Sky Dies Irae

The small Opus 111 imprint records many of the small gems of Baroque and Classical music. Here is a disc from the fine Belgian historical-performance ensemble Il Fondamento. Johann Adolf Hasse is remembered mostly as an opera composer, but he also contributed copiously to the large corpus of now-undiscovered religious music of the middle eighteenth century. The Requiem in C major that makes up the bulk of the present disc, in particular, was widely recognized for its originality in Hasse's own time, as is attested to by the large numbers of copies of the work that have been found all over Europe.

The small Opus 111 imprint records many of the small gems of Baroque and Classical music. Here is a disc from the fine Belgian historical-performance ensemble Il Fondamento. Johann Adolf Hasse is remembered mostly as an opera composer, but he also contributed copiously to the large corpus of now-undiscovered religious music of the middle eighteenth century. The Requiem in C major that makes up the bulk of the present disc, in particular, was widely recognized for its originality in Hasse's own time, as is attested to by the large numbers of copies of the work that have been found all over Europe.

A unique collector's edition is a "climbing on the history of music" for 20 centuries from ancient times (Greece) to the present day. "History of Music", the 20-disc collection. Starting with the ancient music, music of the Middle Ages continued, Renaissance and Baroque music and ending the era of romanticism and modernity.

This whopping 40-disc set, which sells for very little, contains familiar performances of the major works, and most of them are quite good. Symphonies Nos. 1-7 feature Kosler and the Slovak Philharmonic–not a first-class orchestra, but a fine conductor who gets the ensemble to play idiomatically and well. The Eighth is Menuhin's (not bad), the Ninth Paavo Järvi's (quite good). The concertos come from Vox and feature Firkusny (piano), Nelsova (cello), and Ricci (violin).

This fabulous five disc set is replete with some of those old Stokowski warhorses all recorded in absolutely mind boggling Phase 4 sound, overblown perhaps but astounding for its time. Decca's remastering is absolutely magnificent and the discs are jam packed with almost six hours of music. This is another fine memorial to a great conductor who remained astonishingly vital until the very end of his life.