{"title":"harmonia mundi","description":"\u003cp\u003eFounded in 1958, harmonia mundi is today the oldest independent classical record label in existence. After a series of recordings of organ music, Bernard Coutaz, the founder, offered a contract of collaboration to Alfred Deller, who remained faithful to his record company until his death in 1979. Nowadays harmonia mundi is proud of a vast catalogue that covers all repertories, from early music to the music of the twenty-first century, and of the exceptional loyalty of its musicians, such as René Jacobs, who, after more than thirty-five years working with the label, still records for it alongside musicians of the younger generation. Such constancy and fidelity have earned harmonia mundi a unique place in the world of sound recording.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"hmu907326-american-angels","title":"American Angels","description":"\u003cp\u003eAmerican Angels is the diary of our journey to the roots of Anglo- American spiritual vocal music. It includes songs of redemption and glory spanning the years from the American Revolution to the present day: eighteenth-century psalm settings and fuging tunes from rural New England, nineteenth-century folk hymns and camp revival songs from the rural South, and gospel songs originating in Northeastern cities and adopted in the late nineteenth century by rural Southerners. Each of these musical styles has played its own part in an interweaving of oral and written traditions, in which favorite older tunes have survived and flourished from one generation to the next. We love the fact that these tunes have been treasured by so many others before us. They have been printed again and again in the tunebooks, and imprinted on the memories of generation after generation of singers, who continue to sing them at singing conventions, in worship services, and in many other settings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe story of the rural American sacred music featured in American Angels opens with the attempts of certain eighteenth-century colonists to “improve” upon the lining out of psalms. In this practice—the main musical worship practice in the Colonies at the time— a deacon read out a line of text, the congregation responded by singing it, the deacon read out another line of text, and so on. How did those in favor of replacing the “old way of singing” with “regular singing” accomplish their goal? With the introduction of the singing school, where students practiced singing the octave scale with European solmization syllables, ??fa-sol-la-fa-sol-la-mi-fa, and learned to sing music composed in three and four parts. The singing school acted as a primary means of teaching and disseminating music in New England during the eighteenth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe musical settings of psalms and hymns taught in the earliest singing schools and published in the first colonial American tunebooks were imported from England. But by the late eighteenth century, New England tunesmiths—singing school masters who had themselves attended the singing schools—had started to make their own contributions. Many of them compiled their own tunebooks, which they sold to singing school students in each town they visited. They were at first greatly influenced by the English composers of their day, but soon the sound of their compositions began to reflect their rural American origins. Most frequently taking their texts from the English poet Isaac Watts, the New Englanders wrote pieces intended both for worship and for artistic expression. They favored among other styles four-part homophonic settings of psalms, such as Poland and Amanda, and fuging tunes featuring both homophonic and imitative sections, such as Blooming Vale. In both forms, the tenor line holds the tune, but the other three voices carry equally strong, independent, melodies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738602189124,"sku":"HMU907326-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738602221892,"sku":"HMU907326-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738602254660,"sku":"HMU907326-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738602287428,"sku":"HMU907326-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738602320196,"sku":"HMU907326-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307961229636,"sku":"HMU907326-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519103812,"sku":"HMU907326S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519136580,"sku":"HMU907326S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519169348,"sku":"HMU907326S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907326-1.jpg?v=1790121639"},{"product_id":"hmu907332-concertos-for-the-emperor-pure-dsd","title":"Concertos for the Emperor [Pure DSD]","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn September 1728, the Habsburg ruler Charles VI, Archduke of Austria, King of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia and Spain, Holy Roman Emperor etc etc, travelled to the Duchy of Carniola in order to inspect the port of Trieste. Antonio Vivaldi made the eighty-mile journey northeast of Venice to attend on him. It is not known whether the two men had met before, although the previous year Vivaldi had dedicated his twelve concertos Op.9, entitled La cetra (The Lyre), to Charles, suggesting they probably had met or at least corresponded. This encounter seems to have been the highlight of an otherwise disappointing trip for the Emperor, judging by two letters which survive from a Venetian Abbe?, Antonio Conti, to a French lady, Mme de Caylus. On 23 September Conti wrote, ‘the Emperor is not too happy with his Trieste. . . . He has spent a lot of time discussing music with Vivaldi. It is said that he has spoken with him more in two weeks than he has with his own ministers in two years. . . . His appetite for music is very strong.’ And in another letter Conti wrote, ‘the Emperor has given Vivaldi a large amount of money together with a chain and gold medallion.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCash and baubles were no doubt welcome to Vivaldi but probably not the reward he was hoping for: to become one of Charles’s court composers. Of all the arts, the Emperor favoured music in particular. Like his grandfather, Ferdinand III, and father, Leopold I, Charles was an able composer, mainly of church music, and a generous patron. He funded the publication of Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), one of the most influential works of western music theory by his composition teacher and Kapellmeister, Johann Joseph Fux, and he was skilled enough as a performer to direct performances of operas by Fux and the vice Kapellmeister Antonio Caldara. Charles maintained the Habsburg tradition of employing Italian artists at court, and Venetians in particular. As well as Caldara, Marc Antonio Ziani, Fux’s predecessor as Kapell- meister, was from Venice, as were Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, who painted altarpieces for the Emperor’s new Karlskirche, and the court poets Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Metastasio. Vivaldi no doubt had high hopes that he might join his countrymen in Vienna, perhaps with a dual role as player and composer, such as that of Francesco Bartolomeo Conti. Conti, no relation to the letter writer above, was for many years the principal theorbo player as well as court composer. Holding two posts meant receiving two stipends, which raised Conti’s income higher than that of Fux himself. It was not to be, however. Perhaps Vivaldi’s compositional style was too modern for the Emperor’s—or Fux’s—conservative tastes. When a new court composer was appointed a few years later, Matteo Palotta was chosen, a master of the stile antico. This was the ‘old style’ of Palestrina, ‘the brightest light in Music, whose memory I shall never cease to honour with the greatest reverence’ (Fux, Gradus).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738604122436,"sku":"HMU907332-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738604155204,"sku":"HMU907332-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738604187972,"sku":"HMU907332-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738604220740,"sku":"HMU907332-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738604253508,"sku":"HMU907332-15","price":25.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738604286276,"sku":"HMU907332-16","price":29.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738604319044,"sku":"HMU907332-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738604351812,"sku":"HMU907332-18","price":25.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738604384580,"sku":"HMU907332-19","price":27.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 512 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738604417348,"sku":"HMU907332-21","price":35.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307963392324,"sku":"HMU907332-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519267652,"sku":"HMU907332S1417","price":31.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519300420,"sku":"HMU907332S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519333188,"sku":"HMU907332S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519365956,"sku":"HMU907332S1517","price":34.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519398724,"sku":"HMU907332S1617","price":38.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907332-1.jpg?v=1790121681"},{"product_id":"907401di-arvo-part-da-pacem","title":"Arvo Pärt -  Da pacem","description":"\u003cp\u003eNine sacred pieces by Arvo Pärt including of his newest compositions, alongside works from earlier in his career. Pärt's longtime collaborator and biographer Paul Hillier leads the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and organist Christopher Browers-Broadbent in a third recording devoted to the Estonian composer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738604745028,"sku":"907401DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738604777796,"sku":"907401DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738604810564,"sku":"907401DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738604843332,"sku":"907401DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738604876100,"sku":"907401DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307966865732,"sku":"907401DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519759172,"sku":"907401DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519791940,"sku":"907401DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334519824708,"sku":"907401DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/907401DI-1.jpg?v=1790121724"},{"product_id":"907415di-handel-concerti-grossi-op-3-sonata-a-5","title":"Handel Concerti grossi Op. 3, Sonata a 5","description":"\u003cp\u003eAnyone performing handel’s Concertos Op. 3 has to tackle a basic problem – the musical text. the edition published by John Walsh in 1734 is by no means perfect, and is regarded with musicological head-scratching. there are no complete autograph manuscripts to help show us the way with these works. today Walsh is generally held in low esteem, criticised for shoddy editions, and equally shoddy business practices. I believe there is more value and trust in these texts, and in the man, than is usually given credit.