Johann Sebastian Bach and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin go back a long way together! This recording, made with the welcome participation of Isabelle Faust and Antoine Tamestit, follows the complete violin concertos (2019), which left a lasting impression. Returning regularly to the inexhaustible source of the Brandenburgs ever since a memorable first recording in the late 1990s, the Berlin musicians have achieved a sovereign mastery of what is not a single work, but six, which, under their fingers, are successive episodes of a piece of musical theatre in love with dance, transparent sound and freedom. An exhilarating experience!

The work of another relatively new antiquarian group, the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, is altogether more interesting. Performing with no set director and alternating concertmasters, the academy applies fuller instrumentation to the suites and takes a compleatist approach to repeats.

Gottfried August Homilius, now considered the greatest cantor of Dresden's Kreuzchor, was, for a while a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. A composer of music for the church, and a great organist, he was described, in 1790, as 'one of the greatest and worthiest organists alive.' While Homilius's name is found on only one score for this passion, stylistic criteria make it almost certain that he wrote this music. This St. Matthew Passion closely resembles Bach's passions - it contains choral movements, recitatives and arias with orchestral accompaniment, and tells the story of the Passion in the same way as was done in churches all over Germany in the 18th century. However, Homilius uses many more short sections with recitative (a total of 89 pieces altogether - most less than one minute long), but his arias are generally much longer than those in Bach's passions and cantatas.

Continuinghis exploration of Handel operas, maestro René Jacobs now turns his attention to Agrippina the first great operatic success of the composer s Italian period. Composed in 1709, Agrippina is an opera seria in three acts on a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. The opera tells the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman Emperor Claudius and the installation of her son as emperor. Grimani s libretto, considered one of the best that Handel set, is full of topical political allusions. Some believe that it reflects the rivalry between Grimani and Pope Clement XI. From its opening night, the work was given a then- unprecedented run of 27 consecutive performances and received much critical acclaim.

Symphonies & Concertos in HM Gold series is the second entry among a pair of excellent C.P.E. Bach discs by the Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, recorded in the late '90s. To be fair, of the two this is probably the lesser release, although that's not by a margin of very much; one wishes Raphael Alpermann's harpsichord was a little louder in the Concerto in C major H. 654/Wq. 20, but that's about the only inequity between this and the other disc. This concerto appears along with the "first" cello concerto and three additional symphonies; Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, handles all of these works with an unbridled, no-holds-barred exposition of this Bach's sense of aggression and otherness, yet with crisp, precise playing that remains exceptional in its energy and drive.

Bach's second son didn't write a great many symphonies, but all of them are good, and well worth hearing. As a composer, CPE has fallen between the cracks of musical history. Neither baroque nor fully classical, he's seen as a "transitional" figure, which is, musically speaking, like telling someone that they are "a little pregnant." The implication is that his style is somehow unformed or impure, when in truth it's both highly developed and utterly personal. As you can clearly hear in these excellent performances, CPE had his own things to say and a unique way to say them, and the fact that he wasn't Haydn or Mozart doesn't make his music one bit less interesting or enjoyable.

"Never was there a more complete triumph - never a more thorough and speedy recognition of a great work of art." This was the response of the critic in the London Times to the wildly successful premiere of Felix Mendelssohn's Elias in 1846. Hans-Christoph Rademann began his tenure as Principal Conductor of the RIAS Chamber Choir with this groundbreaking oratorio. After eight productive and successful years, his final concert in July 2015 also featured the work.

