Purcell’s fourth and last full-scale semi-opera, The Indian Queen, is often passed over in favour of its longer and more rounded predecessors, especially King Arthur and The Fairy Queen. The reasons are plentiful: Thomas Betterton, with whom Purcell collaborated, never finished his reworking of an early Restoration tragedy and even if he had torn himself away from his business interests in 1695, Purcell would not have been alive to set the remaining music for Act 5. As it happened, Henry’s brother Daniel set the masque from the final act after Betterton had hired an anonymous writer to finish his adaptation. No one can deny that neither verse nor music achieved the heights imagined in the original collaboration; given the quality of the masques in Purcell’s large ‘dramatick’ operas (including Dioclesian, of course), there is an undoubted sense of anticlimax.

Paul Goodwin’s A Christmas Collection (his debut disc with the Academy of Ancient Music) offers an anthology of Schütz’s shorter dialogues and motets by way of an alternative to the composer’s own Christmas Oratorio. Anyone who has ever endured that drily austere work will be pleasantly surprised by the rich textures and vocal expressivity of much of the music here, and by the dramatic wit, say, of the little Annunciation scene, ‘Sei gegrüsset Maria’, for male alto Angel and soprano Mary, in which the mother-to-be can’t help interrupting her heavenly visitor, first in sheer amazement, then in her eagerness to confirm her unblemished virgin state.

Born into an English musical family, organist and composer Christopher Gibbons (1615-1676) probably received early training from his famous father Orlando Gibbons. He sang in the choir of the Chapel Royal and went on to a distinguished career at Westminster Abbey and in the court of Charles II. With this showcase programme of motets, anthems, fantasias for strings, and organ voluntaries (all of which are receiving their first recording), Richard Egarr, the Academy of Ancient Music and the Choir of the AAM, aim to rescue the composer from unjust obscurity.

What could more enticing than two masterpieces written by composers still in their twenties? In a letter to his exacting father, Leopold, Mozart said he thought his recently completed quintet, K452, was his best work yet. And this in the midst of an extraordinarily purple patch, even by his standards. Beethoven's quintet (for the same instruments and in the same key) was written in deliberate imitation of Mozart's, perhaps in as much a spirit of friendly competition as homage.

With various record labels compiling complete works to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the death of Bach, EMI's more accessible approach is this luxurious anthology of the Baroque master's sacred music. Over two and a half hours, this program encompasses the grand scale of the Magnificat in D (BWV 243) and Missa Brevis in A (BWV 234). Between these are scared cantatas, the very popular choral Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 140) contrasting with sensitive solo vocal writing in Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (BWV 12); motets; arias; and an organ prelude and fugue. It's a well-balanced program, covering every aspect of Bach's church music except the Passions.

It's well known that most of Bach's harpsichord concertos began their lives as violin concertos. Since only three violin originals survive–the ones designated as BWV 1041-43–and since these are among his greatest instrumental works, musical scholars and performers have been reversing the process, turning the harpsichord concertos back into violin originals. BWV 1060 is one such case, a concerto for two harpsichords, which sounds much less clangy and bangy in this reconstructed version for two violins.

The year after J. C. Bach arrived in London he published three sets of works, among them this set of "Favourite Overtures". All but one of them had been heard in the King's Theatre, where he served as resident composer. Only one, the first on this disc, prefaced an opera of his own, Orione; Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 6 were written for pasticcios produced at that theatre between summer 1762 and early 1763, while No. 3, as far as we know, was not known in London, making the title "favourite" seem a little optimistic (it had been written for an opera heard in Turin in 1761). Being opera overtures, and essentially products of his Italian period, they are rather lighter in content and manner than most of J. C. Bach's music.

Academy of Ancient Music, Cambridge Handel Opera Company, Cambridge Early Music and Julian Perkins are proud to present the first professional recording of John Eccless Semele (c.1707), a notable early setting of the great English libretto by William Congreve better known in a version by GF Handel from 1744. Academy of Ancient Musics mission is to explore, reveal and preserve the great treasure house of baroque and classical music, and a spirit of newfound discovery runs through all our work.

