments and changes which took place in music at the beginning of the 17th century. The quality of his psalm settings, especially the later ones, make him, together with Monteverdi and Rovetta, one of the most important composers of his day. His Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin) is comprised of works taken from various printed collections of the master and may be regarded as a model for current practice of the early baroque in Italy. The CD is from a live recording of a concert presented during the Musikfest Stuttgart 2010 by the Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart together with outstanding soloists, such as Deborah York and Peter Harvey under the direction of Matthew Hall.

Those surprised by the existence of a Vespro della beata vergine (Vespers of the Blessed Virgin) by Alessandro Scarlatti can take comfort in the fact that there is actually no such thing; what's on offer here is a collection of psalm settings along with a hymn and Magnificat that could have been used for the Vespers service during Scarlatti's time. But, noted Susanne Fontaine, the same is true of Claudio Monteverdi's famous set of Vespers of 1610, which was a compilation rather than a unified work. Whatever the origins of Scarlatti's pieces, they do seem to fit together nicely as a set, evincing a mixture of Baroque Catholic traditionalism and operatic thinking. Several of the psalms work chant material into contrapuntal choral sections, contrasting it with more florid solo passages.

Widely regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of Bach's music today, Masaaki Suzuki has made his name both as the artistic director of the Bach Collegium Japan and as a performer on the harpsichord and the organ. Much interest has been focussed on the BCJ/Suzuki series of Bach Cantatas, begun in 1995 and reaching its final stretch with the recent release of Volume 46 (of a projected 55 discs). Hailed by the international music press, this monumental undertaking has acquired a world-wide following. From the very beginning of the collaboration with BIS, however, there have been numerous recording projects beyond the sacred cantatas of Johannes Sebastian, and, indeed, beyond Bach himself. Some of these acclaimed recordings can now be found in a limited edition boxed set, released in connection with the 20th anniversary of Bach Collegium Japan this year.

The recordings are typical DHM with superb clarity and dynamic range. The mastering to digital is excellent, and the booklet accompanying the series, while brief, is informative. The only unifying these here is baroque Italian composers, but it's extremely easy to fill a collection ten times this size with material from that category. What we end up with in these ten discs is a lovely mix of known and unknown, each pleasant to listen to and discover, and there's no listener fatigue at all working through these discs.

Since it's founding in Freiburg in 1958, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi has been one of the most important and ambitious labels for period performances. Over decades, globally-acclaimed recordings were created with outstanding musicians. The limited edition "Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 100 Great Recordings" contains 100 outstanding DHM recordings with some of the most important and best artists in their field: Nuria Rial, Dorothee Mields, Al Ayre Espanol, Hille Perl, Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Freiburger Barockorchester, Skip Sempé, Capriccio Stravagante, La Petite Bande, Gustav Leonhardt, Andrew Lawrence-King, Frieder Bernius, the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Thomas Hengelbrock and many others.

A beautifully-packaged 50-disc box set, released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, one of the most important and adventurous early music labels. The set contains 50 classic recordings of baroque and ancient music, chosen to represent the breadth of this huge and varied catalogue and each disc is slip-cased with artwork replicating the original CD or LP artwork.

Das Vokalensemble Cantus Cölln unter der Leitung von Konrad Junghänel gehört heute zu den renommiertesten Formationen seiner Art. Die über 30 CD-Einspielungen von Cantus Cölln wurden mit zahlreichen internationalen Preisen ausgezeichnet und umfassen musikalische Raritäten ebenso wie wegweisende Interpretationen von "Klassikern" des barocken Repertoires.