For fans of Il Giardino Armonico's flamboyant flourishes and exuberant expressiveness, it's like having all your birthdays at once, being presented with this great Warner Classics 11 CD set. My own feeling is that this "free" approach to Baroque music is at its best when applied to the theatrical music of disc 8 or the seventeenth century Italian music on disc 1. The showmanship and playfulness is an absolute joy in many of those pieces. I'm less satisfied with the interpretations of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, (on discs 10 and 11), which require a different approach, I feel. I like my Bach to be a little more measured and subtle, I suppose. It has no need of the Il Giardino Armonico treatment. On the whole, though, I do love this set and wouldn't be without it.

The transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque eras did not mark one sudden change of forms or styles, nor did it signal the end of what Claudio Monteverdi called the prima pratica, or the primary practice of Renaissance polyphony. However, a new emphasis on powerful emotional expressions became a central feature of what he dubbed the seconda pratica, which came to the fore with the development of opera, most notably in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in 1607. Composers paid special attention to the innovations in the music of Venice, which eventually spread throughout Europe in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and such figures as Monteverdi, Antonio Lotti, and Antonio Caldara, long associated with the city, became exemplars of the new Venetian style, in both secular and sacred music.

17th Century Wrocław (then Breslau) was one of Europe’s important musical centres. Its three main Protestant churches – St. Elisabeth, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Bernardine – collected extensive music libraries. Their repertoire was shaped both by prints imported from Italy and Germany, and by works composed by local cantors and organists employed in church ensembles. A separate collection of nearly 400 prints from 1610–55 remained in private hands. During World War II, however, they were taken away from the city and dispersed after 1945. Some items have not been found until now. The majority of the prints returned to Wrocław. Numerous manusripts were considered lost until the late 1980s, when they reappeared in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek. They found their way there from Moscow, where some items of the former Breslau library still remain.

The programme chosen for this CD by the eminent early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini and performed by members of his hand-picked ensemble Concerto Italiano illustrate most of the forms that instrumental music adopted in the course of the seventeenth century. Amongst the composers featured are Giovanni Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Zanetti, and Torelli, as well as lesser known figures of the period including Giovanni de Macque, Evaristo dall’Abaco, and Giovanni Bononcini.

Historical harps, recorders, serpent, portative, fiddle and violin, not a common instrumentation - and a very vital one. Old-time music is not mimicked here, but lived: atmosphere, density without fuss. In the center the music itself: Music from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Early Baroque.

Voglio cantar – ‘I want to sing’ – is Emőke Baráth’s first solo album for Erato. The young Hungarian soprano has built a special reputation in Baroque music and the prime focus here is on Barbara Strozzi, who made her name as a composer in 17th century Venice. “She must have been quite a revolutionary personality,” says Emőke Baráth. “Her music is improvisational, intuitive, even rhapsodic … She was clearly a passionate woman with a strong dramatic sense.” Baráth is joined by Il Pomo d’Oro, conducted by Francesco Corti.