During this visit, these young ladies were so obliging as to sing me a salve regina, lately set by their father, in duo. It is an exquisite composition, full of grace, taste and propriety.” So wrote the english traveller charles burney in 1772. The “father” was Johann Adolf Hasse, one of the 18th century’s most famous composers – and here he is in “a delightful programme, thoughtfully put together and very well executed.

This 10 CD-Set offers a collection of the most popular Mass compositions from the Viennese Classics up to the romantic period. It includes famous masterpieces like Mozart’s „Coronation Mass“, Beethoven Missa solemnis, Haydn „Harmony Mass“, Gounod St. Cecilia Mass but also rarities like „Missa Sancti Joannis Nepomuceni“ by Michael Haydn, the „Coronation Mass“ by Cherubini, „Missa sacra“ by Robert Schumann and the „Misa solemnis“ of the german romantic composer Friedrich Kiel. Performed by well known artists like the Vienna Boys’ Choir, RIAS Chamber Choir, Tölzer Boys’ Choir, Wiener Akademie and last but not least also includes the spectacular recording of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with conductor Michael Gielen.

The central question was always about how much needs to be added to the surviving notes in order to make Poppea viable on stage. Gardiner and his advisers believe that nothing needs adding and that the 'orchestra' played only when explicitly notated in the score and was a very small group.

Die Kombination hat sich bewährt. Joseph Haydn hat in Sir John Eliot Gardiner einen Interpreten gefunden, der mit dem nötigen Ernst und der fachlichen Kompetenz seinen geistlichen Werken nachzuspüren vermag. “Seine Darbietungen haben eine bewegende Stärke und Energie. Die Solisten sind ausgezeichnet. An keiner Stelle zweifelt man an Haydns wahrer Größe”, urteilte die BBC über Gardiners Messen-Projekt.

The slaying of Abel by his brother Cain was one of the favourite subjects of the 18th century Italians, at the time when the oratorio was having a phenomenal success in Rome and Venice. It was most probably in one of the palaces of the “Serenissima”, and not a church, that Scarlatti first performed this astonishing “sacred entertainment”, worthy of a “verismo” opera, in 1707… God and Lucifer confront each other in the very soul of Cain, his brother’s voice is heard from heaven, and the “spatial” treatment of the tonal levels all contribute to the effectiveness of what is almost expressionistic music – there is nothing left out of this incredible Baroque Biblical “thriller”!

This is the first authoritative recording of Alessandro Scarlatti's Griselda, rendered with exquisite beauty by René Jacobs, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and an outstanding cast led by Dorothea Röschmann in the title role. Warming to the story of Griselda (originally by Boccaccio) – the low-born woman who endures a string of indignities as the king, Gualtiero, tests her suitability to be the mother of his heir – is not easy. But the added humanity of Apostolo Zeno's libretto, which invests Griselda with more backbone, and Gualtiero with more sympathy, than they had in Boccaccio's original, and the emotional immediacy of the performances, Röschmann's in particular, make this recording go down smoothly. It is also an abundantly melodic and beautifully orchestrated score, representing Scarlatti at the height of his powers.

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.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt The Complete Sony Recordings brings together for the first time Harnoncourt s complete recordings from 2002-2015 with his Concentus Musicus Wien, the Wiener Philharmonike, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the Symphonieorchester des Bayrischen Rundfunks. The Sony Classical edition features his famous symphony recordings of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Bruckner, alongside his celebrated performances of great choral works such as the Verdi, Brahms and Mozart Requiems and Haydn's Die Schöpfung, as well as Mozart's opera Zaide, Haydn's Orlando paladino and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Also included are previously authorized but unreleased recordings of J. S. Bach s Cantatas Nos. 26 & 36, Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge and Dvorák's Stabat Mater.

Rare recordings of two settings of Mary’s passionate Easter lament. For their second L’Oiseau Lyre disc, Il Giardino Armonico, again under their director Giovanni Antonini, are joined by celebrated mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink, for a project exploring the Passion of Christ as seen through the eyes of the Virgin Mary. The two central works are both vocal settings of the Virgin’s lament.

Few ensembles can come to Bach's St John Passion with quite the degree of performance-based insight that Gardiner and his musicians have done. Written for Good Friday in 1724, the passion was the centrepiece of Bach's year-long cycle of liturgical cantatas. Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir spent 2000 performing and recording these surrounding cantatas, before recording this disc in 2003. The result is a little slice of musical heaven. In sound, it's a masterpiece of technical precision and musical beauty. In tone, it perfectly balances the theatrical with the devotional. The English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir expertly build and release tension, their phrases shaped to sound natural, instinctive, and emotionally complete. The work's many dramatic contrasts are also brilliantly done.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt war der vielleicht wichtigste Pionier einer Musikauffassung, die hinter der spätromantischen Sichtweise auf die Passionen Johann Sebastian Bachs das originale Klangbild suchte. Dabei ging es ihm keineswegs um Authentizität als Selbstzweck, sondern vielmehr um ein Ausloten der Bach'schen Klangfarben und Ausdrucksmittel, die im Brahms- und Bruckner-Sound der großen Oratorienchöre und Symphonieorchester verloren gegangen waren. Inzwischen ist diese Auffassung etabliert und Harnoncourt weit ins romantische Repertoire eingedrungen. Die Zeit reinen Bach- und Mozart-Spezialistentums scheint vorbei. Mit der Neueinspielung der Matthäus-Passion begibt sich der Dirigent daher wieder zurück zu seinen Wurzeln.

On February 24 1711, the curtain at the Haymarket theater went up for 'Rinaldo,' the first opera George Frideric Handel produced for London. It had a libretto by Giacomo Rossi, based on a somewhat mangled outline of Tasso's epic poem of the Crusades, 'Gerusalemme Liberata,' which had been prepared by impresario Aaron Hill with the aim of allowing for as many special machinery effects as possible. Handel clearly wanted to impress London, for his sparkling music contained liberal borrowings from some of his best recent scores. While many changes and cuts were made up to the time of Handel1s final revision in 1731, this recording attempts as much as possible to return to the version that would have been heard in the first London production.

A ubiquitous Viennese figure in the early 1700s, Francesco Conti was one of several gifted Italian Baroque composers who settled in foreign lands. If Caldara remains the most durable Italian figure in Vienna, Conti's star — on this evidence — deserves to be dusted down and given a second chance. These four cantatas from eight Cantate am istromenti probably date from the first decade of the century and feature the most delectable plethora of obbligato instruments imaginable.