\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps with a fresh look at the hugely important set of relationships in handel’s London life – those with the various publishers of his scores – we can unearth something more musically positive. By far the most crucial and interesting collaboration for us is that which handel formed with the firm of John Walsh, and which spanned handel’s entire time in England. the story of the Walshes and the early English publications of handel is essential to gain some understanding of the worrisome text of Op. 3.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHandel and the Walsh Publishing Dynasty\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 3 documents that preface these notes show the bare- faced, public facts behind a perhaps much more juicy, private story of the relationship between handel and two generations of the music publishers both named John Walsh. It is a curious fact that although handel and the Walshes collaborated for nearly 5 decades, not one letter between them appears to have survived. the untold story then, particularly for the interesting years just before handel’s Royal Privilege ran out in 1734, can only be fantasized about. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738604974404,"sku":"907415DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738605007172,"sku":"907415DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738605039940,"sku":"907415DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738605072708,"sku":"907415DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738605105476,"sku":"907415DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307967488324,"sku":"907415DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520054084,"sku":"907415DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520086852,"sku":"907415DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520119620,"sku":"907415DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/907415DI-1.jpg?v=1790121766"},{"product_id":"hmu907427-schubert-string-quintet","title":"Schubert String Quintet","description":"\u003cp\u003eFOLLOWING a flurry of activity as a composer of string quartets at the tender age of sixteen, Schubert wrote only three further quartets during his period of apprenticeship – one in each of the three succeeding years. Looking back on his early efforts in the summer of 1824, just a few months after he had completed his Death and the Maiden Quartet D.810, he seems to have had scant regard for them. Responding to a letter from his elder brother Ferdinand, who described his pleasure at rediscovering those youthful pieces, Schubert told him, ‘it would be better for you to keep to quartets other than mine, for there is nothing to them, except perhaps that you like them, as you like everything of mine’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSchubert had made a brief return to string quartet writing at the end of 1820, in a manner that showed his ambition to produce a work more intense and dramatic than anything he had attempted in the genre before. But just as his first serious efforts to master the piano sonata some three years earlier had resulted in several aborted projects, so, too, the string quartet of 1820 was destined to remain unfinished. Over the string quartet, as over the piano sonata, loomed the giant figure of Beethoven (‘Who can do anything after Beethoven?’,2 Schubert once complained to his friend Josef von Spaun); and perhaps it was unwise of Schubert to have chosen to make his return to the quartet arena with a piece in C minor – the key Beethoven had made so much his own. In terms of its actual material the one portion of the work Schubert did manage to complete – the so-called Quarttetsatz, or ‘Quartet Movement’, D.703 – is of the highest quality, though it is possible that he remained dissatisfied with its unorthodox form. At any rate, he abandoned the score after having composed no more than forty bars of its slow movement. The opening Allegro was published for the first time in 1870, more than forty years after Schubert’s death, while the fragmentary slow movement did not appear in print until 1897, when it was issued in the value to that of the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738605891908,"sku":"HMU907427-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738605924676,"sku":"HMU907427-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738605957444,"sku":"HMU907427-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738605990212,"sku":"HMU907427-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738606022980,"sku":"HMU907427-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307968373060,"sku":"HMU907427-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520348996,"sku":"HMU907427S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520381764,"sku":"HMU907427S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520414532,"sku":"HMU907427S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907427-1.jpg?v=1790121802"},{"product_id":"hmu907441-gershwin","title":"Gershwin","description":"\u003cp\u003eGershwin’s