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The four concerti in The Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi have probably earned the distinction of being the most frequently recorded classical works in the digital era. Originally published as part of a set of 12 concerti as Vivaldi's Opus 8, the other eight concerti also get some attention, particularly La tempesta di mare, but the set as a whole is comparatively seldom recorded. In Europa Galante's Virgin Classics release, Vivaldi: Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, violinist Fabio Biondi, who has recorded The Four Seasons at least once before for Opus 111, leads his expert ensemble in the whole of the Opus 8 set.

Although frequently classified as an oratorio, C. P. E. Bach's Auferstehung und Himmeelfahrt Jesu is really a cantata. There are no named dramatis personae and it is evident from Emanuel Bach's own comments that he intended the work to have a partly didactic function. He also considered it, in his own words as "pre-eminent among all my vocal works in expression and in the composition". The author of the text was Karl Wilhelm Ramler, an important poet of the German Enlightenment whose texts had earlier attracted Telemann. Ramler and Bach engaged in a close collaboration over the Auferstehung and between Bach's setting of it in 1774 and the eventual publication by Breitkopf in 1787, composer and poet entered into a lively correspondence concerning the details and shape of the cantata. The first performance took place in Hamburg in 1778 when it was warmly received. Many subsequent performances were given culminating in three directed by Mozart in Vienna.

Last year saw the launch of the David Munrow Edition on Virgin Veritas (9/96). The series continues with this, arguably Munrow’s most consistent and most polished collection, devoted to the sacred and secular polyphony of the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These recordings remain marvellously fresh and vital – even in the case of pieces that have since had more polished or more clearly recorded interpretations.

Re-release of the second album from Epic & Power Metal pioneers Virgin Steele. Remixed, remastered and 3 bonus tracks were addded. 41 years ago this album was released and hit like a bomb in the Metal scene. These men of Steele have been busy! Hot on the heels of last summer’s brand new Bombastic Epic release “The Passion of Dionysus” coming this summer in addition to the re-release of the very first Virgin Steele album, the second Virgin Steele album, “Guardians Of The Flame”, will also be re-released in tandem with the first album, on August 23, 2024, via Steamhammer/SPV in a very special edition, as a digi-CD and as a Gatefold Double Vinyl LP, and also in digital format.

Re-release of the second album from Epic & Power Metal pioneers Virgin Steele. Remixed, remastered and 3 bonus tracks were addded. 41 years ago this album was released and hit like a bomb in the Metal scene. These men of Steele have been busy! Hot on the heels of last summer’s brand new Bombastic Epic release “The Passion of Dionysus” coming this summer in addition to the re-release of the very first Virgin Steele album, the second Virgin Steele album, “Guardians Of The Flame”, will also be re-released in tandem with the first album, on August 23, 2024, via Steamhammer/SPV in a very special edition, as a digi-CD and as a Gatefold Double Vinyl LP, and also in digital format.

The violin concertos here are not the familiar pair in A minor and E. Bach composed a number of concertos for orchestral instruments and later transcribed them as keyboard concertos. Reversing Bach’s procedure, Wilfried Fischer has taken the harpsichord versions and from them has reconstructed the originals. BWV 1056 is a transposed transcription of the Keyboard Concerto in F minor (though New Grove identifies the outer movements as being from a lost oboe concerto). The D minor work is also usually heard in its keyboard adaptation. The concerto in C minor for two harpsichords appears in its original instrumentation for violin and oboe, the soloists here being perfectly balanced for clarity of line. It was Tovey who suggested that the A major concerto may have been intended for the oboe d’amore, an instrument pitched between the oboe proper and the cor anglais.

FROM THE LOVELY, LANGUID opening words, “Dalle cime dell’Alpi” (From the tops of the Alps), as Winter returns from the mountains to learn from the other seasons of the death of the Virgin Mary, this new recording makes a case for Marcello’s 1731 oratorio, Il Pianto e il Riso delle Quattro Stagioni. Fresh voices, attentive to text and to stylish phrasing, portray the siblings Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, supported by the lively playing of the Ensemble Lorenzo da Ponte and vigorous singing of the Venice Monteverdi Academy under the direction of Roberto Zarpellon.