Ars Antiqua Austria This renowned ensemble was founded in Linz in 1995 by Gunar Letzbor and Michael Oman with a core group of eight musicians dedicated to the task of authentically interpreting Austrian music of the Baroque era. To this end, the group performed on original instruments of the period and devoted much energy to researching and uncovering works that had been neglected until being performed by the group. The ensemble takes account of the wide diversity of cultures that have influenced and contributed to Austrian music during the centuries of the Baroque style when the physical and political boundaries of the country were more extensive. The ensemble infuses its performances with "the joie de vivre of the South, the Slav melancholy, French formality, Spanish pomp, and the Alpine character of the German-speaking regions" (Letzbor), typical constituents of the court, and folk and dance music of that time in Austria. The Ars Antiqua Austria has toured Austria, France, Germany, Slovakia, and the Ukraine, played several festivals of Baroque music, and toured the United States in 2001. The group won a Cannes Classical Award in 2002 for its recording of Viviani's Capricci armonici and continued to release albums, including Antonio Bertali: Promithia Suavissima, Parte Seconda (2005), and Benedikt Anton Aufschnaiter: Dulcia Fidium Harmonia (2009).

The mandora is a lute instrument that gradually disappeared with the advent of the guitar and has been completely forgotten since around 1820 - until today. The lutenist Jakub Mitrik has set himself the goal of reviving this instrument and its repertoire with this CD. The development of the mandora was a reaction to the baroque lute, which became increasingly complicated to play and had up to 14 courses of strings. It is tuned in a similar way to the later guitar and has six strings, the lower five of which are double-stringed. The mandora was particularly popular in monasteries, especially among the Benedictines. There, the mandora was valued as a solo and chamber music instrument due to its handiness and versatility. The archives of these monasteries also contain a very varied repertoire specially tailored to the mandora, which Jakub MitrIk and his Biber Consort present here for the first time. This is chamber music in a wide variety of formations, in which the mandora takes on the role of a fully-fledged partner that goes far beyond mere basso continuo accompaniment. With his selection, MitrIk presents a multi-coloured and sensitively performed CD programme that reflects the lightness of the late Baroque and early Classical periods and allows musical life in the monasteries outside the liturgy to shine in an unusual light.

In the 17th century, an astonishing stream of compositions poured out of Naples, and Neapolitan composers and performers enjoyed extraordinarily high reputations all over Europe. One of the most important occasions in Neapolitan musical life were the so-called Spassi di Posillipo, open-air festivals on the Neapolitan shore.

Leonor de Lera has chosen the "Arcadia" described in Greek mythology as a transfigured place in idyllic nature as the title for her new CD. The genre of the pastorale, the Arcadian pastoral idyll, enjoyed incredible popularity during the
Renaissance and all the great poets of the time wrote poems that were in turn set to madrigals by the great composers. Leonor de Lera plays a selection of such pastorals on her violin - accompanied by lute and guitar. She does this, as was customary for Renaissance and early Baroque instrumentalists, by not playing the melodies true to the notes, but by embellishing them with so-called "diminutions". There were many schools and styles for these, which are described in treatises of the time, and the virtuoso also demonstrated his skills with his art of diminution. The violinist now applies the different styles to the various pieces she has chosen for this programme, which are by Monteverdi, Caccini, Falconieri, Trombocino, Willaert and many others. The result is a stylistically diverse, highly virtuosic CD that is also a comprehensive compendium of the art of diminution in Italy around 1600.

The depiction of philosophers and philosophy in early modern music is varied and colourful, at times tragicomic and by no means always 'historically informed'.The noble but mocked Seneca in Monteverdi's Poppea, the hen-pecked, polygamous Socrates in Telemann's Der geduldige Sokrates, the tipple-loving Diogenes and Aristotle in the ballad songs of Leveridge and Lampe, and the lovestruck Heraclitus and Democritus in the more serious duets. There are also the trios and laments of Carissimi, Purcell, Strozzi, Couperin and Jean-Baptise Stuck.Heraclitus and Democritus, two pre-Socratic 5th century thinkers, were particularly fruitful subjects for depiction due to their association with two polar effects: Heraclitus came to be known as the 'weeping philosopher' and was often contrasted in artistic depictions with Democritus, the 'laughing philosopher'.Far from being detached oracles rhetorically dispensing wisdom, these philosopher-singers are feeling as well as thinking subjects, subject to suffering and (self) derision in equal measure.

Profeti Della Quinta Five male singers form the core of Profeti della Quinta, joining with others as the music – from the 16th and 17th centuries – demands.

The innovations of Niccolò Jommelli (1714 74) transformed mid-18th-century Italian opera just as much as Gluck’s slightly later so-called reforms, but his tercentenary passed by largely uncelebrated; this recital album was recorded in 2014 after a concert tour around Spain and presents a cross-section of arias from seven different cantatas, oratorios and operas written between 1749 and 1768.

