Written between 1818 and 1823, Beethoven's Missa solemnis was the result of intensive theological and musical research in the library of it's dedicatee, Archduke Rudolph of Austria. It is, in Beethoven's own view, his most ambitious composition. On this recording, René Jacobs shows us that it is also his loftiest. This is the work of a composer with deeply held religious sentiments and profound tenderness for humanity, so confident in his artistry that he could create that which goes beyond liturgical form and expresses in musical terms the universality of divine transcendence.

Das erstklassige Solistenensemble, der RIAS-Kammerchor und die Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin und nicht zuletzt Jacobs selbst sind Garanten für lebendige historische Aufführungspraxis, so dass diese Interpretation der h-Moll Messe von der Fachpresse entsprechend enthusiastisch aufgenommen und den wenigen Referenzeinspielungen an die Seite gestellt wurde.

SEON (Studio Erichson) is a period music label by the legendary producer Wolf Erichson. Erichson founded the label in 1969 as one of the first labels dedicated only to authentic music. The recordings were made with the best available recording techniques of the time and still deliver a high quality product in line with today's standards. This special boxset offers all SEON CD reissues from the late 90s on 85 CDs in a limited edition boxset.

SEON (Studio Erichson) is a period music label by the legendary producer Wolf Erichson. Erichson founded the label in 1969 as one of the first labels dedicated only to authentic music. The recordings were made with the best available recording techniques of the time and still deliver a high quality product in line with today's standards. This special boxset offers all SEON CD reissues from the late 90s on 85 CDs in a limited edition boxset.

A warm welcome back for this 1977 recording of Handel’s most successful opera, which ran, in 1727, for an unprecedented 19 performances. Curtis and his team were visionary 20 years ago. Recitative is lively, declaimed rather than fully sung; vocal decorations sound spontaneous, period instruments are played with zest and polish – barely a sour note from the handful of strings; colours include a trio of oboes and bassoon and, accompanying Bowman in fine voice, a pair of horns for what Dr Burney described as ‘one of the best and most agreeable hunting songs that was ever composed’.

With the belief that “No opera loses so much as Die Zauberflöte if one strips it of its drama and that means, above all, the spoken dialogue,” René Jacobs’ agenda in Die Zauberflöte is to rehabilitate the reputation of Schikaneder’s libretto. At the heart of his reassesment is the idea that Schikaneder and Mozart’s Masonic message is deeper and more carefully presented than we have thought. He suggests that seemingly silly or inconsistent aspects of the story are put there as intentional false paths as the audience, not only the prince and the bird catcher, undergoes its own trials of initiation. The opera’s symbolism and structure are explained in convincing detail in an essay in the booklet by the Egyptologist and Mozart researcher Jan Assman.

The two works performed here are two that have never gone out of fashion, even in the days before the Bach revival, in the darkest times for his reputation, these works were recognized as masterworks and have never been out of the repertoire. La petite bande was founded by Sigiswald Kuijken in 1972. It is a period instruments ensemble which has come to be recognized as having the highest standard of performance in Bach and other composers as well.

The Sacrae concertationes were first published in 1665. Their style représentatif was designed to put to music the words of the sermons given in the oratories of Rome in the early 17th century - no mean feat bu Mazzocchi emerges as a true master of the genre.

This Septem verba a Christo in cruce moriente proloata (The Seven Words of the Dying Christ on the Cross) was rediscovered nearly a century ago, and scholars down through the years have reached differing conclusions as to whether or not the work was really by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, as one manuscript claimed. More and more copies surfaced, and finally the discovery by musicologist Reinhard Fehling of a new set of parts at an Austrian monastery in 2009 showed that the work was at the very least popular over a good part of Europe, and the forces represented here gave the work its modern-day premiere performance and first recording.

This two-CD album brings together the two earliest recordings by La Petite Bande. They were made in 1973 and feature landmarks in two important French forms of entertainment—comedie-ballet and opera-ballet. Performed in 1670 at Chambord, one of Louis XIV's grandest country retreats, Le bourgeois gentilhomme was the high water mark of Lully's collaboration with Moliere and was to be the last work of its kind on which the two worked together. Moliere developed the comedie-ballet from the fashionable court ballets, working the dances and music into the body of the play with unparalleled skill. Lully, himself a dancer, proved a gifted partner as the music for Le bourgeois gentilhomme reveals.

In addition to German and early Italian sacred music, Michel Corboz was very involved in exploring the Grand Siècle, and in particular the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The re-creation in Lyon of David & Jonathas, a groundbreaking musical form between lyric tragedy and oratorio, with very few recitatives, was one of the main stage events of 1981. Almost three centuries had passed since the premiere and the work was completely forgotten, though being considered nowadays as one of Charpentier’s masterpieces. This recording, made just after the live performances, was the first to reveal the beauty of this work, thanks to Corboz’ conducting of a period instrument orchestra and an amazing cast of vocal soloists: Colette Alliot-Lugaz, Paul Esswood, Philippe Huttenlocher, René Jacobs, François Le Roux…

With more than 260 recordings to his credit and an intensive career as singer, conductor, scholar and teacher, René Jacobs has achieved an eminent position in the field of Baroque and Classical vocal music.

Just before returning home at the end of his years of musical apprenticeship in Rome, the Portuguese composer Almeida composed this unusual oratorio based on one of the most bloddy episodes in the Old Testament, the decapitation of the Assyrian general Holofernes by Judith, a crucial episode in the struggle of the Jewis people against Nebuchadnezzar (588 B.C.). When it was revived in 1990 this powerful, at times sensual work was greeted as a 'revelation of Portuguese music'.

When Nature took on new meaning. The transition from Winckelmann to Rousseau marked one of the biggest upheavals of thought in the Enlightenment - and it is perfectly illustrated in these four Seasons with their decidedly Romantic 'descriptivism'! In this music, even though lambs frisk, fish teem and thunder booms, it is the question of Man within Nature that is the central issue. By going back to the very first version of The Seasons (with the orchestral introductions played in their entirety), René Jacobs enables us to relive that day in April 1801 that saw the triumph of old 'Papa' Haydn.

Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) is one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of Baroque music. Very little is known of his early years, where he studied and who taught him. Born in a village to the south of Prague, he later travelled to Dresden where he joined the court of the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich August I. His position at the court was a lowly one, but he nonetheless composed many works there and his output of church music was particularly prolific.