Decca Classics is thrilled to announce a new Baroque album from Grammy award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti. This is the first album Benedetti has released on a period set-up including gut strings, and she is joined by a leading group of freelance baroque musicians, forming the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra for the very first time. The album features a selection of concerti by Vivaldi plus Geminiani’s incredible arrangement of Corelli’s ‘La Folia’, one of the oldest western classical themes which has been arranged by many composers over time, particularly in the baroque era. Geminiani was one of the greatest violinists of the era and Corelli was one of his teachers whilst growing up in Italy. Later when he moved to London, Geminiani reworked a number of Corelli’s works for local audiences including this arrangement of ‘La Folia’.

On Masterworks, the astonishingly virtuosic acoustic powerhouse outfit California Guitar Trio—comprising master steel-string fingerstylists Bert Lams, Hideyo Moriya, and Paul Richards—converges to deliver a breathtakingly precise, highly complex, and masterfully symphonic studio document. Released in 2012 by the specialized progressive imprint Inner Knot, this brilliant interpretive milestone finds the trio applying their legendary King Crimson-hated, Robert Fripp-schooled Crafty Guitar skills to the canon of European classical music. Spanning nearly 55 minutes of immaculate high-fidelity spatial design, the 11-track landscape operates with an electric, lightning-fast, and deeply disciplined kinetic energy. The trio navigates dense orchestral notation and shifting dynamics with telepathic precision, firing off stunning, jaw-dropping arrangements like Bach's sprawling Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Beethoven's blistering Presto Agitato from the Moonlight Sonata, and a hauntingly stark, beautifully layered adaptation of Arvo Pärt's modern masterpiece Fratres. Driven by their interlocked multi-directional picking lines and unparalleled dynamic control, this pristine archive remains an indispensable masterclass for serious progressive rock purists, acoustic guitar enthusiasts, and classical crossover collectors worldwide.

On Weisses Gold, the legendary East German symphonic rock institution Stern-Combo Meißen delivers a breathtaking, highly theatrical, and conceptually brilliant masterpiece. Originally released in 1978 and beautifully preserved on this definitive 2002 digital archive by Unionton, this ambitious rock-concept suite stands as a towering pinnacle of the GDR progressive rock movement. The album meticulously chronicles the dramatic, historical tale of Johann Friedrich Böttger, the alchemist who inadvertently discovered European white porcelain ("Weißes Gold") while imprisoned by the King. The 50-minute tracklist operates with a majestic, sweeping classical gravity, opening with the magnificent, multi-layered architecture of the Ouvertüre and weaving fluidly through expansive symphonic movements like Zweifel and the triumphant title movement. This expanded reissue is further elevated by an extraordinary three-part bonus adaptation of Antonio Vivaldi's Der Frühling (The Spring). Driven by soaring Moog synthesizer layers, stellar church organ structures, complex rhythmic shifts, and an operatic vocal delivery, this high-fidelity document remains an indispensable monument for serious European prog-rock collectors worldwide.

This CD presents violin sonatas dedicated by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) to German violinist and composer Johann Georg Pisendel (1678-1755). The manuscripts of the works come from the library of the Dresden Court Orchestra to which Pisendel himself made regular contributions in the course of 30 years.

Nine cello sonatas by Vivaldi have survived. Six of them were published as a set in Paris in about 1740; that set, mistakenly known as the composer's Op. 14, contains the sonatas recorded in this release. The three remaining sonatas come from manuscript collections. All but one of the six works are cast in the slow-fast-slow-fast pattern of movements of the sonata da chiesa. The odd one out, RV46, in fact, retains the four movement sequence but inclines towards the sonata da camera in the use of dance titles. The music of these sonatas is almost consistently interesting, often reaching high points of expressive eloquence, as we find, for example, in the justifiably popular Sonata in E minor, RV40. Christophe Coin brings to life these details in the music with technical assurance and a spirit evidently responsive to its poetic content. Particularly affecting instances of this occur in the third movements of the A minor and the E minor Sonatas where Coin shapes each phrase, lovingly achieving at the same time a beautifully sustained cantabile.

