Handel's oratorio Alexander's Feast, composed in 1736, is English to the core, with its talky text by John Dryden and straightforward, clearly structured arias and choruses. The victory of Alexander the Great in the Persian city of Persepolis (an impressive ruin today) in 330 BCE was said to have been followed by a feast that gave Dryden the excuse for a sort of ode to the power of music (rendered in mixed language as "the power of musik" in the booklet of this German release), with arias illustrating the various affects. There isn't really any plot or action; the piece is more an extended secular cantata than an oratorio, especially inasmuch as the soloists (the soprano and the tenor are the prominent ones) do not represent characters in the story.

Soprano Jodie Devos, who has signed with Alpha for several recordings, here pays homage to Offenbach, whose bicentenary of his birth is celebrated in 2019. This programme shows Offenbach’s fascination with the vocal fireworks of coloratura divas. This kind of ‘lyric coloratura’ or ‘soprano leggero’ voice runs like a thread through most of the composer’s oeuvre, from his first pieces for two or three soloists to those grand frescoes of his maturity, La Vie parisienne, Robinson Crusoé, and Orphée aux Enfers.

The Masque of Alfred - apart of course from its finale "Rule Britannia" - has in the 1990s reached CD. Just two years ago a version was issued with the BBC Music Magazine and now we have this more complete account (though there were several variants in Arne's own day) from Nicholas McGegan, an experienced exponent of 18th Century music, recorded in America and using mainly American performers. And very welcome is it. If offers 76 minutes of music, 25 minutes more than the BBC CD and if the OAE's playing on the latter under Nicholas Kraemer often seems rather superior, the Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra are fully equal to Arne's demands which include often atmospheric parts for oboes, horns and flute as well as the basic strings. McGegan uses only four solo singers against the BBC's six.

Conclusion of a Sensational and Unprecedented Edition. We are now finally presenting to you our last CD featuring Handels organ concertos in the version for piano and orchestra. The positive response to our first two CDs in this series has shown that the transfer of the solo part of Handels organ concertos to todays piano is a logical and obvious move. Johann Sebastian Bachs harpsichord concertos belong to the standard repertoire of all world-class pianists, and the same principle truly applies to Handel.

Michel Corrette was a French organist and composer with a long and prolific career. The two works here were composed 47 years apart, and the earlier Nouveau Livre de Noëls is not even an especially early work of this little-known composer. Despite the time difference, they don't differ sharply in style. The Messe pour le temps de Noël, composed in 1788, shows few traces of Classical-period opera or even of the late Baroque Italian vocal style, even though Corrette wrote a pedagogical work instructing his readers in the fine points of Italian music. The French style was simply extraordinarily persistent.

Thomas Arne, (who wrote “Rule Britannia”) is underplayed. Practically everything I’ve heard by him is of interest on multiple levels, either as an original voice utilizing the harmonic and melodic materials of the English baroque style, or as an innovator, at least to my ears, conjuring novel expressions within those materials, or simply as a good tunesmith.

Dr Thomas Arne was a real tunesmith, and this charming collection shows him at his best. Although Arne was heavily influenced by Handel (what Englishman of his generation could avoid this?) he was his own man, and no slavish plagiarist; something that needs to be said of an era, before binding copyrights, when even the great Handel could stoop to this level! It is known that Arne also admired the music of the Venetian Galuppi who visited London in the 1740s. The enchanting 'the Lover's Recantation', sung here beautifully by Emma Kirkby, will remind anyone familiar with Galuppi's comic operas of that composer's style.

Some of the connections with Venice may be a little tenuous, and this particular Winged Lion even circles over Spain clutching a Venetian guitar. The Palladian Ensemble's debut disc was called An Excess of Pleasure; the sequal offers nothing less! From two gutsy Vivaldi concertos via the dashing caprice of Santiago de Murcia's La Jota to a canzon by Cavalli which discharges itself in a haunting echo of Monteverdi's Lamento della Ninfa, the programme continually surprises and enchants. The playing too.

Pianist Alice Sara Ott releases Nightfall, an album that explores the transition and harmony between day and night, light and darkness. This recording features a collection of evocative pieces by Satie, Debussy, and Ravel, including Debussy's "Clair de lune" and Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit - all played with Ott's velvet touch and soulful depth.

The pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva won critical praise for her solo album on Piano Classics (PCL10226) of piano music by Dora Pejacevic: 'You owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of Dora Pejacevic if you haven't done so already.' (Fanfare, May 2022) With her colleagues in Trio RoVerde, she now turns to the Croatian composer's chamber music. The Cello Sonata dates from 1913, the same year as Pejacevic wrote the first piano concerto by any Croatian composer. Like Brahms's First Cello Sonata and Elgar's Cello Concerto, it is cast in a moody E minor, with a yearning character are established from the outset by a long-limbed cantabile melody for the cellist.

Born in Tallinn in 1962, Paavo Järvi is renowned for his dynamic interpretations and innovative programming. He has held prominent positions with leading orchestras, including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, or the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich more recently. Paavo Järvi's approach combines technical precision with expressive depth, making him a favourite among musicians and audiences alike.

Dietrich Buxtehude composed his Membra Jesu nostri in Lübeck in 1680, and the work, drenched in emotion in a most un-Bachian way, has become increasingly popular in the 21st century. The title might be translated "Limbs of Our Jesus," but actually the Latin texts, of considerable antiquity, describe seven wounds supposedly suffered by Jesus Christ on the cross, and the work thus falls into a group of works in which the number seven takes on mystical significance. Various interpretations have been offered, with the majority adopting the one-voice-per-part technique, sometimes in a severe way, sometimes carrying a feeling of intimate chamber reflection.

Thomas Arne’s opera The Judgment of Paris (1742), a setting of William Congreve’s libretto of the same name, is known only from the printed score, but in this world premiere recording is performed with panache and authority by The Brook Street Band and a scintillating young cast led by sopranos Mary Bevan (Venus), Susanna Fairbairn (Pallas) and Gillian Ramm (Juno), with tenors Ed Lyon as the shepherd Paris and Anthony Gregory as Mercury, all under the expert direction of conductor John Andrews.

A challenge to the virtuoso. While they belong to the German tradition, in these sonatas Bach invented a curious division of the parts in which the viola da gamba lies midway between the bass and the principle voice (the treble) of the harpsichord. This particularity in the writing and their exceptional ingenuity place these works among the great masterpieces in the viola da gamba repertoire, both fascinating and terrifying to performers…

In his first album with Mirare, the pianist Lukas Geniušas offers us a recital featuring two early masterpieces of Prokofiev coupled with the only sonata the composer penned in Western Europe.
Even though the earlier works are four decades distant from the latter, a steady feature remains: Prokofiev’s feelings for his beloved Russia.