'James Bowman is on impressive form and his admirers need not hesitate here' (The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs) D'excellentes interprétations' (Ecouter, Voir, France) 'After hearing the first three notes of Cantata 170 my expectations of this recording were high. I was not disappointed' (Hi Fi News)

With her almost supernaturally clear and agile soprano, Emma Kirkby has enchanted audiences ever since she first appeared on the Early Music scene in the 1970s. And as the art of historically informed performance has become more and more widely appreciated, so has her style of singing, to the extent that she in 2007 was included in a listing of ‘the 20 greatest sopranos ever’ made by the BBC Music Magazine. Throughout her career, Emma Kirkby has made a large number of recordings of a wide range of music. Released on the occasion of her 60th birthday, the present collection celebrates her collaboration with BIS, which has resulted in ten discs to date.

Among Handel's vocal works - from the early, operatic solo cantatas to the full-blown operas and the oratorios of his London years - the Nine German Arias hold a special place. Possibly composed around the time that the composer made a final journey to Germany to take leave of his ailing mother, they were Handel's last settings of texts in his native language. It seems likely that these circumstances contributed to the intimate character of these highly personal works, in combination with the texts themselves. Barthold Heinrich Brockes' poems point ahead towards the Enlightenment, establishing as their setting a harmonically organised world, in which benevolent Nature is the prime example of God's bounty.

The Easter Oratorio (German: Oster-Oratorium), BWV 249, is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, beginning with Kommt, eilet und laufet ("Come, hasten and run"). Bach composed it in Leipzig and first performed it on 1 April 1725.

Bach contemporaries such as Jan Zelenka (1679-1745) and Johann Pisendel (1687-1755), both of whom spent most of their creative lives at the Dresden court, are enjoying a well-deserved period of “discovery”–and so is Johann Schein (1586-1630), a less-interesting contemporary of Bach’s most illustrious predecessor, Heinrich Schütz, who preceded Bach as Kantor in Leipzig by a little more than a century. Schein’s primary claim to importance is his incorporation of Italian madrigal style into Lutheran church music. But it’s also clear that he was influenced by the big block-chord sound and antiphonal choir scoring favored by Gabrieli and similarly employed by Schütz.

Winschermann's approach to the cantatas is conservative; his tempos are usually well chosen, though sometimes a little on the slow side, and his phrasing inclines towards that smooth legato so much favoured by Helmuth Rilling… Cantatas Nos. 147 and 74…were issued in 1972 and I think, on balance, they are the two which best illustrate the strong points of Winschermann's approach. In Cantata No. 74, especially, there is some fine obbligato playing from the violinist, Saschko Gawriloff, from Don Smithers (trumpet), and from Winschermann himself (oboe da caccia). The soprano, Ileana Cotrubas, has a vocal colour which suits the music very well…

The crystal clear quality of Dorothee Mields’s singing has already graced many albums of German mid- to late-Baroque music. Her vocal quality, secure intonation and tasteful use of ornamentation characterise performances that are further enhanced by her sensibility to music and text alike.

"The mute cornett, whose mouthpiece resembles that of the cornett but is integrated into the instrument, has a very soft and tender sound. For this reason it is called a mute cornett”. Four such instruments that by some miracle survived the loss of the great collections of the Kassel court are now kept in Leipzig; these instruments formed the starting point for a doctoral thesis led by Lambert Colson. It is now possible to trace the entire history of these instruments, from their manufacture by great Venetian makers, their acquisition by Moritz Von Hessen (the famous patron of the young Heinrich Schütz), the names of the musicians who played them, to the music that was composed for this mysterious cousin of the cornett. This recording will use copies of historical instruments in works composed for the Kassel court, for the most part unpublished, at the Accademia Filarmonica in Verona.

Wo wir schon bei Liedern sind: 1736 wurde im Katalog zur Frankfurter und Leipziger Ostermesse folgende Neuheit angezeigt: »Musicalisches Gesangbuch von 950 auserlesenen geistl. Liedern und Arien. Die unbekandten Melodien sind von Herrn Capellmeister Bach entweder neu verfertigt, oder nach Befinden verbessert und so dann sauber in Kupffer gestochen worden.«

Remaining faithful to their tradition of making live recordings during the course of their concert tours, Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century now come forward with the results of concerts given by them in the spring of last year with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Easter Oratorio as the centrepiece of the new release. With Ilse Eerens, Michael Chance, Markus Schäfer and David Wilson-Johnson as the vocal soloists, and with the faithful Cappella Amsterdam responsible for the choruses, Brüggen and his legendary ensemble once again demonstrate why they have been – and continue to be – one of the pillars of the historically-informed performance movement, which from the final quarter of the 20th century onwards, has stirred up so radically the way of hearing music composed before 1800.

For the fourth time on the Phi label, Philippe Herreweghe presents three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach – Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4, Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79, and Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80. Written at different moments in the composer’s life and based to a large extent on the works of Martin Luther, these cantatas reflect a marked taste for dramaturgy, vivid word-painting and an invariably astonishing use of instruments and voices. Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent give us an accomplished version of these masterpieces, confirming, if further proof were needed, their stature as ardent champions of Bach.

Les Voix Baroques and Arion Baroque Orchestra combine their outstanding talents for this new ATMA recording of Bach’s St. John Passion under the direction of organist and conductor Alexander Weimann. This recording was made in the chapel of the Grand Séminaire in Montreal, following performances in the 2010 Bach Festival.

…This is the best you will ever hear of the "Spiritual Choir-Music of Heinrich Schuetz (1585-1672). This one-disk performance is a selection of ten of the 49 motets in Schuetz's 1648 opus, interspersed with six quite distinct selections from the Kleine Geistliche Konzerte of 1636. The two sources are radically different; the earlier works are in the operatic 'secunda prattica' style of Monteverdi, sung by soloists over decorated basso continuo; the later works are superbly old-fashioned choral polyphony of the 'prima prattica' of composers dead before Schuetz was born. As a concert listening experience, the combination is highly effective, offering a variety and sprightliness that a through-reading of the complete Geistliche Chormusic can't provide.

La partition (manuscrit d'Uppsala, 1667) que viennent de restituer Martin Gester et son frère le musicologue Jean-Luc Gester est de tout premier ordre. On ne sait qui l'a écrite, mais celui qui le fit est un grand assurément. Climat sensuel et doloriste, beauté de l'écriture, raffinement de l'expression. Les solistes vocaux groupés autour de Gester sont épatants, chantant comme un madrigal spirituel cette passion de chambre.