The music on this disc dates to 1996, shortly after the then-emerging young mezzo soprano Magdalena Kozená had graduated from the Bratislava College of Music. She gave a concert of Bach arias at a medieval Benedictine monastery in the old Moravian town of Trebic, as part of a music festival called Concentus Moraviae, and it evolved into the present disc. The disc itself was recorded not at the monastery, but at a Czech concert hall with very live, cathedral-like sound.

This disc is the debut entry in a full cycle of Bach's cantatas to come from Canada's Montreal Baroque historical performance ensemble. Conductor Eric Milnes opts for the controversial approach of having just one voice per part – the four soloists, joined together – in the choral movements, with no choir in sight.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs interest in the organ would seem to be fairly limited, at least judging by the number of pieces he composed for the instrument. The reasons for this attitude could be personal and professional, but could also reflect the changing affections and the new sensibility of the period, since during his lifetime the organ underwent a phase of relative decline. Indeed, following the acme reached by Johann Sebastian Bach, the instrument sank into a phase of neglect in Germany during the second half of the 1700s.

Gone are the days when Kazuhito Yamashita amazed and delighted us with his remarkable transcriptions of "Pictures at an exhibition" or Dvorak's "New World" transcription. 53 years later (Yamashita was born in 1961) has reached impeccable artistic maturity. His prodigious musicality and remarkable virtuosity can be evidenced throughout this double album.

The first thing to strike the listener about these 2006 Avie recordings of Bach's Sonata for viola da gamba and harpsichord will be how loud they are. While neither instrument is noted for its power to project, the instruments are recorded so closely here as to be gargantuan in these recordings by Jonathan Manson and Trevor Pinnock. After adjusting the volume, the second thing to strike the listener will be how brilliantly played they are.

Some of the Baroque releases on Canada's ATMA label have stuck close to established molds, but this one by the young Québécoise harpsichordist Catherine Perrin breaks them all. Perrin's career is unusual in itself; while many performers of early music stick to the specialized circles of players who do the same, Perrin has parallel careers as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio host, contemporary music performer, and musical theater enthusiast. Perrin subtitles her disc "Five Centuries of Preludes on the Harpsichord," but she intends something slightly different: an examination of the prelude as a musical idea. In her booklet notes she quotes writer Michel Chion, who situates the prelude in a space of unique freedom, "a privileged position in the vanguard," unleashed by "the fact that it occurs before the time has come to be serious or definitive.

Most of Sara Sant'Ambrogio's recordings have been as cellist with the Eroica Trio, but she takes on the odd numbers of J.S. Bach's Six Suites for unaccompanied cello in this 2009 solo outing, and it's an ambitious undertaking. This album faces comparisons with several great recordings of the suites, and this young cellist likewise faces scrutiny for playing works associated with such names as Casals, Fournier, and Rostropovich, past masters of the instrument.

Cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio says ''Before I knew language, I knew Bach'' referring to her earliest memories of growing up in a house full of classical music. A founding member of the Eroica Trio, with recordings on Angel/EMI Classics, Sant'Ambrogio has been profiled in Strings, Strad, Gramophone, and more. She performs on a Matteo Goffriller cello, Venice, ca. 1715. Sara earned rave reviews for her earlier Bach CD (Cello Suites, 1, 3, & 5), and these recordings are even better.

The Ensemble Pygmalion directed by Raphaël Pichon commences its collaboration with Harmonia Mundi with this new recording of J.S. Bach’s lost music to the Köthener Trauermusik (Cöthen funeral music), BWV 244a. Founded in 2006 at the European Bach Festival, Ensemble Pygmalion is a combination of choir and orchestra - all young performers with experience of authentic instruments and period-informed performance. Its repertoire concentrates primarily on Johann Sebastian Bach and Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Strong but delicate, deliberate but subtle, driven but supple, Masaaki Suzuki's 2005 recording of Bach's Italian Concerto and French Overture for harpsichord are quite convincing in their own distinctive way. In Suzuki's hands, the opening crash of the Italian Concerto is as instantly arresting as the powerful opening prelude and fugue from the French Overture is immediately appealing.

Listeners familiar with other recordings in Masaaki Suzuki's ongoing traversal of Bach's solo keyboard works may find his performances of the Partitas somewhat of an anomaly. For instance, the sharply delineated juxtapositions of tempos that made his Fantasias and Fugues program so thrilling (type Q3840 in Search Reviews) are nowhere to be heard here. The interpretive agenda this time is much subtler and decidedly more introverted.

The playing of many professional classical guitarists leaves me cold. Where they flawlessly execute a score, Bream has spaciously conceived the music using something it seems is in short supply- a disciplined imagination. Each note, instead of sounding like part of an automatic process, sounds conceived and executed deliberately. Bream attended conservatory, where he was told not to bring his "gypsy instrument".

Over the last 20 years, the Naxos label has done a great deal to obtain its reputation as one of the leading classical guitar labels. Its very first guitarist was Gerald Garcia, who was not slow to show the way forward by extending the rather limited guitar repertoire by making arrangements of pieces originally written for other instruments. This is what he has done here, too: None of the music on this disc was written for guitar, it is all arranged by Garcia himself, who plays a modern guitar and definitely not a baroque instrument.

Robert Shaw's reading of the B Minor Mass is, in one sense at least, just what one would expect: sober and purposeful, beautifully shaped (Shaw is a master architect), it centers on the chorus. Like all of Shaw's choruses, the Atlanta group has that trademark richness of body and blend, and it sings with utter unanimity as though it were one great voice. Shaw opts for marginally broader tempos than those found in most period-instrument performances but is nowhere near as glacial as some interpreters.