Following his attractive performance of six of Vivaldi's cello sonatas, Christophe Coin has recorded six of the composer's 24 or so concertos for the instrument. Five of these, Michael Talbot tells us in an interesting accompanying note, probably belong to the 1720s while the sixth, the Concerto in G minor (RV416), is evidently a much earlier work. Coin has chosen, if I may use the expression somewhat out of its usual context, six of the best and plays them with virtuosity and an affecting awareness of their lyrical content. That quality, furthermore, is not confined to slow movements but occurs frequently in solo passages of faster ones, too. It would be difficult to single out any one work among the six for particular praise. My own favourite has long been the happily spirited Concerto in G major (RV413) with which Coin ends his programme. Strongly recommended. (Gramophone Magazine)

What if Vivaldi’s famous Quattro Stagioni, performed in Paris in 1728, had been preceded by those of Guido, the star violinist of the Parisian orchestras of Louis XIV’s maturity ? Here, at last, are these two works reunited: to the well-known virtuosity of Vivaldi’s work, of extraordinary impact, Guido’s Seasons oppose a mixture of Italian features and a thousand facets worthy of the French Court, with an infectious ardour! A mysterious Neapolitan who arrived in Paris around 1702 as Music Master to Philippe d’Orléans, Guido was close to the financier Crozat, who in 1716 commissioned Watteau to produce four paintings on the theme of the Seasons: he set them to music around 1717 with his Scherzi armonici sopra le Quattro Stagioni dell’anno.

Directing his finely honed ensemble of period-instrument performers from the harpsichord, Pinnock brought us music that makes its points through subtlety, charm and skillful manipulation of modest instrumental means.

Though Mönkemeyer’s playing has an evident sense of period, he’s not performance practice, he’s not hidebound by the imperatives of the time-honoured treatises. He revels in Paganini’s honeyed lyricism, and brings a finely-honed intensity to interpolated cadenzas…L’arte del mondo directed by Werner Ehrhardt prove spirited companions.

Music Director of Tafelmusik from 1981 to 2014, Jeanne Lamon was loved by audiences, and praised by critics in Europe and North America for her virtuosity as a violinist and her brilliant musical leadership. Under her direction, Tafelmusik achieved international stature with over 80 recordings to its name, and with tours to over 350 international cities including invitations to the most prestigious concert halls and festivals in the world.

The Berliner Barock Solisten ensemble, founded by members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and the then concertmaster Rainer Kussmaul, has set itself the task of cultivating historically informed performance practice with modern instruments. It was these very violin concertos that were featured on the ensemble’s first CD recording.

Anticipating the 50th anniversary of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2022, we present their complete recordings on DG. The intriguing sound culture of Orpheus, especially of the string section, is often explained as a result of the cooperative mindset of the orchestra and its artistic process of rehearsing.

Perlman's Four Seasons was recorded in 1976 in London's Abbey Road Studios. This was before the period instruments craze had gotten up to full steam. Perlman and the London Philharmonic play unrepentantly on modern instruments and in a modern style, albeit not without Baroque savvy. Expansive tempos and rich, vibrato-generous sonorities make this recording a good choice for listeners who don't seek the astringencies of period performance, or who simply want to take a musical bubble bath in this repertoire.

This series of CDs by Tactus and Modo Antiquo represents the first complete recording of the cantatas of Antonio Vivaldi. Up until now, these works have appeared only sporadically on record, yet they constitute quite an important body of works in Vivaldi’s total production. Dedicated exclusively to female voices, the cantatas have here been divided according to the classifications used in the Ryom catalogue: cantatas for soprano and continuo, cantatas for contralto and continuo, cantatas for soprano and instruments, cantatas for contralto and instruments. Modo Antiquo has approached this first complete recording of the cantatas by Vivaldi with full respect for the original texts and the performance practices of the period.

The Habsburg Imperial Court was a melting pot of many different cultures in which the zest for living of southerners, the Slav melancholy, French formalism, Spanish courtliness and the original German-speaking Alpine cultural region intermingled. Together with his Ars Antiqua Austria ensemble, Gunar Letzbor occupied himself over a ten year period to produce this 10CD "Klang der Kulturen" box, a musical tour of the individual countries that formed the roots of and influences on the music of baroque Vienna, documenting them in live recordings, with each CD representing one country.