George Frideric Handel

The greatest opera stars in the world - together in one 2-CD set.

A unique collection of all the great genuine opera stars appearing on the world's stages today.

A galaxy of great names performing opera's best-loved arias and classic melodies.

CD 1 ("The Divos") features celebrated performances from Roberto Alagna, Juan Diego Flórez, Jonas Kaufmann, Plácido Domingo, Bryn Terfel, José Carreras, Josef Calleja and Erwin Schrott

CD 2 ("The Divas") features outstanding recordings by Cecilia Bartoli, Renée Fleming, Anna Netrebko, Angela Gheorghiu, Montserrat Caballé, Nicole Cabell, Olga Borodina, and Kiri te Kanawa

A fabulous showcase of today's top vocal talent

2 CDs for the price of one

“I would happily sit in King’s College Chapel listening to this choir sing for the rest of my days.” The Times

In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel, and the 800th anniversary of the University of Cambridge, the first ever live cinema broadcast of a choral concert will take place from King’s College, Cambridge this Easter.

The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge will perform Handel’s best known work, Messiah, on Palm Sunday, April 5 2009 in the magnificent setting of King’s College Chapel. The performance will be conducted by Stephen Cleobury, Director of Music at King’s, and features the Academy of Ancient Music and soloists Ailish Tynan, Alice Coote, Allan Clayton and Matthew Rose. It is part of the Easter at King’s festival of music and services, now in its fifth year.

This will be the first time a choral concert has been carried live via satellite. It will be shown in over 85 cinemas across Europe with US broadcasts, also on April 5, confirmed for around 50 screens to date and Canadian broadcasts scheduled in over 30 cinemas for April 11. EMI Classics will make the live concert recording available digitally on April 14, the actual anniversary of Handel’s death, and will release the physical CD later in the month.

Through an exclusive agreement with Opus Arte, EMI will also release the film of the concert on DVD in November 2009, in the run-up to Christmas, while additional cinema broadcasts are planned in the UK, other European countries, the United States (a 3D version will be shown as well) and Australia during the same period.

George Frideric Handel’s crowning masterpiece, his oratorio Messiah, was a hit at its premiere in April 1742 and remains among the most popular works in Western choral literature. A native of Germany, the composer lived in England from 1712, where he was considered one of the leading musical figures of his day. In 1741, the year in which he wrote Messiah, however, Handel found himself on the verge of bankruptcy, depressed and broken following the failure of several of his operas. In London it was even being said that his career as a composer was over.

Not so in Ireland, where the Lord Lieutenant and governors of three charitable organisations invited Handel to Dublin to conduct a performance of one of his works for charity. Having recently completed his oratorio Messiah, the composer decided to use the invitation as an opportunity to present this new work to the world. The premiere – at Neal’s Music Hall in Dublin in 1742 – was eagerly awaited by the Dublin public and the hall was sold out.

Handel based Messiah on a libretto by Charles Jennens that employs verses from the bible to present the life of Jesus. The work is in three sections: the Advent and Christmas; Christ’s passion; and the events told in the Revelation to St. John. While the composer intended the oratorio to be secular theatre, today Messiah is performed equally in churches and concert halls, by professionals and amateurs alike, usually during Lent (prior to Easter) or Advent (prior to Christmas).

Star soprano Christine Schafer sings scenes and arias from one of Handel’s most popular operas. The combination of Handel and Schafer ensure this is going to a major release.

“For intimacy and brio, there’s Ottavio Dantone and the five musicians of Accademia Bizantina… Poised in the Siciliano of the E major concerto, merry in the Allegro of the A major, strikingly confident in the whirlwind Presto of the F minor and dazzling in the Italianate Adagio of the D minor, the ensemble is faultless” The Independent on Bach Harpsichord Concertos. This is the second disc in the new L’Oiseau Lyre partnership with Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone; it promises to be a stunning contribution to commemorate the Handel celebrations in 2009.

