Up to 30% off Brilliant Classics

Added to the MUSICA SACRA series: a large scale Oratorium by Georg Philipp Telemann, one of the 40 he wrote.

Telemann wrote the libretto for the work himself, emphasising the dramatic character of the text in his powerful near-operatic music.

Wonderful performance by the famous Freiburger Vokal-Ensemble and L’arpa Festante München.

In recent times Haydn’s “Seven Last Words” have enjoyed increasing levels of fame and popularity.

These intimate seven adagios show a contemplative, deeply introspective side of Haydn which many were not familiar with.

Of the several versions of the work (solo keyboard, string quartet, string orchestra) this version for soloists, choir and orchestra became the most popular.

Excellent performances by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Nicol Matt, who made their name with highly acclaimed recordings of Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms for Brilliant Classics.

Bach’s Easter Oratorio (a re-working by Bach himself of a secular Cantata) is a substantial Cantata in eleven parts, in which the festive character of the Resurrection is caught in joyful trumpet fanfares in the first two instrumental Sinfonias.

Eloquent recitatives and intimate arias complete Bach’s musical celebration of Easter. Sung texts included.

A firm place for this powerful but somewhat neglected Oratorio in the MUSICA SACRA series!

In popularity Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy has been largely overshadowed by his famous Vespers, certainly an undeserved fate: the Liturgy contains magnificent choral music, a deep and moving tribute to the rich and ancient tradition of Russian Orthodox Chant.

Superb performance by all-Russian forces of the Russian State Symphony Capella, conducted by Valery Polyansky. Includes liner notes and texts.

A valuable addition to the Brilliant Classics MUSICA SACRA series.

‘John Mark Ainsley sings with remarkable spiritedness throughout, exhibiting an accomplishment and beauty of his articulation in his early numbers which afford constant repetition.’ Gramophone

Booklet note and sung texts.

2009 is the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death.

The Messiah was written at great speed by Handel during the winter of 1741–2, and was received to great acclaim its first performance in Dublin in 1742. Charles Jennens compiled the text from the Bible, and the work is cast in three sections. Although a success in Dublin, the work had a less than warm welcome when it was performed in London without its title, and called ‘a New Sacred Oratorio’ to avoid causing offence to the rather puritanical British public and press. This ruse failed however, and the press were hostile. Jennens and Handel also fell out, as Jennens felt that the composer hadn’t taken enough time and care over the music! This was a low point for Handel, and he seriously contemplated leaving the UK and returning to Germany. Eventually, after a few years, and after a series of performances for charitable causes, the work became a firm favourite. It has been linked ever since with the composer’s generous charitable donations to the Foundling Hospital, of which he was a director along with William Hogarth and Thomas Coram. Messiah is the masterpiece of the English Baroque, and for 200 years has been performed by both professional and amateur choirs around the world. Handel’s gift for truly memorable tunes and (notwithstanding Jennens’s concerns) the care he took in setting the text have ensured that it has remained one of the most famous works ever composed.

Recording made in 2003.

The 1725 version is used in this recording.

‘There are fine contributions especially from Stephen Varcoe, and an exceptionally immediate and affecting ‘Es ist vollbracht’ from Michael Chance.’ Gramophone

Booklet note and sung texts.

Bach produced his St John Passion in 1724, and it was his first setting of the Passion story. The premiere of the first version took place on Good Friday in Leipzig at the Nicolaikirche. Johann Kuhnau had introduced the tradition of Passion oratorios to Leipzig a few years earlier. Bach’s work underwent several revisions right up to the late 1740s, and was performed regularly in all versions. Bach’s Passions have an interesting history. He is credited with five, but only two survive intact, the St John and the St Matthew. The St Mark manuscript was destroyed during a bombing raid in the Second World War, although some music and the text survived, and it has been reconstructed and subsequently recorded. Passion settings appear to have occupied Bach from early on in his career. Some of the material used in the St John Passion dates back to 1714, and it is now believed that Bach reused material from an earlier and now lost Passion. In fact, Bach’s endless revisions saw material from the St Matthew Passion being included in the St John, several Sinfonias were added, and then removed, and these in turn provide material for the many incomplete concertos in Bach’s catalogue of works.Passions are musical descriptions of the events in the life of Christ, from the entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the Crucifixion.

Digital recording made by Denon. This release is available in Europe only.

Booklet essay and sung texts.

