Magdalena Kožená / La Cetra / Andrea Marcon MONTEVERDI

In 2000 Magdalena Kožená took over from an ailing Anne Sofie von Otter as Nero in the Vienna Festival production of L’incoronazione di Poppea, not only saving the day but also scoring a great personal success. And yet a deeper connection to Monteverdi and his music can be traced to a far earlier date, as the singer herself recalls: “I was sixteen when I met a lutenist with whom I formed an ensemble for Baroque and Renaissance music. It was a very important experience for me, for not only did I learn the Italian language through these pieces, but I discovered a great deal about the style of the music of this period and about the way in which it is ornamented.” Since then Magdalena Kožená has explored the world of opera in far greater depth. Not only has she sung Mozart, she has also appeared in productions of Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande and Der Rosen- kavalier. “So it’s more of a romantic repertory,” the singer explains. “But this doesn’t mean that I have banished Monteverdi from my life. I return to him again and again and I feel at home with him.” In short, the present recording marks the singer’s return to her original repertory. She is accompanied here by Andrea Marcon, with whom she has already recorded Vivaldi and Handel recitals. For Magdalena Kožená this artistic partnership represents a great gain: “Andrea has a lot of experience in this repertory, and he is also a very spontaneous sort of person: his music-making is always highly charged and full of surprises. Of course we rehearse before a concert or in advance of a recording and agree on the basic interpretation. But we know each other so well that we can then allow ourselves the freedom to improvise. This works only with certain people and only in Baroque music – for me it’s a bit like jazz, where musicians react spontaneously to the spirit of the moment.”

Mahan Esfahani TIME PRESENT AND TIME PAST

If you buy only one record of harpsichord music in your life . . . buy this sensational album. The 30-year-old Iranian-American Mahan Esfahani has been making waves among connoisseurs for several years. Now he emerges as a superstar whose musicianship, imagination, virtuosity, cultural breadth and charisma far transcends the ivory tower in which the harpsichord has traditionally been placed . . . Where necessary, Esfahani is brilliantly accompanied by Concerto Köln. Even their final performance -- of JS Bach¿s Vivaldi-inspired harpsichord concerto in D Minor, with its plangently lyrical slow movement -- has a delicious twist. In the last movement Esfahani inserts a flamboyant cadenza by Brahms, of all people. A truly magical mash-up of times past, present and future.

(Record Review / Richard Morrison, The Times (London) / 08. May 2015)

La Cetra / Marcon CALDARA La concordia de' pianeti

This release marks the world-premiere recording and rediscovery of Antonio Caldara’s La Concordia de’ pianeti, a musical serenade of operatic magnitude composed for the court of Austrian Emperor Karl VI, featuring the creme de la creme of the day’s singers, including the legendary castrato Carestini (Franco Fagioli’s part).
Unearthed and edited by Andrea Marcon, the piece offers a series of virtuosic arias, breath-taking cantilenas and ethereal duets performed by some of the finest singers of today.
Franco Fagioli and Daniel Behle, two of today’s hottest vocalists, lead a distinctive cast of early music “shining stars”, including soprano Veronica Cangemi in a welcome return to Deutsche Grammophon / Archiv. The dynamic La Cetra Barockorchester, one of the most coveted period ensembles active today, lends an idiomatic touch to the program.
This is a major new release under the Archiv imprint featuring a world-class cast of singers. The opera is new to the repertoire and the catalogue altogether and has been recorded both in studio conditions and live performances in Dortmund. (ArkivMusic)

Giuliano Carmignola / Concerto Köln BACH Violin Concertos

Giuliano Carmignola, we’re informed on the back of this CD’s case, ‘seeks to cast fresh light upon these much-loved masterpieces by imbuing them with all the joyfulness of his Venetian sound’. You could say this is as much a warning as it is a USP: if you like your Bach monumental and solemn, Carmingnola’s folky exuberance and springy bow may feel like too much of his personality foisted on the music. But with an open mind, it’s impossible not to enjoy this disc. It achieves exactly what it proudly sets out to, eagerly assisted by the twinkle-toed Concerto Köln.

