This 25CD set presents the most famous, iconic and best-loved works from the Baroque Era, works which are part of our common musical heritage and conscience, eternally young and cherished for their charm, beauty and deeply human emotions, shared by audiences all over the world.
Played by specialized Early Music Groups like L’Arte Dell’arco, Musica Amphion, Violini Capricciosi, Musica ad Rhenum and many others.

Conductor Diego Fasolis and his Coro della Radio Svizzera always can be counted on for a very good show, and this one, featuring two well-known if not necessarily top-drawer Handel works, is no exception. The early Dixit Dominus, with its Vivaldian "De torrente in via" movement and other Italian stylistic elements, is appropriately lively and crisply articulated in the fast sections and fully indulgent of the slow passages, allowing us to hear in gorgeous detail the promising signs of Handel's germinating genius.

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding.

The young Russian soprano makes her solo debut on Decca with cantatas by Handel, Mozart, Porpora and Vivaldi which showcase her scintillating coloratura, tonal clarity and warmth, and radiant middle register; Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini accompany with panache.

Rodelinda was the first of Handel's operas to be revived in modern times (at Gottingen, in 1920) and the first to be performed in the USA (at Smith College, Northampton. Massachusetts, in 1931), and this summer it adds to its laurels the distinction of being the first Handel opera (as opposed to oratorio) to be staged at Glyndebourne. Composed just after Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano, it must, I think, rank in many people's top half-dozen of the Handel operas, with its complex plot of dynastic intrigue revolving around the powerful, steadfast love of Bertarido (the ousted king of Milan) and his queen Rodelinda: just the kind that unfailingly drew strong music from Handel.

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.

'L'Allegro il penseroso ed il moderato' brings together Sir David Willcocks, some fluent chamber players and the illustrious tenor Peter Pears - not the most orthodox of Handel interpreters in an era of so-called authentic performance, but here appropriately sonorous. The greater feast, however, is the 'Ode for St Cecelia', whose spiritual patronage of the sonic arts first really took off in the seventeenth century and has not looked back since. April Cantelo and Choir of King's College Cambridge offer an inspired and inspiring account of a rich, celebratory and gorgeously double-rhythmed delight.

Conductor Ferdinand Leitner (1912-96), learning his trade from masters like Walter, Busch, Richter and Karl Muck (as rehearsal pianist at Bayreuth), gained the experience that lead to his being dubbed the "singers' conductor" by all who worked with him during a long and lustrous career marked by his tenure as Zurich Opera music director (1969-84) and some 300 commercial recordings. The 1970s-80s Bayreuth stalwart, bass-baritone Franz Mazura as Tamerlano and famed American lyric soprano Helen Donath as Asteria headline this 1966 Leitner-led performance of Handel’s Tamerlano.

London-based early music group L'Avventura announces the launch of their debut CD, a unique collection of previously unrecorded music by Handel. Fighting the deluge of re-recordings and re-issued CDs in this Handel anniversary year, Opella Nova Records is pleased to present a new group with a completely different take on the venerated composer. The playful, eminently-listenable Handel in the Playhouse is the debut album of new early music ensemble L'Avventura London, directed by Zak Ozmo, and is based on new musicological research. Consisting mainly of previously unheard English playhouse music composed by Handel, the recording is perfectly timed to coincide with the anniversary of the composer's death.

Das renommierte Berliner Barockensemble Lautten Compagney feiert 2009 sein 25-jähriges Bestehen. Mit seinem neuesten Programm "Handel With Care" feiert es aber vor allem den großen Komponisten Georg Friedrich Händel anlässlich dessen 250. Todesjahres. Viele Melodien aus Händels Arien und Chören waren bereits zu Lebzeiten des Komponisten regelrechte Schlager. Wolfgang Katschner, der 2004 mit dem Händelpreis ausgezeichnet wurde und seine Lautten Compagney haben unter dem Motto "Instrumente singen" für "Handel With Care" ihre Lieblingsarien aus Opern und Oratorien wie "Rinaldo", "Tamerlano", "Samson" u.v.a. für Soloinstrumente und wechselnde Instrumentalbesetzung neu arrangiert.

Marriner's set remains fully competitive for musical scholarship and, what is even more to the point, for musical expressiveness and spontaneity … the Academy was in peak form when this recording was made and the sound is very well balanced and vivid.

Israel in Babylon is a pasticcio compiled by Edward Toms in 1764, with pre-existing instrumental works by Handel transformed into arias. The performance is fantastic, with thrilling choral work from the Kantorei Saarlouis, expert solo singing Julia Gooding, Jonathan Peter Kenney and Joseph Cornwell, and spirited playing from the Ensemble UnaVolta under Joachim Fontaine.

Admired for her remarkable creative imagination and exemplary musicianship, soprano Patricia Petibon, in her newest album for Deutsche Grammophon, offers a treasure-trove of fascinating Baroque curiosities guaranteed to enthral both the Baroque aficionado and the casual listener.

Edinburgh University’s Russell Collection is one of the world’s finest collections of early keyboard instruments. The second volume in John Kitchen’s ongoing project to bring its musical exhibits to life matches music by Handel, Purcell, the Scottish composer Robert Bremner and others including Mozart’s son Franz Xaver with a gloriously vigorous menagerie of spinets, virginals, chamber organs, clavichord and harpsichords.

This disc is intended to introduce a collection of keyboard instruments in Edinburgh, Scotland, but actually it accomplishes much more. The instruments featured here were built all over Europe, with the majority from the British Isles or France. They date from between 1586 and 1810, with the first example being an Italian virginal and the final one a fortepiano. Along the way come harpsichords of various kinds, a clavichord, and a small organ. Brief but relevant and engaging histories are given for each instrument.