The Concerto Copenhagen is Scandinavia’s most renowned Baroque ensemble and one of the most innovative such formations worldwide. Its trademarks are its unusual program combinations featuring Scandinavian rarities and famous Baroque masterpieces. This world-class orchestra now turns to Handel’s great Brockes-Passion in a CD recording based on the Halle edition of this composer’s works. The Passion text published by the well-to-do Hamburg resident Barthold Heinrich Brockes was a literary bestseller during the early eighteenth century.

Born to sing J. S. Bach, Anne Sofie von Otter brings elegant style, richness of voice, and career-long commitment to Baroque music to this glorious recording of alto and soprano arias she herself selected. Featuring beloved staples like the moving “Erbarme Dich” from the St. Matthew Passion and the “Agnus Dei” from the B minor Mass, this follow-up to her successful release of Music for a While includes lesser-known repertoire to entice the most jaded lover of voice, Baroque or Bach. Lars Ulrik Mortensen leads Concerto Copenhagen, the acclaimed Scandinavian Baroque ensemble, in instrumentations of fascinating variety unusual in Bach solo vocal albums

With the establishment of Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens in 1843, the Danish composer and conductor Hans Christian Lumbye (1810–1874) swiftly rose to fame as the city’s internationally acclaimed king of waltzes and galops, leading his orchestra from the violin. For this recording, Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Concerto Copenhagen – Scandinavia’s leading period instruments ensemble – studied Lumbye's original scores and used instruments from the era to recreate an authentic sound. This collection showcases Lumbye’s enchanting music, along with popular pieces by his idols, Lanner and Strauss I.

All credit to Lars Ulrik Mortensen and his collaborators in continuing their work to present neglected Danish symphonies of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Gerson’s overture will instantly fall into place for you if you know the un-named Schubert overtures and the first two symphonies. There are many familiar echoes and much choice writing for the woodwind. Gerson also owed fealty to the Mozart of the Marriage of Figaro overture, the Haffner symphony and the famous G minor symphony. It’s all very entertaining and easy to like.

Violinist and director Johann Ernst Hartmann is mainly known to posterity for his Danish Singspiel though he actually wrote far more instrumental music than songs. A disastrous fire in the Christianborg Palace in 1794 destroyed a large number of his manuscripts so it’s uncertain quite how many symphonies and other concerted music he did write – only one Symphony ever made it to publication, the First, which was published by Hummel in Amsterdam in 1770.

What the largely unknown name of Georg Muffat may lack in dissemination and reputation, he makes up for in incredible variety, virtuosic power, and influence, especially on the development of instrumental music. The treasure trove of Muffat, which comes to light in particular in his sonata collection Armonico tributo, is what the early music ensemble Concerto Copenhagen and its director Lars Ulrik Mortensen are taking to the discographic spearhead of their 30th anniversary in 2022.

Here is what is probably Handel’s most accomplished opera: the heir to L’incoronazione di Poppea with respect to the villainy of some of its characters, but also the Baroque ancestor of certain Romantic operas! Scrupulously based on historical characters, this work illustrates many different facets of the human soul, and also boasts perhaps the most sumptuous orchestral textures Handel ever conceived, magnificently brought out by Lars Ulrik Mortensen in this production from the Copenhagen Opera. Francisco Negrin’s transposition of the opera to the universe of modern war and Anthony Baker’s refined designs place Andreas Scholl (Giulio Cesare) and the other soloists in an unsettling, crepuscular atmosphere that is highly contemporary.

Concerto Copenhagen, the Danish National Baroque Orchestra, has developed into one of Scandinavia’s leading Baroque orchestras. The orchestra now turns to Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous Orchestral Suites. Although extensive research has been conducted for many years, it is not known when the suites were composed. Today everything indicates that the suites were written much earlier than is assumed and then merely had to be adapted to Bach’s new Leipzig circumstances. It is therefore not unusual for them to be performed – as on this recording – without timpani and trumpets. Although the especially popular third suite is a ceremonious, sumptuous work, the material contributed by the wind instruments is hardly of considerable significance. The suite enjoys a top ranking on the charts of Bach’s most attractive and best-loved works.

This is a very welcome reissue from 1994. Leipzig-born Johann Adolph Scheibe (1708-1776) became the most important and renowned composer in Denmark after settling there in 1740. Though recognized as an astute music theorist and critic, most of Scheibe’s extraordinarily prolific oeuvre remains lost today; and it’s a shame because if these often engaging Sinfonias are even remotely representative, he also was an inspired, innovative, and highly accomplished composer.

Many Baroque music afficionados may remember Scheibe as the author of an infamously vicious diatribe against the music of J. S. Bach ( e.g.: "If only his writing were not so turgid, so convoluted!"). Scheibe's own talents, though obviously nowhere near as stellar as his target, are nonetheless considerable. The two flute concerti on this wonderful recording are seductively and sensitively rendered by artists Maria Bania and Irene Spranger. The musical lines of the inner slow movements are gorgeous and the outer movements are captivatingly playful.

The three cello concertos on this disc illustrate that fertile period in the second half of the 18th century when features of the Baroque were gradually replaced by the so-called galant style. Foremost amongst the composers inaugurating this change was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach whose Concerto in A major is a perfect example of the passionate and dramatic range that marked him out as a pivotal figure of his time. Haydn’s Concerto in C major modulates between older and newer styles, whereas his Concerto in D major is a Classical masterpiece, and a worthy companion to his greatest symphonies.

These five solo concertos from the Swedish Rococo are all typical of the period. The most interesting aspect is how they manifest variations of the European model. And the model is the concerto for one or, sometimes, several soloistic instruments in three movement followed by a slower, lyrical one and a fast final movement.

Christmas celebrations are thought to go all the way back to the formidable feasting of the Vikings at midwinter, when in true Nordic fashion yuletide was toasted in. The celebration of the birth in Bethlehem is more subdued and spiritual, but it is of a far more recent date. We do not know if the Vikings celebrated yuletide with music, but music at Christmas has been a popular tradition since the Middle Ages. Today, practically all peoples around the world celebrate midwinter with special religious and cultural rituals; the precise times vary, but gifts, decorations, festivities, candles, bells and special Christmas music are apparently always part of this. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Christmas was the busiest time of the year for church composers.

The music from the Baltic region in the latter half of the 17th century is characterized by fearless innovation and bubbling creativity. Here, a glimpse into the sacred solo-cantata and chamber music of this period is presented by bass-baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Concerto Copenhagen under the direction of Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

A major contribution to the Handel Year: countertenor star Andreas Scholl returns to the Decca label in a new high definition film of Handels comedy Partenope, presented in Francisco Negrins stylish with a modern-dress staging from the Royal Danish Opera. Scholl gives an outstanding performance, with several contrasting arias that collectively display his unique purity of tone, his virtuosic technique and his sensuous lyricism. Concerto Copenhagen and conductor Lars Ulrik Mortensen are unsung heroes of period-instrument performance, and they make a wonderfully spirited and polished contribution to the production.