It includes the two ubiquitous violin concertos (A minor and E major), the double concerto in D minor (with Carmignola well matched by Mayumi Hirasaki, stepping up from within the ensemble), plus two convincing new reconstructions of concertos which, though probably originally written for violin, survive only in harpsichord concerto versions (the G minor BWV 1056 and D minor BWV 1052). At over 70 minutes of music, it goes a fair way towards justifying its premium price.

If it is the fast movements which show off Carmignola’s pizzazz, he also has plenty of sweetly lyrical qualities to bring in the Largos and Adagios – the merest smidge of vibrato at the ends of long notes, everything else achieved by subtle phrase shaping and that nimble bowing arm. (Kimon Daltas, editor of Classical Music magazine)

Anne Sofie von Otter BACH

It was with Bach that Anne Sofie von Otter made her very first solo appearances when she performed the alto arias in the St. John Passion in Stockholm. But by then, as she has explained, the experience gained as a chorister in the Stockholm Bach Choir had already had a fundamental and enduring influence on her approach to the composer. “The conductor of the Bach Choir at that time was very dynamic: he was on fire for this music, and I became on fire for it as well. Then Nikolaus Harnoncourt came up to conduct the Bach motets, and that was also a marvellous experience. Harnoncourt was revolutionizing the performance of Baroque and Viennese Classical works - spring-cleaning tempos and phrasing and using original instruments to shed the old woolly sounds of a Romantic orchestra and make the music vibrant again. It was an exciting time for young people like me who gathered around the gramophone and listened eagerly to his new recordings of Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart. Harnoncourt really was my main influence in Bach."
“In the first ten years of my career I sang a lot of Bach," the singer adds, “but after that I purposely put his music and oratorio aside, because there was so much else to explore, especially opera. So this disc is like coming back full circle." Her concept for the recording and the repertoire she has chosen for it date back to the autumn of 2007. “I borrowed discs of every single Bach cantata, listened to them all, and made notes. It was wonderful to discover new arias, but rather than have a solo vocal recital I decided to break it up with purely instrumental movements. I'd known Lars Ulrik Mortensen for a long time, though we hadn't seen a lot of each other recently, and suddenly this name 'Concerto Copenhagen' appeared on the horizon; I heard them on the radio, and I thought: 'What a wonderful ensemble!' Sure enough, Lars Ulrik was the leader of this great ensemble, so when the idea of the Bach recording came up I thought: 'Why don't I ask Concerto Copenhagen?' I cut down the original list, Lars Ulrik added new ideas, and we had a fantastic time making this recording." As for instrumentation: “Bach often puts the alto voice together with the oboe, so that choice was given, and the sound of the Baroque oboe is one I love."
There is a strong showing in the programme of works from the latter part of the young Bach's years in Weimar, from 1714, when he composed Widerstehe doch der Sünde BWV 54, for alto, strings and continuo, and the more elaborately scored Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen BWV 12, with its plangent Sinfonia. After his subsequent spell at the court of the music-loving prince of Anhalt-Cöthen, where most of his secular orchestral works were written, Bach returned to composing cantatas when he was appointed Kantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1723. At the end of May he began the production of what would, in a relatively short time, turn out to be a staggering quantity of work for the Lutheran liturgical year - some 300 sacred cantatas for Leipzig in five annual cycles, not to mention the great Passions and oratorios. For Christmas that year he wrote the first version of his Magnificat, originally in E flat major and with four insertions specific to Christmas Day; the pastoral siciliano of the lilting alto and tenor duet “Et misericordia", with its two flutes, is heard here in the more familiar D major version, made toward the end of the decade.
The two sacred works that tower over that period, however, are the St Matthew Passion and the B minor Mass, both represented here. From the St Matthew Passion, first performed on Good Friday 1729, Anne Sofie von Otter sings the profoundly moving aria “Erbarme dich", which occurs at the point in the Easter narrative when Peter has fulfilled Christ's prediction that he will deny him three times before the cock crows, and follows the words “And he went out, and wept bitterly." The B minor Mass was initiated in 1733 with the Kyrie and Gloria and expanded with music composed both previously and later before reaching its final form at the end of the 1740s. The great alto aria “Agnus Dei" was written in 1735.
Historical considerations aside, for von Otter the music remains the starting point, and then the way it relates to the text. Bach poses specific problems for any singer: “Bach is tricky as far as breathing is concerned. There are these wonderful lines, and you want not to breathe so as not to break them up. But more and more the text has increased in meaning for me. Bach really does something with the words, and I enjoy using the text, getting it across. It's not by chance that Bach will really squeeze everything he can out of certain vowels or consonants - this symbolism is something I learned about in the Bach Choir. One has to paint the picture in Bach's mind with one's voice. 'Erbarme dich', for instance, has great sadness, in the pleading of the minor sixths, while in 'Widerstehe doch der Sünde' we decided on a particular approach to convey the image of the poison in the text."
“I dived into this project with great excitement. Lars Ulrik really has what I always like in a conductor, particularly in a Baroque conductor: very clear ideas and a lot of energy. He leads from the organ, so he's part of the music-making himself in a very active way. It was a creative collaboration, and the time was spent with great love." (Kenneth Chalmers)

