Ancient Music

This six-CD box set brings together four major concerto sets composed including the most famous Il Cimento dell'Armonia e l'Invenzione awarded pride of place.
The eminently reliable Academy of Ancient Music play their period instruments with consummate zest under their charismatic conductor Christopher Hogwood and these sets date back to the early digital cum late analogue days when the fabled 'L'Oiseau-Lyre' label still produced those lavishly packaged boxes with their distinctive white covers and the wonderful paintings.

The recorder played a huge part in 18th-century European music, so it’s strange that this beautiful instrument doesn’t command the attention it deserves today. Enter Dutch player Lucie Horsch with a Baroque feast of thrilling arrangements and wonderful, original works for recorder. Dive into the magical, virtuosic worlds of Castello, Naudot, and Sammartini—whose Concerto in F Majoris a sparkling discovery—and relive famous pieces that shine anew. The voice flute used for “Erbarme dich” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion has a breathtaking vocal quality, while Horsch joins fellow recorder player Charlotte Barbour-Condini for a joyful, energizing performance of Handel’s “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.” Utterly inspiring.

AAM Records’ newest release features the Academy of Ancient Music joining forces with The Choir of Keble College and director Matthew Martin in a landmark recording of Francisco Vall’s ‘forgotten’ Missa Regalis [1740]. Performed from a new edition by Simon Heighes, Valls’ fascinating (and frequently confusticating) juxtaposition of ancient and ‘modern’ compositional styles provides a intriguing glimpse into the treasure-trove of Spanish baroque music, much of which remains relatively unknown to the wider world.

Purcell’s fourth and last full-scale semi-opera, The Indian Queen, is often passed over in favour of its longer and more rounded predecessors, especially King Arthur and The Fairy Queen. The reasons are plentiful: Thomas Betterton, with whom Purcell collaborated, never finished his reworking of an early Restoration tragedy and even if he had torn himself away from his business interests in 1695, Purcell would not have been alive to set the remaining music for Act 5. As it happened, Henry’s brother Daniel set the masque from the final act after Betterton had hired an anonymous writer to finish his adaptation. No one can deny that neither verse nor music achieved the heights imagined in the original collaboration; given the quality of the masques in Purcell’s large ‘dramatick’ operas (including Dioclesian, of course), there is an undoubted sense of anticlimax.

Led by Christopher Hogwood, the Academy of Ancient Music has made many renowned recordings of Handel's music-particularly the oratorios. The beloved Messiah heads up this 8-CD set, followed by Esther; La Resurezzione , and, making its return to the international catalog after an absence of several years, the 1985 recording of Athalia -with none other than Joan Sutherland in the title role! Recorded in London, 1979-85.

Chandos Chaconne's J.C. Bach: Overture "Adriano in Siria" features the Academy of Ancient Music under Simon Standage in four symphonies (one is an overture; for Bach there was no difference between the structure and function of these two forms) and the Sinfonia Concertante in C major, T. 289/4. The last-named work is the best music here; a loving realization featuring soloists Rachel Brown (flute), Frank de Bruine (oboe), and conductor Standage (violin) combining in pleasing harmony while managing to shine individually. This is exactly what Bach had in mind when he wrote the music, and this performance is to be preferred over the only other recording of the work on Capriccio.