music really is hard to label. With a creative range that won him successes both on Broadway and in Carnegie Hall, it could scarcely be otherwise for this pioneer “crossover” artist. But why try to pigeonhole such brilliance? Better simply to enjoy it’ His parents, Moshe Gershovitz and Rose Bruskin, emigrated separately from Russia to America in the 1890s.They married in 1895 and settled in New York’s tough Lower East Side neighborhood. They had four children: sons Ira, George and Arthur, and a daughter, Frances. Father ran a Turkish bath. Ira dabbled in writing song lyrics while helping out with the customers, sowing the seeds of his long, marvellous partnership with his kid-brother composer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGeorge was a vigorous, active child, playing street hockey and roller-skating through the area. He had little interest in schooling. There was hardly any music in the household until a piano arrived in 1910. Intended primarily for Ira, it was George who was drawn to it most strongly. If it hadn’t appealed to him, he might have followed many of his friends’ paths and become a gangster.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of his piano teachers gave him Chopin, Liszt and Debussy to play, inspiring an early ambition to become a concert pianist. But the family’s need for money led him to drop out of high school at 15. He got a job as a song ‘plugger’ in the retail department of Jerome H. Remick \u0026amp; Co., one of several major popular music publishers located in Tin Pan Alley. His job was to sell their songs by playing and singing them for performers. That was how he met and befriended Fred Astaire, destined to be one of his greatest interpreters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe gradually broke into the pop song market he had come to know so well from the inside. The first of his songs to see print appeared in 1916. It bore the memorable title When You Want ’Em, You Can’t Get ’Em, When You’ve Got ’Em, You Don’t Want ’Em. He had to start somewhere! By the early ’20s, he was earning a healthy income from his own material. For several years he had also been taking private instruction in classical techniques. Sooner or later these two streams were bound to merge. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe premiere of Rhapsody in Blue took place as planned on February 12, 1924, in New York’s Aeolian Hall. Gershwin himself played the solo part. It came at the end of a long, varied program, but it was still received with overwhelming enthusiasm. This irresistible blend of ’20s jazz and daredevil classical virtuosity remains one of the most beloved and frequently performed of all American compositions. Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, was in the audience when Gershwin’s rhapsody made its debut. Impressed by its unprecedented amalgamation of popular and classical styles, he commissioned Gershwin to compose a full-scale piano concerto. “Many persons had thought that my rhapsody was only a happy accident,” Gershwin wrote. “Well I went out, for one thing, to show them that there was plenty more where that came from. I made up my mind to do a piece of ‘absolute’ music. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738606940484,"sku":"HMU907441-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738606973252,"sku":"HMU907441-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738607006020,"sku":"HMU907441-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738607038788,"sku":"HMU907441-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738607071556,"sku":"HMU907441-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307971289412,"sku":"HMU907441-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520709444,"sku":"HMU907441S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520742212,"sku":"HMU907441S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334520774980,"sku":"HMU907441S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/Gershwin-Cover-No-Logo.jpg?v=1790438524"},{"product_id":"hmu907461-62-bach-brandenburg-concertos","title":"Bach -  Brandenburg Concertos","description":"\u003cp\u003eBach’s Brandenburg Concertos, like his ‘goldberg’ Variations, have become one of the most famous and popular collections of instrumental music. they are perhaps rivalled only by the first third of Vivaldi’s op.8, The Four Seasons. At the date of writing these notes, having entered ‘Bach Brandenburg concertos’ into a particular e-store’s search engine,?I was offered 463 ‘hits’. over the last fifty years, (since thurston dart’s 1954 recording, and Harnoncourt’s ‘first’ 1964 period- instrument recording) the desire to present the Brandenburgs in a newer, better and more historically ‘correct’ manner has increased rapidly. Brandenburg fever inspires great passion. And why not? these six concertos represent one of the glories of the instrumental repertoire. \u003cbr\u003eEach ‘new’ version seems to require justification, particularly those on period instruments. too much ink has been spilled because of this, and more and more heated (and sometimes irrelevant) debate over historical and instrumentation issues ensues. the Brandenburg story should be very familiar to the Reader.1 these concertos were presented in a fair-copy full score, dated 24 march 1721, to the margrave of Brandenburg. Using this simple fact as a point of discussion, here is a small sample of the debate:- the manuscript is presumed to have been