Viktoria Mullova / Giuliano Carmignola VIVALDI Concertos for two violins

Thanks to The Four Seasons, the solo violin concerto is the genre with which Vivaldi is associated above all others. And indeed, at nearly 250 works, this species of composition forms the largest single portion of his output, outnumbering his next favourite, the concerto for orchestra, by more than four to one. In historical terms, too, his development of the formal aspects of the solo concerto was his greatest legacy: his model of three movements in the sequence fast-slow-fast still wields influence today, and the so-called "ritornello" structural principle - in which returning orchestral statements of a strongly defined, harmonically stable main theme offer a framework for more free-ranging and lightly scored passages involving the soloist - informed every composer's approach to concerto-writing until well into the 19th century.
Yet Vivaldi's concerto output is considerably more varied than that. Not only did he compose concertos for a wide range of string, wind and brass instruments, he also wrote them for differing numbers of soloists, from none to 13. His first taste of international fame, indeed, came with a set of twelve concertos which offered alongside its four solo concertos equal numbers of concertos for four and two violins. Published in Amsterdam in 1711 under the title L'estro armonico, it achieved great popularity in northern Europe in those early days of the instrumental concerto, making its mark on German composers in particular. The flautist and theorist Johann Joachim Quantz later recalled that "as musical pieces of a kind that was then entirely new, they made no small impression on me. I was eager to accumulate a good number of them, and Vivaldi's splendid ritornelli served as good models for me in later days". Vivaldi also acquired a keen following at the Dresden court, who sent their best violinist Johann Georg Pisendel to Venice to study with him; and in Weimar the young J.S. Bach transcribed for solo keyboard six pieces from the 1711 set, including two of the "double concertos".
Only two further concertos for two violins by Vivaldi were published in his lifetime (one as part of his op. 9 La cetra set in 1727, another printed independently in Amsterdam), but there are a further 24 surviving, most of them in the huge manuscript collection of Vivaldi's works now held in the National Library in Turin. These concertos are rarely performed today, either in concert or on record, but, like much of Vivaldi's unpublished output, contain music that is not only undeserving of its neglect, but offer facets of his creative personality that are not always evident in the works he chose to see into print.
The concertos presented on this disc by Viktoria Mullova and Giuliano Carmignola demonstrate for the most part Vivaldi's usual method of writing for two soloists on similar instruments: rapid interchanges of phrases and melodic fragments which echo, overlap and swap over with each other, alternating with passages of parallel motion, almost invariably euphonious (only the slow movement of RV 523 uses the texture to create expressive dissonances). They thus differ from the Vivaldi-inspired but more polyphonic manner of Bach's well-known Concerto for Two Violins, and show the influence of the dominant texture of the chamber music of the time, the trio sonata, in which two matched instruments would duet over a continuo accompaniment consisting of a bass-line instrument and a chord-playing lute, harpsichord or organ. This similarity appears even more obvious in the slow middle movements of RV 509, 516, 523 and 524, which feature "continuo" instead of orchestral accompaniment, and becomes explicit when it is seen that RV 516 shares both its second movement (with slight differences) and much of the material of its first and third with one of Vivaldi's unpublished trio sonatas (RV 71).
