Favourites,
Gifts for... Baroque and Early Music fans
With highlights from this year's early music releases (including recordings from Pygmalion, Mahan Esfahani,Théotime Langlois de Swarte, the Marian Consort and Il Pomo d'Oro), comprehensive box sets and collections, and new books & sheet-music publications, we've selected some perfect presents for lovers of Renaissance and baroque music.
Outstanding 2022 Releases
Described by Gramophone's Edward Breen as 'one of my favourite secular Josquin discs in recent years', this programme of the Franco-Flemish master's chansons for three and four voices features some of his earliest works in the genre, both bawdy and serious; highlights include 'Scaramella va alla guerra' (referenced repeatedly in the late Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy), 'Belle pour l’amour de vous', and 'Qui belles amours'. Also includes music by Ockeghem, Isaac, Compère, and Attaingnant.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
JS Bach: Matthäus-Passion
Julian Prégardien (Evangelist), Stéphane Degout (Christus), Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon
With soloists including Sabine Devieilhe, Lucile Richardot, Tim Mead, Reinoud Van Mechelen and Christian Immler, this Matthew Passion was recorded following a live performance at the Festival de Pâques in Aix-en-Provence and won the Choral category at this year's Gramophone Awards, with Jonathan Freeman-Attwood describing it as 'a recording that markedly enriches the Passion’s famously illustrious discography through its quest for endless possibilities'.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following his compelling exploration of sonatas by Senaillé and Leclair with William Christie (which was one of our Recordings of the Week last summer), the young French violinist presents the latter composer’s concertos in A minor Op. 7 No. 5 and in D major Op. 10 No. 3, plus Vivaldi’s concertos RV 179a & RV 384 and the eighth concerto from Locatelli’s L'Arte del Violino. The album was Gramophone's Recording of the Month in March, with Mark Seow declaring 'these are performances so special that I feel a changed man from listening to them. Buy it, tell all your friends'.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
In addition to the Italian Concerto and French Overture, Esfahani's third JS Bach recording for Hyperion includes the four duets BWV802-805 (which he notes have been 'practically ignored by harpsichordists, whether on record or in the recital hall'), the Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo, and the Capriccio in honorem Johann Christoph Bachii Ohrdrufiensis.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Lusitano's motet Inviolata, integra et casta es featured on the Marian Consort's digital debut album on Linn (along side music by Josquin and Roderick Williams), and their first physical release is devoted to music from his Liber primus epigramatum, issued in Rome in 1551. Born in Olivença in around 1520, Lusitano is described as 'pardo' in one eighteenth-century source, and is therefore thought to have been the first published composer of African heritage.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Described by Dunford as ‘a Baroque West Side Story’, this programme of arias and duets from Handel's English-language works mixes the sacred and the secular, featuring excerpts from Theodora, The Choice of Hercules, the Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, Semele, Solomon, Susanna, Joseph And His Brethren, and Saul; Davies sang David in the latter work to great acclaim in Barrie Kosky's landmark staging at Glyndebourne in 2015.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This sequel to the rumbustious Alehouse Sessions (released in 2017 and described by BBC Music Magazine as 'a no-holds-barred hooley of riotous improvisatory give and take') celebrates the musical legacy of the Restoration theatre, and mixes music by Purcell with folk-tunes, sea-shanties, and Shakespeare-inspired pieces by Eike and his band.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The French harpischordist and violinist (both founder-members of Le Consort) explore the legacy of the Francœur family, focusing primarily on sonatas by the brothers Louis (c.1692-1745) and François (1698-1787) and also including a piece by Louis's son, Louis-Joseph. The programme also features music by Jean-Baptiste Anet and Jean Durocher, plus works which the younger Francœur brother composed in collaboration with François Rebel.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Handel: Theodora
Lisette Oropesa (Theodora), Joyce DiDonato (Irene), Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian (Didymus), Michael Spyres (Septimius), John Chest (Valens); Il Pomo d'Oro, Maxim Emelyanychev
Following their Gramophone Award-winning account of Agrippina two years ago (with DiDonato in the title-role), Emelyanychev and Il Pomo d'Oro turn to Handel's dramatic oratorio from four decades later, recorded after a European tour last summer; the live performances were praised by BachTrack for Oropesa's 'straightforward sincerity and innocence' as the heroine and by Res Musica for the 'absolute mastery of [DiDonato's] singing' as her friend and mentor Irene.
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Following their superb advocacy of 'missing link' composers including Carbonelli and Giornovich, Čičić and his Illyria Consort turn the spotlight on Johann Jakob Walther, one of the most significant violinists in Germany in the generation before J.S. Bach and described as 'the Paganini of his day' by the Belgian musicologist François-Joseph Fétis. This is the first-ever complete recording of his Scherzi da Violino, published in Dresden in 1676.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
New Box Sets and Collections
Made between 1955 and 1979, this anthology of recordings from the conductorless Italian chamber orchestra includes Vivaldi's The Four Seasons (with founder-member Felix Ayo as soloist), concerti grossi by Corelli, Torelli, Albinoni, Geminiani and Handel, the Brandenburg Concertos, Wassenaer's Concerti Armonici (previously attributed to Pergolesi), Mendelssohn String Symphonies, Rossini's Sonate a quattro, and Schubert's Rondo for violin and strings.
