Freiburger Gespräche

This recording is an excellent place to start in acquiring an appreciation of Handel's operas, with the outstanding mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt in the title role and leading a fine cast that includes soprano Juliana Gondek, mezzo Jennifer Lane, and bass Nicolas Cavallier. The plot–an only slightly convoluted tale of true love put to the test by scheming villainy–stands up better than many stories set by the likes of Verdi and Bellini, and Handel had longer than usual to write the music, a fact which shows in the opera's low clunker-to-gold ratio. There is not a weak voice in the cast, and McGegan leads the singers and the Freiburger Barockorchester with idiomatic flair; alternative scenes are provided for those who just can't get enough.

In their own way Beethoven’s five piano concertos relate a part of their composer’s life. In the previous volume of this complete recording, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado and the musicians of the Freiburger Barockorchester explored the beginning (Concerto no.2, a springboard to Viennese fame) and the end (the ‘Emperor’) of the story. They now turn to the most personal of all the Beethoven concertos, the Fourth which, at a time when the spectre of total deafness threatened his career, shattered the conventions of the genre - as did such orchestral works as Coriolan and the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus.

Mozart places melody at the very heart of his concertos. Introverted and sometimes uncertain at the start of K453, it is subsequently transmuted into birdsong - foreshadowing Papageno - and leads to a finale worthy of an Opera buffa. Imbued with majesty in K482 (contemporary with Le nozze di Figaro), it takes on a tinge of bitterness in the work's slow movement, before returning to more joyful melodic motifs, one of which will recur in Cosi fan tutte. Never have opera and concerto been so close. Partnering with the Freiburger Barockorchester, acclaimed forte pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout brings out all of the singing lines and sparkling bravura of these two great concertos.

The Freiburger Barockorchester, directed from Gottfried von der Goltz’s violin, released a brand new recording of Telemann’s rare Passion, entitled Seliges Erwägen (Contemplative Meditations). More than just setting to music the story of the passion of Christ, such as Bach did, we hear in this score a succession of meditations. If we know little about its genesis, it is acknowledged that the success of this work was considerable, even more than that of his Passion after Brockes or his oratorio The Death of Jesus. The clear diction and the transparency of the voices in the chorals perfectly convey the dramatic expression, typical of these sacred works.

DG and the Freiburger Barockorchester, one of the world’s foremost period-instrument orchestras, launch a new creative partnership with an album of works associated with the celebrated Mannheim court orchestra. Mozart’s Mannheim couples little-known gems by Cannabich, Holzbauer, Vogler and others with works written by Mozart during his formative visit to Mannheim in the late 1770s.

George Frideric Handel - Theodora [BluRay Untouched]
Ivor Bolton / Freiburger Barockorchester / Salzburger Bachchor
MPEG-4 AVC, 1080p, 1.78:1 | DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, LPCM 2.0 @ 24Bit/48kHz
Label/Cat#: Unitel Classica # 705804 | Country/Year: Europe 2011 | Size: 46,72 GB | 5% Recovery Info
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Opera, HiDef

The cast is wonderfully voiced, and the orchestra and chorus sound marvelous, and really that's all that matters in the long run. Not that many people are all that familiar with Theodora, despite Sellars' sensational production of a few years ago, and hopefully this new Blu-ray can help bring this beautiful piece to a wider audience. Highly recommended.

George Frideric Handel - Theodora [HiRes FLAC]
Ivor Bolton / Freiburger Barockorchester / Salzburger Bachchor
LPCM 2.0 @ 24Bit/48kHz ripped to FLAC | Size: 1,50 GB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Unitel Classica # 705804 | Country/Year: Europe 2011
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Opera, HiDef

The cast is wonderfully voiced, and the orchestra and chorus sound marvelous, and really that's all that matters in the long run. Not that many people are all that familiar with Theodora, despite Sellars' sensational production of a few years ago, and hopefully this new Blu-ray can help bring this beautiful piece to a wider audience. Highly recommended.

Two things distinguished Thomas Hengelbrock's 1996 recording of Bach's B minor Mass from the many other historically informed performances of the work released in the early digital era. Where many other conductors used small mixed choirs, Hengelbrock not only used the 26-voice Bathasar-Neumann-Chor, he drew his soloists from it. And where most other conductors tended exclusively toward quick tempos, Hengelbrock mixed things up, favoring fast tempos in joyful movements and slow tempos for painful movements.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber & Georg Muffat - Sonatas
Freiburger Barockorchester Consort / Petra Müllejans
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 307 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Harmonia Mundi # 05472778442 | Country/Year: Germany 2002
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…This record is a must for all lovers of this music. Sensibly, the Freiburger Barockorchester Consort do not give us all the Biber sonatas, mixing them with the 2 Muffatt ones. Some purists might prefer a disc which includes all the Biber sonatas, but with such lovely performances here I just hope that we get the rest of the sonatas on another disk.