Harmonies of Devotion is both an exploration of the Italian motet repertory of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and a celebration of the devotion to this sacred repertory displayed by English antiquarian collectors of the eighteenth century. Among the works recorded here for the first time are Giovanni Legrenzi’s six-voice masterpiece Intret in conspectu tuo, which survives thanks to a copy made in London by Handel, a five-voice Crucifixus by Legrenzi’s pupil Antonio Lotti, sent to London’s newly formed Academy of Ancient Music, a grand Marian motet written for the Academy by Agostino Steffani, and music by Steffani’s teacher Ercole Bernabei, again collected by members of London’s antiquarian music clubs.

The outstanding musical significance of Johann Rosenmüller, who was said to be able to merge Italian sensuality and German “gravitas” in his compositions in the most harmonious way, was already undisputed among his contemporaries. He studied in Leipzig, and quite soon the town council realized that he was a musician of an immense talent. Rosenmüller therefore received a position at the famous Leipzig Thomasschule, and was considered as the future successor of the ill Thomaskantor, Tobias Michael.

The programme presented by Ann Hallenberg for DHM is a homage to the historical roman figure of Agrippina, one of the earliest historical women to inspire the fantasy of librettists and composers. Ann Hallenberg and a team of musicologists researched the musical archives to unearth all surviving operatic manuscripts containing the figure of Agrippina. Twelve of the arias are WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS. Apart from Handel’s famous opera ‘Agrippina’ and Telemann’s ‘Germanicus’, all music on this album has been recorded for the first time.

In late 17th century Venice, a trinity of highly talented composers Rosenmüller, Legrenzi and Stradella enjoyed flourishing careers. They were men whose lives were bound together by fame and persecution as well as peerless musicians whose innovative, passionate compositions were uniquely complementary. On this new disc featuring Sonatas and Sinfonias by this remarkable trio of maestri, Manfredo Kraemer leads his group The Rare Fruits Council in performances that illuminate the virtuosity and tenderness of their compositional art.

2009 release from L'Arpeggiata, the French-based ensemble directed by Austrian-born harpist and lutenist Christina Pluhar. L'Arpeggiata has made a speciality of exploring and exploiting the close links between Baroque repertoire and the traditional music of the Latin world and its characteristic forms such as the tarantella, the folia or the canario. On Via Crucis, 'the way of the Cross', the focus is on the pervasive presence of religious feeling in Southern Europe. The Passion of Christ evokes the same fervour in composers such as Giovanni Felice Sances (1600-1679) or Tarquinio Merula (1594-1665) - both active in northern Italy – as it does in the streets of Naples or the villages of Corsica. The two main works in the collection are Sance's extraordinary Stabat Mater and Merula's Hor ch'e tempo di dormire, in which the Virgin Mary lulls her baby to sleep while weeping for his future suffering and both enthrall the listener with a basso ostinato and hypnotic swaying rhythms.

With the 10 arias on Tormento d'amore, Ian Bostridge demonstrates the important place that the tenor voice held in Italian opera from the mid-17th to the mid-18th century - often thought of as the era of the castrato. At this time, there were two main centres of opera in Italy: Venice, where such composers as Cavalli, Vivaldi, Cesti, Stradella, Sartorio and Legrenzi were active, and Naples, home to Provenzale, Caresana, Vinci and Fago. In addition to arias - two of them in world premiere recordings - the album offers five instrumental sinfonie and a traditional Neapolitan song, 'Lu cardillo', or 'The Goldfinch', a songbird closely associated with Naples. Bostridge is partnered by conductor Antonio Florio and his ensemble Cappella Neapolitana.

