Following on the heels of the practically definitive Cantus Cölln performance of Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri, this Atma Classique disc featuring Les Voix Baroques – a sort of all-star assemblage of early music vocalists – has a tough row to hoe. The singing – as one might expect from talents such as Suzie LeBlanc and Catherine Webster – is indeed excellent throughout, but there remain two significant problems with this recording, the first being the thin and rather scrawny recording, not helped by what sounds like a rather bare-bones approach to continuo.

Constantly in search of eclectic and meaningful programmes, the soprano Anna Prohaska here celebrates ‘life in death’. An ambitious programme, conceived with Robin Peter Müller and his ensemble La Folia, which takes us on a journey across the centuries and through many different countries, with French chansons of the Middle Ages (including one by Guillaume de Machaut), seventeenth-century Italian pieces by Luigi Rossi, Francesco Cavalli and Barbara Strozzi, German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Dietrich Buxtehude, Christoph Graupner, Franz Tunder) and the English luminaries Henry Purcell… plus John Lennon and Paul McCartney. A musical and spiritual quest that even takes in a detour to North America with a universally known song by Leonard Cohen.

The young Czech soprano Hana Bla íkóva is currently one of the most exciting voices in the baroque scene today. After receiving her final diploma at the Conservatory of her native city Prague in 2002, the singer very rapidly gained an excellent reputation as a baroque interpreter. Conductors such as Philippe Herreweghe, Masaaki Suzuki and Vaclav Luks frequently invite her for CD recordings, concerts and tours. She regularly appears at renowned festivals including Prague Spring, Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Resonances in Vienna and the Early Music Days in Regensburg.

Never short of ideas when it comes to offering concert programs imbued with authenticity and refinement, Luc Beauséjour is an exceptional harpsichordist and organist. “The naturalness of his harpsichord playing, the remarkable attention he gives to proportions and to a singing quality have made him a one-of-a-kind artist.” (Le Devoir)

Charles Daniels enters into the exultant spirit of ‘Lobe den Herrn’, especially its exuberant final alleluia, and the three male voices bring an almost Italianate sweetness to ‘Jesu dulcis memoria’, one of several fine examples of Buxtehude’s fascination with the chaconne, as well as conveying all the darkness and pain of the richly-scored Passiontide meditation ‘An filius non est Dei’.

Setting various German and Latin texts for solo voices, violins and continuo, these sacred cantatas are typical products of the late 17th century in their pragmatic approach to form.
Here are patchworks such as Jesu dulcis memoria and Salve, Jesu, Patris gnate unigenite; chorale or song variations such as Jesu, meine Freude; and others, like Ich halte es dafür and Ich habe Lustabzuscheiden, which combine the two. CantateDomino is liltingly Italianate, Mein Herz ist bereit is an agile showpiece for solo bass, while Herr, wennich nur dich hab is a set of variations over a ground bass. The Purcell Quartet's essential string sound has always been sweet, airy and lucid, and it's interesting to hear how that has been transferred here from the instrumental sphere to the vocal.

This remarkable recording marks the first relationship on disc between an ensemble and the label Opus Arte, until now known for DVDs of live opera, ballet and theatre. Its new partnership with the choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, one of Britain's oldest and finest choral institutions, begins with Buxtehude's sublimely tender 1680 meditation on the crucified Christ, Membra Jesu Nostri. In the future, we are promised works by the glorious John Sheppard, a 16th-centuryinformator choristarum at the college, and contemporary pieces from Matthew Martin, a former Magdalen scholar recently given a British Composer award.

A transformative force in historically informed performance, Ton Koopman is renowned as a conductor, harpsichordist and organist. In 1979, aged 35, he founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in the city where he had studied with the great Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt. Drawing on an international pool of players, the ensemble soon gained a reputation for flexibility, colour and expressivity as it explored the music of such composers as the Bach family, Handel, Telemann and Buxtehude.

Des styles italiens novateurs comme l'opéra et l'oratorio, tous deux ayant pour base les mêmes concepts rhétoriques, se sont répandus très rapidement à travers toute l'Europe et c'est dans les régions de langue allemande que les modèles furent développés avec le plus d'ardeur. Le programme de ce CD Sanctum Desiderium est une soigneuse sélection de compositions allemandes du dix-septième siècle qui expriment un désir sacré en le traduisant aussi par des images musicales.

It's hard to believe this CD was done with only a violin, viola da gama and harpsichord. This is polyphonic music at its finest. It does tribute to Buxtehude, who preceded Bach. The ensemble is perfect - the instruments complement each other. When they go from slow to fast, it is remarkable to hear the contrast. These are expert musicians with a complete mastery of their instruments. They use loud-soft as easily as any masters of the Baroque. The result is joyous, lively and entertaining.

This acclaimed recording series of the complete organ works of Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707) offers a unique musical journey in the footsteps of the Danish-German Baroque master. Organist Bine Bryndorf explores Buxtehudes inventive stylus phantasticus through the beautiful sound of five historic organs around the Baltic area, beginning in the composers native town of Elsinore, and ending in Lübeck, where his successor Johann Sebastian Bach famously went to experience the art of the ageing organ legend.

Sigiswald Kuijken directed these performers, based notionally in Trondheim, for a festival concert in Sarrebourg in 2015. Like other takes on the great corpus of Bach cantatas by groups who are attempting to show us his works in a wider context, this pair is presented in the wider context of the musical expression of the final conflict between the forces of good and evil in the late 17th century. Buxtehude’s cantata Befiehl dem Engel, dass er komm (BuxWV10) and Christian Geist’s Quis hostis in cœlis provide the context for Bach’s compositions for Michaelmas in 1724 and 1726.

Trio Sonnerie have chosen five of the 14 sonatas by Buxtehude from the 1690s to demonstrate their considerable fluency and rapport. These are witty and elegant works, finely crafted and requiring the skills of virtuoso players. Monica Huggett and Sarah Cunningham capture their essence with happily chosen and neatly articulated tempos—the vivace movements are effortlessly played—and beautifully transparent textures. Mitzi Meyerson provides a stylish and secure accompaniment, particularly in the G major Largo and the B flat major Vivace (which is, in fact, a chaconne).

Following on from and designed along the same lines as the Guide to Period Instruments, this boxed set includes an exhaustive introductory text as well as a great quantity of music excerpts on the set’s eight CDs. These extracts have been taken from the extensive repertoire recorded by Ricercar over many years, with excerpts from recordings kindly provided by our colleagues from Harmonia Mundi, Gimell, Accent, Alpha and Sony supplementing our programme where necessary. The Lutheran repertoire of the Renaissance has remained for all intents and purposes unrecorded up until now; the tracks illustrating this repertoire together with other excerpts have been recorded specially for this compilation by Vox Luminis.

Death and Devotion Cantatas by Tunder, Weckmann, Buxtehude, and Ritter It is a remarkable fact that the most expressive and original vocal church music composed in Northern Germany during the latter half of the seventeenth century was the work not of cantors, but of organists. Some of this is due to the exceptional status which had been achieved by organists in cities like Hamburg and Lbeck in the course of the century; they had become both virtuosi par excellence, and at the same time learned composers.