Camerata Bern

This 50 CD Box Set includes Archiv Produktions finest analogue recordings made between 1959 and 1981, representing a Golden Age of a pioneering label that defined the way early music should be performed and recorded. Featured artists include Karl Richter, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Pierre Fournier, John Eliot Gardiner, Trevor Pinnock and other icons of the Archiv label.

For those that prefer to hear these works on piano rather than harpsichord, you can hardly find more enjoyable, illuminating, and elegant performances than these. Andras Schiff has surely become one of the most prominent proponents of J.S. Bach on the piano and its hard to believe these particular discs were ever allowed to slip from commercial availability. Their re-issue here is reason to rejoice. It is with good reason that another chapter in the career of Andras Schiff has started recently with his new series of Beethoven Sonatas on ECM, and of course more Bach. He is a true master, and the Bach Concerto recordings with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, led by Schiff himself, exemplify this and count as essential listening.

Heinz Holliger is widely considered the greatest oboe virtuoso of modern times. He is also a noted composer and conductor; as a composer he is one of the few who has maintained a strict adherence to serial procedures. Holliger has been the recipient of many prizes, including the Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau in Germany, and he is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jan Dismas Zelenka - Complete Orchestral Works
Das Neu-Eröffnete Orchestre - Jürgen Sonnentheil
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 266+287+292 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: CPO # 999 897-2 | Country/Year: Germany 2002
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…If you haven’t heard this music, let’s just say that Zelenka wrote some of the most enjoyable and colorful music of the Baroque era, and he is supremely well served by CPO’s engineers, conductor Sonnentheil, and his New-Eröffnete Orchestre.

During the 18th century, it was not uncommon for enlightened princes with musical pretensions to commission works from their court composer and then affix their own names to the title pages. But in the recently solved riddle of the so-called Pergolesi/Ricciotti ''Concerti Armonici,'' the case seems to be just the reverse. These six works, written in the contrapuntal sdyle of the late Baroque, were long thought to be the work of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, largely because handwritten copies of the score found in various collections attributed the set to the Italian composer.

As Sir András Schiff turns 70 (in December 2023), this 78-disc edition celebrates an artist who has made a significant contribution to shaping Decca’s history through an array of artistic endeavours. Neatly divided into four sections – solo, concertante, lieder and chamber music, the set includes several currently unavailable recordings; the first international release of Beethoven’s complete Violin Sonatas, with Sándor Végh; four CDs’ worth of material recorded on Mozart’s fortepiano; and the booklet includes an interview with Misha Donat in which Schiff tells the story of his journey with Decca.