This program also makes a perfect introduction to the world of the cantatas in general for anyone who loves Bach's instrumental music or larger vocal works (like the B minor Mass), but who has been hesitating before taking the plunge into the vast sea of his cantata production. Why? Simple: two of these pieces contain music found elsewhere in Bach's output. For example, the first chorus of BWV 120 became the concluding number (Et expecto) of the B minor Mass "Credo". BWV 29 opens with an almost shockingly brilliant arrangement (as an organ concerto) of the opening movement of the E major violin partita, followed by the chorus that appears in the B minor Mass as both the "Gratias" and the "Dona Nobis Pacem" (the German original means exactly the same thing as the Gratias: "We thank thee," making the adaptation entirely apropos). All three cantatas feature brilliant writing for trumpets (four of them in BWV 119) and drums, and were written for civic ceremonies in Leipzig. And if the words are often less than inspiring to us now, no one can argue that Bach didn't rise to the occasion musically.

One of Bach's more magnificent extended choruses graces the cantata BWV 12, and another less substantial but no less impressive one dominates BWV 38. These works represent some of Bach's most profoundly affecting and musically sophisticated textual and emotional representations, the former an ideal evocation of "weeping and wailing" with its unmistakably vivid chromatic descending bass-line, lurching rhythm, and agonized melody (which Bach later re-used in his B minor Mass). The pungent, reedy sound of the oboe adds perfect color and character to the whole cantata, and of course, Bach's ingenious writing, especially the obbligato parts, lifts all three of these cantatas beyond the functional to the highest artistic and spiritual level.

It is…a fine pairing of two of Bach’s more extroverted works, in which Herreweghe delves beneath the masculine surface of the Magnificat to find its more tender interior and boldly explores Bach’s expansion of Luther’s great Reformation hymn, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. For whatever reason, Cantata 80 seems to have lost a degree of popularity lately, and it’s good to hear it again, complete with W. F. Bach’s interpolated trumpets.

Icelandic music of the last half century is the focus of this recording by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, led by its conductor, Graham Ross. Born from his close collaboration with the native composers of the “Land of Fire and Ice,” this programme sets out to explore and highlight their hypnotic soundworld, instinctively leaning towards contemplation. A prime example is the touchingly beautiful Requiem by Sigurður Sævarsson, which here receives its world premiere recording.

That Baïlèro, a shepherd’s song from the highlands of Auvergne sung in the Occitan dialect of the area, should become a favorite with singers ranging from Victoria de los Angeles to Sarah Brightman by way of Renée Fleming and Karita Mattila, is all because of Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret. As a budding composer in Paris in the 1900s, Canteloube was unable to interest himself in the various musical cliques and currents. Instead he looked for inspiration in Auvergne in central France where he was born, starting to collect the songs of the farmers and shepherds that lived in the mountainous region. But he did so as a composer rather than a musicologist, and between 1923 and 1954 he published a total of thirty Chants d’Auvergne, arranged, harmonized and sumptuously orchestrated.

Conductor Daniel Reuss' splendid new recording of Handel's Solomon expands the extraordinarily broad range of music, including works by Bach, Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Ligeti, Stefan Wolpe, and the Bang on a Can composers, in which he has shown his mastery. His 2006 recording of Martin's Le vin herbé was one of the highlights of the year. Handel scored the oratorio for unusually large choral and orchestral forces, and the sound of this performance, with the RIAS-Kammerchor and Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, is warmly humanistic, beautifully paced, and tonally sumptuous, and is sung and played with stylistic assurance and lively dramatic passion.

Here is a splendid revival by Paul McCreesh and an excellent cast, as seen at the Barbican in 2003, of one of Gluck’s lesser-known dramatic works. Where the composer’s previous ‘reform’ operas, Orfeo and Alceste, had been dramas of life and death, Paride ed Elena deals with a gallant subject: Paris’s wooing of Helen, here betrothed rather than married to Menelaus. Cupid pulls the strings, while Athene appears as a malign dea ex machina to utter warnings of future carnage – which the lovers blithely disregard. McCreesh and his superb orchestra relish Gluck’s portrayal of contrasting worlds and generate plenty of tension when the emotional temperature finally begins to rise.Though Paride ed Elena is even more static than Alceste, variety comes from Gluck’s portrayal of the two contrasting national characters, Sparta and Troy.

