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Once in while a recording comes along in which the performers, producers, and recording team get everything right. This is one of them. First issued in 1995, this production of Bach's Easter "oratorium" easily can claim supremacy among several very good alternatives. Largely cobbled from an earlier secular cantata for a duke's birthday, the music is some of Bach's most poignant while being alternately festive and meditative. There are no "roles" as we find in the Passions, no Evangelist-type recitatives, no chorales, and there's no real dramatic story line. Instead, we visit a particular scene--Peter, John, and the two Marys discover the empty tomb and contemplate its meaning. David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

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Tania León (born May 14, 1943 in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban composer and conductor who has been recognized as an educator and advisor to arts organizations. In 1998 she was awarded the New York Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She has received Honorary Doctorates from Colgate University and Oberlin College and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, NYSCA, Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, ASCAP and Koussevitzky Foundation, among others. In 1998 she held the Fromm Residency at the American Academy in Rome.

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The complete cycle of Beethoven’s nine Symphonies is a landmark event for Decca Classics, for Riccardo Chailly, and for the Gewandhaus Orchestra, where he has been Kapellmeister since 2005.

Giovanni Sgambati was born in Rome and he died there. Bald facts tell only part of the story. He was in fact no parochialist and briefly his music permeated European and American cultural life with celebrity premieres by no means unusual in the period 1880-1905. He was out of the ordinary as an Italian composer in not writing opera.

This 10 CD Limited Edition was released in preparation for René Jacobs’ 65th birthday on 30th October 2011 and features complete recordings for Sony Classical and DHM combined for the first time in a truly unique edition.

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Here is the earliest operatic masterpiece of Nicola Porpora (1686-1768), Neapolitan composer, who left an indelible mark on the 18th century and the careers of its greatest masters, from Hasse, Jommelli and Handel to Joseph Haydn, who was his pupil in Vienna. Against the backcloth of the old Carolingian epic, the valiant knight Roland is transformed into a lover before becoming 'Orlando furioso' in this encounter of three mythical figures: Ariosto, Metastasio and Porpora. We run the gamut from epic to tragedy in this vibrant, crackling performance under the inspired direction of Juan Bautista Otero. A major discovery!

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