Following on from and designed along the same lines as the Guide to Period Instruments, this boxed set includes an exhaustive introductory text as well as a great quantity of music excerpts on the set’s eight CDs. These extracts have been taken from the extensive repertoire recorded by Ricercar over many years, with excerpts from recordings kindly provided by our colleagues from Harmonia Mundi, Gimell, Accent, Alpha and Sony supplementing our programme where necessary. The Lutheran repertoire of the Renaissance has remained for all intents and purposes unrecorded up until now; the tracks illustrating this repertoire together with other excerpts have been recorded specially for this compilation by Vox Luminis.

Leonardo García Alarcón's 2011 recording of Michelangelo Falvetti's 1682 oratorio Il Diluvio Universale is a reminder, if one were needed, that there are untold treasures of Baroque repertoire waiting to be discovered. The story of The Flood is told economically, but with enough peculiar diversions from the Biblical story to keep listeners on their toes about what's going to happen next. There are personifications of Divine Justice, Human Nature, Water, Fire, Land, and Death (a smugly self-satisfied character who sings a triumphant, gleeful little gigue once humanity has been wiped out).

The original score of El Prometeo (Prometheus) is held in the Leopoldine Library in Vienna. It dates from 1669 and was written by Antonio Draghi, a composer who was also a singer, notably in the operas of Cavalli. For the first time in history, an Italian set a text in Spanish. The last act of El Prometeo has disappeared. But since the libretto of this act has survived, Leonardo García Alarcón decided to rewrite all the music for it. ‘I immersed myself in Draghi’s music in order to understand his style, his favourite intervals, the type of melody he composed and the type of basso continuo he was fond of, so as to try to produce a score that is worthy of him. So I hope that this third act will measure up to his music, his intentions and his creativity!’ says the Argentinian conductor. Directing a brilliant cast (Fabio Trümpy, Mariana Flores, Giuseppina Bridelli, Scott Conner, Borja Quisa, Zachary Wilder, Ana Quintans), Leonardo García Alarcón brings this Baroque opera to life in Spanish, an opportunity to show his love for his mother tongue, ‘a supremely musical language’!

Love, drama and betrayal under the Sicilian sun: this ‘pasticcio’ of folk melodies and music by ‘learned’ composers was born of the love of Leonardo García Alarcón and the singers and musicians of the Cappella Mediterranea for Calabrian, Sicilian and Neapolitan songs dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We hear music by Alessandro Scarlatti and Sigismondo d’India, both born in Palermo, as well as works from the extraordinarily rich collection of St John’s Co-Cathedral in Malta (notably by Vincenzo Tozzi). Leonardo García Alarcón even composed a five-part fugue on La canzone di Cecilia , associated with the heroine of the drama. The music was arranged by Quito Gato. This tribute to southern Italy by Cappella Mediterranea has triumphed on stage for years; now this recording immortalises it.

Although Lully never held any post in the Chapelle du Roi, his influence on the development of the grand motet, so emblematic of the Grand Siècle, was of decisive importance. He wrote imposing motets celebrating the glory of God and the King for the great ceremonies at court. Of the many royal funerals, that of Queen Marie-Thérèse in 1683 was among the most grandiose. Lully’s Dies iræ and De profundis were sung there. But his most celebrated motet was undoubtedly his Te Deum, which rang out for the first time in 1677 and became the king’s favourite.

For English-speaking audiences who don't mind their Handel sung by sometimes heavily accented non-native speakers, this version of Judas Maccabaeus is hard to beat. Argentinean conductor Leonardo García Alarcón leads the exemplary ensembles Choeur de Chambre de Namur and Les Agrémens in an exceptionally spirited account of the score that effectively erases any taint of its reputation as starchy favorite of amateur Victorian choral societies. His rhythms are crisp and his tempos impetuous, as is appropriate for the martial subject matter, but his phrasing is also gorgeously shapely and the lyrical numbers are rendered with sumptuous sensuality and flexibility. The brilliance of the performance is amplified by the very resonant and richly ample sound quality, which allows the voices, both choral and solos, to be heard to their best advantage, bright yet warm, with a ringing, exhilarating clarity.

Given that not one of the Masses by Jacques Arcadelt was included in our boxed set that revealed his immense musical personality to the world, we now remedy this situation with an indispensable addition. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon chose the Missa Noe Noe, which is presented here in the context of the Christmas liturgy. We have also included motets not only by Arcadelt but also by Josquin Desprez, as he was the great model for musicians of his generation. The recording ends resoundingly with Josquin's imposing Benedicta es coelorum regina for six voices, although in an expanded version for twelve voices by Jean Guyot de Chatelet (1512 - 1588): another Walloon composer to be discovered!