Whether these dialogues be virtuosic (as in the outer movements of RV 511 and 514) or melodious (as in the relaxed first movement of RV 509 or the expressive second movement of RV 514), they almost always give meticulously equal treatment to the two soloists, with neither assuming a dominant role in terms of range, technical difficulty or quantity of material. The effect is of a single character in the solo role, albeit one performing musical feats more complex than those achievable by a single player. In this regard it is easy to imagine them providing performance material for the youthful musicians of the Ospedale della Pietà, the Venetian orphanage of whose renowned all-female orchestra Vivaldi had charge as teacher and director for much of his career. Their concerts drew visitors in numbers to the Ospedale's chapel on the Riva degli Schiavoni - to admire the music of course, but also sometimes to search for wives; opportunities to show off the abilities of talented players in solo roles in as democratic a manner as possible must have been welcome. This primarily local use is suggested by the fact that while all of the concertos recorded here can be found in the Turin manuscript, thought to represent Vivaldi's own personal stock of scores, only RV 523 survives in a second contemporary copy.
Occasionally, however, there are breakaways from this two-as-one approach, when one violin will play a snatch of melody while the other accompanies. Such moments are fleeting, but can be all the more striking for that, as in the final movements of RV 524 and, most memorably, RV 516, where a glorious tune emerges from the arrow-like orchestral scales of the ritornelli. Having already pictured a pair of Ospedale inmates sharing the more equal dialogues elsewhere, is it going too far for us to speculate that Vivaldi himself, known as a virtuosic if sometimes unpolished violinist, might have taken one or other of these roles, either advertising his presence as melodic lead or gently supporting a favoured pupil with rock-solid arpeggios?  (Lindsay Kemp)

Pablo Heras-Casado / Concerto Köln EL MAESTRO FARINELLI

 Quickly becoming known as one of the most exciting conductors of his generation, Pablo Heras-Casado is set to make his album debut, El Maestro Farinelli, on the recently re-launched label, Archiv Produktion for Deutsche Grammophon. Available May 27, 2014, this new album marks Heras-Casado’s return to his core repertoire and musical heritage, performing instrumental and vocal music associated with Farinelli, the legendary 18th-century castrato singer who served as impresario and court musician to the kings of Spain.

With El Maestro Farinelli, Archiv Produktion offered Heras-Casado the opportunity to choose what music to conduct from the Farinelli period, focusing on neglected operas where many orchestral scores had been destroyed in a palace fire in the 19-century and ultimately those that survived had to be transcribed by hand. This album features a rare world premiere of eight recordings with some arias sung by noted countertenor Bejun Mehta as well as including the works of Baroque composers like Hasse, Porpora and Jomelli, which Farinelli presented during his time as concert master in Madrid and Aranjuez.

Enjoying a diverse conducting career thus far, Pablo Heras-Casado has encompassed the great symphonic and operatic repertoire, historically-informed performance, cutting-edge contemporary scores, and has already developed a special rapport with a number of soloists, orchestras and opera houses.

