Antonio Vivaldi

A charming selection of sacred music for treble voices, plus a perennial Irish favourite, Cockles and Mussels, sung with irresistible Gaelic charm by the boy trebles of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

With varied accompaniment featuring organ, harp, and guitar, this is a beautiful collection of both well-loved, and some unfamiliar, instantly-appealing works for boys’ voices.

The first release for a number of years from St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin – which has the only choir school in Ireland, founded over 500 years ago.

A generously filled disc at with over 70 minutes of music.

The Copenhagen Chamber Ensemble, founded in 1978, consists of a group of friends and alumni from the Copenhagen Choir School, who have each pursued careers as instrumentalists. The ensemble has performed across Europe, the USA and South America.

The disc features a selection of pieces by composers of the Baroque period, specially chosen by the ensemble. The relatively unknown Johan Helmich Roman was known during his lifetime as the Swedish Handel, and six movements from his Drottinholmmusiken appear on the disc, selected for their use of each of the ensemble’s instruments. Next is the spirited Sinfonia in A by Johann Adolf Scheibe, one of relatively few foreigners in Denmark at the time, who moved from Germany to work as Kapellmesiter for the Danish Opera. This is followed by a work of prolific composer Georg Philipp Telemann, whose reputation has struggled against the imposing presences of J.S. Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi, but whose compositions have enjoyed a renaissance in the 20th century. The majestic first movement of the Quintetto in G gives way to an animated second and brief third, followed by dance-like finale. Following this is J.B Boismortier’s Senate in E Op.24 No.3, with flute as the prominent instrument and the disc finishes with the great Antonio Vivaldi, whose lively Concerto No.6 in G RV107 provides a fitting end to the collection.

Internationally renowned early music virtuosi Genevieve Lacey (recorder), Daniel Yeadon (viola da Gamba/cello) and Neal Peres Da Costa (Organ/harpsichord) here bring their expertise and insights to the music of the Baroque masters.

Since their return to Australia after 15 years in London, Neal Peres Da Costa and Daniel Yeadon have regularly joined Genevieve in recitals.

One of the greatest composers of the Baroque period, Antonio Vivaldi was also a priest and virtuoso violinist. Although he was equally famous for his notorious vanity as for his music, his imaginative compositional style soon became world-renowned, and J.S. Bach gave new vitality to Vivaldi’s works, citing the composer among his most important influences.

This collection comprises several of Vivaldi’s chamber concertos, which he is likely to have composed for the year-long stay of the crown prince of Saxony-Poland in Venice in 1716. The prince brought with him several musicians to whom Antonio became close, and for whom the concertos were written to be performed in the prince’s private apartments. The chamber concertos, showcasing a variety of instruments, each include three movements, with the fast movements containing ritornello-form passages that alternate with free instrumental solo sections. The concertos RV84 in D, for violin, flute and basso continuo, and RV103 in G minor, for recorder, oboe and basso continuo, are homotonal, a characteristic which pertains particularly to the works of Vivaldi and immediately distinguishes his style from that of other composers of the era.

Recorded in 1990.

New booklet notes by musicologist and Italian Baroque expert Michael Talbot.

Aside from his numerous flute concertos (including the six of the famous Op. 10), Vivaldi's catalogue includes three unpublished concerti for ottavino (piccolo) without opus number (the autograph manuscripts are to be found in the Turin Library), which are practically unique in Italian Baroque music. For this unusual soloist, Vivaldi 'imposes runs of great volubility and perilous breaks' (Marc Pincherle) in his allegros whilst also revealing, in the slow movements, 'the instrument’s unsuspected expressive possibilities'.

Even though not initially written for piccolo, the other three concertos that round out this programme are particularly well suited to the instrument. The one in A minor (P. 77) was originally a concerto da camera for recorder, two violins - in a tight dialogue with intentionally parallel parts - and bass. The Concerto in C minor (P. 440) had also been written for recorder whereas the Concerto for two flutes in C major (P. 76) called for two transverse flutes. All three feature two particularly nimble and voluble - even spectacular - fast movements flanking a mysterious, questioning or serene nocturnal cantilena. But, in addition, each one takes on a clearly pronounced character: playful and mischievous in the case of the Concerto in A minor, dramatic for the one in C minor, and festive and cheerful in the Concerto for two flutes.

This monumental set of recordings, originally on Das Alte Werk LP, collects Frans Bruggen performing a variety of pre-baroque, baroque and rococco works for recorder(s). Frans Bruggen put the recorder on the map as a solo instrument, and no one before or since has made such a huge impact, nor had Bruggen's musicality and expressiveness.

Once the world's most famous recorder player, today Frans Brüggen is considered among the foremost experts in the performance of eighteenth century music. He studied the recorder with Kees Otten and flute at the Amsterdam Muzieklyceum. In addition, he took courses in musicology at the University of Amsterdam. At the age of 21, he was appointed professor at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and later held position as Erasmus Professor at Harvard University and Regent's Professor at the University of Berkeley, making him one of the youngest musical scholars of the time though still remaining, as Luciano Berio wrote, "a musician who is not an archaeologist but a great artist".

This collection features conductor Robert Shaw, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Robert Shaw Festival Singers performing sacred choral classics from some of the albums they recorded for Telarc between 1979 and 1993.

In consistently excellent sound, Shaw’s unrivalled mastery of this repertoire shines through in every selection on the disc, from the final pages of the "Prologue in Heaven" from Boito’s Mefistofele, to the towering conclusion of Mahler's Symphony No. 8.

Philippe Jaroussky, described by Germany’s Die Zeit as “the Apollo of countertenors’, stands out among his many talented contemporaries as much for the soprano-like beauty of his tone as for the elegance and insight of his interpretations and his adventurous and erudite approach to repertoire – whether unearthing neglected scores by little-known composers or venturing beyond the Baroque into the 19th and 20th centuries.

Established as one of Virgin Classics’ bestselling artists, Jaroussky, now aged 34, has been honoured three times in the Victoires de la Musique awards in his native France and has also received Germany’s most prominent music prize, the Echo Klassik. His diverse achievements are saluted in two new collections on Virgin Classics – the 2CD set “The Voice” and the DVD and Blu Ray “La Voix des rêves: Greatest moments in Concert”.

“THE VOICE” 2 CD Best of Philippe Jaroussky comprises 31 tracks chosen by the singer himself and six previously unreleased tracks of music by Handel and Purcell. Vivaldi takes pride of place on the album, but other composers include Caldara, Porpora and JC Bach and, from later eras, Fauré, Reynaldo Hahn and even Argentina’s King of Tango, Ástor Piazzolla.