Vittorio Ghielmi, one of today’s most admired viola da gamba soloists, comes from a family of musicians (his brother founded Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini). In parallel with his erudite and virtuoso readings of Marais or Graun, Vittorio Ghielmi is an artist who enjoys crossing borders. With his ensemble, Il Suonar Parlante, he seeks new musical languages and collaborates with leading figures of jazz (Uri Caine) and the masters of traditional music (Khaled Arman, Dhruba Ghosh).

At times quite sprightly, at other times ponderous not least in its treatment of dotting and though played with the professional efficiency one expects of the ECO, this recording fell short of medal-ranking when it was first issued. During the intervening 16 years even middle-of-the-road performances of the Music for the Royal Fireworks have become more attentive to scholarship and there are now several excellent recordings of the kind available (not to mention others on period instruments) on CD.

Händel’s La Resurrezione is an oratorio for Easter. It was first performed on Easter Sunday 1708 in Rome. The libretto was written by Carlo Sigismondo Capece. The events related in the story are those of the period between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, when Christ ‘descended into Hell’ to redeem the souls of the patriarchs and prophets who had prepared for His coming. The events in the underworld are set out in series of lively exchanges between an Angel and Lucifer. Meanwhile, the story as seen on earth is related through the conversations of three mortal characters, Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas and St John the Evangelist. The two planes of the drama are united when the Angel appears to the women at the sepulchre and announces the Resurrection to them.

Bach's St John Passon shows the composer's towering imagination at its most intensely dramatic, moving and vivid. Christ's trial and death are retold by soloists acting as participants in the event but also meditating upon it in reflective arias; the choir's role alters from rowdy mob baying for crucifixion to that of a congregation singing quiet, redemptive chorales. Criticised in its day for being too operatic, the work is now revered for its originality, for its faith and above all for its incomparable beauty of musical thought. The new reading is a testament to the vitality of the choral tradition: all soloists are former or current members of New College Choir. It also presents a new level of authenticity, not only with period instruments but also with boys's voices as Bach would have used at St Thomas in Leipzig.

For most people, Vivaldi completely associated with Venice, but during his lifetime his music was premiered in a variety of places. Six of his operas were performed in Prague at the Sporck Theatre. Of these, two were only ever performed in Prague, Argippo and Alvilda, regina de Goti, and this disc is a recording by Czech forces of the former. The libretto, by Domenico Lalli, had already been set by a variety of composers before Vivaldi used it for Prague in 1730. Unfortunately the score was lost and only the libretto survived. Then in 2006 Czech harpsichordist Ondrej Macek discovered around half the arias of the opera in the library of the counts of Thurn und Taxis.

The revival of that most original and fascinating Baroque composer Alessandro Stradella on Brilliant Classics continues with the issue of his substantial Oratorio La Susanna. The story is based on an apocryph bible book, and tells about the virtuous and beautiful Susanna who is wrongly accused of adultery, but is ultimately saved from her execution by the prophet Daniel. This juicy story inspired Stradella to composing dramatic and effectful arias and (instrumental) ensembles, full of burning emotions.

Kennedy, the violinist formerly known as Nigel Kennedy, has a well-earned reputation as the bad boy of classical music. His defiantly anti-Establishment antics anger traditionalists and tickle the rebellious. This venture into the Bach canon will confirm both camps in their views. Traditionalists will fume at such excesses as the exaggerated, ugly flourish at the end of the E Major Concerto and the supersonic speeds adopted for the Allegro movement of the two-violin Concerto among much else, including the puzzle-booklet more appropriate to a pop release. Kennedy's fans, though, will relish those elements of what is an ultimately fairly straightforward set of Bach interpretations enlivened by personal touches, a string sound that owes much to "authentic instrument" practices, and zippy speeds that make for exciting listening.

Marin Marais published his last collection in 1725, eight years after the appearance of his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole . He was no longer playing in the Chambre du Roi by that time and had moved to a house in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau where he cultivated plants and flowers in his garden. He continued, however, to give lessons to people who wanted to improve their viol playing. The Cinquième Livre de Pièces de Viole reflects this image of a peaceful life; today we regard it as the final testament of a musician who was looking back upon his past years as their undisputed master — and which he remains today.

Baroque dedicatory letters seek to fmatter the addressee, such as those sent to Duchess Sibylla of Württemberg. This custom was as necessary as it was natural. However, it is remarkable how much Philipp Friedrich Böddecker (*1607, Hagenau in Alsace; †1683, Stuttgart) emphasised the particular musical abilities of the dedicatee in the preface to his Sacra Partitura, published in Strasbourg in 1651.

World premiere recording of violin and cello sonatas by Albinoni, Bigaglia, Caldara, Gentili, and Reali. Scaramuccia Ensemble.

Notated on four staves, as though intended for some unspecified set of instruments (or even voices? or keyboard?), these thirteen erudite contrapuncti, four canons, and an unfinished triple fugue—incorporating the letters of Bach’s name—are often considered to be his musical testament. Shrouded in myths traceable to its very origins, The Art of Fugue is a puzzle for the performers and for the listeners alike, but when a brilliant string quartet takes up the challenge, a solution becomes obvious, and the music takes flight.

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.

First and foremost, Domenico Scarlatti is regarded as the greatest composer of binary harpsichord sonatas of all time, and that is as it should be: he wrote more than 600 of them and many are constantly recorded and played. However, early in his Italian career, Scarlatti developed a proven track record as a composer of sacred music, some of it under the watchful eye of his father, Alessandro Scarlatti, believed by many at the time as the top composer of the age. The fact most readily observed in regard to Domenico's sacred music is that his Stabat mater, composed in 1717 or 1718, was the work within that genre replaced in Rome by Giovanni Pergolesi's Stabat mater around 1735. The Scarlatti work was conceived in a different style to different strictures; while it has become the most recorded of Scarlatti's sacred works, it definitely suffers when paired with the Pergolesi owing to its immediacy and familiarity. On Coro's Iste Confessor, the Sixteen led by Harry Christophers widely opt for Scarlatti's own, other sacred music as filler to the "Stabat mater with results fairer to the composer and quite favorable to listeners.

This disc in the Avison Ensemble’s project to record the complete Corelli chamber music is devoted to his Op. 5 collection of violin sonatas – works that swept Europe by storm when they were first published in 1700. Recent recordings include Accademia Bizantina, Purcell Quartet, Trio Corelli, Trio Sonnerie, and a particularly charismatic version from Andrew Manze with harpsichordist Richard Egarr. One of the most immediate differences between these versions is their approach to the continuo, the Avison Ensemble favouring the varied timbres and textures of an ensemble (variously harpsichord or organ, archlute, Baroque guitar and cello) rather than solo harpsichord.

Elizabeth Watts is regarded as 'one of the finest British sopranos to have emerged in the last decade. Her reputation is steadily growing as she has performed s a recitalist, opera singer, and concert artist, she has already appeared at many of the world's leading musical centres and festivals, including the Royal Opera House, London, Wigmore Hall, Welsh National Opera, the BBC Proms, Santa Fe Opera, Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, and has engagements throughout Europe from Amsterdam to Zurich.