Dioclesian is the tale of a simple Roman private, Diocles, who fulfils the prophecy of Delphia (a prophetess, and hence Dioclesian's alternative title) that one day he will become emperor. In the meantime, Diocles avenges the slaying of the previous emperor and becomes a hero. With ambitions realized he discovers the he has over-played his hand by responding to Princess Aurelia's advances in the place of a nice homely girl called Drusilla, whom he had agreed to marry. The prophetess, who happens to be Drusilla's aunt, plans his come-uppance before he realizes the emptiness of his aspirations, abdicates and returns to nature and Drusilla.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Monteverdi Choir, Choeur du Théâtre du Châtelet and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique in a landmark recording of Berlioz's towering opera. A tragic tale of love and fate, war and peace and the intertwined destinies of two cities, the opera is based on Virgil's imperial vision of the founding myth of Rome. The American tenor Gregory Kunde as Aeneas and the Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci lead an international cast in this stunning production.

This, Vivaldi's very first opera, was premièred in Vicenza in 1713 and was an instant hit. The story is a relatively uncomplicated one by the standards of Baroque opera, of amatory pretences and misunderstandings: it has been admirably summarised by Eric Cross (who has edited the work) as a 'light-weight, amoral entertainment in which the flirtatious Cleonilla consistently has the upper hand, and gullible Emperor Ottone (a far from heroic figure) never discovers the truth about the way he has been deceived'. The score proceeds in a succession of secco recitatives (with just a very occasional accompagnato) and da capo arias – which the present cast ornament very stylishly.

British tenor Mark Padmore brings together a collection of English and Italian arias from Handel oratorios and operas. Padmore, who performs works of many eras in a wide range of styles, has primarily settled into the kind of repertoire Peter Pears comfortably inhabited, but with a stronger emphasis on Baroque opera and oratorio. Padmore's voice resembles Pears' in some ways; it's a light instrument, and is capable of great agility. It has some of Pears' limitations, particularly a tendency toward tonal blandness and lack of variety in its colors, as well as a slight edge when pushed. Most importantly, though, Padmore does not have Pears' reedy quality or breathiness – his voice is pure and more mellow than Pears'.

Two masterful Schubert interpreters, tenor Mark Padmore & pianist Mitsuko Uchida record Schubert’s Schwanengesang and Beethoven’s An Die Ferne Geliebte for the first time. On a new Decca Classics album, Uchida and Padmore appear on record for the first time in this live recording from London’s Wigmore Hall. They perform Schubert’s Schwanengesang (his “Swansong”, first published weeks after the composer’s premature death in 1828) and Beethoven’s only major song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. With a lifetime of experience with this music, Uchida and Padmore are the perfect duo to interpret this magnificent repertoire.

This important release follows Hickox and Collegium Musicum 90's award-winning recordings of the Masses of Haydn and Hummel. It continues the Esterházy theme since Beethoven's Mass in C succeeded ones commissioned by the prince from Haydn and Hummel. There are few recordings of this repertoire on period instruments, and with the addition of the two rare cantatas, this CD is especially important.

Giustino is the Baroque version of a ‘ripping yarn’. The eponymous hero rises from ploughboy to emperor via an action-packed curriculum vitae that has him seeing visions, routing traitors, fighting bears and even slaying a sea-monster! Written in the autumn of 1736, shortly after Handel had suffered a period of ill-health, Giustino is not among his greatest operas, but it is thoroughly entertaining and offers much fine music. Particularly felicitous are Giustino’s bucolic aria ‘Può ben nascere tra li boschi’ and Anastasio’s lovely ‘O fiero e rio sospetto’. The headlong pace leaves Handel little time to develop the more sensual, amorous side of his music. One exception – and the opera’s most entrancing interlude – is the ravishing love duet in Act II, superbly sung here by Dorothea Röschmann (Arianna) and Dawn Kotoski (Anastasio).

Hummel's choral music, like that of his rival Beethoven, lies pretty far down the list of his compositions in terms of overall renown. But some of it originated in a very famous spot: Hummel succeeded Haydn as a composer of large-scale choral works for the use of the noble Esterházy family at its vast palace. The Mass in D minor heard on this album was composed in 1805, when the "Lord Nelson" mass in the same key by Haydn would still have been very much in the air and ears at Esterháza. Faced with the unenviable task of trying to top it, Hummel turned not to Haydn as a model but, as liner-note writer David Wyn Jones points out, to Mozart: the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor provides Hummel's mass with its tense general mood, its flexible shifts between the soloists and the larger group, and its flashes of lyrical light.

Again Grainger amazes, amuses, arouses, intrigues. These 'Songs for mezzo' originate in Britain (with an excellent sequence of Scottish songs), Jutland and Australia. Some are folksongs collected in the early years of the century; two have words by Kipling, five by Ella, Grainger's wife, and some have no words at all.

The macabre irony of The Widow’s Party is ghoulishly cheery – the first of six Kipling tracks. They’re not all vocal either. Try the soulful The Running of Shindand and Tiger-Tiger each for five cellos. The sequence concludes with the caramel orient sunset of The Love Song of Har Dyal. Country Gardens plays touchball with Schoenberg in the delightfully grating and ringing Barry Peter Ould-realised version. Scotch Strathspey and Reel is one of Grainger’s most treasurable pieces – about as far away as one could get from the fatuities of tartan culture and pretty sea-shanties. It makes connections far more often with the idiom of The Warriors and of whirlingly possessed dances from the Caledonian highlands.

The CD's title slightly misleads. Not all of these pieces are for chorus and orchestra. Some are for orchestra alone. Nevertheless, the CD gives us Grainger at his most characteristic. Grainger always considered himself primarily a choral composer who occasionally dabbled in short works for orchestra and chamber ensemble. For far too long, almost everybody dismissed Grainger as a lightweight, but, happily, that seems about to change. For one thing, more works have come to light and, more importantly, to performance and recording. Chandos' Grainger Edition counts, in my opinion, as one of the most significant projects in British music.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

“Christie's love-affair with Hippolyte informs every note of this mesmerising performance, transporting the listener from enchanting pastoral scenes to ominous, Stygian shores.” BBC Music Magazine

Ivor Bolton has been principal conductor of the Basel Symphony Orchestra since the beginning of the 2016 / 17 season and has always had a special affinity with British music. The present album with rather unknown music by Benjamin Britten was therefore a very special concern for him from the beginning. The program consists of the early cycle Our Hunting Fathers (with the tenor Mark Padmore), the Quatre Chansons francaises (a stroke of genius by the only 14-year-old) and the suite from the unfortunately rarely performed opera Gloriana, which, by the way, was written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Mark Padmore and fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout combine here to perform two of Schumann’s major cycles to words by Heine. They also throw in a selection of five Heine settings by the largely forgotten Franz Lachner (1803-90) from his Sängerfahrt (Singer’s Journey), which include the same text – ‘Im wunderschönen Monat Mai’ – with which Schumann’s Dichterliebe begins.