Favourites,
Gifts for... Baroque and Early Music fans
New Recordings
The Goldberg Variations as you've never heard them before - but in orchestral colours that Bach would recognise. Chad Kelly's inventive instrumentation for small Baroque ensemble (single strings, oboe, flue, bassoon and harpsichord) allows us to experience the Variations in a whole new way.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Unapologetically dramatic, this award-winning performance of the Vespers is a sumptuous reminder that around the same time, Monteverdi was helping to plant the seeds of opera. Pichon and his musicians find variety and contrast in every phrase, yet also manage to retain the sense of the whole work as a single, powerful event.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Drawing on the same Biblical texts that Brahms assembled into his German Requiem, Lionel Meunier and Vox Luminis create an imaginary precursor programme with works from the Renaissance and Baroque Lutheran tradition - bringing to light relatively unexplored repertoire by Schein, Selle, Briegel and other composers.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
A long-awaited return to Sheppard by the Tallis Scholars to mark their fiftieth anniversary, this recording shows that their affinity for his music is undimmed by time; the clear sound and soaring soprano lines are perfectly suited to the rich, ecstatic polyphony of the pre-Reformation English school.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
An intimate, 'unplugged' approach to Bach's keyboard works - András Schiff shows us why the clavichord was very much more than just a quiet practice instrument. The two- and three-part inventions, the Capriccio BWV992, and the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue BWV903 are reimagined through the subtle, flexible sound of an instrument long disregarded as the ugly duckling of the keyboard family.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Peter Whelan's Irish Baroque Orchestra continue their series of albums exploring the musical life of Dublin and Ireland in the eighteenth century; the eponymous Mr Charles, a musical entrepreneur and evidently quite a character, lost no time in organising popular and successful concerts featuring Handel's newest and most fashionable works - and musical novelties such as the recently-invented chalumeau - even while the composer himself was still in Dublin in the wake of the premiere of Messiah!
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Built around the Mass for Four Voices and a selection of English and Latin motets, this anniversary celebration from Stile Antico presents a survey of William Byrd's sacred music, with Stile Antico's balance and clarity enabling the subtleties of the writing to shine through.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Avoiding the overwrought melodrama that has obscured some other recordings, Bojan Čičić nevertheless brings a great deal of panache and even showmanship to Bach's solo violin works. The Yorkshire Times went so far as to say "this is not just yet another recording of the Partitas; it is the recording".
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Feuillâtre's debut for Deutsche Grammophon shows how effective the guitar can be as a vehicle for Baroque music, with transcriptions (including some by Feuillâtre himself) of Bach, Royer, Rameau and more. Even the ubiquitous first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier sounds fresh and fluid. An artist to watch, and an album to linger over and relish.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Isabelle Faust's exploration of the Baroque repertoire for solo violin is a neat complement to Čičić's Bach - presenting some of the works that Bach would presumably have been familiar with when writing his own sets. These are no mere placeholders or ancestral curiosities, though - the inventive and fantastical imaginations of Matteis, Vilsmayr, Pisendel and others have a truly unique appeal.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The third and final instalment of Phantasm's affectionate series of Bach adaptations includes selections from both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier, chorale preludes, three-part inventions and more - once again accentuating the inherently polyphonic nature of Bach's keyboard writing by expanding it into chamber music.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recent DVD/Blu-ray releases
Handel: Messiah
Lucy Crowe (soprano), Alex Potter (countertenor), Michael Spyres (tenor), Matthew Brook (bass), The English Concert & Choir, John Nelson
Gramophone's summary of this recording as "no-nonsense yet consistently interesting and invigorated" is an apt summary - the work that John Nelson dubs "singularly famous" is difficult to present anew and afresh, but this all-star cast manage it, and the result is nothing short of operatic splendour. Don't miss the eight bonus tracks, offering alternative versions of some of the arias. Tacked on the end as an 'appendix', they're at least as interesting as the main event.
Available Formats: 2 CDs + DVD Video, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Bach 300
Lang Lang (piano), Daniel Hope (violin), Albrecht Mayer (oboe), Sophie Kauer (cello), Francesca Aspromonte (soprano), Cameron Shahbazi (countertenor); Thomaner Chor Leipzig, Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig, Andreas Reize
A loving and lavish tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach, in the three hundredth anniversary not of his birth or death, but of his appointment as Kantor at Leipzig's Thomaskirche, raising the curtain on perhaps his most fruitful period as a composer. Artists include the Thomanerchor and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, as well as Lang Lang, Daniel Hope, Albrecht Mayer and more.
