This new album rounds off the complete recording of the symphonies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach that the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin began over two decades ago. The final batch offers the quintessence of his art, revealing the full originality of Johann Sebastian’s inspired son, whose freedom and inventiveness paved the way for Haydn and Mozart.

It was in Rome, where he resided between 1707 and 1710, that the young Handel composed these three dazzling sacred works. The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the RIAS Kammerchor give us an extremely lively and colourful reading of these pieces in which the composer showcased his talent: allegiance to the forms of the past, total mastery of counterpoint and, already, a unique feeling for storytelling. Everything here announces musical genius.

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and soprano Christina Landshamer present a Telemann monography, consisting of his cantata Ino and instrumental works composed in the same period. Despite, or perhaps actually thanks to, Telemann’s use of just one singer, Ino is highly dramatic, depicting a desperate woman trying to save herself and her son from her husband turned mad, eventually throwing herself off a cliff and then transformed into a goddess. Telemann composed it two years before his death, and the score is exceptionally rich and colourful. The cantata is combined with his Overture in D Major, Divertimento in E-flat Major and Sinfonia melodica, each underlining the exceptional liveliness of this composer well into the ninth decade of his prolific life.

This disc is an invitation to explore one of the great attractions of Venice in the Baroque era, the famous ospedali. Among the inmates of the Pietà was a girl named ‘Pellegrina’, for whom Vivaldi wrote many of his oboe concertos. With her Berlin colleagues, Xenia Löffler breathes new life into these concerti soli, concerti ripieni and sinfonie by the ‘Red-haired Priest’ – but also by his emulators, among them a composer of today, no less fervent in his admiration: Uri Rom.

Georg Friedrich Händel was one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period. Opera dominated Handel’s career, yet he was better known for his oratorios and instrumental works for several centuries. He forged a personal idiom by taking Italian traditions and adding elements of German counterpoint and dance forms from France. The result was a uniquely cosmopolitan style which, when Handel took it to London, would expand to embrace the musical legacy of the English Restoration composer Henry Purcell. Discover a compilation of famous Handel works featuring masterpieces by the great composer and wonderful musicians.

Under the baton of the new chief conductor Hans-Christoph Rademann, the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin are performing famous Motets by Johann Sebastian Bach, interspersed with some fine instrumental works of the composer. Founded in 1948, the choir enjoys today a worldwide reputation as one of the best ensembles of its kind.

George Frideric Handel and Hamburg town councillor and poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes were students at the same time in Halle, and it's probable that they knew each other and were perhaps even friends. Brockes wrote a nine-volume anthology, from the first volume of which Handel, between 1724 and 1727, set his Nine German Arias. In translation, the Brockes work is titled "Earthly Delight in God, Consisting of Physical and Moral Poems," the texts reflecting pleasure in the glory of God's natural creation. Handel had been writing opera in England since 1710; the reason behind the composition of these arias, his last works in German, and which were unpublished in his lifetime, remains unknown.

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin launches a series of Mozart symphonies to appear on Pentatone, starting with the composer’s “Paris” and “Haffner” symphonies. On this first album, the works are coupled with his enchanting Oboe Concerto – performed by the ensemble’s first oboeist Xenia Löffler – and the bold overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail in Mozart’s own woodwind arrangement. Taken together, these pieces demon-strate the rich palette and expressive power of Mozart’s music in the period between 1777 and 1783, during which he finally managed to spread his wings and leave his hometown of Salzburg.

A precursor in this field as in so many others, Telemann gave the viola its very first masterpieces, immediately establishing it as a solo instrument in its own right. Alongside Sabine Fehlandt and the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Antoine Tamestit pays splendid tribute to this pioneering music, which blends melodic charm and contrapuntal rigour into an organic whole.

One of the first, and best, recordings of this splendid but interpretatively elusive work was made in Berlin in 1954 under the direction of Ferenc Fricsay. Like the present recording, it featured the RIAS (Berlin Radio) Chamber Choir, though in those days the fledgling choir was supplemented in the full choruses by the famous St Hedwig’s Cathedral Choir. Now it is on its own, acquitting itself superbly in all movements and dimensions; what’s more, the conductor of the entire enterprise is its own conductor, the English-born Marcus Creed.

Le prestigieux Collegium Musicum créé par Telemann fut l'orchestre attitré de Bach lorsqu'il prit ses fonctions à Leipzig. Il put ainsi tester avec cette formation de nouvelles associations de timbres que l'on retrouve dans le Concerto pour clavecin BWV 1052, le Concerto pour piano forte en si bémol majeur et le Triple Concerto BWV 1044. Il s'agit parfois de transcriptions et d'adaptations, d'œuvres originellement pour violon, mais le résultat est étonnant de brio et de force expressive. Il faut écouter ce fameux Triple Concerto pour flûte, violon, clavecin et cordes porté par les couleurs de l'Akademie für Alte Musik : on y retrouve l'impulsion rythmique, la richesse de tempérament du Concerto Brandebourgeois n° 5, un esprit de danse et de fête qui privilégient sans conteste le clavier.

In 1727, having just become a naturalised British subject, Handel was commissioned to write a set of anthems for the coronation of George II. Since he could hardly have expected ever to see a more majestic occasion, the composer took full advantage of it to put on a musical firework display of unprecedented splendour. The RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin give thrilling accounts of these flamboyant works – some of which are still used today at each new coronation!

The year 2012 marks the tercentenary of the birth of Frederick the Great, whose political and military glory has often relegated his musical talent to the status of a mere hobby. But Frederick II was not only the key personality of Berlin musical life for the whole of the 18th century – as is shown by the works of the composers presented on this CD, all of whom worked at his court at some point in their careers – but also an excellent flautist who left posterity a number of fine flute sonatas from his own pen.

Harmonia Mundi's Rebel: Elements – Vivaldi: Four Seasons combines two of the Baroque's biggest instrumental barnburners as performed by one of the top period instrument groups in Europe, Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, under the leadership of concertmasters Clemens-Maria Nuszbaumer and Georg Kallweit and featuring their star attraction, violinist Midori Seiler. Like Vivaldi's often derided as over-familiar Four Seasons, Jean-Féry Rebel's 1737 ballet Les Éléments does not want for good recordings, but it is nowhere near as famous as the Vivaldi; this is the first time the two have been combined on a recording, and these pieces are quite compatible given their shared, programmatic purposes.

The version submitted by Howard Arman for the Bavarian Radio Chorus is based on surviving Mozart sources as well as on Süßmayr's additions; in several places, however, it reaches new conclusions that are implemented with due caution and humble respect for Mozart's magnificent original. Mozart's Requiem is followed by Neukomm's Respond Libera me, Domine - and for musical, liturgical and chronological reasons, the programme begins with Mozart's Vesperae solennes de Confessore KV 339 (1780), composed of psalms from the Old Testament as well as the Magnificat from the Gospel of St Luke and composed for the liturgical festival of a holy confessor.