a gift to stimulate Bach’s advancement with the margrave. there is no acknowledgement of receipt or thanks whatsoever from the margrave. the ‘job application’ seems thus to have failed. the manuscript remained in the margrave’s library, unloved and unplayed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738607923524,"sku":"HMU907461_62-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738607956292,"sku":"HMU907461_62-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738607989060,"sku":"HMU907461_62-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738608021828,"sku":"HMU907461_62-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738608054596,"sku":"HMU907461_62-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307972469060,"sku":"HMU907461_62-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334521463108,"sku":"HMU907461_62S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334521495876,"sku":"HMU907461_62S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334521528644,"sku":"HMU907461_62S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907461_62.jpg?v=1790121889"},{"product_id":"hmu907470-beethoven-symphony-no-3-eroica","title":"Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 - Eroica","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThe music presented here charts two careers, of a simple musical idea, from acorn to oak, and of its creator, from obscurity to daylight. First heard as the modest seventh of twelve ‘contredances’ (WoO 14), Beethoven set this gem of a melody in more resplendent surroundings in the finale of his first large-scale success in Vienna, the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, Op.43 (1800-1). The following year, he used the theme and its bass line as the subject of Fifteen Variations and a Fugue for fortepiano, Op.35, now known as the ‘Eroica Variations’, before immortalizing them in the finale of his Third Symphony, arguably the greatest and most important symphony ever written. This progress neatly reflects the development of Beethoven’s career. In the late 1790s, the Viennese public danced to his music without caring or probably even knowing who the composer was. With Prometheus Beethoven stood in the half-light of the theatre’s wings, his name overshadowed by the star billing of the ballet’s choreographer and principal dancer, Salvatore Viganò. In the audience at the Burgtheater was Beethoven’s former mentor, Haydn, who two years previously had enjoyed a triumph with his Creation at the same venue. Their conversation afterwards went something\u003cbr\u003elike this:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eH.: It’s good.\u003cbr\u003eB.: But it’s no Creation. H.: \u003cbr\u003eNo, it’s not.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow Beethoven must have been tempted to knock the old man’s wig off! The following year was one of crisis for Beethoven, faced with inevitable deafness and plagued by the black dog. The so-called ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’ of 6 October, 1802, shows him contemplating suicide. This letter, addressed to his brothers but never sent and discovered posthumously, describes the moment Beethoven choose heroism over cowardice – ‘The only thing that held me back was my art.’ Soon he was talking of a new way: ‘I am not happy with my works so far. Henceforth I shall take a new path.’ It was with Eroica, composed during 1803-4, first performed privately in 1804 and publicly on 7 April, 1805, at the Theater an der Wien, that he presented his fully-formed genius and its immortal creation to the public’s – and posterity’s – gaze.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738608316740,"sku":"HMU907470-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738608349508,"sku":"HMU907470-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738608382276,"sku":"HMU907470-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738608415044,"sku":"HMU907470-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738608447812,"sku":"HMU907470-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307972600132,"sku":"HMU907470-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334521954628,"sku":"HMU907470S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334521987396,"sku":"HMU907470S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522020164,"sku":"HMU907470S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907470.jpg?v=1790121931"},{"product_id":"hmu907480-requiem-op9-quatre-motets","title":"Requiem Op.9, Quatre Motets","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIn all his liturgical music, Duruflé’s profound religious faith is evident, most notably in the celebrated Requiem, op.9, completed in 1947. Originally scored for soloists, chorus, orchestra and organ, the work was transcribed for chorus and solo organ in 1948. The third version, for small orchestra, dates from 1961. Its first performance, on November 2, 1947, at Paris’s Salle Gaveau, was led by Roger Désormière, with the French Radio Choir, under the direction of Yvonne Gouverné, and soloists Hélène Bouvier and Camille Maurane.