Collections of Baroque keyboard music are often focused on famous French and German composers, so there's comparatively little available on CD of English harpsichord music of the 18th century, aside from recordings of works by Henry Purcell and George Frederick Handel. Considering the rarity of its material, Sophie Yates' 2016 album on Chaconne, The Pleasures of the Imagination, holds a certain appeal because its selections haven't been dulled by excessive anthologizing. While some of the composers' names may ring a bell, such as John Blow, Jeremiah Clarke, Thomas Arne, and Johann Christian Bach (the "London Bach"), their contributions here will be unknown to most listeners, while William Croft, Maurice Greene, and Richard Jones are known only to specialists in the period.

British countertenor Iestyn Davies is one of the fastest rising stars on the concert and opera circuit. Following his highly acclaimed recording of Porpora cantatas, he returns for a second solo album with Hyperion, a selection of arias written for Gaetano Guadagni. Italian-born Guadagni was the first ‘modern’ castrato, famed all over Europe for the lyric purity of his voice and his powerful, naturalistic acting style. Not only did he enjoy a close artistic relationship with Handel, who nurtured Guadagni’s voice to fit the alto roles in his English oratorios, but he effectively created the role of Orpheus in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, an opera he thoroughly made his own. Here, Iestyn Davies is joined again by the renowned period-instrument band Arcangelo, directed by Jonathan Cohen.

La Tempestad se ha presentado al público en Festivales como los de Aranjuez, Cádiz, Sevilla, Marbella, Murcia, Santillana del Mar, Valladolid, Almería, Daroca, Zaragoza, etc. Sus miembros, formados en importantes conservatorios europeos (Toulouse, Viena, Amsterdam, La Haya), han formado parte de Al Ayre Español, La Real Cámara, El Concierto Español, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the XVIII Century, European Union Baroque Orchestra, La Stravaganza, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla, etc., con quienes han actuado por España, Europa, Israel y China.

John Beard, Francesco Borosini, Annibale Fabri: these three men helped to revolutionized music in the 18th century. Their voices moved the greatest composers of the time to increasingly write for tenors, a move from the Castrati, which had dominated opera since 1600. Now, three centuries since this trio’s brilliance encouraged a surge of new repertoire for the vocal range, world renowned tenor Ian Bostridge celebrates their legacy with his stunning new release, Three Baroque Tenors.

The Masque of Alfred - apart of course from its finale "Rule Britannia" - has in the 1990s reached CD. Just two years ago a version was issued with the BBC Music Magazine and now we have this more complete account (though there were several variants in Arne's own day) from Nicholas McGegan, an experienced exponent of 18th Century music, recorded in America and using mainly American performers. And very welcome is it. If offers 76 minutes of music, 25 minutes more than the BBC CD and if the OAE's playing on the latter under Nicholas Kraemer often seems rather superior, the Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra are fully equal to Arne's demands which include often atmospheric parts for oboes, horns and flute as well as the basic strings. McGegan uses only four solo singers against the BBC's six.

Thomas Arne, (who wrote “Rule Britannia”) is underplayed. Practically everything I’ve heard by him is of interest on multiple levels, either as an original voice utilizing the harmonic and melodic materials of the English baroque style, or as an innovator, at least to my ears, conjuring novel expressions within those materials, or simply as a good tunesmith.

Dr Thomas Arne was a real tunesmith, and this charming collection shows him at his best. Although Arne was heavily influenced by Handel (what Englishman of his generation could avoid this?) he was his own man, and no slavish plagiarist; something that needs to be said of an era, before binding copyrights, when even the great Handel could stoop to this level! It is known that Arne also admired the music of the Venetian Galuppi who visited London in the 1740s. The enchanting 'the Lover's Recantation', sung here beautifully by Emma Kirkby, will remind anyone familiar with Galuppi's comic operas of that composer's style.

Thomas Arne’s opera The Judgment of Paris (1742), a setting of William Congreve’s libretto of the same name, is known only from the printed score, but in this world premiere recording is performed with panache and authority by The Brook Street Band and a scintillating young cast led by sopranos Mary Bevan (Venus), Susanna Fairbairn (Pallas) and Gillian Ramm (Juno), with tenors Ed Lyon as the shepherd Paris and Anthony Gregory as Mercury, all under the expert direction of conductor John Andrews.

This disc casts her in music composed, for the most part, for one of the most celebrated English singers of that era, Cecilia Young, one of several talented singing sisters and for a time the wife of Thomas Arne—famed in her day for the "sweetness and simplicity" (Dibdin's words) of her singing and her character. The impersonation seems a convincing one, to judge by the result here, which is uniformly delightful.