Ensemble Plus Ultra FROM SPAIN TO ETERNITY The Sacred Polyphony of El Greco's Toledo

Several of the composers on this Archiv release - Alonso Lobo, Cristóbal de Morales, perhaps Francisco Guerrero - will be familiar to anyone who has sung in a college glee club. Their short motets, with orderly polyphony that seems to hang in a perfect balance, seem to communicate timeless religious essences. Less common are recordings that situate the music in the Spanish cities where it was composed, and that's not what is here. Although the graphics promise "sacred polyphony of El Greco's Toledo," only the career of the comparatively lesser-known Alonso de Tejeda really overlapped with that of Greek-Spanish master; the rest of the composers worked there earlier or, in the case of Francisco Guerrero, hardly at all (he served there as Morales' apprentice). And even if assigning correspondences between the music and art of a given place and time is a tricky business, the art of El Greco, with its Mannerist distortions of reality, seems almost diametrically opposed to the peaceful world of these composers; his musical cousin is perhaps Italian Carlo Gesualdo. So listeners are left with the cleanly sung readings of the Ensemble Plus Ultra, a bit small at eight singers but precise in that difficult configuration. The sounds coming out of your speakers will be appealing, but the group has plenty of competition on this ground. (James Manheim)

Claudio Abbado / Orchestra Mozart PERGOLESI Dixit Dominus

These discs complete Claudio Abbado’s three-part tribute to Pergolesi, born 200 years ago.They are most revealing, showing Pergolesi’s sureness of touch as a craftsman, melding together the old-style contrapuntal skill learnt as a student at a Conservatoire in Naples with the elegant tunefulness of contemporary Neapolitan opera. The resulting blend is a remarkably early foretaste of the Galant style. Abbado’s choice of programme emphasises Pergolesi’s versatility and inventive genius, and at such an early age. All this music dates from 1731/36 – he died aged only 26. Not otherwise available on disc is the Missa S Emidio, written after the earthquakes which hit Naples in 1731/2. It’s most attractive and, in the ‘Qui tollis’, highly charged; slow, searing harmonies from the chorus and anguished violin appoggiaturas, lead to a positively perky soloist framing the hushed pleading ‘hear our prayer’. Veronica Cangemi has a bright edge to her tone, a quality rather lacking in the choir, due in part to the spaciousness of the Bolgna church in which they’re recorded, rather distantly. Sara Mingardo is superb, her long first note of ‘Domine Deus’ an object lesson in the subtle manipulation of vocal colour. The high point is Laudate Pueri, a thrilling setting of the Psalm text. Added horns and trumpets add a punchiness to the sound which in turn, inspires the choir. Rachel Harnisch is an exuberant soprano soloist, with an effortless top D. It’s striking that, despite the constantly-changing nuances of the text, Pergolesi’s setting retains a strong sense of structural integrity. and sometimes rather obscured by, lively counterpoint. For the second movement, the choir’s remoteness is beautifully judged, a gentle assurance of the Lord, ‘gracious and full of compassion’ recurring in Julia Kleiter’s radiant soprano solo. Dixit Dominus stretches the forces with double choir and contrasting wind and string groupings in the orchestra. In the secular cantata, Chi non ode…, Pergolesi is at his most Galant as lyrical melody unfolds above reassuringly predictable harmony. Harnisch is superb here, floating into the top register with glorious ease. After a recitative Largo stentato (laboured) as the rejected lover bewails ‘his’ fate, death is welcomed with a sparkling final presto ending with a no-less-sparkling top E flat. A fine tribute to an extraordinary genius. (George Pratt, BBC Music Magazine)

Claudio Abbado / Orchestra Mozart PERGOLESI Stabat Mater - Violin Concerto - Salve Regina in C minor