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e Duruflé’s initial idea had been to compose a suite of organ pieces, each based on plainchant taken from the Mass for the Dead. Realizing his reluctance to detach the Latin text from the instrumental themes he had sketched, Duruflé transformed his design into a larger-scale work which became the Requiem. The text comprises nine of the sections forming the Mass for the Dead: Introit, Kyrie, Domine Jesu Christe, Sanctus, Pie Jesu, Agnus Dei, Lux Aeterna, Libera me, ending with the In Paradisum – the ultimate answer with which Faith allays all doubts: a depiction of the soul entering Paradise. To quote the composer:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e ‘The Requiem is entirely based on the Gregorian chant used in the Mass for the Dead. At times, the chant is incorporated unaltered and the orchestra intervenes only to accompany or to comment. At other times, it was from the Latin text alone that I took my inspiration, namely in the Domine Jesu Christe, Sanctus and Libera me. Throughout, I wished to be guided by the special shape of Gregorian melodies. As for the compositional form of each of the movements, it was suggested by the structure of the liturgy.... The organ is often used to give special emphasis to a line; it also represents a certain waning of Faith and Hope. The work is not meant as an ethereal paean to detachment from earthly cares; in its immutable form of a Christian prayer, the Requiem reflects man’s anguish as he contemplates the ultimate mystery of life and death. The music is at times dramatic or filled with a sense of resignation, hope or fear, mirroring the words of the Scriptures which form the liturgy. It aims to express the sentiments of a human being facing his or her terrifying, unfathomable or comforting fate.’\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738608578884,"sku":"HMU907480-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738608611652,"sku":"HMU907480-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738608644420,"sku":"HMU907480-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738608677188,"sku":"HMU907480-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738608709956,"sku":"HMU907480-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":57307973058884,"sku":"HMU907480-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522216772,"sku":"HMU907480S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522249540,"sku":"HMU907480S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522282308,"sku":"HMU907480S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907480.jpg?v=1790121973"},{"product_id":"hmu907496-lang-the-little-match-girl-passion","title":"Lang: the little match girl passion","description":"\u003cp\u003eA particular story, in fact: the story of The Little Match Girl, by the danish author Hans christian Andersen. the original is ostensibly for children, and it has that shocking combination of danger and morality that many famous children’s stories do. A poor young girl, whose father beats her, tries unsuccessfully to sell matches on the street, is ignored, and freezes to death. through it all she somehow retains her christian purity of spirit, but it is not a pretty story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ewhat drew me to The Little Match Girl is that the strength of the story lies not in its plot but in the fact that all its parts – the horror and the beauty – are constantly suffused with their opposites. the girl’s bitter present is locked together with the sweetness of her past memories, her poverty is always suffused with her hopefulness. there is a kind of naive equilibrium between suffering and hope.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ethere are many ways to tell this story. one could convincingly tell it as a story about faith, or as an allegory about poverty. what has always interested me, however, is that Andersen tells this story as a kind of parable, drawing a religious and moral equivalency between the suffering of the poor girl and the suffering of Jesus. the girl suffers, is scorned by the crowd, dies and is transfigured. I started wondering what secrets could be unlocked from this story if one took its christian nature to its conclusion and unfolded it, as christian composers have traditionally done in musical settings of the Passion of Jesus. (excepts David Lang)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738608972100,"sku":"HMU907496-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609004868,"sku":"HMU907496-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609037636,"sku":"HMU907496-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738609070404,"sku":"HMU907496-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609103172,"sku":"HMU907496-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307975287108,"sku":"HMU907496-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522478916,"sku":"HMU907496S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522511684,"sku":"HMU907496S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522544452,"sku":"HMU907496S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907496.jpg?v=1790122013"},{"product_id":"hmu907518-requiem","title":"Requiem","description":"\u003cp\u003eConspirare has many strengths, both technical and artistic, but to these earsamong its greatest is the ability to make music speak to the soul powerfully and persuasively. The music on this disc, then, finds a special advocate in Conspirare. These works address death and dying, love and loss, and remembrance. The musical language in them ranges from the simple harmonic clarity of an early American hymn tune to dissonant tone clusters. These artists find beauty in each sonority and constrain those sonorities to serve the rich texts that they set.