Available Format: 83 CDs
The Swiss conductor Michel Corboz signed to the Erato in 1964, and in the early part of his long relationship with the label did much to raise the profile of composers such as Carissimi, Lalande, Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Monteverdi, all of whom were relatively sparsely represented on record at the time. Highlights from this collection include the latter's L'Orfeo and Vespro della beata Vergine, Cavalli's Ercole amante, and Carissimi's Abraham et Isaac & Jephte.
Available Format: 74 CDs
Founded in 1953 as the Jean-Marie Leclair Instrumental Ensemble and renamed after its founder six years later, the Orchestre de Chambre Jean-François Paillard was one of the Erato label's first signings and did much to champion French baroque repertoire which was largely neglected at the time. Recorded between 1953 and 1984, this collection includes music by Rameau, Lalande, Mouret, Dauvergne, Leclair and Charpentier.
Available Formats: 14 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Isabelle Faust plays Bach
Isabelle Faust (violin), Akademie Für Alte Musik Berlin, Kristian Bezuidenhout (harpsichord), Antoine Tamestit (viola)
This set brings together Faust's widely acclaimed complete Bach recordings on Harmonia Mundi to date: the Violin Concertos & Brandenburg Concertos (with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin), the Solo Sonatas & Partitas (which won a Diapason d’Or de l’Année in 2010), and Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord (with Kristian Bezuidenhout). A bonus DVD, recorded by Bach's tomb at the Leipzig Thomaskirche, features the Partita No. 2 in D minor and Sonata No. 3 in C major.
Available Format: 8 CDs + DVD Video
This first volume of Aparté’s new Resound series is devoted to music of the Habsburg dynasty, with highlights including Fux's La Deposizione dalla Croce, Il Fonte della Salute and Missa Corporis Christi, Porpora's Il Gedeone, Salieri's Te Deum, Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Missa Solemnis, and shorter works by three music-loving emperors: Joseph I, Ferdinand III and Leopold I.
Available Format: 14 CDs
Recent Books on Early, Medieval and Baroque Music
New Perspectives on Handel's Music: Essays in Honour of Donald Burrows
David Vickers (editor); Boydell & Brewer; Hardback
As soon as Handel composed, rehearsed, and performed his music, it immediately became a subject of fascination for the authors of reports, polemics, and critical appraisals. The continuous yet evolving culture of Handelian studies is represented here by several generations of scholars inspired by the research, publications, and teaching of Donald Burrows. This festschrift contains twenty essays that exemplify aspects both of traditional philological enquiry and of modern interdisciplinary musicology.
Available Format: Book
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is the most important source of early English keyboard music, and this Lyrebird edition is the first for over 120 years. Containing 297 pieces, The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book follows Lyrebird’s editorial policy of retaining as many of the original manuscript’s visual aspects as possible, including its beaming, ties, notational forms (such as black notation) and time signatures. Included are full-colour plates of the manuscript. The substantial preface covers the background to the Jacobean period and provides a bibliographical analysis of the manuscript and its corrections, music and genre, and such performance issues as notation, instruments, and ornamentation.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
Available Format: Sheet Music
A new publication of the complete My Ladye Nevells Booke, an important source of William Byrd’s keyboard music, which is dated 1591. A peer-reviewed preface looks at the composer and manuscript and, by examining errors and emendations, comes to some surprising conclusions about the book’s genesis. Detailed notes on instrumentation and performance practice are provided, along with a substantial bibliography for those wishing to study this remarkable collection further. Included are full-colour plates of the manuscript. The music is presented as a pseudo-facsimile by returning all the visual aspects of the manuscript. This includes black notation, original time signatures and clefs, and corrects the only other modern edition from 1923.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
Available Format: Sheet Music
After The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and My Ladye Nevells Booke, Anne Dawson, Her Book is one of the most important keyboard music manuscripts found in a British library. Dated 1716, it has been in the Henry Watson Music Library, Manchester, since the 19th-century. It contains a wealth of music that was fashionable among a London modish elite in the early years of the eighteenth century and includes transcriptions of no less than eleven concerti grossi by Antonio Vivaldi, another concerto by Giuseppe Bononcini and other transcriptions of Marais and Pepusch. These are interspersed with idiomatic keyboard works that include toccatas that are thought to be by Handel and Buxtehude. Edited by Jon Baxendale, this Lyrebird Music edition is the first full edition of the complete contents and a substantial preface provides copious notes on the manuscript, its music and performance.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
Available Format: Sheet Music
David Smith - Head of Digital
