Stuttgarter Kammerorchester

If one considers that this 2005 CD presents music written in the early to middle twentieth century, and the latest of these is a "recomposition" of three Renaissance madrigals, then it seems a most peculiar offering in ECM's New Series line – certainly important for anyone interested in modern music but decidedly not the cutting-edge fare this label usually delivers.

This 37-disc box set is the only brand new and fully digital recording of the complete symphonies of Haydn. Performed by the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra) and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, the recordings were done live in connection with concerts of the whole cycle. The series received fantastic reviews by the press, and The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra was awarded the European Chamber Music Prize in 2008.

This 37-disc box set is the only brand new and fully digital recording of the complete symphonies of Haydn. Performed by the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra) and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, the recordings were done live in connection with concerts of the whole cycle. The series received fantastic reviews by the press, and The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra was awarded the European Chamber Music Prize in 2008.

This 37-disc box set is the only brand new and fully digital recording of the complete symphonies of Haydn. Performed by the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra) and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, the recordings were done live in connection with concerts of the whole cycle. The series received fantastic reviews by the press, and The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra was awarded the European Chamber Music Prize in 2008.

This 37-disc box set is the only brand new and fully digital recording of the complete symphonies of Haydn. Performed by the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra) and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, the recordings were done live in connection with concerts of the whole cycle. The series received fantastic reviews by the press, and The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra was awarded the European Chamber Music Prize in 2008.

This 37-disc box set is the only brand new and fully digital recording of the complete symphonies of Haydn. Performed by the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra) and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, the recordings were done live in connection with concerts of the whole cycle. The series received fantastic reviews by the press, and The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra was awarded the European Chamber Music Prize in 2008.

This 37-disc box set is the only brand new and fully digital recording of the complete symphonies of Haydn. Performed by the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra) and conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, the recordings were done live in connection with concerts of the whole cycle. The series received fantastic reviews by the press, and The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra was awarded the European Chamber Music Prize in 2008.

Until 1750, Europe was under the spell of the Italian opera seria for about 70 years. Then the audience began to develop a taste for more drama: no more succession of arias that were loosely welded together by an overly familiar plot, but a story in which people could live with the main characters. The French, who had stubbornly refused to go along in the European mania for Italian opera seria and had developed their own national opera, could look forward to an increasing influence of French opera. This can be clearly observed in the operas of Christoph Willibald von Gluck, who has gone down in history as the great opera reformer of the 18th century. However, there were even more composers who had implemented innovations and one of them was Niccolò Jommeli (1714-74).

Previous recordings allotted the words of the angel in the Evangelist's narration of No. 13 to the tenor, but Münchinger rightly, in my view, gives them to the Angel. His direction is more lively and, where called for, more dramatic than in the competing version under Richter, and the Decca recording has, also, an extra brightness and clarity lacking in the DGG. The soloists are admirable in both versions, and in both, also, the Pastoral Symphony is beautifully played.