The virtuoso Venetian diva of the 17th century, Barbara Strozzi, Monteverdi's heiress, journeys the passions of the soul through a daring mosaic of styles and rhythms. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, who is one of the rising generation of baroque conductors, is leading a major research project on the specific parameters which make up musical performance, paying particular attention to improvisation techniques and the relationship between text and music. His work at the Ambronay Festival has focused on the performance of 17th-century Italian music including rich and little-known repertoire of motets and madrigals by Barbara Strozzi, Isabella Leonarda and Antonia Bembo.

Ulisse all’isola di Circe was the first opera to be staged in the Southern Netherlands. It was first performed in Brussels on the occasion of Philip IV of Spain’s wedding to Maria-Anna of Austria on 24 February 1650, although we know that the spectacle was revived in 1655 at the express wish of Queen Christina of Sweden. Gioseffo Zamponi was most likely born in Rome between 1610 and 1620. He made his career in the Southern Netherlands, entering the service of Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm, governor of the Netherlands, in 1648, for whose establishment he composed sacred music and also played.

Julie Roset, a young French soprano from Avignon, immediately attracted attention with her first recital for Ricercar (Nun danket alle Gott with Clematis) and went on to record a recital of works by Sigismondo d'India with Mariana Flores that met with great critical acclaim. In this new recording she tackles several of Handel's masterpieces on religious themes: his Salve Regina, Gloria and the motet Silete venti were all composed at the time when the young Handel had been inspired to new heights by his discovery of Roman musical life.

The opening of Venice’s first opera house, the Teatro di San Cassiano, in 1637, was one of the major events in the history of opera. The protagonists of these new operas henceforth represented all the social categories making up this public and who, in fact, had to be able to find themselves onstage. The gods were no longer the only ones to lay down the law, challenged by the Vices and Virtues who preached in the Prologues.

In the Europe of the first half of the seventeenth century, instrumental music became a source of sonic and expressive experimentation. Influenced by vocal rhetoric, composers sought to replace words with a new musical language. The virtuosity of the instrumentalists developed, as did invention, improvisation and the search for surprising sonorities. Along with the organ or the harpsichord, the violin was the instrument of choice for experimenting with these new techniques. Italian and German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Farina, Schmelzer, Mealli, Buxtehude, Biber, Pisendel and Bach vied with each other in imaginativeness… The violinist Chouchane Siranossian and the harpsichordist Leonardo García Alarcón – both loyal Alpha Classics artists – have chosen to explore this repertory, here including Bach’s sonatas BWV 1019, 1021 and 1023 among other pieces.

The title of the two-disc album, Vivaldi: Vespro a San Marco, implies that the composer wrote a set of pieces comparable to Monteverdi's Vespro della beata Vergine, but the title needs to be interpreted somewhat loosely. The program notes describe the collection of psalms, canticles, motets, and prefatory chants recorded here as an evocation of a service of vespers Vivaldi might have assembled rather than a reconstruction of one he actually ever did. These vespers are distinctly Vivaldian in idiom, but they resemble Monteverdi's in the use of some common texts and in the diversity of musical styles, genres, and performing forces assembled; there is not much of a sense of unity in the traditional sense, but a profusion of delightfully varied musical vignettes, including a cappella chants, solos, ensembles, choruses, and instrumental pieces.

Julie Roset, a young French soprano from Avignon, immediately attracted attention with her first recital for Ricercar (Nun danket alle Gott with Clematis) and went on to record a recital of works by Sigismondo d'India with Mariana Flores that met with great critical acclaim. In this new recording she tackles several of Handel’s masterpieces on religious themes: his Salve Regina , Gloria and the motet Silete venti were all composed at the time when the young Handel had been inspired to new heights by his discovery of Roman musical life.

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is naturally an iconic work for Leonardo García Alarcón. The Argentinian conductor has performed and matured his interpretation of Monteverdi’s masterpiece throughout his life. Together with his group of soloists, the Namur Chamber Choir and the Cappella Mediterranea ensemble, he now presents his vision of L’Orfeo: Monteverdi’s opera is as much the apotheosis of the Renaissance as a testimony to the nascent Baroque style. This is what strikes us when we listen to this new recording, which so eloquently emphasises the contrasts between sometimes nostalgic glances towards the past and the most innovative expressions of operatic language.