Leonor de Lera has chosen the "Arcadia" described in Greek mythology as a transfigured place in idyllic nature as the title for her new CD. The genre of the pastorale, the Arcadian pastoral idyll, enjoyed incredible popularity during the
Renaissance and all the great poets of the time wrote poems that were in turn set to madrigals by the great composers. Leonor de Lera plays a selection of such pastorals on her violin - accompanied by lute and guitar. She does this, as was customary for Renaissance and early Baroque instrumentalists, by not playing the melodies true to the notes, but by embellishing them with so-called "diminutions". There were many schools and styles for these, which are described in treatises of the time, and the virtuoso also demonstrated his skills with his art of diminution. The violinist now applies the different styles to the various pieces she has chosen for this programme, which are by Monteverdi, Caccini, Falconieri, Trombocino, Willaert and many others. The result is a stylistically diverse, highly virtuosic CD that is also a comprehensive compendium of the art of diminution in Italy around 1600.

The depiction of philosophers and philosophy in early modern music is varied and colourful, at times tragicomic and by no means always 'historically informed'.The noble but mocked Seneca in Monteverdi's Poppea, the hen-pecked, polygamous Socrates in Telemann's Der geduldige Sokrates, the tipple-loving Diogenes and Aristotle in the ballad songs of Leveridge and Lampe, and the lovestruck Heraclitus and Democritus in the more serious duets. There are also the trios and laments of Carissimi, Purcell, Strozzi, Couperin and Jean-Baptise Stuck.Heraclitus and Democritus, two pre-Socratic 5th century thinkers, were particularly fruitful subjects for depiction due to their association with two polar effects: Heraclitus came to be known as the 'weeping philosopher' and was often contrasted in artistic depictions with Democritus, the 'laughing philosopher'.Far from being detached oracles rhetorically dispensing wisdom, these philosopher-singers are feeling as well as thinking subjects, subject to suffering and (self) derision in equal measure.

Profeti Della Quinta Five male singers form the core of Profeti della Quinta, joining with others as the music – from the 16th and 17th centuries – demands.

The innovations of Niccolò Jommelli (1714 74) transformed mid-18th-century Italian opera just as much as Gluck’s slightly later so-called reforms, but his tercentenary passed by largely uncelebrated; this recital album was recorded in 2014 after a concert tour around Spain and presents a cross-section of arias from seven different cantatas, oratorios and operas written between 1749 and 1768.

The Bachs must count as one of the most musical families in the history of Western music. Next to Johann Sebastian Bach, there were many other outstanding musicians and composers in the family. This release presents a varied anthology of flute music by Johann Sebastian and his composing sons - Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian - with every piece containing typical compositional characteristics of each of them.

Tchaikovsky's "Iolanta" is an elegiac tale about a blind princess who lives in a secluded garden, overseen by her well meaning father who tries to shield her from her condition. Only a handsome knight can grant her the ability to see through the power of love. Russian soprano Olga Mykytenko and the astonishing tenor Piotr Beczala give riveting performances as Iolanta and the noble knight. Re-issue of a former release on the Relief label.

The composer Johann Friedrich Fasch maintained a particularly close relationship with the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, where he served as Kapellmeister from 1722 until his death in 1758. The present program focuses on the oboe: these are compositions by Fasch himself, such as an oboe concerto, a concerto for 2 oboes and smaller works for oboe, as well as works with oboe by Telemann and Bach, which are connected with the Zerbst court music inventory, Fasch's "Concert-Stube" (1743), and Fasch's tenure in Zerbst. Soloist of the recording is the young oboist Nele Vertommen (b. 1999), a student of Marcel Ponseele and winner of the 1st prize at the International Telemann Competition in Magdeburg in 2021, accompanied by the rising ensemble Musica Gloria.

The Imperial Theatre offered Tchaikovsky a commission to write an opera based on the plot sketch by Ivan Vsevolozhsky in The Queen of Spades or Pique Dame, Op. 68 is an opera in three acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the 1834 novella of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, but with a dramatically altered plot. The premiere took place in 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia.After first turning it down, Tchaikovsky accepted it in 1889. Toward the end of that year, he met with the theatre's managers to discuss the material and sketch out some of the scenes.

The 18th century was the great time of the castrati, they celebrated the greatest triumphs in opera. But gradually the tenor voice also gained more and more weight, until it finally dominated the great roles in bel canto. One of those who strongly influenced this development was Annibale Fabbri, known as "Balino", whose voice would today be described as a "pure lyric tenor". Because of the beauty of his voice and his incomparable stage presence, he achieved great fame and received invitations to all the great stages of Europe. This album presents those roles that famous composers of the time such as Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Sarro, Handel or Caldara wrote for Fabbri, and at the same time follows the stations of Fabbri's performances throughout Europe, from Rome, Naples and Venice to London and Vienna. Tenor Marco Angioloni and the ensemble Il Groviglio succeed in making an impressive plea for a long-neglected voice of baroque opera in the first third of the 18th century.

