Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707) was a Danish-German composer and organist. He is recognized for bridging Renaissance and Baroque musical traditions, influencing composers such as J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel. Born in either Helsingborg, Sweden, or Helsingor, Denmark (the exact location remains uncertain), Buxtehude spent much of his career in Lubeck, Germany, where he served as organist at the Marienkirche (St. Mary's Church) from 1668 until his death. As a composer, Buxtehude is recognized for his organ works, including preludes, fugues, and chorale variations. His music blends intricate counterpoint with an expres- sive, almost improvisational character, making him one of the most significant figures in early Baroque music.

The Concerto Copenhagen is Scandinavia’s most renowned Baroque ensemble and one of the most innovative such formations worldwide. Its trademarks are its unusual program combinations featuring Scandinavian rarities and famous Baroque masterpieces. This world-class orchestra now turns to Handel’s great Brockes-Passion in a CD recording based on the Halle edition of this composer’s works. The Passion text published by the well-to-do Hamburg resident Barthold Heinrich Brockes was a literary bestseller during the early eighteenth century.

Concerto Copenhagen and Lars Ulrik Mortensen presents the three symphonies by Joseph Haydn; Merkur, Trauer, Palindrom.

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.

Emma Kirkby sounds as lithe and radiant as ever, superbly able to negotiate Amodei's melismatic writing and imbue it with subtle but effective rhetoric.

John Holloway’s recital of mid 17th century music mines the rich sonic possibilities of a highly unusual instrumental combination: baroque violin with basso continuo provided by harpsichord and organ played simultaneously by two musicians, both realising the figured bass to the full harmonic, contrapuntal and rhythmic potential of their instruments. Aloysia Assenbaum and Lars Ulrik Mortensen brilliantly support Holloway’s exhilarating account of Bertali’s "Chiacona" and move with him through the mysteries of Schmelzer’s "Sonatae Unarum Fidium".

Born to sing J. S. Bach, Anne Sofie von Otter brings elegant style, richness of voice, and career-long commitment to Baroque music to this glorious recording of alto and soprano arias she herself selected. Featuring beloved staples like the moving “Erbarme Dich” from the St. Matthew Passion and the “Agnus Dei” from the B minor Mass, this follow-up to her successful release of Music for a While includes lesser-known repertoire to entice the most jaded lover of voice, Baroque or Bach. Lars Ulrik Mortensen leads Concerto Copenhagen, the acclaimed Scandinavian Baroque ensemble, in instrumentations of fascinating variety unusual in Bach solo vocal albums

Johann Sebastian Bach's flute sonatas undoubtedly require congenial partners, who play together in an unpretentious, equally important way - in the truest sense of the word, in concert. This is brilliantly fulfilled by Lars Ulrik Mortensen with his hardly surpassable vocal playing on the harpsichord and Linde Brunmayr-Tutz with virtuosity and full sound on the transverse flute.

With the establishment of Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens in 1843, the Danish composer and conductor Hans Christian Lumbye (1810–1874) swiftly rose to fame as the city’s internationally acclaimed king of waltzes and galops, leading his orchestra from the violin. For this recording, Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Concerto Copenhagen – Scandinavia’s leading period instruments ensemble – studied Lumbye's original scores and used instruments from the era to recreate an authentic sound. This collection showcases Lumbye’s enchanting music, along with popular pieces by his idols, Lanner and Strauss I.

All credit to Lars Ulrik Mortensen and his collaborators in continuing their work to present neglected Danish symphonies of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Gerson’s overture will instantly fall into place for you if you know the un-named Schubert overtures and the first two symphonies. There are many familiar echoes and much choice writing for the woodwind. Gerson also owed fealty to the Mozart of the Marriage of Figaro overture, the Haffner symphony and the famous G minor symphony. It’s all very entertaining and easy to like.

Violinist and director Johann Ernst Hartmann is mainly known to posterity for his Danish Singspiel though he actually wrote far more instrumental music than songs. A disastrous fire in the Christianborg Palace in 1794 destroyed a large number of his manuscripts so it’s uncertain quite how many symphonies and other concerted music he did write – only one Symphony ever made it to publication, the First, which was published by Hummel in Amsterdam in 1770.

Lars Ulrik Mortensen is best known as a harpsichordist active largely in Baroque solo and chamber music repertory. But his career is quite multifaceted: he has regularly conducted both instrumental and operatic works and has taught harpsichord and historic performance practices at the Hochschule fur Musik in Munich. He has often appeared in concert as accompanist to singer Emma Kirkby and has regularly partnered violinist John Holloway and cellist Jaap ter Linden. As a soloist Mortensen has garnered acclaim for his recordings of the Goldberg Variations and various Buxtehude keyboard works.

What the largely unknown name of Georg Muffat may lack in dissemination and reputation, he makes up for in incredible variety, virtuosic power, and influence, especially on the development of instrumental music. The treasure trove of Muffat, which comes to light in particular in his sonata collection Armonico tributo, is what the early music ensemble Concerto Copenhagen and its director Lars Ulrik Mortensen are taking to the discographic spearhead of their 30th anniversary in 2022.

It's hard to believe this CD was done with only a violin, viola da gama and harpsichord. This is polyphonic music at its finest. It does tribute to Buxtehude, who preceded Bach. The ensemble is perfect - the instruments complement each other. When they go from slow to fast, it is remarkable to hear the contrast. These are expert musicians with a complete mastery of their instruments. They use loud-soft as easily as any masters of the Baroque. The result is joyous, lively and entertaining.

Here is what is probably Handel’s most accomplished opera: the heir to L’incoronazione di Poppea with respect to the villainy of some of its characters, but also the Baroque ancestor of certain Romantic operas! Scrupulously based on historical characters, this work illustrates many different facets of the human soul, and also boasts perhaps the most sumptuous orchestral textures Handel ever conceived, magnificently brought out by Lars Ulrik Mortensen in this production from the Copenhagen Opera. Francisco Negrin’s transposition of the opera to the universe of modern war and Anthony Baker’s refined designs place Andreas Scholl (Giulio Cesare) and the other soloists in an unsettling, crepuscular atmosphere that is highly contemporary.