A member of the Mannheim school, Ignaz Holzbauer (1711–1783) was a composer of symphonies, concertos, operas and chamber music who wrote in the style of the Sturm and Drang movement. In his penultimate opera "Tod der Dido" [The Death of Dido] (1779), Ignaz Holzbauer presented himself not only as a master of fine musical word interpretation, but also as an imaginative music dramatist. While the original Italian version underlined his position as one of the leading opera composers of the time, the German version which he wrote a year later additionally emphasizes his position as a pioneer of the German National Opera. Frieder Bernius therefore chose this version for a production performed at the Schwetzingen Festival in 1997, which is now being released here for the first time.

Between 1820 and 1847, Felix Mendelssohn composed a total of 38 songs for a cappella male voices. Many of these were written for his own use at home or in the company of friends. He also liked to personally gift or dedicate these songs to others. This recording by the male voices of the SWR Vokalensemble under conductor Frieder Bernius affords the opportunity to enjoy these wonderful compositions that are among the least explored parts of Mendelssohn’s vast oeuvre.

The Magnificat and Gloria, written in 1822, are Mendelssohn’s first large-scale works which he composed for reasons other than study purposes. The influence of the intense cultivation of Bach by his teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter, and the Berlin Sing-Akademie are clearly evident, as in the later chorale cantatas. The masterful 19-voice motet, Tu es Petrus, which Mendelssohn gave his sister as a birthday present, he had planned to publish as his very first sacred work. Frieder Bernius and the Kammerchor Stuttgart present a further addition to their model, prizewinning CD series of Mendelssohn’s complete sacred works.

Christian Cannabich himself - at first leader of the orchestra, then director of instrumental music at the court of Carl Theodor - was one of those who engaged with the new form of music drama. Cannabich, who mostly composed symphonies, chamber music and ballet suites and enjoyed the reputation among his contemporaries of being an excellent orchestra mentor, created the stage work Electra in 1781 with a setting of words by Mannheim intendant von Dalberg. From its beginnings in France, the melodrama established itself in the 1770s as an independent form of music drama, with particular success in the German-speaking territories.

A stunning collection of some of the greatest sacred music ever written. From the great Lamentations of Byrd, Tallis and Palestrina, the listener is taken on a remarkable spiritual journey through Bach’s great St Matthew Passion, Purcell’s moving and bleak funeral music for Queen Mary, and Handel radiant Messiah. Pergolesi’s masterful setting of the Stabat Mater and Telemann’s Passions-Oratorium are also to be found here, along with Haydn’s Stabat Mater and his dark and intense masterpiece Die sieben letzen Worte, or The Seven Last Words of our Saviour from the Cross. Finally, Allegri’s hauntingly beautiful Miserere opens this collection – a work that was copied from memory after one hearing by the child Mozart. Prior to that moment the work had only been heard in the Vatican.

In this Carus release, Frieder Bernius leads soloists from Kammerchor Stuttgart in a selection of transcriptions by Clytus Gottwald and original compositions for chorus subdivided into multiple parts, in this case, up to 16 parts. The arrangements, here of songs originally for solo voice and piano, demonstrate Gottwald's mastery of this niche genre; he has also made remarkably effective choral transcriptions of chamber music and work for full orchestra. The arrangements, of songs by Ravel, Debussy, and Schumann, work beautifully as choral music, even as independent compositions, considered apart from their sources.

Since it's founding in Freiburg in 1958, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi has been one of the most important and ambitious labels for period performances. Over decades, globally-acclaimed recordings were created with outstanding musicians. The limited edition "Deutsche Harmonia Mundi: 100 Great Recordings" contains 100 outstanding DHM recordings with some of the most important and best artists in their field: Nuria Rial, Dorothee Mields, Al Ayre Espanol, Hille Perl, Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Freiburger Barockorchester, Skip Sempé, Capriccio Stravagante, La Petite Bande, Gustav Leonhardt, Andrew Lawrence-King, Frieder Bernius, the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Thomas Hengelbrock and many others.

With its highly complex and artful opening chorus, the cantata Ein feste Burg is one of the highlights among Bach's cantatas. With the Kammerchor Stuttgart under Frieder Bernius and the soloists Sarah Wegener, David Allsopp, Thomas Hobbs and Peter Harvey, this masterpiece finds a more than adequate recording here. The cantata is supplemented by the Missa brevis in G minor, BWV 235, one of the four Lutheran masses Bach composed at the end of the 1730s.

A beautifully-packaged 50-disc box set, released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, one of the most important and adventurous early music labels. The set contains 50 classic recordings of baroque and ancient music, chosen to represent the breadth of this huge and varied catalogue and each disc is slip-cased with artwork replicating the original CD or LP artwork.

A selection of works which shows the courage to try the unusual: Ligeti’s Lux aeterna and Boyd’s As I crossed a bridge of dreams share a flowing of harmonic fields into one another as if in slow motion. On the other hand, Ligeti’s use of the technique of dividing an apparently endless flow of sound, with its related intervallic structures, into comprehensible periods, shows similarities to Scarlattis method of employing motives whose intervallic structure are interrelated. For Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen Gottwald transferred Ligeti’s technique of vocal writing to his arrangement of the Mahler Lied.

VIVARTE is the legendary Sony Classical period music label known for producing outstanding recordings on period instruments. The recordings by legendary producer Wolf Erichson are made with the best recording technologies available and by one of the best production teams in the world (Tritonus Music Production, Stuttgart). The collection contains a perfect overview of VIVARTE's legendary catalogue ranging from Vivaldi to Brahms including recordings with specialists in historically informed performance practice such as Anner Bylsma, Gustav Leonhardt, Tafelmusik, Huelgas Ensemble, L'Archibudelli among others. Many of the recordings received critical acclaim all over the world and won prestigious awards. This box set includes CDs presented in paper sleeves with the original artwork, a 250 page booklet with track listings and the original liner notes for each recording.