Gunar Letzbor and his ensemble Ars Antiqua Austria are proven specialists for Austrian baroque music. During recent years, they have rediscovered, performed and recorded polychoral Festive Masses by Weichlein, Ramhaufsky and Hochreither and thus Georg Muffat's magnificent 'Missa in labore requies' is a logical choice of repertoire. This work is the only surviving church music by Georg Muffat and is overwhelming in sonic impact and profundity but also a richness of melodic invention. In its polychoral design, the work is in the tradition of Salzburg Festive Masses, reflecting in their extraordinary musical opulence, the almost boundless material wealth of the prince bishops who commissioned them.

In 1650, the scholar Athanasius Kircher wrote for the first time about a phenomenon that had been familiar to the music world for some time: rhapsodically free instrumental music-making, in which virtuosity is expressively in the foreground and compositional inspirations sometimes disregard the rules of harmony. Kircher called this “stylus phantasticus“. With the development of the monody in Italy around 1600, vocalists initially moved the hearts of the audience, but soon the best instrumentalists emulated them in their own way. The melody instruments swung into their own solo and duo songs, which even today impress in rhetoric and emotionality without words. The listeners at that time were almost in ecstasy, as contemporary reports say. CordArte presents outstanding examples of this new art under the motto "Rapsodia italiana". Here, the violin in particular can make its mark as a new virtuoso instrument. But the viola da gamba also comes into its own, both alone and in dialogue. Last but not least, the harpsichord and organ demonstrate their qualities both as harmonic accompanists and as soloists.

A French title, Italian repertoire, a Swedish manuscript… The manuscript of a certain "Georg Gerdin" provides insight into the ramified travel routes of good music in the 18th century. Nothing is known about Mr. Gerdin himself, only that he signed his manuscript "A Upsale le 8 d'Aout 1758". In his manuscript, Gerdin compiled four sonatas by Pietro Castrucci and two by the now largely forgotten Francesco Geminiani, probably drawing on an edition printed almost fifty years earlier in Amsterdam and London, which had adapted the sonatas originally conceived for violin for the recorder. The recorder player Tabea Schwartz presents these exciting and extremely virtuosic sonatas of the highest quality in a Swedish "reading". Her congenial accompanist, the harpsichordist Thomas Leininger, combines them with short miniatures on well-known English melodies from a collection published in Sweden around 1770 by an unknown composer named Frederick Nussen.

Johannes Brahms wrote well over 300 lieder, including his arrangements of German folk songs, partsongs and choral lieder. Considering how long he carried a song around in his head before writing and publishing the final version, this is an astonishing amount. This 2-CD-set presents a selection from Brahms huge lied repertoire, which not only gives an impression of his importance to music history up to the present day and what a perfect lied composer he was, but also reveals what a cheerful, young-at-heart and humorous person he must have been. The selection of songs and duets is arranged chronologically (1853-1896) and includes all phases of his life in which the lied played a central role, thus allowing the development of the German-language song in the time after Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann to be clearly traced. The pianist Jan Schultsz plays on a wonderful original J.B. Streicher fortepiano from 1871, a model on which Brahms also preferred to play. The singers are Rachel Harnisch (soprano), Marina Viotti (mezzo-soprano) and Yannick Debus (baritone) - young singers who have already celebrated successes in concert and in major opera houses.

Schubert's publisher Tobias Haslinger published fourteen songs under the title "Schwanengesang" one year after the composer’s death. Schubert had written them down in rapid succession shortly before his death, which indicates that they were partly conceived as a song cycle.The German bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann was a member of the ensemble of the Berlin State Opera from 1998 until 2011 and has also appeared at the Bayerische, Hamburgische and Wiener Staatsoper and San Francisco Opera. He has sung with the London, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras, the Berlin and Dresden Staatskapelle, Orchestra National de France, and the Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles Symphony Orchestras under conductors including Thielemann, Haitink, Barenboim, Welser-Möst, Harnoncourt, Luisi, von Dohnányi, Nelsons and Gardiner. Hanno. In addition to concert and opera, Hanno Müller-Brachmann has a great passion for the Lied. He has given recitals in Berlin, Graz, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris and Lausanne, at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade, Berlin Festwochen and the Edinburgh Festival, among others.

Countertenor Alberto Miguélez Rouco (born 1994) studied singing in his hometown of La Coruña in Spain before continuing his vocal training at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Rosa Domínguez. Despite his young age, he can already look back on a remarkable career: As a concert singer he has performed in Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (Handel), Il San Vito (Pasquini), Magnificat (Bach), Marian Vespers (Monteverdi), Oratorio de Noël (Saint-Saëns), Te Deum (Charpentier), Gloria and Magnificat (Vivaldi) and Coronation Mass (Mozart). He has performed in concerts with Les Talens Lyriques, Ensemble Elyma, and Trondheim Baroque Orchestra. The present recording of Spanish cantatas by José de Nebra and Francisco Corselli is his solo debut album.