C.P.E. Bach eclipsed his legendary father s fame to become the mid-18th century s leading German composer. This wide-ranging collection of symphonies, concertos and vocal works by the great forerunner of Haydn and Mozart is performed by authoritative interpreters including Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert. The evident delight of the musicians in this music makes for rewarding listening … Impressive and fascinating.

Marek Janowski, the Dresdner Philharmonie and the MDR Leipzig Radio Choir present Haydn’s oratorio Die Schöpfung (1798), together with soprano Christiane Karg, tenor Benjamin Bruns and bass Tareq Nazmi. During his London sojourns, the aging Haydn was astounded by the audience engagement at performances of Handel’s oratorios, and he aimed to realize something similar in his own work. From the legendary breakthrough of light in the orchestral introduction all the way to the hymn to the almighty creator in the finale, Haydn offers a sweeping, colourful tableau of God’s creation of the world. As such, the work offers the apotheosis of the eighteenth-century oratorio while also serving as an inspiring example to nineteenth-century Romantic composers. Janowski and his forces realize both the Classical transparency and Romantic drive of this epoch-making piece.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, as part of his regular duties as kapellmeister in Hamburg, composed 19 passion settings, alternating the four Gospel texts so that a new setting of a given text appeared once every four years, as his predecessor Georg Philipp Telemann had done. Until the discovery of the Berlin Sing-Akademie collection in Kiev in 1999, all that remained of this considerable body of work were bits and fragments of individual pieces, most of them extant because they were used in other contexts.

Radical, daring and extremely refined: that’s how Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach saw his new path for the Oratorio, after his father’s Passions had marked the climax of the baroque era. Encouraged by his godfather Telemann and liberated from the yoke of the capricious Frederick of Prussia, he found himself in Hamburg with an audience hungry for new music. And he brought them his oratorios, no longer in churches but in concert halls, where he demanded the listener’s undivided attention for sudden changes of mood and colour.

Beethoven’s monumental contribution to Western classical music is celebrated here in this definitive collection marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Surveying the totality of his career and achievement, the Complete Edition spans orchestral, concerto, keyboard, chamber, music for the stage, choral and vocal works, encompassing his most familiar and iconic masterpieces, alongside rarities and recently reconstructed fragments and sketches in world premiere recordings. The roster of artists and ensembles includes some of Beethoven’s greatest contemporary exponents, in performances that have won critical acclaim worldwide.

Beethoven’s monumental contribution to Western classical music is celebrated here in this definitive collection marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Surveying the totality of his career and achievement, the Complete Edition spans orchestral, concerto, keyboard, chamber, music for the stage, choral and vocal works, encompassing his most familiar and iconic masterpieces, alongside rarities and recently reconstructed fragments and sketches in world premiere recordings. The roster of artists and ensembles includes some of Beethoven’s greatest contemporary exponents, in performances that have won critical acclaim worldwide.

After his years in London and the discovery of Handel’s Messiah, which had profoundly moved him, Joseph Haydn embarked on writing a large-scale religious work. For this very devout composer, this veritable act of faith would torment him for two years and from it would come an oratorio of penetrating intensity. After enjoying immediate success in Vienna, Die Schöpfung (The Creation) conquered the whole of Europe in less than a year.

This 1971 film version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Magic Flute is based on a production at Hamburg State Opera staged by the multi-talented stage, television and film author, director and actor Sir Peter Ustinov, with decor and costumes by Jens-Denis Malclès. The cast brought together by Rolf Liebermann for this film version of the Magic Flute consists of stars with established international careers but also of singers who were just on the point of breaking through to international fame at the time.

Several generations of Bachs have been gathered by Richard Marlow and the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge for their programme of motets. All of them have been recorded at various times in the past but many only infrequently, and one or two, perhaps, now make their first appearance on CD. There is no dull music here and two of the pieces, at least, are of outstanding expressive beauty. The earlier of these is Johann Bach’s profoundly affecting Unser Leben ist ein Schatten (“Our life is but a shadow”). This member of the clan survived both the Black Death and the savage bombardment of Erfurt during the Thirty Years War.

Beethoven’s monumental contribution to Western classical music is celebrated here in this definitive collection marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Surveying the totality of his career and achievement, the Complete Edition spans orchestral, concerto, keyboard, chamber, music for the stage, choral and vocal works, encompassing his most familiar and iconic masterpieces, alongside rarities and recently reconstructed fragments and sketches in world premiere recordings. The roster of artists and ensembles includes some of Beethoven’s greatest contemporary exponents, in performances that have won critical acclaim worldwide.

It was a sensational find in many respects when Gunar Letzbor discovered the Passion by the composer and Augustinian canon Franz Joseph Aumann in the archives of St Florian's Abbey (near Linz, Austria) and other monasteries.

When Nature took on new meaning. The transition from Winckelmann to Rousseau marked one of the biggest upheavals of thought in the Enlightenment - and it is perfectly illustrated in these four Seasons with their decidedly Romantic 'descriptivism'! In this music, even though lambs frisk, fish teem and thunder booms, it is the question of Man within Nature that is the central issue. By going back to the very first version of The Seasons (with the orchestral introductions played in their entirety), René Jacobs enables us to relive that day in April 1801 that saw the triumph of old 'Papa' Haydn.

Michael Spyres is a singer who challenges and reshapes perceptions – as his albums BariTenor and Contra-Tenor have shown. Now, preparing for his debut at the Bayreuth Festival in Summer 2024, he searches In the Shadows to reveal more about Wagner and the origins of his music dramas. “Wagner evokes a varying spectrum of emotions – awe, ecstasy, even trepidation,” explains Spyres. “This album endeavours to illuminate the composers who languish in the shadows, who formed the foundation of Wagner’s compositions and sculpted the framework of vocal writing for the Wagnerian tenor.” In the Shadows culminates with three arias by Wagner – from Lohengrin and the lesser-known Die Feen and Rienzi. Preceding them are early-19th-century arias by composers of the French, German and Italian schools: Méhul, Beethoven, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Weber, Auber, Spontini, Bellini and Marschner. Spyres’s distinguished companions in his exploration are the players of Les Talens Lyriques and their conductor Christophe Rousset.

45 years after his debut Philips recording of Beethoven’s 9th, Seiji Ozawa returns to this epic masterpiece. The Mito Chamber Orchestra features many international star players including Radek Baborák (horn), Ricardo Morales (clarinet) and Philippe Tondre (oboe). The German baritone Markus Eiche leads a quartet of leading Japanese soloists and the Tokyo Opera Singers in a fascinating performance on a chamber orchestra scale.