New Releases

Together with less well-known harpsichord works of Hasse, the harpsichordist Luca Guglielmi is introducing these four royal sonatas of Hasse on CD for the first time. Guglielmi performs regularly in the world's major concert halls, working together with Jordi Savall and his ensembles Le Concert des Nations and Hesperion XXI, amongst others.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), one of the peaks of the Baroque contrapuntal style, also turns out to be one of the most enigmatic works in the history of music. Though composed as a series of fugues on the same subject, Bach did not specify the instruments that’ should play them.

Les Voix humaines viol consort has recorded its own version of Bach’s unfinished final work. Since 2001, some of Montreal’s finest gambists have regularly joined the viol duo Les Voix humaines to form the Voix Humaines Consort, which specializes in the vast 17th-century repertoire for viol consort.

Ensemble Masques returns with a recording of music by the German baroque composer Johann Rosenmüller. The composer’s 25 year soujourn in Venice inspired the most personal and expressive of his instrumental music, among which are the 12 sonatas included on this recording. Masques’s previous ATMA recording of music by Rameau garnered 5 Diapasons from the prestigious French magazine of the same name.

The Beatles songs on this “Best of” compilation are from the three Beatles Baroque CDs by Les Boréades. Eric Milnes made the arrangements and directed the ensemble.

Released between 2000 and 2006, these three CDs have been among ATMA Classique's best sellers, both in Canada and internationally.

Eric Milnes, a native of New York, has won praise from international critics for conducting and performing at early music festivals, notably those of Utrecht, Bremen, Regensburg, Passau, Boston, New York, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Berkeley, and San Francisco. Mr. Milnes is a graduate of Columbia University and of The Juilliard School, both in New York.

The Scottish and Irish airs and instrumental pieces chosen for this new sampler were selected from previous ATMA recordings by singers Meredith Hall, Matthew White, and Michael Slattery, along with ensembles La Nef and Skye Consort.

The lyrics of traditional Scottish and Irish songs from the 17th and 18th centuries are closely related to the social life of the time, and several airs tell the stories of love between lads and lassies. Tenor Michael Slattery sings John Dowland’s songs with an Irish flavor, while soprano Meredith Hall and countertenor Matthew White perform Scottish music from the era of the famous Killiecrankie battle.

Once again Frieder Bernius lives up to his name as the rediscoverer of unknown masterpieces from the Romantic era. Just in time for the Franz Ignaz Danzi's 250th anniversary, and together with the Kammerchor Stuttgart and the Hofkapelle Stuttgart he has snatched Danzi's opera Der Berggeist from an undeserved oblivion.

This opera, first performed in Karlsruhe in 1813 – exactly 200 years ago – based on the folkloric tale of Rübezahl, is an especially notable contribution to early Romantic opera in Germany.

Freider Bernius conducting the forces of the Stuttgart Chamber Choir are well documented and critically acclaimed, and this new recording is a welcome addition to the catalogue.

The name Otto Nicolai is most closely associated with his opera The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Less well known, on the other hand, is his extensive output of sacred music, which includes a cappella works and choral works with orchestra. As Mendelssohn's successor as artistic director of the Berlin Cathedral, with the Mass in D major Nicolai composed a sacred work well worth discovering.

It is an important contribution to church music of the 19th century. In addition to this festive mass with orchestral accompaniment, the chamber choir CONSONO under Harald Jers also presents several other choral works which with their varied scorings, some a cappella, some with instrumental accompaniment.

All these works show the diversity of Nicolai's sacred compositions.

On the CD Musicalischer Seelen-Frieden, Dorothee Mields and the ensemble Hamburger Ratsmusik present several of the most beautiful solo cantatas of the baroque composer Johann Philipp Krieger. Krieger understood how to unite French and Italian elements of style in his music and thus as a composer he was an important role model for the generation in which Bach and Telemann were active.

His altogether twenty sacred concertos from the collection "Musikalischer Seelen-Friede", the only edition of Krieger’s sacred music, which was printed in 1990 and 1996, are among the most important contributions to this important genre in his time.

Four of these concertos are recorded here for the first time.