The Mnchner Philharmoniker are continuing to open up their vast archives, giving listeners the opportunity to enjoy one of the richest collections of recordings by legendary artists. This recording of Mozart's 'Piano Concertos Nos. 20 and 26' allows listeners to relive a remarkable concert evening with Friedrich Gulda as conductor and soloist at once.

Facce d’amore, ‘Faces of love’ follows Jakub Józef Orliński’s first solo album, Anima Sacra, which moved Gramophone magazine to announce that “This is a voice with a big future.” It brings a switch from the sacred to the personal and passionate. As the Polish-born, New York-trained countertenor says, the programme – which includes eight world premiere recordings – comprises “operatic arias that tell a story, showing a musical picture of a male lover in the baroque era – not only the positive side, like joyful or reciprocated love, but also anger or even madness.” Spanning some 85 years of the baroque period, the arias on Facce d’amore are by Handel, Cavalli, Alessandro Scarlatti, Bononcini, Conti, Hasse, Orlandini, Predieri and Matteis. Orliński is again partnered by the instrumentalists of Il Pomo d’Oro and their Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev.

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen wrote his first three string quartets in 1959 and his 14th and last in 2013, three years before he died. This first volume in a new cycle comes from an ensemble coached by Tim Frederiksen (he who gave us the Nightingale Quartet) at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. The Nordic Quartet gave their graduation performance at the Academy last autumn.

This fine work, in the perfect Classical tradition, is from late in Piccinni’s French period. It was composed in 1783 and was performed in Paris regularly until 1836 and throughout the rest of Europe until about 1830. Piccinni keeps the plot moving at a fine clip, running one number into the next without a glitch and (especially in the third act) effectively using the chorus to add to the excitement. His writing for the solo voices is stirring in a Gluckian way, but elements of his Italian roots show up in the vocal line and melodic inspiration as well.

In the course of his illustrious career, Fabio Biondi has nurtured a remarkable empathy with Italian music from across many centuries, but strikingly so with the early Baroque violin sonata repertory, the development of which was dramatically propelled into the future by Arcangelo Corelli with his Op 5 collection. It is this empathy possessed by Biondi which has inspired the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (from its bowed instrument collection) to make him a loan of the precious 1690 “Tuscan” violin made by Antonio Stradivari, for this Glossa recording.

Le finte gemelle was first staged in 1771. Success was immediate and other performances followed both in Italy and abroad. With Le finte gemelle Piccinni returned to a genre he had already tried ten years previously with La Cecchina ossia La buona figliola (1760), on a text by Goldoni. A sweeping success, that masterpiece had made him famous in all theatres well before he found himself at the centre of the well-known dispute between Gluck and Piccinni supporters, which would explode in Paris in 1778, after the performance of his Roland. The present live recording, in co-production with the Opéra de Chambre de Genève, features a young and qualified cast who masterfully render the spirit of this score by Piccini.

The Swedish Ensemble Villancico under its conductor Peter Pontvik guide us through the world of Latin American baroque music. This music is a merging of cultures and traditions - Indian, Spanish, and African. The Ensemble Villancico is currently regarded worldwide as one of the most important interpreters of early music from Latin America, uniting Nordic voices and the spirit of Latin American baroque music.

Following four successful recordings released on the Ricercar, Alpha and Arcana labels, Rome-based Andrea De Carlo and his Ensemble Mare Nostrum continue their exploration of the Roman repertoire and inaugurate here a new series of recordings, with its own distinctive artwork, devoted to the vast and multifaceted musical heritage of the Eternal City.

Cellist Marko Ylönen has recorded a beautiful double album containing Bach’s six suites for solo cello. On the album, Ylönen wants to emphasize the way in which the different series work together in a dialogue. That is why he does not play them in their numerical order, but creates an experience that takes the listener from the world of passion in the fifth series to the joyful tones of the last sixth series. The clear musical structure and the affect of the musical characters and gestures combine in Ylönen’s performance. His interpretation of the Bach suites tells the listener something invaluable, touching and timeless.

Listeners used to the Hanover Band will need no prompting to buy this excellent series of performances, excellently recorded. They avoid some of the more quirky and, to some, off-putting aspects of period performance. There are no ugly bulges of tone and wirey shafts of under-nourished violin tone. The wind and brass play bang in tune and the instruments are fully under the control of these top players.

The version is excellent, very well recorded and Koopman offers an accurate reading without falling into the rigid excesses of some German interpreters or a certain "softness" of some English.

As a Bach interpreter, Richter was almost unrivalled worldwide for many years and his Bach interpretations set standards. Karl Richter and his choir became the formative interpreters of the internationally renowned Bach Festival in Ansbach, a meeting place for the musical elite from all over the world. For almost two decades, the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra has had the musical world from New York to Leningrad, from Tokyo to Paris at its feet, and many of its highly decorated recordings are among the best-selling recordings.

Classical in its respect for established forms, romantic in its clearly autobiographical nature, the chamber music by the composer of The Bartered Bride is not plentiful, especially when compared with the output of his younger, immediate successor, Antonfn Dvoiik, who returned to the string quaner form rhroughout his creative life, producing fifteen between 1862 and 1895. Well removed from absolute music - as would be Leoš Janáček's after him -, Smetana's surviving chamber catalogue consists of only four works that make up a rare case of psychological programme music. The Piano Trio(1855) already represented a sort of tombeau for the small daughter he had recently lost to scarlet fever.

Two musical titans in the classical world, award-winning Italian bass Lorenzo Regazzo and Italian conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini, are brought together once again to record the greatest operatic arias by George Frederic Handel. Handel, one of the most celebrated operatic composers of the eighteenth century, always remained out of step with the preferences of his era - notably his attachment to the 'natural' male voice in a time when the high voices of women or castratos triumphed everywhere.

What else can be traced and discovered from Handel’s lost music? Well, once again the Brook Street Band embark on their exciting quest with their fourth disc on AVIE, bringing music unheard since the time of Handel: English Cantatas and Songs.