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738609299780,"sku":"HMU907518-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609332548,"sku":"HMU907518-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609365316,"sku":"HMU907518-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738609398084,"sku":"HMU907518-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609430852,"sku":"HMU907518-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307976958276,"sku":"HMU907518-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522904900,"sku":"HMU907518S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522937668,"sku":"HMU907518S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334522970436,"sku":"HMU907518S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907518.jpg?v=1790122056"},{"product_id":"hmu907524-marie-et-marion","title":"Marie et Marion","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen we were developing our first medieval French motet program, Love’s Illusion, from the Montpellier Codex (c. 1300), we decided to use only motets on the topic of fin amours, or “courtly love.” But there were two exceptions in the program, one of which was the loveliest of the handful of 4-voice motets in the Codex, Plus bele que flor \/ Quant revient et fuelle \/ L’autrier joer \/ FLOS [FILIUS EIUS] (Mo 21). In this motet, three different fin amours texts are declaimed simultaneously by the upper three voices over a wordless tenor. The highest of these voice parts, the quadruplum, begins like any typical courtly love motet lyric, praising the beauty and goodness of the lady-love. But, while the other two texted voice parts sing of secular love, the quadruplum lyric concludes with a “surprise ending,” in which the object of the singer’s love and desire is revealed as the Virgin Mary. Inspired by this motet, we have had in mind another Montpellier Codex program that explores the juxtaposition of courtly\/pastoral love themes with ardor and praise for Mary, the Lady with no equal.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe trouve?re chanson and the French motet repertories of the 13th- century are closely intertwined, both in terms of their poetry and their melodies. In both are found high-art lyrics of love and longing as well as more playful, sometimes naughty pastourelles which deal with the stock characters of the countryside: shepherds, shepherdesses and other non- noble personages. They go by many names, but the most common are Robin (for the man) and Marion\/Marot\/Marotele (for the woman). In Marie et Marion we present the common and contrasting themes of love and desire, in motet and song, for the earthly (and earthy) Marion, and the heavenly Marie, both of whom inhabit, comfortably side by side, the music and poetry of this age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Montpellier Codex, from which we draw all the motets in this program, was collected in Paris around the year 1300, and is the richest single source of 13th-century French polyphony. With a repertory spanning the entire 13th century, it contains polyphonic works in all\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ethe major forms of its era – organum, conductus, hocket and, primarily, motet (315 motets in all). In the tracklist we have included the Mo numbers by which scholars normally refer to these motets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe French double motet, by far the most popular type of motet in the 13th century, dominates the Montpellier Codex. Its tenor is usually based on a plainchant fragment, but sometimes on a dance or popular tune as in En mai quant rosier \/ L’autre jour par un matin \/ HE RESVELLE TOI ROBIN (Mo 269).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738609725764,"sku":"HMU907524-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609758532,"sku":"HMU907524-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609791300,"sku":"HMU907524-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738609824068,"sku":"HMU907524-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738609856836,"sku":"HMU907524-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307978727748,"sku":"HMU907524-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334523461956,"sku":"HMU907524S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334523494724,"sku":"HMU907524S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334523527492,"sku":"HMU907524S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907524.jpg?v=1790122097"},{"product_id":"hmu907552-britten-serenade-for-tenor-horn-strings-nocturne-finzi-dies-natalis","title":"Britten: Serenade for tenor, horn \u0026 strings - Nocturne. Finzi: Dies Natalis","description":"\u003cp\u003eCelebrated tenor Mark Padmore joins with Britten Sinfonia in some of the most beautiful English music for voice and orchestra. The centrepiece is Benjamin Britten's magical evocation of twilight and nightfall, the Serenade (with Stephen Bell, horn). In Gerald Finzi's song-cycle Dies Natalis, the ecstatic mood reflects a child's wide-eyed wonder at the world. Britten's poignant Nocturne completes the programme.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrench\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark Padmore et le Britten Sinfonia propose ici quelques-unes des plus belles pages de la musique anglaise pour voix et ensemble. La Sérénade de Benjamin Britten allie la voix au cor pour sonder l'atmosphère instable du rêve, ce sur quoi surenchérit son Nocturne, consacré au motif du \"crépuscule\" chez quelques grands poètes anglais, de Shakespeare à Wordsworth. Le programme est complété par la cantate Dies Natalis de Gerald Finzi qui s'attache aux vers d'un poète du XVIIe siècle, Thomas Traherne, évoquant la joie simple et naïve d'un enfant ébahi par sa découverte du monde.