Available Format: Blu-ray
Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea
Elsa Benoit (Poppea), Jake Arditti (Nerone), Ambroisine Bré (Ottavia), Iestyn Davies (Ottone), Alex Rosen (Seneca), Stuart Jackson (Arnalta); Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo García Alarcón
Described as "mafia-Baroque", this production of Monteverdi's opera (his last and in many ways most forward-looking) about power and intrigue in Rome is as powerful as ever; the titular heroine ruthlessly scheming her way to supremacy and engineering the disappearance of every obstacle that stands in her way.
Available Format: Blu-ray + DVD Video
New Box Sets and Collections
Surely one of the most enduringly influential artists of the entire early music movement, Trevor Pinnock's historically-aware (and often keyboard-led) performances cut to the emotional centre of the music. Even after five decades or more of subsequent developments in scholarship and practice, they retain the impact that led Leonard Bernstein to comment on their ability to make him jump out of his seat.
Available Format: 100 CDs
Rinaldo Alessandrini and his Concerto Italiano have been making their way through Monteverdi's nine books of madrigals at a leisurely pace since the early 1990s; now completed, that journey runs the gamut of emotions (especially in Book 8, the collection of madrigals on themes of love and war), and includes sensitive performances of favourites like Combattimento de Tancredi e Clorinda, Lamento de la ninfa, Zefiro torna.
Available Format: 11 CDs
Recent Books on Early, Medieval and Baroque Music
The Pursuit of Musick: Musical Life in Original Writings & Art c.1200-1770
Andrew Parrott | Clink Street Publishing | Paperback
This encyclopedic and generously illustrated anthology of original written sources explores some 600 years of musical activity in Europe, from the first troubadours to the emergence of the pianoforte. Throughout, it presents an extraordinary treasure trove of material documenting myriad ways in which our recent ancestors engaged with music. Arranged in three main parts (Society, Ideas, Performance), its principal chapters are supplemented by shorter ones exploring related and intriguing byways.
Available Format: Book
Refiner's Fire: The Academy of Ancient Music and The Historical Performance Revolution
Richard Bratby | Elliott & Thompson | Hardback
When Christopher Hogwood and Peter Wadland founded the Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, their mission was to create Britain’s first orchestra devoted to recording baroque and classical music on period instruments. They went on to change the musical world. This book tells the story of this trailblazing orchestra and the people who shaped it: fifty years of innovation, exploration and musical adventure, from the pioneering days of the early 1970s to new directions in the twenty-first century.
Available Format: Book
This book offers a new look at Bach that considers problems of inattentiveness to historical considerations in academic writing about Bach's relation to the present, putting forward interpretive reassessments of key individual works and examining problems in modern comprehension of the partly archaic German texts that Bach set to music. It ultimately argues that, while we are free to make use of Bach and his music in whatever ways we find fitting, we ought also to guard against miscasting Bach in our own ideological image and proclaiming the authenticity of that image, and hence its prestige value, in support of our own agendas.
Available Format: Book
Bach's six Cello Suites are among the most cherished of all works in the classical music literature. Shrouded in mystery - they were largely unknown for some two hundred years after their composition - they have acquired a magical aura which continues to fascinate audiences. Now available in paperback, this book by award-winning cellist Steven Isserlis aims to take the reader further into the world of the suites in order to enhance the experience of hearing some of the greatest works ever composed.
Available Format: Book
Bach in the World: Music, Society, and Representation in Bach's Cantatas
Markus Rathey | Oxford University Press | Hardback
Bach's works are often classified as either sacred or secular, but the lines cannot be drawn clearly. This book offers a new exploration of how his music functioned as an agent of communication within rituals, such as the installation of the town council, and as a place where socio-political norms were perpetuated and sometimes even challenged.
Available Format: Book
The Cambridge Companion to Seventeenth-Century Opera
Jacqueline Waeber (editor) | Cambridge University Press | Paperback
This is a much-needed introduction to one of the most defining areas of Western music history - the birth of opera and its developments during the first century of its existence. From opera's Italian foundations to its growth through Europe and the Americas, it charts the changing landscape - on stage and beyond - which shaped the way opera was produced and received.
Available Format: Book
New Sheet-Music Editions
The Notebook for Johann Christian Bach completes the collection of surviving instructional works from within the Bach family, following the highly praised Notebooks for Anna Magdalena and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Bach Revealed: A Player’s Guide to the Solo Cello Suites by J.S. Bach
Volume One (Suites I and II) BWV 1007-1008
Cellist Selma Gokcen and distinguished American harpsichordist and Bach scholar Kenneth Cooper have created in Bach Revealed a study of Bach's Six Cello Suites, offering two-part playing editions for the first time, assisting professional cellists, students and teachers studying these great works. Volume one (Suites I and II) is available now for cello or in an edition for viola.
Available Format: Sheet Music
