With her almost supernaturally clear and agile soprano, Emma Kirkby has enchanted audiences ever since she first appeared on the Early Music scene in the 1970s. And as the art of historically informed performance has become more and more widely appreciated, so has her style of singing, to the extent that she in 2007 was included in a listing of ‘the 20 greatest sopranos ever’ made by the BBC Music Magazine. Throughout her career, Emma Kirkby has made a large number of recordings of a wide range of music. Released on the occasion of her 60th birthday, the present collection celebrates her collaboration with BIS, which has resulted in ten discs to date.

Among Handel's vocal works - from the early, operatic solo cantatas to the full-blown operas and the oratorios of his London years - the Nine German Arias hold a special place. Possibly composed around the time that the composer made a final journey to Germany to take leave of his ailing mother, they were Handel's last settings of texts in his native language. It seems likely that these circumstances contributed to the intimate character of these highly personal works, in combination with the texts themselves. Barthold Heinrich Brockes' poems point ahead towards the Enlightenment, establishing as their setting a harmonically organised world, in which benevolent Nature is the prime example of God's bounty.

Der französische Komponist und Organist Louis-Nicolas Clérambault war auch ein guter Geiger und entstammte einer musikalischen Dynastie. Sein Stil war von den großen italienischen Komponisten seiner Zeit geprägt, vor allem von Corelli. Und so schrieb er eigene Werke mit italienischem Flair in französischen Stil.

Emma Kirkby always has been an excellent Handel singer, from her two 1985 recordings–Italian Cantatas with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music (L'Oiseau Lyre) and German Arias with Charles Medlam and the London Baroque (EMI)–and 1987's Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, again with the London Baroque (Harmonia Mundi) to this new, exemplary program of Latin motets. Kirkby retains a remarkably youthful sound, exhibiting all of her admired agility and intonational accuracy, but with more richness in the lower register than in her younger days.

London Baroque, one of our best pre-classical ensembles, has chosen an all-Marais programme for its debut on gramophone records. Both works come from a collection published in 1723 containing unusually extended pieces in a style often removed from that of Marais's Pièces de violes. The most elaborate of them is La gamme which, as its name suggests, relies both on the ascending and descending levels of the scale for its invention.

This recording of Monteverdi's retelling of the Orpheus legend may not be as fine overall as John Eliot Gardiner's, but it has much to recommend it. Nigel Rogers was the first great modern Monteverdi tenor: he made this record after his prime, but his virtuoso passage-work and stylish ornaments should be required listening for every student of the role. The cast, chorus, and orchestra give solid, if occasionally reserved, performances (though Guillemette Laurens is a shrill Messenger). The best singing of the entire record is (perhaps unfortunately) at the beginning: Emma Kirkby's sweet voice, imaginative embellishment, and eloquent delivery as Music result in absolutely the best rendition of the Prologue on record.

Arcangelo Corelli was the most famous Italian composer of the late 17th century. He owed this preeminence to his skill in harnessing the musical tendencies of his time, as is demonstrated by his celebrated Sonatas, which became the models for the chamber sonata (sonata da camera) and church sonata (sonata da chiesa). Yet the composer himself was constantly reacting against these archetypes, and it is this perpetual reflection on his own art that gives his works their extraordinary richness.

Arcangelo Corelli was the most famous Italian composer of the late 17th century. He owed this preeminence to his skill in harnessing the musical tendencies of his time, as is demonstrated by his celebrated Sonatas, which became the models for the chamber sonata (sonata da camera) and church sonata (sonata da chiesa). Yet the composer himself was constantly reacting against these archetypes, and it is this perpetual reflection on his own art that gives his works their extraordinary richness.

The Swedish trumpet-player Niklas Eklund, born in Göteborg (Gothenburg) in 1969, trained at the School of Music and Musicology of Göteborg University. Further studies took place under the tutelage of Edward H. Tarr at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. After five years as solo trumpet with the Basle Radio Symphony Orchestra, he left the orchestra in the autumn of 1996 to further his career as a soloist. Since then he has appeared with leading ensembles and conductors such as Zubin Metha, John Eliot Gardiner, Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Robert King, Eric Ericson, Reinhard Goebel, Gustav Leonhardt, the London Baroque, the Bach Ensemble (New York), the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble and the English Baroque Soloists.

"…[The] 'Serenata a tre'…is brimming with energy and melodic invention, every aria a delight. The three singers give sparkling performances and London Baroque dispatches the brightly variegated score with much aplomb…"

–BBC Music

John Blow’s opera, Venus and Adonis , explores and exploits the themes of power play, manipulation, and yearning. Venus’s reluctance to surrender coupled with Adonis’s innocence leads to both a tragic accident and poignant transcendence. The work was the first to have been written by a female librettist, Anne Finch.