Full of characteristic melodies and sonorous harmonies, Handel’s organ concertos op. 4 were composed in 1735-36, when Handel was in his prime. It is the first time the Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone have recorded these famous Baroque works.

As a point of difference, in two of the six concertos, Dantone also performs a solo prelude (improvisation) before the beginning of the concerto, as Handel did in performances. Recorded in Halle, Handel’s birth place, in the Sankt Bartholomäus Church, the church where many members of the Handel family got married.

Rarely heard after its London premiere in 1732, Ezio, in its first ever studio recording, is rediscovered by Curtis and his cast to be a masterpiece of music drama. Strong characters, thrilling arias, potent instrumentals, and rare touches – such as Handel’s only operatic bass aria with trumpet obbligato and another air enlivened by the passing skirl of bagpipes – make fascinating listening. Metastasio’s plot poetically gets down to passion, murder, and revenge. Superb Baroque specialist Ann Hallenberg shines as Ezio, a role created by the castrato Senesino

A 3CD set including works with the 3 composers’ anniversary 2009 Haydn (1809), Purcell (1659) and Handel (1759) and presenting 3 works on the theme of Saint Cecilia.

“It seems that, in the years around 1720, when people went to the opera to hear a castrato idol or an adored soprano, they would play cards, pay court to their neighbours and savour sorbets during the recitatives – even during the so-called arias of action, which they enjoyed less than the ornamented reprises of the showpiece arias. With this intractable and hedonistic audience in mind (so different from people like us, of course), thirteen star singers came together to concoct this festive piece, constructed and presented in three acts like a true dramma per musica, but with no explicit story and no concrete characters: in other words, an imaginary opera formed of passion and music.” Ivan A. Alexandre

This album marks the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death with creativity, erudition and maybe a touch of audacity. Far more than a compilation album, it selects individual numbers from 11 operas and two oratorios by Handel and reassembles them in a sequence that respects the potent formula elaborated in the composer’s 38 works for the operatic stage.

While there is no specific narrative, the listener will be drawn in by the dramatic logic of a balanced succession of numbers, including some ‘greatest hits.

For the first time, this budget priced 6 CD collection re-presents Segovia’s highly-prized recordings made for American Decca in the 1940s and 1950s, when he was arguably at the height of his powers. Here are the first six albums released by the label in that now legendary series, presented for the first time in original LP couplings and with their striking original-sleeve artwork: Andrés Segovia Guitar Solos; An Andrés Segovia Recital; An Andrés Segovia Concert; An Andrés Segovia Program; An Evening with Andrés Segovia; Andrés Segovia Plays…

Many of these 80+ tracks are appearing on Deutsche Grammophon for the first time. The set has been newly remastered, with a minimum of intervention, from original tapes or tape copies of original glass masters. Like the best whisky, Segovia’s art is unfiltered on these CDs. The results reveal a new intimacy and delicacy in these six classic recitals that are wholly captivating.

The package: Mini-LP sleeves (front and back), CD booklet (in the style of the The Martha Argerich Collection) has new liner notes by Segovia expert Graham Wade comprising introduction and annotations on each of the albums, with colour minis.

On a cold January day in 1989, two dozen oboes, twelve bassoons, nine horns, nine trumpets and two giant double drums were gathered in a north London church to make what became of Hyperion’s most iconic recordings: The King’s Consort’s recreation of Handel’s Musick for the Royal Fireworks is a sonic triumph of jaw-dropping majesty, its authenticity only stopping short at burning down the venue.

Ten years later Robert King and The King’s Consort turned their attentions to the Water Music. Handel’s commission was for an enormous party on the river Thames given by George I. A large orchestra was present on the musicians' barge: a good-size string section (despite the King’s outspoken loathing of ‘violeens’) and a substantial wind presence. The sound of a large baroque wind band produces a magnificent sonority. Similarly, a colourful continuo force on the river seems probable. The rhythmic impetus of a pair of baroque guitars combined with the colours of two harpsichords lends the music a vital danceband-like rhythm section, much in keeping with the King’s colourful intentions for his evening’s entertainment!