Salieri's own autograph work-list contains the following entry: 'Two concertos for the pianoforte, written for two ladies." Unfortunately we do not know who these two ladies were. All that we can say for certain is that they must both have been technically accomplished and trained to the highest musical standards. Salieri's demanding concertos are distinguished in the main by their middle movements, traditionally the genre's most fertile field of experimentation.

Simon Mayr is mostly remembered as Donizetti’s teacher, but as recent recordings of his sacred music reveal, there is more to him than that; more, even, than the 70 operas he produced over his long career in his adopted Italy. According to expert Franz Hauk’s liner notes, Mayr produced in all some 600 sacred compositions; many of these are individual mass movements but they also included 18 complete masses.

Martin Frösts new album is a baroque adventure based on the question: What might Vivaldi have composed for the clarinet if it had been more fully developed? For this recording three clarinet concertos have been newly composed, made up of music drawn from Vivaldis most beautiful opera and oratorio arias. Performed on the mellow, songlike chalumeau the predecessor of the modern clarinet and the brilliant, virtuosic clarinet of today, Martin Fröst and Concerto Köln create a wonderful symbiosis between the old and the new.

Joseph Martin Kraus, also named as the "Swedish Mozart", has been many years a shadowy existence in music history. Gluck and even Joseph Haydn saw "a real genius" in his virtuose and nearly early-romantic works. His position as composer at the swedish court under Gustav III. made it possible to have a fix income and a blithe creativity. This CD-Set gives us an overall musical impression about his compositions in all genres: Beginning with the incidental music to Amphitryon, the high virtuos Italian Cantatas, his Symphonies from different life periods, till the early String Quartets- Gluck and Haydn have not been mistaken.

No less than five brilliant countertenors – including Max Emanuel Cencic and Philippe Jaroussky – join conductor Diego Fasolis and Concerto Köln for Artaserse by Leonardo Vinci (1690-1730). In early 18th century Italy, the Neapolitan-born composer was one of the brightest stars in opera, and Artaserse is considered his masterpiece.

Petibon has established herself as one of the most interesting and versatile sopranos of our day and has been widely acclaimed for her outstanding acting abilities that make her merge completely with whatever role she sings and represents on stage.

Concerto Köln – the silver-toned Rolls-Royce of period ensembles – handles this journey with suave style and flawless control…Valer Sabadus makes for a refined Farinelli, and where his smoky voice lacks in power, it gains in agility. He breezes through the coloratura arias, with their virtuoso roulades and vertiginous leaps…He really shines, though, in the more intimate arias.

This hilarious contemporary version of Francesco Cavalli's baroque opera Hercules in Love was commissioned on occasion of the marriage of Louis XIV, the Sun King, to Maria Theresa of Spain. The original production took two years to complete and was at the time the greatest show ever performed in Europe. Directed by David Alden, this surreal production is a triumph of commedia buffa resplendent with decorative and symbolic elements, and complemented by Constance Hoffman's exceptional costumes. Led by Ivor Bolton, a master of baroque music, the chorus of De Nederlandse Opera and Concerto Köln give a sublime performance. With Luca Pisaroni's (Ercole) singing being heroic and melodious in turn, and Veronica Cangemi as a splendid Iole, this is an outstanding production by the DNO.

When this set appeared it pushed all the other recorded versions of Giulio Cesare aside, and now, examining it again and even finding some things to argue with, it maintains that supreme position. The opera is given complete and all the roles are sung in their original octaves (no bass-baritone Caesar, for instance). René Jacobs' tempos are ideal for each dramatic situation, and if the recitatives have a formality that slows them down somewhat, well, we are dealing with Caesar, Cleopatra, and very grand historic deeds. Both orchestra and singers embellish their written lines, and from this vantage point, those embellishments seem very tame–but they're still welcome, highly musical, and apt.

Der Garant für die hohe musikalische Qualität der Produktion war Festspielleiter Nicholas McGegan. Diese Rodelinda bestach durch eine differenzierte und ungeheuer lebendige Interpretation von Händels Musik. Mit dem Orchester Concerto Köln stand ihm auch eines der besten "Barock-" und Opernorchester zur Verfügung, das in dieser Rodelinda vor allem die lyrischen Dimensionen des Werkes genussvoll gestaltete.

Diana Moore lends her youth and tight vibrato to Rinaldo; a greater vocal presence should come with the experience. Cyndia Sieden is an ideal Almirena, as well as Dominique Labelle in the often poorly served and yet essential role of the magician Armida. Andnew Foster-Williams and Cecile van de Sant excel and carry Argante and Goffredo to a rare level of emotion for one and dramatic consistency for the other. The counter-tenor Chnistophe Dumaux is a perfect Eustazio. Finally, under the lively, dramatic and witty direction of Nicholas McGegan, the Concerto Köln is simply phenomenal.

–Opera International

“This magnificent production is a complete and blissful success. Don’t miss it.” Those were the words of the French website Classique News when Leonardo Vinci’s rediscovered Artaserse was staged by Silviu Purcãrete at the Opéra National de Lorraine in Nancy. Complementing the CD version of the opera released in Autumn 2012, this DVD features no fewer than five of the world’s leading countertenors – assuming both male and female roles: Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic, Franco Fagioli, Valer Barna-Sabadus and Yuriy Mynenko.

Carl Heinrich Graun was court composer to Frederick the Great of Prussia, and this opera was chosen to open the new opera house in Berlin in 1742. It was a great success, but Handel's opera on the same subject had appeared less than two decades before, and had anyone been familiar with that one, Graun's might have come as a disappointment. Handel gets under his characters' skins–Cleopatra's eight arias tell us everything we have to know about her, for instance–while Graun (merely) offers some beautiful, well-orchestrated, at-times exciting music. Any composer would have been proud to compose Cesare's heart-stoppingly vengeful last-act aria "Voglio strage", and any Read more mezzo (or castrato or countertenor) would be happy to sing it. Here, Iris Vermillion is spectacular, and elsewhere in the opera she's as heroic, romantic, and colorful as our hero ought to be.