Total Consecration

Music appreciation textbooks and timelines in magazines often name Guillaume Dufay as the first great composer of the European Renaissance, but one might equally call him the last great composer of the Middle Ages. This disc presents all 13 of Dufay's isorhythmic motets–the final masterpieces of a very medieval-minded genre. During the Middle Ages, music was considered a science (just like mathematics), and isorhythmic motets are constructed according to strict arithmetical principles. In addition, each voice generally has a different text, while the fundamental voice (called the tenor) usually has no text at all and is often (as here) performed by instruments.

Hector Berlioz, France’s greatest Romantic composer, exemplifies the spirit of his age – yet his genius was also ahead of its time. Reflecting his colourful life, his music is astonishing for its originality and ambition, and for orchestration of groundbreaking brilliance. This, the first-ever complete Berlioz edition, comprises carefully selected recordings and even includes works completely new to the catalogue. The accompanying booklet, lavishly illustrated, contains a fascinating commentary from Berlioz biographer David Cairns, whose words bring the composer’s music still more vividly to life.

Theatre Music - the dialogue in the service of great poetry - is the focus of this recording. We have already been able to perform Egmont with several renowned actors. That the part of the narrator is here taken by Herbert Föttinger, currently the director of the theatre for which Beethoven himself wrote music, is beautifully fitting. Christopher Hampton has modeled the combined texts of Goethe and Grillparzer into his poetic English translation. It fills us with great joy and gratitude that John Malkovich - with whom we have already had the pleasure of collaborating for several years - has taken on the part of the narrator in the English version.

Back by popular demand, The Toscanini Collection is a reissue of RCA's 1992 compendium that encompassed all of the recordings Toscanini made with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and NBC Symphony. A new addition to this amazing collection is his approved recordings with the BBC Symphony from the 1930s that were not included in the 1992 edition. This limited-edition package is the complete RCA Toscanini Collection on 84 CDs plus a bonus DVD, "The Maestro."

The cube made with matches which appears on the cover of this disc, showing on flames in the inside of the digipak and afterwards completely burnt, plays with the ideas that inspire this dazzling recording: the four ways to the knowledge of numbers through the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy), which are expressed through something as ephemeral assound, where also the unexpected and the emotion of the moment take place.

The Benedictine abbey at Lambach in Upper Austria was founded in 1056. Research undertaken since 2002 has revealed a treasure trove of musical works written by musicians associated with the abbey. Two such composers are featured on this disc, recorded in the historic building itself: Beniamin Ludwig Ramhaufski (c.1631-1694) and the Salzburgborn Joseph Balthasar Hochreither (1669-1731), who possibly studied with Biber.

Beethoven’s monumental contribution to Western classical music is celebrated here in this definitive collection marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Surveying the totality of his career and achievement, the Complete Edition spans orchestral, concerto, keyboard, chamber, music for the stage, choral and vocal works, encompassing his most familiar and iconic masterpieces, alongside rarities and recently reconstructed fragments and sketches in world premiere recordings. The roster of artists and ensembles includes some of Beethoven’s greatest contemporary exponents, in performances that have won critical acclaim worldwide.

For the first time it is possible to present the orchestra music os Beethoven to the listening public of today in a form which he would recognise. For the Hanover Band is an orchestra of 29 specialist performers on late 18th-century instruments, a classical orchestra modelled in size and type on the Burgtheater orchestra in theVienna of 1800.