The present set is the debut of Ton Koopman on the Challenge Classics label and the re-start of the series of complete cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Volume 13 in this CD presentation contains the third series of chorale cantatas from the second annual cycle Bach composed for Leipzig. Music criticism in the modern sense did not exist in the eighteenth century, so we do not really know anything about how the public responded to Bach's music. One of the few comments we have is in a newspaper report of Bach's first appearance in the capacity of Cantor of St Thomas's, presenting a cantata on 30 May 1723,but we learn only that it was received with approbation, even applause.

This is a St Matthew Passion which should please many readers. Bruggen’s interpretation is eloquent, thoughtful in matters of style and expressive content, and it benefits from a textural clarity which few competitors can rival. All aspects of Bach’s miraculous score are taken into account.

Rodelinda, Regina de' Longobardi was the 7th opera Handel wrote for the Royal Academy of Music founded in 1719. It was premiered at the King's Theater in the Haymarket on February 13, 1725, with great success, as chroniclers report. There were 14 performances in the first season and 8 in each of the revivals in the following season and in 1731, for which Handel revised the work. Thus, it is not surprising that, after nearly 190 years of oblivion, it should have been Rodelinda, now in a German language version and called Rodelinde, which marked the beginning of the 20th century revival of Handel's operas on June 26, 1920, during the Gottingen Handel Festival.

It is good to welcome this set of the extravagantly brooding orchestral music of the Dutch composer Alphons Diepenbrock.

Heart is a studio album by French singer Amanda Lear, first released in 2001 by Le Marais Prod. The album was recorded in 2001 at Barouf Studio and Studio Wolf with French producers FX Costello and Laurent Wolf, and was Lear's first album ever to be recorded entirely in France. It was also her first studio release of new material in six years, since 1995's Alter Ego. In an interview, the singer explained that the long gap resulted from her lack of enthusiasm after numerous budget compilations started to appear on the market without her consent. She also revealed that on this album she was given more artistic freedom than before, and decided to include more melodic and sentimental songs. Lear stated that Heart was the album "she has always wanted to make" and that originally, she planned to called it Phoenix.

Dabringhaus & Grimm has already issued an excellent Bruch disc that couples the Second Symphony with the Third Violin Concerto and this collection of pieces is indeed very welcome. The Swedish Dances had not been hitherto recorded since Kurt Masur's set on Philips and Hanson compares well with that excellent version. There is brilliant colour and energy in the music that is well portrayed and brought out by this orchestra.

In the 1990s, the Finnish soprano Karita Mattila established herself as one of the world's leading operatic sopranos. Coming to early attention as a prize-winning singer adept at the more lyric roles in the repertory, she developed the qualities of a dramatic soprano as well, with an especially warm and grand voice. She is a tall, blond, and striking woman with excellent stage presence and acting skills.

After more than forty years this remains the best recording of "Tannhäuser" for a number of reasons. Good recordings have never been thick on the ground and while this one is by no means perfect, it pretty much kicks everything else into touch by virtue of the extraordinary vibrancy and erotic ambiance of Solti's direction - I believe this to be his finest achievement in terms of pure conducting.

First released in the spring of 2002, Lamento was awarded Quebec’s Opus Prize for Record of the Year in the Baroque Music category. Hear the acclaimed countertenor Daniel Taylor and his ensemble Theatre of Early Music in this telling combination of sacred German vocal solos and fine instrumental works.

There are many, many good things about Andrew Parrott and the Taverner Consort and Players' Bach performances – their luminous colors, complete clarity, utter lucidity, and structural integrity – that there is an uneasy feeling in criticizing them for their occasional flaws. When Parrott's Bach is good, it is as great as any that has been recorded in the past 20 years. It's as great as Leonhardt's, Koopman's, or Herreweghe's, and far better than Gardiner's, Harnoncourt's, or Rilling's. And Parrott's Bach is so great in the great pieces – so great in the overwhelming dramatic intensity of the close of his Saint John Passion and so great in the mystery, agony, and ecstasy of the central choral triptych in his Mass in B minor – that his performances seem very, very great indeed.

Strauss singing doesn't come much better than this. No doubt the composer himself, with his love of the soprano voice, would have been enthralled by Isokoski's glorious singing. He might also have approved of Janowski's straightforward, quite brisk conducting as he was never one to sentimentalise his own music. With a combination of free, unfettered tone, not a hint of strain in high-lying passages, a fine legato and an amazingly long breath, Isokoski fulfils every demand of her chosen songs. To those attributes she adds just a hint of quick vibrato, which she uses unerringly to expressive purpose throughout.

»Es wird eine Königin zum Tode verurteilt, die der Scharfrichter enthauptet, nach abgeschlagenem Haupte kommt eine kleine Prinzessin hervor, welche anfangs wider den Scharfrichter sich erzürnet, bald darauf aber in denselbigen sich verliebet und eine italienische Arie singt.« Was sich hier wie ein Ausschnitt aus einem der surrealen Schauspiele Eugène Ionescos anhört, ist 1776 in Salzburg entstanden und von einem Pater verfasst worden. Im Universitätstheater wurden nach alter Tradition im Fasching und zu Ende des Schuljahres von Schülern und Studenten lateinische Tragödien, die mit komischen Einlagestücken versehen waren, zum Besten gegeben.

Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine. The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Thanks to the Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (New Schubert Edition), Tübingen, which uses primary sources, the performers have been able to benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team. For the first time, the listener and interested reader can follow Schubert’s textual alterations and can appreciate the importance the written word had for the composer. The project’s artistic advisor is the pianist Ulrich Eisenlohr, who has chosen German-speaking singers who represent the élite of today’s young German Lieder singers.