The abundant legacy of Gustav Leonhardt’s recordings for Telefunken’s Das Alte Werk series invites us to follow his trajectory as a performer from the early 1960’s onwards, a time when the new codes of early music had yet to be invented, when their success depended above all on the strength of conviction of the performer. Leonhardt’s was strengthened by dialogue: with a range of partners whose variety defies all preconceived ideas, with ancient instruments or modern copies of all types, with repertoires as diverse as Byrd, Purcell, Rameau, Johann Sebastian but also Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Not forgetting the 1970 Monteverdi LP, which has never been reissued since. The image of a pope of early music isolated in his tower and frozen in a school style does not last long after listening to this historical sum, extended here by the later series of recordings under the Virgin Veritas flag.

Some of the connections with Venice may be a little tenuous, and this particular Winged Lion even circles over Spain clutching a Venetian guitar. The Palladian Ensemble's debut disc was called An Excess of Pleasure; the sequal offers nothing less! From two gutsy Vivaldi concertos via the dashing caprice of Santiago de Murcia's La Jota to a canzon by Cavalli which discharges itself in a haunting echo of Monteverdi's Lamento della Ninfa, the programme continually surprises and enchants. The playing too.

"EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots. It is an overture to engage with the sheer perfection of the world around us, to consider if we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being. It is a clarion call to contemplate if our collective suffering isn't perhaps linked to the aching separation from something primal within and around us. This is a vivid musical exploration through the centuries to remember and to create a new EDEN from within." - Joyce DiDonato

There is no shortage of discs around featuring transcriptions of Renaissance music for brass. Whilst played on modern instruments the main difference here however is that London Brass, several of whom play period instruments in other ensembles, have enlisted the specialist knowledge of Philip Pickett to direct them.

New release Canta la Serenissima includes the most divine music from the Republic of Venice, the Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta, La Serenissima. Saint Mark’s Cathedral was one of the main employers of Venetian musicians and also a place of musical reforms in the 16th and 17th centuries. Composers featured on the disc include Claudio Monteverdi, the most famous maestro di cappella of all times at Saint Mark’s, Alessandro Grandi (1586–1630), who was a master of sacred monody, Dario Castello (c. 1590–c. 1658), who was a leader of a wind ensemble from 1621 at Saint Mark’s and Biagio Marini (1594–1663), who was a violinist from 1615 at Saint Mark’s. CD includes also works composed for the city of Venice’s patron saint Virgin Mary. Vocal works are performed skillfully by soprano Kajsa Dahlbäck.

Most of Monteverdi's motets for one voice were among his late publications, like the celebrated Selva morale e spirituale (Venice, 1640). An aboluste master of what he called the seconda prattica, he demonstrated in these pieces all of the skill he had acquired over the years in writing for the solo voice. Just as he had taken the madrigal to its peak of perfection, Monteverdi here realises the achievements of the Baroque period in this form of religious music inherited from the early centuries of polyphonic writing. The performers have striven to revive the typically Venetian context of the time, placing these sublime works in a framework of instrumental toccatas and sinfonias by his contemporaries Marini, Merulo and Antegnati.

In 2014, Bruce began a project together with Czech soprano Hana Blažíková to explore the affinity of the cornetto and the human voice. The project was called Breathtaking: A Cornetto and a Voice Entwined. With the program that evolved from that project, Bruce and Hana recorded a CD for the Passacaille label and toured the world performing the program more than forty times in North America, Europe and Australia. In order to make the touring financially viable, they have paired with backup ensembles in Europe, the USA and Australia.

Following the international success of their first album on Resonus, Venice 1629, Jamie Savan with his acclaimed period group The Gonzaga Band continue their exploration of lesser-known music in the Baroque Venetian orbit. Here they uncover the Vespers (1616), a forgotten masterpiece by Amadio Freddi, maestro di cappella of Treviso Cathedral during Monteverdi’s tenure at St Mark’s in Venice.

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.

Voglio cantar – ‘I want to sing’ – is Emőke Baráth’s first solo album for Erato. The young Hungarian soprano has built a special reputation in Baroque music and the prime focus here is on Barbara Strozzi, who made her name as a composer in 17th century Venice. “She must have been quite a revolutionary personality,” says Emőke Baráth. “Her music is improvisational, intuitive, even rhapsodic … She was clearly a passionate woman with a strong dramatic sense.” Baráth is joined by Il Pomo d’Oro, conducted by Francesco Corti.

This is the second disc to come from Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli forces and it is already their second Gramophone Award. When I reviewed their Virgin Classics' recording of a reconstruction of a dogal coronation of 1595 (5/90) I admired their stylish blend of informed scholarship and sensitive musicianship allied to performances from musicians well-versed in the language of the period. Added to that the music was recorded with great immediacy in the acoustically impressive surroundings of Brinkburn Priory in Northumberland. For this reconstruction of a Vespers that could have be held in St Mark's, Venice McCreesh shows a real understanding of the placing and choreography of the participants in the musical aspects of the liturgy.

Everybody will know by now that Elizabeth Wallfisch has a special interest, affection and regard for the 17th- and 18th-century Italian violin schools. She has already recorded much music by the likes of Tartini, Corelli, Locatelli and others with her group, The Locatelli Trio, and also with The Raglan Baroque Players under Nicholas Kraemer. Here is a varied and fascinating collection of pieces by some of the lesser-known composers from a generation or two earlier than those composers.

« On retrouve…le même élan, cette beauté sonore, cette profonde musicalité »… »la musique émouvante, déchirante jusqu’au dernier soupir. Le théâtre n’est pas loin, mais le drame se dessine à l’opposé de tout excès, de toute solllicitation dramatique ou émotive. Nigel Rogers chante…avec un sens de la prosodie, une clarté d’élocution et une sobriété de la ligne musicale ». –Opéra International

This new recording is like an insert between the books of madrigals that mark the course of Rinaldo Alessandrini’s discography, in his long-term progress towards a complete recorded edition. Daylight is a continuation of Night, which appeared on the occasion of the 350th Anniversary of the composer’s birth. Not only do we have the same thematic, non- chronological concept - a sort of ‘Best Of’ Monteverdi’s nine books of madrigals and opera arias, augmented by instrumental pieces by Falconieri and Marini - but it also has its own discrete dramaturgy, from dawn to the full sunlight of day, a scenario conceived by the Italian conductor and harpsichordist.