Hidrologija ii Deo

Stéphane Fuget has a highly disciplined ensemble that brings out the depth and intricate layers of Lully’s music with fine diction (for the vocalists) and tempos that highlight the dramatic content…the performance is engaging and powerful, showing the pride and elegance of the French court of Louis XIV. This is one excellent disc and should be part of any collection.

Classics, the fifth Era album by producer Eric Lévi, is similar in style to previous releases but is novel in its new age adaptation of well-known classical works by Giulio Caccini, Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Verdi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler, George Frederick Handel, and Samuel Barber. The past couple Era albums, The Mass (2003) and Reborn (2008), weren't as well received as the first couple, Era (1997) and Era 2 (2000). Though this didn't prevent them from reaching the Top Ten of the French albums chart, many fans expressed disappointment that Lévi was increasingly running out of good ideas and either repeating himself or, in the case of songs like "Kilimandjaro" from Reborn, making awful music. Rather than come up with fresh material of his own once again, Lévi goes back to the classics for Classics, crafting Era-style new age adaptations of Caccini's Ave Maria, Vivaldi's Spring and Winter from The Four Seasons…

This disc recycles some performances by the German historical-instrument group Virtuosi Saxoniae, originally issued between 1986 and 1995. As such, it improves not only on most of the budget compilations issued by the label involved, Berlin Classics, but on the majority of such compilations in general. The same group is involved all the way through, for one thing; there are different vocal soloists, but the interpretive environment is consistent. More important, the compilation rearranges the original material into something new and interesting. The selection of music turns on the double use of the sentence "Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis" (Glory to God on high, and peace on earth to people of good will), unfortunately mistranslated in the English booklet notes, although the German is correct. The utterance is given by Luke as that of the Host above the stable in Bethlehem after the birth of Christ; it is also more general, opening the Gloria of the Catholic Mass. The selection of Baroque works here accordingly brings together pieces of various types. There are big settings of the Gloria, either freestanding like the well-known Gloria in D major, RV 589, by Vivaldi, or taken from missae breves or full-length masses.

In June 1995, a virtually unknown group of Japanese musicians embarked on the monumental task of recording the complete sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Almost eighteen years later, on 23rd February 2013, the Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki – by then household names in the international music world – reached their goal, as they finished recording the 55th disc in a series which in the meantime had met with overwhelming acclaim worldwide. Made in conjunction with the final cantata recording, this film commemorates the occasion. Besides filmed performances of the three last cantatas – Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV191, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV69 and Freue dich, erlöste Schar, BWV30 – the film includes interviews with Masaaki Suzuki and key members of Bach Collegium Japan as well as behind-the-scenes footage.