Hungarian countertenor Zoltan Darago joins forces with Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques for his first album, in a programme encompassing the most beautiful cantata arias composed by J.S. Bach for the alto tessitura.

'James Bowman is on impressive form and his admirers need not hesitate here' (The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs) D'excellentes interprétations' (Ecouter, Voir, France) 'After hearing the first three notes of Cantata 170 my expectations of this recording were high. I was not disappointed' (Hi Fi News)

Steve Schroyder's (ex Tangerine Dream) super krautrock band, featuring many guests (from Ash Ra Tempel, Agitation Free, etc.). Recorded in 1975, "Magical Mind" is a psychedelic tour de force for electric guitar tones, Moog synth textures and discreet pulses from percussions. Ethereal soundscapes and freak out kraut-improvisations.

With her almost supernaturally clear and agile soprano, Emma Kirkby has enchanted audiences ever since she first appeared on the Early Music scene in the 1970s. And as the art of historically informed performance has become more and more widely appreciated, so has her style of singing, to the extent that she in 2007 was included in a listing of ‘the 20 greatest sopranos ever’ made by the BBC Music Magazine. Throughout her career, Emma Kirkby has made a large number of recordings of a wide range of music. Released on the occasion of her 60th birthday, the present collection celebrates her collaboration with BIS, which has resulted in ten discs to date.

Among Handel's vocal works - from the early, operatic solo cantatas to the full-blown operas and the oratorios of his London years - the Nine German Arias hold a special place. Possibly composed around the time that the composer made a final journey to Germany to take leave of his ailing mother, they were Handel's last settings of texts in his native language. It seems likely that these circumstances contributed to the intimate character of these highly personal works, in combination with the texts themselves. Barthold Heinrich Brockes' poems point ahead towards the Enlightenment, establishing as their setting a harmonically organised world, in which benevolent Nature is the prime example of God's bounty.

“Contemplation has enabled a powerful introspection within me, etching a path to my innermost self. It is with great anticipation that I now reveal this path, in the hope of forging a heartfelt connection with you. I present this to you, imbued with the sincerity of my emotion, and extend an invitation for you to accompany me on this journey.” – Huw Montague Rendall

"Denn er selbst, der Herr, wird mit einem Feldgeschrei und der Stimme des Erzengels und mit der Posaune Gottes hernieder kommen vom Himmel, und die Toten in Christo werden auferstehen zuerst". Dunkel und drohend lässt Telemann dazu den Donner grollen, den Zorn Gottes. Der Herr, der Richter naht. Es beginnt der Tag des Gerichts. Mit diesen Signalen hebt ein packendes musikalisches Geschehen an, das dem, der sich mit ihm auseinanderzusetzen gewillt ist, eine reiche, symbolgeladene Welt schönster, erfüllender, oft eigenwilliger künstlerischer Bewältigung von Wort und Ton eröffnet.

This is a splendid collection of German music from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. In under an hour, sixteen distinctive and beautifully evocative accompanied songs are performed with style and commitment by the Swedish ensemble, Oliphant (Uli Kontu-Korhonen, chant, drum; Eira Karlson, fiddle, slide trumpet; Leif Karlson, lute, symphony, percussion; Janek Öller, recorders, hümmelchen, bomba). The four person group specializes in medieval music – performed on period instruments where possible. The perform with an "edge" that's at the same time gentle, considered and highly communicative. Indeed, the acoustic on this CD is close and warm without being at all cloying. That has the result of thrusting the very essence of the words (whose articulation is clear and penetrating) and the production of the sounds – on the fiddle, for instance – to the forefront of our attention over and above any more general impression we may have as a result of the music's strong aural flavor.

The Easter Oratorio (German: Oster-Oratorium), BWV 249, is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, beginning with Kommt, eilet und laufet ("Come, hasten and run"). Bach composed it in Leipzig and first performed it on 1 April 1725.

As a special project to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Eugene Ormandy's death, we will release 10 stereo recordings that represent the essence of Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra from the vast amount of recordings he left behind for Sony Classical and RCA. The rich orchestral sound, with its thick string parts as the foundation, its unparalleled woodwinds, and its beautiful brass, is beautifully imprinted with the spirited 1950s and 1960s, and the 1970s, when Ormandy's voice grew more mature and profound, as he reached the pinnacle of 20th century orchestral art.

Bach contemporaries such as Jan Zelenka (1679-1745) and Johann Pisendel (1687-1755), both of whom spent most of their creative lives at the Dresden court, are enjoying a well-deserved period of “discovery”–and so is Johann Schein (1586-1630), a less-interesting contemporary of Bach’s most illustrious predecessor, Heinrich Schütz, who preceded Bach as Kantor in Leipzig by a little more than a century. Schein’s primary claim to importance is his incorporation of Italian madrigal style into Lutheran church music. But it’s also clear that he was influenced by the big block-chord sound and antiphonal choir scoring favored by Gabrieli and similarly employed by Schütz.