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi had a tragically short career, living just 26 years, and producing most of his mature works over a period of about five years. This album includes three of the composer's most representative pieces. The most familiar is the 40-minute Stabat mater for soprano, alto, and orchestra, which was the most frequently published composition of the 18th century. This version, featuring soprano Rachel Harnisch and contralto Sara Mingardo, makes a splendid introduction to the work and should be of interest to anyone who loves this poignant music. Both soloists have expressive voices of exceptional purity and intensity, beautifully suited to this alternately serene and wrenching score. Mingardo is particularly striking in the aria, "Fac, ut portem Christi mortem," in which she descends into a baritonal range with startlingly solid, oaken timbre. The cheery, playful tone of the Violin Concerto reveals the composer's versatility and Giuliano Carmignola nails its technical demands with lovely tone and disarming grace. The album includes one of Pergolesi's four settings of Salve regina, with soprano Julia Kleiter. It's a largely somber work, similar in emotional tone to the Stabat mater. In spite of its name, the Bologna-based Orchestra Mozart plays music of all eras, and under Claudio Abbado's leadership it brings just the right fleet agility to this music, which is balanced between the Baroque and Classical eras. The sound of the live performances is clean and well balanced, with a warm ambience. (Stephen Eddins)

Claudio Abbado / Orchestra Mozart PERGOLESI Missa S. Emidio

One could weep to think what great works Giovanni Battista Pergolesi might have composed had he not died from tuberculosis aged just 26. That’s the cup-half-empty view, anyway. The cup-half-full view is that, despite his early death, this 18th century Italian left us a collection of musical masterpieces whose beauty, compositional skill and often-spine-tingling passion discount his youth. 2010 marks the 300th anniversary of Pergolesi’s birth, and Claudio Abbado is marking it with his Pergolesi Project: a year-long, three-album undertaking of Pergolesi’s works, conducting the Orchestra Mozart. The first disc in the series featured the Stabat Mater, the Violin Concerto and the Salve Regina in C minor, and was superb. His second disc, this time all sacred works, is just as good.

In terms of overall musical interpretation, this CD neatly dovetails into the first in terms of overall sound: a cleanly executed period style, rendered luxuriously beautiful thanks to the warmth and easy fluidity of the playing. However, there’s a marked difference in the musical forces. Whilst the previous recording required only solo singers, this second requires a choir, thanks to the inclusion of two large choral works, the Missa S. Emilio and the Laudate pueri Dominum. The Swiss Radio Choir’s performance is a delight: bright yet substantial tone, clean-as-a-whistle delivery of the tricky passagework, and highly expressive reading of the musical lines and the texts. The soloists are also going for gold; the Salve Regina is sung with heartfelt yearning here by Sara Mingardo in its later version F minor for alto. Then, altogether different is the dramatic and little-heard aria, “Manca la guida al piè” from the religious opera that the 21-year-old Pergolesi wrote as a graduation piece. Veronica Cangemi’s honeyed, pure-toned performance plays on every emotional nuance, with wonderfully controlled ornamentation.

All in all, another Pergolesi disc from Abbado that feels like musical perfection. Just go listen, and enjoy. (Charlotte Gardner 2010)

