Ton And

If only for his melodic genius, Handel would have been forever acknowledged as one of history's greatest composers. These delightful sonatas for recorder provide abundant evidence to support that claim, and Marion Verbruggen's warm, resonant recorder and brilliant flute prove the perfect partners for bringing these rarely heard pieces to life.

The present set is the debut of Ton Koopman on the Challenge Classics label and the re-start of the series of complete cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Volume 13 in this CD presentation contains the third series of chorale cantatas from the second annual cycle Bach composed for Leipzig. Music criticism in the modern sense did not exist in the eighteenth century, so we do not really know anything about how the public responded to Bach's music. One of the few comments we have is in a newspaper report of Bach's first appearance in the capacity of Cantor of St Thomas's, presenting a cantata on 30 May 1723,but we learn only that it was received with approbation, even applause.

The cantatas of volume 19 can be relegated to three groups: Four works (BWV 72, 88, 129 and 193) belong to the third Leipzig series, lasting from 1725 to 1727; five (BWV 145, 159, 171, 174 and 188) belong to the group known as the Picander cycle of 1728-29, which was not completed or has not survived complete; two works (BWV 51 and 117) belong to the period after 1730, in which Bach composed new church cantatas only sporadically.

This is vintage, classic Koopman: Tempi that never linger, orchestral textures that accord privilege to clarity and insight over effect and superb, beautifully articulated, solo vocal lines. Koopman's lucidity might appear a little too detached or cool for some listeners who are used to responding to the emotional charge of Bach's Passions. One of Koopman's greatest strengths is his grasp of architecture: of the unfolding of the passion events; of the relative roles and interactions of the soloists and 'crowds'; of the inevitability of events in a musical - as opposed to a Biblical - sense.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, as part of his regular duties as kapellmeister in Hamburg, composed 19 passion settings, alternating the four Gospel texts so that a new setting of a given text appeared once every four years, as his predecessor Georg Philipp Telemann had done. Until the discovery of the Berlin Sing-Akademie collection in Kiev in 1999, all that remained of this considerable body of work were bits and fragments of individual pieces, most of them extant because they were used in other contexts.

The world-renowned early music specialist and keyboard player Ton Koopman and the violinist Catherine Manson perform the six Sonatas for Harpsichord and Violin, BWV 1014-1019 of Johann Sebastian Bach on this new 2-CD set for Challenge Classics. Their previous collaboration on the label was an outstanding recording of the music of Buxtehude. Catherine Manson enjoys a versatile performing career specialising in period performance as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral leader. She became the current leader of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in 2006, and as first violinist of the London Haydn Quartet has been involved in a critically acclaimed series of recordings of the Haydn quartets for Hyperion.

Koopman's Second Passion of St. Matthew: Passion plays became the musical high points of the church year in Leipzig under Bach. That fact that the Passion of St. Matthew can still overwhelm audiences today is without a doubt. Ton Koopman decided - after the first recording at ERATO more than 10 years ago - to record this masterpiece once again and consequently to put his experience with intensive involvement with the complete cantata by Bach into it. The result could not be more convincing in picture and sound, not the least thanks to the excellent soloists, who are much more well-balanced than the first time.

Bach's 200 existing cantatas (100 more have been lost) represent one of music history's most remarkable achievements. The first volume in Erato's ambitious but much-needed traversal of the complete canon contains nine cantatas from Bach's early career. Except for "Christ lag in Todesbanden," these are lesser-known works, yet that doesn't mean they are of lesser quality. Here are some of Bach's most compelling choruses, accompanied by colorful and ingenious instrumental writing. Highlights abound, including the appendices that reproduce Bach's revised versions of cantatas 4 and 21. The choral singing is excellent: sensitive and agile, with unforced tone.

Bach’s St. John Passion with a star-studded lineup of soprano Johennette Zomer, countertenor Andreas Scholl, tenor MLike Koopman's reading of the St Matthew Passion last year, this is an intimate, if occasionally idiosyncratic, account. His understanding and shaping of the structure of the work produce powerful results, while an intuitive sense of pacing means the more contemplative sections serve to heighten the main dramatic narrative, rather than interrupt it. Koopman also achieves a sensitive balance between voices and instruments, so that the solo singers become very much part of the contrapuntal texture, and the instrumental parts are given due focus.