Wonderful representative collection of music from England's Renaissance.

Éternel oublié de l’histoire de la musique anglaise, John Eccles (1668-1735) en est pourtant un des maillons les plus importants. Appartenant à une grande famille de musiciens, membre des « Vingt-quatre violons du roi », il consacra le meilleur de sa production à l’opéra. Son chef-d’œuvre, Semele, emprunte les innovations françaises et italiennes tout en conservant la spécificité propre aux conceptions anglaises.Longtemps privée d’une édition moderne, la musique d’Eccles recommence à faire surface comme en témoigne cet enregistrement de concert de la reconstitution de sa Semele, captée en 2019 lors d’un concert donné à la chapelle du Trinity College de Cambridge, sous la direction et la réalisation de Julian Perkins, à la tête d’une douzaine d’excellents solistes et des forces conjointes de la Cambridge Handel Opera Company, du Cambridge Early Music et de l'Academy of Ancient Music.Cette Semele est restée dans quelques mémoires grâce à son livret utilisé par Haendel pour son dernier oratorio en 1743. Quant à l’opéra d’Eccles, il a fallu attendre 1972, soit deux-cent cinquante années après sa création, pour le réentendre dans une version incomplète. Cette nouvelle version est une véritable révélation et l’on ne peut qu’être étonné d’un si long oubli. L’oeuvre, d’une grande beauté, alterne les ressorts de la comédie et de la tragédie en décrivant l’humanité face aux Dieux qui représentent les miroirs de ses propres passions.

AAM Records’ newest release features the Academy of Ancient Music joining forces with The Choir of Keble College and director Matthew Martin in a landmark recording of Francisco Vall’s ‘forgotten’ Missa Regalis [1740]. Performed from a new edition by Simon Heighes, Valls’ fascinating (and frequently confusticating) juxtaposition of ancient and ‘modern’ compositional styles provides a intriguing glimpse into the treasure-trove of Spanish baroque music, much of which remains relatively unknown to the wider world.

2013 Gramophone Artist of the Year, three time winner at the Classic BRITs and also three time winner at the Echo Klassik Awards, Alison Balsom OBE has cemented an international reputation as one of classical music’s great ambassadors and is ranked amongst the most distinctive and ground-breaking musicians on the international circuit today. With this release Alison records on the natural trumpet for the first time since the hugely successful album Sound the Trumpet. Inspired by seasonal Baroque repertoire, the recording includes Bach’s concertos by Corelli, Torelli, and Fasch performed with the Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of violinist Pavlo Besnosiuk.

These 2 discs offer the music of 3 different choirs and 4 different times periods. CD 1 features the Choir of King's College, Cambridge,performing 4 Coronation Anthems: Zadok the priest; My heart is inditing; Let my hand be strengthened and The King shall rejoice. Recording Date:August,1963.

Recorded before Sir Stephen Cleobury’s untimely passing in November 2019, King’s College presents a new account of one of the greatest masterpieces in sacred music, Bach’s St Matthew Passion. For this recording Cleobury led the King’s Choir and the Academy of Ancient Music alongside some of the most outstanding British singers performing today, headed by one of the finest Evangelists of our time, James Gilchrist. The album is accompanied by a booklet with over 60 pages of texts and photographs, including a full translation by Michael Marissen and a specially-commissioned essay by John Butt.

In this performance of Handel's best-loved oratorio, conductor Christopher Hogwood returns to the original performance traditions. The choruses are sung by boy trebles and male altos, tenors and basses, and member of the Choir of Westminster Abbey. The soloists improvise embellishments in the arias and, in certain cases, join in the singing of the choruses - just as they would have done 240 years ago. In addition, Members of the Academy all play instruments of the period or accurate modern copies.