Motetten und Sonaten des 1626 in Clusone bei Bergamo geborenen Komponisten (gestorben 1690) stehen auf dem Programm dieser CD aus der Reihe 'UNICA'. Zu hören sind die Sopranisten Monika Mauch, die sich auf die Interpretation Alter Musik spezialisiert hat und bereits mit vielen renommierten Alte-Musik-Ensembles gearbeitet hat, sowie 'Les Cornets Noirs'. Die jungen Musiker beschäftigen sich - sowohl von der musikwissenschaftlichen Seite als auch von der Aufführungpraxis her - in erster Linie mit Werken italienischer und deutscher Komponisten des 17. Jahrhunderts. Musiziert wird in einer festen Besetzung (zwei Zinken, zwei Violinen, Violoncello und Orgel), zu der je nach Programm auch Sänger und weitere Instrumentalisten dazukommen.

In 1996, the complete recording of the oratorio La morte del cor penitente (The Death of the Penitent Heart), composed around 1671, by the Northern Italian Early-Music ensemble Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca was a special event: for the first time, the Italian composer Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690) an important creator of sacred and chamber music – was introduced with a voluminous work. At the same time, the recording, which went on to win several awards, also marked the beginning of the career of the Sonatori around Andrea Marcon, now long famous. Legrenzi was a master of baroque musical rhetoric: expressive harmonies and melodic elegance transformed the libretto by an unknown author, which illustrates its theme with numerous metaphors, into a sensuous pleasure.

After Carlo Farina and the Vitalis, Clematis continues its exploration of the Italian Baroque instrumental repertoire with Giovanni Legrenzi. The Sonatas taken from the collections he published in Venice between 1655 and 1673 feature highly diverse forms ranging from the trio sonata up to larger forms for 4, 5, or 6 parts and even double choir. His final collection of instrumental music, Balletti e Correnti, published in 1691, offers us a very different view of instrumental music in which certain French influences cannot be denied. Here, Clematis gives us the first complete anthology of his instrumental works. The variety of forms and forces ensures this disc with a fine diversity of styles from sonatas still close in spirit to those of Biagio Marini up to those for four violins foreshadowing the generation of Vivaldi.

The transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque eras did not mark one sudden change of forms or styles, nor did it signal the end of what Claudio Monteverdi called the prima pratica, or the primary practice of Renaissance polyphony. However, a new emphasis on powerful emotional expressions became a central feature of what he dubbed the seconda pratica, which came to the fore with the development of opera, most notably in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in 1607. Composers paid special attention to the innovations in the music of Venice, which eventually spread throughout Europe in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and such figures as Monteverdi, Antonio Lotti, and Antonio Caldara, long associated with the city, became exemplars of the new Venetian style, in both secular and sacred music.

This release is part of an eight-disc series by the small historical-instrument ensemble London Baroque, covering the entire history of the trio sonata in four countries (Italy, Germany, France, and England) over two centuries (17th and 18th). The series is more aimed at those with a strong interest in Baroque instrumental music than at general listeners, but several of them have been attractive for anyone, and this album falls into that group. It might well have come first in a chronological series, for it includes the very first works that might be called trio sonatas, the Sonata a tre of Giovanni Cima, published in 1610, and the Sonata a tre secuondo tono, from 1621.

17th Century Wrocław (then Breslau) was one of Europe’s important musical centres. Its three main Protestant churches – St. Elisabeth, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Bernardine – collected extensive music libraries. Their repertoire was shaped both by prints imported from Italy and Germany, and by works composed by local cantors and organists employed in church ensembles. A separate collection of nearly 400 prints from 1610–55 remained in private hands. During World War II, however, they were taken away from the city and dispersed after 1945. Some items have not been found until now. The majority of the prints returned to Wrocław. Numerous manusripts were considered lost until the late 1980s, when they reappeared in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek. They found their way there from Moscow, where some items of the former Breslau library still remain.

Unsurprisingly, it is in the music of the Baroque era – the heyday of the castrato – that French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky has captured the attention of music-lovers lovers around the world. The ethereal, but sensuous beauty of his voice, his virtuosity and his sense of style have brought him critical praise, a number of major awards – including, in 2008, Germany’s prestigious Echo-Klassik prize for Male Singer of the Year.