After their acclaimed recording of Telemann’s Miriways, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin returns to PENTATONE with Joseph Haydn’s opera L’isola disabitata, together with an excellent quartet of vocalists. Officially called an azione teatrale, L’isola is a serious opera about love, loss and misunderstanding with a happy ending, set on an exotic deserted island. Special about this opera is that Haydn chose orchestral accompaniment for the entire work, with colourful and dramatic accompagnato recitatives. In Haydn’s printed score, many of the elaborate instrumental sections were deliberately cut, because he feared that they demanded too much from the players, and that some audiences may not have been cultured enough to fully appreciate them. Special about this recording is that these parts have all been reinstated, using a recent edition by Thomas Busse. The seasoned players of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, led by Bernhard Forck, play this lavish score with fervour and swing, while Anett Fritsch (Costanza), Sunhae Im (Silvia), Krystian Adam (Gernando) and André Morsch (Enrico) offer an equally virtuosic vocal delivery.

When Mozart took up the popular genre of the serenade, it was to transcend it and lend it new lustre. A festive masterpiece of simplicity and emotion, his Gran Partita quickly became a genuine ‘hit’! Thanks to the distinctive, spellbinding timbres of their period instruments, the members of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin give a unique flavour to these two extraordinary serenades, over which there blows – as it were – a tremendous wind of freedom.

Cleverly paired with two symphonies by C.P.E. Bach – written in 1755/56 and 1775/76 respectively – Beethoven’s first two contributions to the symphonic genre reveal the bubbling creativity of a thirty-year-old composer determined to go even further in the renewal of the genre than another, very recent reference, Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’. So much is clear from the very first chord of his Symphony no.1! Relive this decisive moment in the company of the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, under the guidance of their Konzertmeister Bernhard Forck.

The RIAS-Kammerchor Berlin and its chief conductor Justin Doyle present Handel’s Messiah, together with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and an all-British quartet of outstanding soloists, consisting of Julia Doyle (soprano), Tim Mead (countertenor), Thomas Hobbs (tenor) and Roderick Williams (bass). Messiah (1742) is not only Handel’s most famous work, but equally one of the cornerstones of British choral culture. Over the years, a tradition of mass performances full of pomp and circumstance took root, with the "Hallelujah" as a showstopper. This new period-instruments recording, however, aims to bring the piece back to the size and intimacy of the earliest performances.

Das erstklassige Solistenensemble, der RIAS-Kammerchor und die Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin und nicht zuletzt Jacobs selbst sind Garanten für lebendige historische Aufführungspraxis, so dass diese Interpretation der h-Moll Messe von der Fachpresse entsprechend enthusiastisch aufgenommen und den wenigen Referenzeinspielungen an die Seite gestellt wurde.

On March 14, 1849, 24-year-old Anton Bruckner finished his first major vocal composition. The only Requiem of the composer who would later become the architect of big symphonic “castles in the sky” was still created during his work in St. Florian. Some references to older models and some stylistic incongruities in musical stature still refer to the phase of self-discovery of the young composer. But those who listen closely will certainly discover the passages in which the mystical aura and sublimity of the large orchestral scores shine through already, be it in the gently glowing tone of the Benedictus, the intimate creed of the Agnus Dei or the powerful and masterfully conceived double fugue of Quam olim Abrahae. It is essentially “Bruckner on the way to Bruckner”.

Is another baroque opera–in this case by composer Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739)–really worth hearing in its entirety? After a completely conventional overture, the opening scene pits the legendarily rich king of Lydia, the titular Croesus (who incidentally lived in the fifth century B.C.), against the Athenian philosopher and lawgiver Solon. On account of his immeasurable wealth, the complacent Croesus believes himself to be completely secure and unassailable; Solon mocks his riches and points out how ephemeral all earthly goods are. This exchange of words via recitative is perfectly built up–both as a composition and as performed here. From his very first notes, Roman Trekel's Croesus carries conviction, while Kwangchul Youn (a role originally intended for tenor but justifiably and effectively transcribed by conductor René Jacobs for bass) is no less impressive.

In this premiere recording, René Jacobs leads a cast of outstanding singers and musicians in a grand production of Georg Philipp Telemann's 'Orpheus.' The manuscripts of this operatic drama were only recently rediscovered and because of some missing material, the version presented here cleverly interpolates other music by Telemann (and his contemporaries) to complete the story.