Conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler already enjoyed a worldwide legendary standing during his lifetime - he was considered the German conductor and performances were greeted with rapturous applause. Today, more than 50 years after his death, Wilhelm Furtwangler is still an icon and his work has become an integral part ofthe music scene.

Luigi Cherubini's Chant sur la mort de Joseph Haydn was not, in the event, written after Haydn's death in 1809, but in response to a premature report of that event in 1804. The revival of Classical-period music has thus far given Cherubini short shrift, which is surprising in connection with the man whom Beethoven called the greatest living composer. Maybe this German release, by the veteran historical-instrument ensemble Cappella Coloniensis, will stimulate fresh activity. The chief attraction here is the seldom recorded tribute to Haydn. It's a wonderful work, with an unorthodox form that seems to bespeak strong feeling. Cherubini worked from an existing funeral text by Masonic author Louis Guillemain de Saint-Victor, but the shape of the piece is his own. He opens with a slow, profound polyphonic introduction that not only must have appealed to Beethoven but perhaps even influenced the idiom of his late works.

Composed in 1783, Thrice Betrothed, Never Wed was the young Cherubini’s fifth opera and his first opera buffa. While it echoes its era—Paisiello, Cimarosa, Haydn, and early Mozart—it displays an almost Rossinian rhythmic bite and a few harmonic touches that look forward to the dramatic masterpieces of Cherubini’s Paris years (Lodoiska, Medée, Les deux journées, Anacréon, the C-Minor Requiem). Despite decades-long exploration of Cherubini, I have never encountered the opera before; this claims to be its first recording. The plot is filled with the expected inanities: disguises, mistaken identities, and Commedia dell’arte shenanigans.

The present recording honors three important composers celebrating major anniversaries in 2009: Handel, Mendelssohn and Haydn. George Frideric Handel’s Dettinger Te Deum is presented here not in its original version, but rather in an arrangement by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who rendered outstanding service to music not only through the revival of Bach’s choral works, but also through those of Handel. In addition, The Storm, the little-known choral work by Joseph Haydn, is also to be heard here. He composed it during his first visit to England and later arranged it for a large ensemble.

Written in 1797, Cherubini's faithful version of Euripides' ancient tragedy is one of the most savage and powerful works of the opera repertoire, relating the cruel vengeance of a wounded woman for whom infanticide seems to be the only solution to her humiliation in love. As a continuation of Gluck's music, Cherubini's work is of boundless emotion, at once a refined, terrifying and desperate portent of a tragic outcome.

Tout le monde devrait connaitre certaines oeuvres classiques. Les requiems de Mozart ou de de Saint Sens en font parti, à mes yeux.

Acclaimed mezzo-soprano Mary-Ellen Nesi presents thirteen arias most of them recorded here for the first time inspired by ten Greek female archetypes. George Petrou and the brilliant Armonia Atenea add fire to this exciting collection of 18th-century masterpieces. MDG listeners will be familiar with Mary-Ellen Nesi from several outstanding Handel recordings. In her most recent recital the acclaimed mezzo-soprano turns to dramatic roles from Baroque and classical operas.

The Venice Baroque Orchestra and a fine line-up of singers present a pasticcio setting of a libretto by Metastasio, with contributions from composers including Caldara, Vivaldi, Galuppi, Hasse and Paisiello. In the eighteenth century, 1,300 years after the last Olympic Games in ancient times, the Olympic theme was highly fashionable. Many composers based operas on the libretto L'Olimpiade by Metastasio. This recording has been structured to contain all of Metastasio’s original arias; it is a pasticcio in the sense that the music is by 16 different composers amongst the many that set the libretto between 1733 and the end of the century.