The Wiener Philharmoniker, conducted by James Levine, presents a delightful selection of highlights from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte, K620” in this exquisite recording. The album encapsulates the essence of Mozart’s final opera, offering listeners a curated experience of its most memorable moments.

With the Thirty Years’ War raging around them, Lutherans considered death to be the true fulfillment of their earthly life. Prince Heinrich von Reuss organised all the details of his funeral in advance, from the music that would be sung - to be composed and then performed by Heinrich Schütz during the funeral ceremony - to the coffin itself.

Claudio Abbado was undeniably the supreme Mahler conductor of our time. With his Lucerne Festival Orchestra he has set new standards in the field of classical music, especially in the interpretation of works by Gustav Mahler. The core of the orchestra is provided by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, itself an élite body of players. Soloists like violinist Kolja Blacher, clarinettist Sabine Meyer, oboist Albrecht Mayer, violist Wolfram Christ, cellist Natalia Gutman, the Hagen Quartet and members of the Alban Berg Quartet to name just a few, make the Lucerne Festival Orchestra a star-studded ensemble.

Claudio Abbado was undeniably the supreme Mahler conductor of our time. With his Lucerne Festival Orchestra he has set new standards in the field of classical music, especially in the interpretation of works by Gustav Mahler. The core of the orchestra is provided by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, itself an élite body of players. Soloists like violinist Kolja Blacher, clarinettist Sabine Meyer, oboist Albrecht Mayer, violist Wolfram Christ, cellist Natalia Gutman, the Hagen Quartet and members of the Alban Berg Quartet to name just a few, make the Lucerne Festival Orchestra a star-studded ensemble.

This is the third CD in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas from Georg Philipp Telemann’s collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg in 1726 – the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to be published. The cantatas are designated for voice, an obbligato instrument – recorder (as on this disc), violin, transverse flute or oboe – and basso continuo, and take the form of two da capo arias with an intervening recitative. Although intended for worship, both public and private, Telemann’s cantatas are a masterly blend of tunefulness with skilled counterpoint and vocal and instrumental virtuosity.

From fairy tale to great opera: With Die Zauberflöte Mozart made the step from simple Singspiel to a full-blown German opera, thus laying the foundations for an independent opera culture in the German language. The 1973 Electrola recording combines a truly legendary vocal ensemble, featuring first and foremost Edda Moser, whom many people still regard as the best Queen of the Night of all time, Walter Berry as a Papageno oozing Viennese charm, Anneliese Rothenberger as the enchanting Pamina and Peter Schreier as her loving Tamino.

This latest release from the multi-award-winning partnership of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake features a literary and musical form which inspired the greatest voices of German Romanticism. The foremost poets and composers of the age saw the ballad as a direct link to the folk-minstrels of the past. Frequently ghoulish and sensational in character, ballads satisfied the popular taste for the Gothic.

Last year’s Magdeburg Festival Days were marked by an extraordinary event: the revival of Telemann’s last known extant passion composition, the St. Luke Passion of 1748, by the Rheinische Kantorei and the Kleines Konzert under Hermann Max. In the mid-nineteenth century the autograph made its way to Berlin, where it today is preserved as the only source for this composition. The historical edition was prepared especially for the modern repeat performance in Magdeburg. Every four years Telemann returned to the same passion narrative, always employing the language of music to occupy himself in new ways with the gospel message of each of the four evangelists.

Elizabeth Watts is regarded as 'one of the finest British sopranos to have emerged in the last decade. Her reputation is steadily growing as she has performed s a recitalist, opera singer, and concert artist, she has already appeared at many of the world's leading musical centres and festivals, including the Royal Opera House, London, Wigmore Hall, Welsh National Opera, the BBC Proms, Santa Fe Opera, Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, and has engagements throughout Europe from Amsterdam to Zurich.

As all four of the discs in this set have been reviewed in these pages before, this notice accordingly provides only a brief summary. J. F. Weber discussed the Read more in Fanfare 33:2, the Weihnachtshistorie and Auferstehungshistorie (the Nativity and Resurrection narratives) in 33:5, and the Matthäus-Passion in 35:1, while Ronald E. Grames and I both covered Die sieben Worte and the Johannes-Passion in 34:2. In all instances the reviews were enthusiastic and offered unqualified endorsements of these performances as the recordings of choice for these works; now having the opportunity to hear them all, I heartily re-affirm that collective judgment.

Most often performed in an arrangement for string quartet, this recording of Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross is a unique proposition – offering Haydn’s original instrumental meditations alongside their choral counterparts.

Haydn’s songs, German and English, have never quite had the standing they deserve: two of the English canzonettas and one of the German songs here are not even in the current catalogue. Most often they are sung by sopranos, but there is no reason why a tenor shouldn’t be used; Haydn, a tenor, is known to have sung them himself. The performances here, by all three singers and Roger Vignoles’ alert and thoughtful accompanying perhaps plays a key role take them seriously and show them as the substantial music they are.

This album of Handel vocal selections should delight the listener with its clear, bell-like soprano and its period orchestra, its Handelian melismas and reverential songs to God. Soprano Dorothea Craxton sings with such a beautiful, creamy sound and smooth technique that one does not hear her breaths. However, this album disappoints for the sole reason that the recording quality is off-balance, often relegating Craxton to sound like a member of the ensemble as opposed to soloist (or being overpowered by one of the ensemble).

Telemann wrote funeral compositions for many persons. His setting of the Funeral Music for Emperor Charles VII – transmitted solely in the form of a sketch in the composer’s own hand with numerous corrections and writing simplifications and in part without a text – already points to typical features of his late vocal work: a treatment of the vocal parts that is melodically sometimes austere, mostly coloratura-poor, and systematic in its employment of verbal meter, a melodic design sharpened by succinct rhythms and suspensions, and a harmonic structure enriched by pointedly set interdominants. This funerary music is set in the context of the state compositions ordered by the Hamburg city council for the elections, coronations, weddings, and deaths of Holy Roman Emperors of the German Nation.