J.S. BACH Weihnachts-Oratorium

Although German composer Johann Sebastian Bach entitled his work Weihnachtsoratorium (Christmas Oratorio), it is in fact closer to a cantata cycle than an oratorio. Composed and compiled for the Christmas season as celebrated in Leipzig in 1734 and early 1735, the six parts of the Christmas Oratorio were intended to be performed on the six major feast days over that 13-day period from December 25 through January 6: the "First Day of Christmas," the "Second Day of Christmas," the "Third Day of Christmas," the "Feast of the Circumcision," the "First Sunday of the New Year," and the "Feast of the Epiphany." Furthermore, each part of the work is designed to function as an independent musical unit; each part (except the second, which starts with a "Pastoral Symphony") begins and ends with choruses in the tonic key, and each part tells a separate part of the Christmas story. However, Bach also clearly intended the music to be heard as a unified work: not only does the oratorio tell a single story based on Biblical texts, but it is musically organized around the key of D major. The musical content of the oratorio is, for the most part, drawn from three secular cantatas: Herkules auf dem Scheidewege, BWV 213; Tonet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten!, BWV 214; and Preisse dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215. In addition, portions of the music were drawn from the lost St. Mark Passion, and the sixth part of the oratorio was later given an independent existence as a separate cantata (BWV 248a). So skillful is Bach's adaptation that listeners at the time would have been unlikely to be disturbed by Bach's self-plagiarism (which was a common procedure for him anyhow). In the manner of Bach's Passions, the text of the Christmas Oratorio is drawn from the Gospel interspersed with meditations on the meaning of the Gospel texts. While scholars conjecture that these meditations were written by Bach's usual collaborator, Christian Friedrich Henrici (known as Picander), some also suspect that Bach might have written or rewritten many of them himself because Picander did not include the text of the oratorio among his collected works. A joyfully celebratory work, the Christmas Oratorio is one of the peaks in Bach's compositional oeuvre. The story is related in recitative by an Evangelist, or narrator, thus placing the work within the long-established tradition of religious drama. However, unlike earlier oratorios and unlike Bach's own settings of the Passion story, there is virtually no dramatic dialogue, The only named characters are the Angel in Part Two and Herod in Part Six. Scored for the usual four-part vocal forces, the oratorio is given is own distinctive character through the varied orchestration featured in each section. Thus, Part One, largely a joyous celebration of Christ's birth, is adorned by brilliantly festive trumpets and timpani. The following cantata stands in complete contrast, its gentle pastoral mood reflected in scoring that includes pairs of oboes d'amore and their more rustic cousin, the oboe da caccia. Bach then gives symmetry to the first three cantatas by bringing the trumpets and timpani back for Part Three, which opens with an exultant chorus before proceeding to the arrival of the shepherds at the manger. Part Four introduces a pair of horns into the orchestra; their resplendent tones dominate an opening chorus celebrating the glory of God. Part Five, for the lesser feast of the Sunday after New Year, calls for smaller orchestral forces — just a pair of oboes supporting the usual strings and continuo, perhaps as a counterpart to the second cantata. Finally the full majesty of trumpets and drums returns in Part 6, the topic of which is God's power over evil, here personified by Herod and his dealings with the three Magi. (James Leonard )

Paul McCreesh / Gabrieli Consort & Players A VENETIAN CHRISTMAS music by G. GABRIELI & DE RORE

Here's another of Paul McCreesh's "as it might have been" reconstructions, this time of the First Mass of Christmas in Venice's St. Mark's church "around 1600". McCreesh's customary focus on bringing to life the pomp and ceremony of a huge celebratory occasion offers huge rewards for the listener as musicology, the finest performing forces, and first-rate sound engineering combine to deliver a bold and beautiful "you are there" experience. The whole thing centers around Cipriano de Rore's seven-part mass Praeter rerum seriem, a parody on a six-part motet by Josquin. It's a gorgeous setting, and McCreesh's vocal ensemble really digs into the emotional and spiritual heart of this music. The Sanctus and Agnus Dei are particularly affecting, but the entire mass has a rich textural voluptuousness and structural grandeur that certainly would be enough to make any music lover glad to attend church the day that mass was sung! The rest of the program features music by Giovanni Gabrieli, including some terrific instrumental pieces that literally fill the room with the richly resonant sound of cornetts, sackbuts, and organ, played with impressive clarity and virtuoso style by members of the Gabrieli Players.
As for the singers, at several points I felt that I could be listening to a Tallis Scholars recording--the tone quality and particularities of expression and ensemble are very similar. Not surprisingly, when I looked at the list of performers several Tallis Scholars names appeared--and I mention this only to inform those listeners who know and love that fine early music ensemble that they certainly will enjoy what they hear on this recording. The choral sound is largely affected by the absence of sopranos and the presence of male altos as the highest voice part, which imbues their music with a darker, mellower, reedier quality than we're used to in most mixed choir configurations. Although purists will be disappointed that the recording wasn't actually made in St. Mark's, the acoustics of England's Brinkburn Priory in Northumberland prove an amazingly suitable substitute. The concluding Quem vidistis pastores by Gabrieli (in an arrangement by H. Keyte for voices and instruments) is stunning. I haven't always been impressed with McCreesh's projects--but don't miss this one. (David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com)