The Bachs must count as one of the most musical families in the history of Western music. Next to Johann Sebastian Bach, there were many other outstanding musicians and composers in the family. This release presents a varied anthology of flute music by Johann Sebastian and his composing sons - Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian - with every piece containing typical compositional characteristics of each of them.

Tchaikovsky's "Iolanta" is an elegiac tale about a blind princess who lives in a secluded garden, overseen by her well meaning father who tries to shield her from her condition. Only a handsome knight can grant her the ability to see through the power of love. Russian soprano Olga Mykytenko and the astonishing tenor Piotr Beczala give riveting performances as Iolanta and the noble knight. Re-issue of a former release on the Relief label.

The composer Johann Friedrich Fasch maintained a particularly close relationship with the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, where he served as Kapellmeister from 1722 until his death in 1758. The present program focuses on the oboe: these are compositions by Fasch himself, such as an oboe concerto, a concerto for 2 oboes and smaller works for oboe, as well as works with oboe by Telemann and Bach, which are connected with the Zerbst court music inventory, Fasch's "Concert-Stube" (1743), and Fasch's tenure in Zerbst. Soloist of the recording is the young oboist Nele Vertommen (b. 1999), a student of Marcel Ponseele and winner of the 1st prize at the International Telemann Competition in Magdeburg in 2021, accompanied by the rising ensemble Musica Gloria.

The Imperial Theatre offered Tchaikovsky a commission to write an opera based on the plot sketch by Ivan Vsevolozhsky in The Queen of Spades or Pique Dame, Op. 68 is an opera in three acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the 1834 novella of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, but with a dramatically altered plot. The premiere took place in 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia.After first turning it down, Tchaikovsky accepted it in 1889. Toward the end of that year, he met with the theatre's managers to discuss the material and sketch out some of the scenes.

The 18th century was the great time of the castrati, they celebrated the greatest triumphs in opera. But gradually the tenor voice also gained more and more weight, until it finally dominated the great roles in bel canto. One of those who strongly influenced this development was Annibale Fabbri, known as "Balino", whose voice would today be described as a "pure lyric tenor". Because of the beauty of his voice and his incomparable stage presence, he achieved great fame and received invitations to all the great stages of Europe. This album presents those roles that famous composers of the time such as Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Sarro, Handel or Caldara wrote for Fabbri, and at the same time follows the stations of Fabbri's performances throughout Europe, from Rome, Naples and Venice to London and Vienna. Tenor Marco Angioloni and the ensemble Il Groviglio succeed in making an impressive plea for a long-neglected voice of baroque opera in the first third of the 18th century.

Gunar Letzbor and his ensemble Ars Antiqua Austria are proven specialists for Austrian baroque music. During recent years, they have rediscovered, performed and recorded polychoral Festive Masses by Weichlein, Ramhaufsky and Hochreither and thus Georg Muffat's magnificent 'Missa in labore requies' is a logical choice of repertoire. This work is the only surviving church music by Georg Muffat and is overwhelming in sonic impact and profundity but also a richness of melodic invention. In its polychoral design, the work is in the tradition of Salzburg Festive Masses, reflecting in their extraordinary musical opulence, the almost boundless material wealth of the prince bishops who commissioned them.

In 1650, the scholar Athanasius Kircher wrote for the first time about a phenomenon that had been familiar to the music world for some time: rhapsodically free instrumental music-making, in which virtuosity is expressively in the foreground and compositional inspirations sometimes disregard the rules of harmony. Kircher called this “stylus phantasticus“. With the development of the monody in Italy around 1600, vocalists initially moved the hearts of the audience, but soon the best instrumentalists emulated them in their own way. The melody instruments swung into their own solo and duo songs, which even today impress in rhetoric and emotionality without words. The listeners at that time were almost in ecstasy, as contemporary reports say. CordArte presents outstanding examples of this new art under the motto "Rapsodia italiana". Here, the violin in particular can make its mark as a new virtuoso instrument. But the viola da gamba also comes into its own, both alone and in dialogue. Last but not least, the harpsichord and organ demonstrate their qualities both as harmonic accompanists and as soloists.

A French title, Italian repertoire, a Swedish manuscript… The manuscript of a certain "Georg Gerdin" provides insight into the ramified travel routes of good music in the 18th century. Nothing is known about Mr. Gerdin himself, only that he signed his manuscript "A Upsale le 8 d'Aout 1758". In his manuscript, Gerdin compiled four sonatas by Pietro Castrucci and two by the now largely forgotten Francesco Geminiani, probably drawing on an edition printed almost fifty years earlier in Amsterdam and London, which had adapted the sonatas originally conceived for violin for the recorder. The recorder player Tabea Schwartz presents these exciting and extremely virtuosic sonatas of the highest quality in a Swedish "reading". Her congenial accompanist, the harpsichordist Thomas Leininger, combines them with short miniatures on well-known English melodies from a collection published in Sweden around 1770 by an unknown composer named Frederick Nussen.