Harmonia Mundi’s collection of cantatas on the story of Orfeo is exactly what I want from new recordings of early music. The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and Sunhae Im are exemplary in their playing and singing; the audio engineering and sound quality are deeply satisfying; and the...

Ensemble Odyssee’s album of music by Gaetano Veneziano (1656–1716) and Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) is as much about the group and their approach to performance as it is about the composers and music they’ve chosen. That is, when an ensemble champions the work of a composer, they...

Velázquez and the Music of his Time is a compilation CD assembled to coincide with a 2015 exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris of Diego Velázquez’s (1599-1660) most important paintings. Aside from Velazquez’s 120 surviving works of art, his appointment to Philip IV of Spain in...

This album was an obvious recommendation hearing only the opening bars of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Suite from Dardanus, gracefully rendered with a sparkle and finesse that could stand easily beside any version I’ve heard. Musical sensibilities, tonal beauty, balance, intonation,...

The music of A.H. Schultzen (1681-1742) is a relatively new and exciting addition to the 18th-century recorder literature. Schultzen’s music first came to light in a 2001 article in the Journal of the American Recorder Society. A contemporary and compatriot of J.S. Bach and G.P....

Oehms Classics has released this collection of six sonatas, trios and concerti by Telemann, all but one appearing as a world premiere recording. Playing on period instruments, L’Accademia Giocosa (‘playful’) is made up of members of the Bavarian Radio Symphony, together with...

The latest release from Musical Concepts in their ongoing Baroque Bohemia & Beyond series, this seventh installment is subtitled “winter season”, and is comprised of delightful music by Czech composers active in the early decades of the Classical era. The music is largely by...

The music of Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) lacks the representation in the catalog it deserves. The Italian composer, who is probably best known as the father of Domenico Scarlatti, composed over 50 works for the stage (predominately operas) and over 700 chamber cantatas, two of the most...

A recent release in Supraphon’s Music from eighteenth-century Prague series, this CD is subtitled Bohemian Disciples of Johann Joseph Fux. The music of Fux (1660-1741) does not appear on the disc at all. What these pieces have in common is that each of the three composers, František...

Subtitled Devotional Music from 17th-century Hamburg, A German Soul from Brilliant Classics is a varied program of instrumental, solo vocal and organ pieces dating, for the most part, from the early Baroque. The eight composers represented were all active in northern Germany at some point or...

Some composers are satisfied to live quiet but purposeful lives, have many children and leave a great musical legacy. Others are like Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682) who led the life of a scoundrel in the midst of a great musical career, living to only 42 years of age. He lived the life that...

This is the second CD recommended on Expedition Audio of music by German composer Johann Georg Reutter (1708-1772), who has long been handed the short end of the proverbial stick by history’s musicologists. Appraisals of Reutter’s art coming from the past couple centuries contrast...