Bernarda

The real prize in this jam packed nine-CD set is of course the incandescent recording of Giulio Cesare with some of the most phenomenal singing on record by Larmore, Schlick, and Fink. When this came out it created quite a stir, given it is about as complete as it ever has been, and filled with Jacob’s searching and trend-setting conducting. While it won’t displace favorites of yesteryear, those recordings are of a different era and style altogether, and here the opera comes together in a manner fully redolent of what Handel must have envisioned.

Album CD released in Spain in 1992 by the label Hispavox that is part of the large collection of 'Historical Records' that are the heritage of this record label, dedicated to the different flamenco styles. The collection is required for both the approach to the deepening of flamenco singing. This album collects 24 cuts 'bulerías' recordings of diverse styles.

SDG is proud to release a new recording of Bach's St John Passion. Previous releases have received phenomenal press coverage and tremendous reviews for performance, sound quality and packaging. Recorded in Königslutter in 2003, this two disc album features internationally acclaimed soloists, including Mark Padmore, Hanno Müller-Brachmann, Peter Harvey and Bernarda Fink.

Ludwig van Beethoven's 'Nine Symphonies' are the core repertoire of virtually every orchestra in the world and the Concertgebouworkest is no exception. Until the 1960s the Beethoven tradition of the Concertgebouworkest meant yearly symphony cycles that closed concert seasons. Later on Beethoven 'Symphonies' were mainly programmed one at a time, with a different (guest) conductor. This box set offers the finest recorded Concertgebouworkest live performances of the 'Nine Symphonies' since the 1970s. With a variety of conductors, from Leonard Bernstein to Nikolaus Harnoncourt it demonstrates the orchestra's incredible versatility.

The appetite for evolving performance practices in Bach’s St Matthew Passion appears undiminished as we have gradually shifted, over the generations, from larger to smaller ensembles and also towards a greater dramatic understanding of the implications of Bach’s ambitious ‘stereophonic’ double choir and orchestra choreography.

The slaying of Abel by his brother Cain was one of the favourite subjects of the 18th century Italians, at the time when the oratorio was having a phenomenal success in Rome and Venice. It was most probably in one of the palaces of the “Serenissima”, and not a church, that Scarlatti first performed this astonishing “sacred entertainment”, worthy of a “verismo” opera, in 1707… God and Lucifer confront each other in the very soul of Cain, his brother’s voice is heard from heaven, and the “spatial” treatment of the tonal levels all contribute to the effectiveness of what is almost expressionistic music – there is nothing left out of this incredible Baroque Biblical “thriller”!

Flamenco album released in Spain in 1993 by Hispavox on original sound recording made in 1976 with a collection of 12 gold 'bulerías'. 'Bulería' is one of the greatest 'palos' (styles) of classic flamenco, fundamentally important in the gypsy singing area of Jerez de la Frontera (Spain).

Beethoven called Mozart's Requiem "wild and terrible," and that's what we get in Harnoncourt's new recording. Ominous dread hangs from every note of the dark opening measures, the Rex tremendae and Confutatis are driven with terrifying strength, and the supplications of the Lacrimosa, with their weeping stabbings of the orchestra, are freighted with emotional power. The Tuba mirum duet of bass soloist and trombone has a beauty almost never achieved in other readings. Nor does Harnoncourt overstep the stylistic boundaries of this classical-era work; rather, the intensity is heightened for being in the idiom of its time. Call it a Romantic reading of a Classical piece that looks forward to a more unbuttoned era.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

We have here the exception to the traditional "M 22" rule (M22 refers to the collection of complete Mozart operas taped by Deutsche Grammophon in Salzburg last summer, and now available on DVD) whereby regardless of the stage production, the musical quality remains very strong. In this "Sogno", it is the other way round. The production is smart, witty, transposed in the 1920s, and always ALWAYS keep the interest of the audience high…By Autonome