Jérôme Pernoo / Les Musiciens du Louvre / Marc Minkowski OFFENBACH Romantique

Familiarity with the famous galop from Orphée aux enfers and the finale of La Vie parisienne has tended to obscure Offenbach's early career. Failing to see the wood for the trees, we have all too often forgotten that before creating the French opéra bouffe, Offenbach was one of the greatest cellists of his day, and that far from restricting himself to making his Parisian audiences laugh, he was also an impassioned Romantic gifted with an astonishing melodic vein. His grand opera Die Rheinnixen, the delicate Fantasio, Les Contes d'Hoffmann of course, as well as the works included in the present release should be enough to convince listeners of this claim's validity.

Thanks to his almost fiendish virtuosity, Offenbach was known to his contemporaries as the "Liszt of the cello". Indeed, he even appeared on the same concert platform as Liszt, as well as with Anton Rubinstein and Friedrich von Flotow, both in Paris and in his native Germany. It was Offenbach, too, who introduced Beethoven's cello sonatas to France. But above and beyond the pleasure that he took in performing the music of others, his true passion was composition, and from a very early age he produced an impressive corpus of works for his favourite instrument, writing not only many shorter pieces but also countless studies and fantasias and a number of larger orchestral works, chief among which are a Danse bohémienne, a Grande Scène espagnole and, above all, the tremendous Concerto militaire, here recorded complete for the first time.

Offenbach himself gave the first performance of the concerto's opening movement at the Salle Moreau-Sainti in Paris on 24 April 1847 - it is unclear why the remaining movements were not performed at that time. It is likely that Offenbach played the work on a number of later occasions, although the only fully documented performance took place in Cologne on 24 October 1848. The work then fell into obscurity and it was not until a century later that the composer's grandson, Jacques Brindejont-Offenbach, unearthed it and entrusted the autograph score of the opening movement, together with a number of surviving piano sketches, to the cellist Jean-Max Clément. Clément prepared a new edition of the score based on these various sources, reserving for himself the right to perform the piece in the concert hall. He did what he could to reconstruct the second and third movements, which he orchestrated on the basis of the original piano sketches, while taking certain liberties with the material. In particular, he cut a number of passages in the opening movement that he judged to be too difficult.

In fact, both Clément and Jacques Brindejont-Offenbach were unaware that autograph copies of the Andante and final movement were lodged in the family archives, in both cases completed and orchestrated by Offenbach himself. Admittedly, neither manuscript was meaningfully headed and the introductions to both movements had been substantially developed and changed when compared to the piano sketches, so that it is difficult to detect any connection between the different pieces in the jigsaw without a detailed study of the sources.

The present recording begins and ends with two works - the rhapsodic overture to Orphée aux enfers (1874) and the "Snowflake Ballet" from Le Voyage dans la lune (1875) - that both bear witness to one of the most successful periods in Offenbach's life. By now he had become director of the Théâtre de la Gaîté, one of the most beautiful halls in Paris, and he finally had at his disposal a full-size orchestra with a proper pit and a genuine corps de ballet. He now revised two of his earliest successes - Orphée aux enfers and Geneviève de Brabant - to take account of these magnificent new surroundings and to offer his astonished audiences an entirely new type of opera, the opéra-bouffe féerie, a fairytale light opera in which nothing was too sensational - a work designed to fill his audiences with a sense of genuine wonderment. Pictorial poetry and Bacchian euphoria are combined in these snowflakes, which suffice to prove that the composer had no need of a pseudo-cancan, of a Gaîté parisienne or of assiduous arrangers to create orchestral magic. May the present recording contribute to the revival of an authentic Offenbach. (Jean-Christophe Keck)