‘Haunted by the absence of God’ is how the Berlioz biographer David Cairns described the Grande Messe des morts. Written at a time and in a country where there was no place for God after the Revolution, it is a work of genuine mourning and high drama. In 1837 Berlioz was commissioned by the French Interior Ministry to write something that could be used for major public ceremonies. He had already composed a Messe solenelle in 1824, and he turned to this work for both material and inspiration. The resulting Requiem is one of the largest religious works of all time – and in length compares with Verdi’s Requiem and Britten’s War Requiem. Berlioz, like Bruckner, saw his work scored for massive choral and instrumental forces, as almost architectural in structure. He certainly wanted to fill every possible part of the cathedral or church with sound. This remarkable work looks back as well as forwards – the influence of past masters such as Gossec and Cherubini hovers over the Requiem, but there is also a break with tradition. This is a deeply personal work.It is violent, frightening, and often uncomfortable. Berlioz wrote, ‘The poetry of the Prose des morts so intoxicated and exalted me that nothing presented itself to my mind with any clarity: my head was seething, I felt quite dizzy.’ It is also, for all its grandeur, an austere work. The massive choral and orchestral sections present a forbidding if impressive façade and this is only broken in one section which allows the tenor soloist a brief moment in the spotlight. This austerity no doubt reflects the influence of Cherubini whose C minor Requiem of 1815 has no soloists.

Composed some 12 years after Berlioz’s Requiem, his Te Deum is in many respects a close relation of the earlier work. Again it is on a large scale, written for triple choir, large orchestra, organ and tenor soloist. Where the Te Deum differs is in the range of colours it projects. There is much more in the way of light and shade, more a sense of praising God, rather than fearing him as is conveyed in the Requiem, at least until the awesome final ‘Judex crederis’. Both works plundered the 1824 Messe solenelle, and Berlioz commented to Liszt that ‘the Requiem has a brother’. We know little about the reasons why Berlioz composed this work. Maybe the upcoming coronation of Louis-Napoleon provided the stimulus – we know that Berlioz was lobbying for the honour of writing a suitable work for the new Emperor. Berlioz had also examined in Dresden the score of a large-scale Te Deum by Hasse, and commented on the dramatic effect made by the pealing of bells in the score. Some of the early material was intended for an aborted Fête musicale funèbre of1835. This later became the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale, and the section where Berlioz imagines ‘General Bonaparte making his entry beneath the cathedral vaults’ may have been the catalyst for the Te Deum.

‘Half genius, half idiot’ was Mahler’s description of the reclusive and strange Anton Bruckner. Peasant-like and socially awkward, with a weakness for teenage girls throughout his life, he was a tortured soul. A small-town musician, he struggled to establish his musical voice, but when he did, it would become one of the most distinctive and influential in classical music. Bruckner was by any standards a late developer. Although he had composed a sizeable amount of music before he reached 40, if he had written nothing else, it is unlikely that any of it would be remembered today. Only one or two glimpses of the mature composer can be detected in these works, but certainly nothing of the great symphonies that would follow. It is with the D minor Mass that his unmistakable style first made itself known. Up to this point, he had been living the life of a provincial musician, a choir master and organist. His influences were Joseph and Michael Haydn, and he had yet to encounter in any significant way the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and Wagner. By the time the D minor Mass was completed in 1864, Bruckner was under the spell of the Bayreuth master, Richard Wagner. Though the mass is not overtly ‘Wagnerian’ (it is still based on a Haydnesque model) the exposure to Wagner unlocked in Bruckner a sense of individuality and daring that must have surprised his provincial circle. There is a sense of anguish in the music that on the basis of the early works appears to come from nowhere.

Haydn’s Stabat Mater dates from 1767 and is among the earliest of his large-scale vocal works. Until 1766 he had been the deputy to Gregor Joseph Werner at Eisenstadt, so had gained a thorough experience in both the performance of lavish Mass settings (in which he himself would excel), and Grabenmusiken, or musical meditations on religious themes intended to stress the penitential character of the age. Such works were a feature especially of the period of Lent. The Stabat Mater became a great success. Copies of it can be found in libraries across Europe, and it was a regular feature of the ‘concerts spirituels’ in revolutionary Paris. Haydn, then in the middle of his Sturm und Drang (‘Storm and Stress’) period, uses dramatic and daring harmonies and extreme chromaticisms to heighten the drama and the depictions of pain and anguish. A remarkable work for its time, it still has the ability to startle and move the listener in both its forward-looking harmonic style and emotional punch. 2009 is the bicentenary of Haydn’s death, and a reappraisal of this great composer’s genius will introduce many listeners to several of his works for the first time. The Stabat Mater is essential to any CD collection of his works.