This is an excellent and varied selection of composers from the very well known like Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach and Vivaldi, through the less famous but familiar like Frescobaldi, Sainte-Colombe and Zelenka, to the downright obscure. It is all delightful: the musicians are uniformly excellent, and include such great names as Gustav Leonhardt, Cantus Colln, Christopher Hogwood and so on. They give fine performances both of the familiar works and of the less familiar ones. Obviously there will be discs you like more than others and you may already have favourite versions of some works, but these discs are never less than very good and are often outstanding.

The son of Johann Stamitz, Carl Stamitz was born in Mannheim, where he had his musical training from his father and his father’s successors. In 1770 he moved to Paris, subsequently travelling as a virtuoso violinist and later as a viola player. Carl Stamitz wrote a quantity of symphonies and symphonies concertantes (orchestral works with contrasting groups of solo instruments). He added significantly to the concerto repertoire, not least in 15 authenticated violin concertos, a number of clarinet concertos and three viola concertos, the last of particular importance in a limited solo repertoire for the instrument.

Schon bei seiner Gründung 1962 hatten es sich Collegium Aureum als Ziel gesetzt, alte Musik auf historischen Instrumenten aufzuführen. Während der langen Zeit seines Bestehens veröffentlichte das Ensemble zahlreiche erfolgreiche LPs und CDs und konzertierte in den großen Konzertsälen ganz Europas.

Since it's founding in Freiburg in 1958, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi has been one of the most important and ambitious labels for period performances. Over decades, globally-acclaimed recordings were created with outstanding musicians. The limited edition "Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 100 Great Recordings" contains 100 outstanding DHM recordings with some of the most important and best artists in their field: Nuria Rial, Dorothee Mields, Al Ayre Espanol, Hille Perl, Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Freiburger Barockorchester, Skip Sempé, Capriccio Stravagante, La Petite Bande, Gustav Leonhardt, Andrew Lawrence-King, Frieder Bernius, the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Thomas Hengelbrock and many others.

A beautifully-packaged 50-disc box set, released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, one of the most important and adventurous early music labels. The set contains 50 classic recordings of baroque and ancient music, chosen to represent the breadth of this huge and varied catalogue and each disc is slip-cased with artwork replicating the original CD or LP artwork.

This Collection of Mozart fetaures some of the leading period-instrument ensembles and spans the oeuvre of Mozart's works. Included excellent readings of the 'Prague' Symphony and the Requiem.

This recording is something of a throwback to earlier days of the original instrument movement. The Collegium Aureum was an early exponent of this, and the 1966 recording of the JS Bach shows how this movement has evolved. Wonderful trumpets, struggling with the tessitura and tuning, and the (probably) part-time early music oboists, point up the most obvious difference. Early music was a labor of love in the 1960's, not a full time job. Which make me wonder if today's "authentic" performances aren't too clean, and too polished. How much rehearsal time did the "old wig" get, anyway, especially with works that were being given their premiere performances? Charles Rosen said that a truly authentic performance is impossible, you're either too early or too late.

The words in Latin "Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy" might be affecting to someone with more belief than I have, and I confess are even touching to me who have nearly none, but I have at one time had many recordings of this little mass and they all have some opera lady singing the solo part in the Kyrie which was written for a little boy to sing - and they are stilted, poised and SUCK. But this recording has all the melancholy of adolescence with its thesis of sexual discovery and antithesis of gerontion or whatever. Anyway the boy in question, and this may be a little homo-erotic, but only subconsciously if at all, sounds like he is an aging chorister and his voice is about to change, and he sounds like he's in a bit of a pout (nasty priests can't keep their mits to themselves) and he starts off all alone singing, like a low growl kyrie almost baritone and then the clouds burst open in sunshine and the sweetest ANGEL alto honey spray ELEISON. God, it is the most beautiful thing in the world.