Much has been said and written about Handel and Metastasio, and the composer’s supposed lack of interest in the librettos of the famous Roman poet. The fact is that Handel generally used adaptations of much older librettos which perhaps represented a bigger space of liberty for its work and conception of drama. Though Handel set to music only three librettos by Metastasio (Siroe, Poro and Ezio), we can hardly doubt he knew and recognised the qualities of their dramaturgy. Two of the three were successful and all of them gave him opportunity to write beautiful music.

Jephtha, first performed in 1752, was Handel’s last major work, written while he was struggling with poor health and failing eyesight. Yet the score contains some of his most powerful and moving music, notably the chorus’s bleak paean to blind faith, ‘How dark, O Lord, are Thy decrees!’ Jephtha is also one of his more operatic oratorios and, if many Baroque operas require the suspension of disbelief, this libretto (by Thomas Morell) may need modern listeners to suspend their distaste at the perversities of its 18th-century pietism. Handel’s wonderfully humane music cuts through all such sanctimony, however, as if – as the Handel scholar Winton Dean has argued – in highlighting the themes of personal suffering and capricious fate, Handel implicitly ‘makes Jehovah the villain of the piece’.

After an acclaimed disc of Johann Ludwig Bach, Hans-Christoph Rademann continues his fascinating exploration of the most famous musical dynasty. Born in 1735, the ‘London Bach’ was the youngest of Johann Sebastian’s sons. He seems to have remained in his father’s shadow until the age of 19, when he had the chance to travel to Italy, very likely to receive guidance from the celebrated Padre Martini, as his (future) friend Mozart was to do some years later. It was in Milan that he wrote the two works recorded here, including an incredible Requiem with a completely unexpected formal design; in matters of style, however, the 22-year-old composer had already laid the foundations of all his later output.

This recording presents two symphonies "on the theme of nature." Valid though this expression is, it nevertheless calls for quotation marks. Far from being a prefiguration of Beethoven's famous Pastoral, Justin Heinrich Knechts' Symphonie 'Portrait musical de la nature' represented a highly convincing attempt by it's composer to extricate himself from program music. It is exciting to hear these two works recorded together for the first time by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin directed by it's concertmaster, Bernhard Forck.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

Some Symphonies for the Prussian Court. What better proof than these Symphonies commissioned by the Crown Prince of Prussia to show how the Italian 'Boquerini' never lost contact with Europe, even when retired to the depths of the Spanish countryside. With their colourful instrumentation and some truly inspirational touches in the melody, these are some of the finest works in classical style.

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin returns to Pentatone together with soprano Christina Landshamer, presenting La Passione, a collection of dazzling concert arias on love, longing and loss by Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, paired with the latter’s “La Passione” Symphony. Ranging from pastoral simplicity to exuberant outrage, the programme offers some of the finest vocal writing around 1800, including some of Beethoven’s rare and little-known excursions to Italian bravura opera, as well as one of the most dramatic and expressive symphonies of the eighteenth-century.

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.

The narrative of Christ’s Passion as retold by Barthold Brockes (a dominant figure in early 18th-century German literature) is of such dramatic power that it was set to music by 13 different composers (including Handel, Keiser, and Mattheson)! Telemann’s version, premiered on 2 April 1716, became so famous that J. S. Bach, no immature youngster at the time, copied it out in full 23 years later . . . René Jacobs has striven to restore this quite extraordinary score to life in all its rich complexity.

After the pan-global success of her disc of Vivaldi arias, mezzo Cecilia Bartoli is clearly a woman on a mission to rescue the neglected operatic output of otherwise well-known composers. Of the eight arias by Gluck on this disc, six have never been recorded before–and it's likely that the operas they have been taken from will be unknown to all but the most obsessive buffs. Unfortunately, even Bartoli can't quite make a case for all the material here: it sometimes lapses into the excessive passage-work and routine arpeggios which are especially obvious in the first track.

Johann Sebastian Bach and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin go back a long way together. This recording, made with the welcome participation of Isabelle Faust and Antoine Tamestit, follows the complete violin concertos (2019), which left a lasting impression. Ever since a memorable first recording in the late 1990s, the Berlin musicians have returned regularly to the inexhaustible source of the Brandenburgs. They have achieved a sovereign mastery of what is not a single work, but six. In their hands, they become successive episodes of a piece of musical theater in love with dance, transparent sound and freedom.

This set presents an extensive collection of works which George Frideric Handel wrote during his short but astoundingly fruitful stay in Italy. Here he met the great composers of the day, imbuing the rich Italian style, full of drama, cantabile and instrumental brilliance.

The recording of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, conducted by René Jacobs, was one of the discographic highlights of the year at its 1997 release. Critics around the world praised the "sophisticated interpretation", the "splendid cast", the "expressiveness of the evangelist" as well as the "compelling acting performance of the singers".