That Baïlèro, a shepherd’s song from the highlands of Auvergne sung in the Occitan dialect of the area, should become a favourite with singers ranging from Victoria de los Angeles to Sarah Brightman by way of Renée Fleming and Karita Mattila, is all because of Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret. As a budding composer in Paris in the 1900s, Canteloube was unable to interest himself in the various musical cliques and currents. Instead he looked for inspiration in Auvergne in central France where he was born, starting to collect the songs of the farmers and shepherds that lived in the mountainous region. But he did so as a composer rather than a musicologist, and between 1923 and 1954 he published a total of thirty Chants d’Auvergne, arranged, harmonized and sumptuously orchestrated.

Jonathan Kent's spectacular production of Purcell's huge semi-opera is joyous, imaginative and witty Glyndebourne, with its intimate auditorium, provides the perfect setting for a drama which is partly spoken and partly sung. Based on an adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the story is lavished with a brilliance that justifies this production's acclaim. Paul Brown's inventive designs, Kim Brandstrup's exquisite choreography, an excellent cast of actors and singers and outstanding playing by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under William Christie combine to make a seamless theatrical experience, here recorded in High Definition and true surround sound.

Czech-born Jan Dismas Zelenka was by all accounts one of Baroque music’s trickier customers—fervently religious but completely lacking in courtly graces. Combine this with a tendency to throw out the rulebook when it came to harmonic convention and it’s hardly surprising that he was underappreciated in his lifetime. Yet here is some of the most pungently exciting writing of the Baroque, as individual as that of his near-contemporary, Johann Sebastian Bach. The very opening of Zelenka’s Litaniae sets out his stall and Robert King and his eponymous Consort make the most of its startling qualities. But he is a composer to tug at the heartstrings too, nowhere more so than in the Salve regina, ravishingly sung by a young Carolyn Sampson.

Continuing the series 'Bach's Contemporaries', this volume concentrates on the wonderful music of Johann Schelle — a cousin of Kuhnau (another composer featured in this series). This immensely striking sacred music by Schelle (one of Bach's predecessors in the post of Kantor in Leipzig's famous Thomas Church) brings together a top-flight group of soloists and a large and colourful assembly of instrumentalists, and presents remarkable and splendidly varied music which not only stands up proudly in its own musical right, but also greatly enhances our understanding of Bach's own sacred writing.

Sebastian Knüpfer is yet another Baroque composer whose reputation and popularity have been overshadowed by J S Bach. Little of Knüpfer's music has previously been transcribed from its many manuscripts, let alone published. However, in his day Knüpfer was a respected and highly sought-after composer; his compositions were admired by his contemporaries and, according to his obituary, he 'composed quotations of the Psalms and other Biblical books with such sweetness and skilfulness that he delighted even the saddest hearts, and his name is spoken with admiration not only in Leipzig but also outside'.

Long one of the finest living interpreters of Bach's sacred music, Philippe Herreweghe here adds two secular cantatas to an already distinguished discography. In the festive Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten and the celebratory Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten, Herreweghe leads his Collegium Vocale, Ghent in performances of rare beauty and great joy. Taking the symbolic roles of Diligence, Honor and Gratitude in one cantata and the scarcely less symbolic roles of Irene, Bellona, Fama, and Pallas in the other, the vocal quartet of Carolyn Sampson, Ingeborg Danz, Mark Padmore, and Peter Kooy performs with brilliant characterizations and consummate artistry.

This, the second release of the highly anticipated Retrospect Ensemble series, features the Easter Oratorio, one of Bach's best-known oratorios and a monumental work, as well as the Ascension Oratorio. Retrospect Ensemble employs large-scale forces for this recording including four-part choir and orchestra (including timpani). This dynamic recording highlights the skill and brilliance of Bach's writing through the inspired story telling of its star soloists and the passion of the Ensemble.

Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan made their first recording of the St Matthew Passion in March 1999. Twenty years later, in April 2019, it was time once again, as the singers and players gathered in the Concert Hall of the Saitama Arts Theater in Japan. ‘A profound joy’ is how Masaaki Suzuki describes his emotion at the opportunity to record Bach’s great fresco of Christ’s Passion for a second time. And this time, he and his ensemble have brought with them into the concert hall a profound and collective familiarity with Bach’s choral music, after having recorded more or less all of it in the meantime, including the complete sacred cantatas.