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGerman\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark Padmore und die Britten Sinfonia präsentieren einige der schönsten Werke der englischen Musik für Stimme und Orchester. In seiner Serenade fügt Benjamin Britten dem Gesang noch eine elegische Hornmelodie hinzu, um uns in eine geheimnisvolle Traumwelt zu entführen, atmosphärisch hierin noch überboten von seinem Nocturne, das dem Andenken der großen englischen Dichter von Shakespeare bis Wordsworth gewidmet ist. Das Programm wird von Gerald Finzis Kantate Dies Natalis ergänzt, die auf Verse von Thomas Traherne zurückgreift. Der Dichter des 17.Jahrhunderts beschwört darin die einfache und naive Freude eines Kindes, das staunend die Welt entdeckt.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738610118980,"sku":"HMU907552-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738610151748,"sku":"HMU907552-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738610184516,"sku":"HMU907552-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738610217284,"sku":"HMU907552-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738610250052,"sku":"HMU907552-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307980792132,"sku":"HMU907552-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334523724100,"sku":"HMU907552S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334523756868,"sku":"HMU907552S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334523789636,"sku":"HMU907552S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907552.jpg?v=1790122139"},{"product_id":"hmu907572-the-phoenix-rising","title":"The Phoenix Rising","description":"\u003cp\u003eAmongst the many and diverse projects funded by the Carnegie UK trust (which celebrates its centenary this year), one project in particular was to transform the musical life of the whole nation to a degree which could not have been anticipated at the time, namely the publication of Tudor Church Music (TCM), a ten-volume collected edition of works by the great Tudor composers, published by OUP between 1922-1929 and accompanied by a series of individual ‘octavo’ performing editions of individual pieces suitable for purchase and use by choirs. Relatively little of the music included had been previously available in modern score, most of it still residing in library manuscripts and, of course, in partbook format – the norm in the sixteenth century but alien to the average modern singer. Thanks to TCM, a significant body of the finest Tudor music became readily available to scholars and performers alike in easily readable editions. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe project did not enjoy an auspicious start: the original editor R. R. Terry, the first Director of Music at Westminster Cathedral and an early advocate of the music of Byrd, proved unable to progress with the task, and was ousted by the members of his editorial committee.  They continued the work, but slow progress and mounting losses on the expensive ‘library’ edition caused the Trust to pull the plug on ten of the original twenty volumes proposed. Indeed, the Trust came to the pessimistic view that ‘There is, as yet, little evidence to justify the belief that the recovered music is likely to take a prominent place in the ordinary church choir repertoires’.  How wrong they were!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738610807108,"sku":"HMU907572-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738610839876,"sku":"HMU907572-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738610872644,"sku":"HMU907572-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738610905412,"sku":"HMU907572-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738610938180,"sku":"HMU907572-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57307983053124,"sku":"HMU907572-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334524281156,"sku":"HMU907572S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334524313924,"sku":"HMU907572S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334524346692,"sku":"HMU907572S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907572.jpg?v=1790122225"},{"product_id":"hmu907325-wolcum-yule","title":"Wolcum Yule","description":"\u003cp\u003eMany of the symbols and practices of the Celtic midwinter celebration known as Yule (probably several thousand years older than the festival of Christmas) have come down to us in a curious amalgamation of mythologies, pagan and Christian. Yule marks the time of the winter solstice, around 21st December—the longest\u003cbr\u003eand darkest night of the year, when the coming of spring seems a faint hope. To fortify that hope, the ancient Celts, who dwelt throughout Britain, held\u003cbr\u003ea celebration of lights, to give power to the returning sun. They brought evergreens into their homes to symbolize life at the time when most of nature seemed dead and\u003cbr\u003edark, and they gave and received gifts to represent wisdom gained from looking inward during the long winter nights. These symbols, and many other elements of ancient pagan ceremonies, were absorbed into the early Christian festivals, blending into a multi-layered expression of the universal cycle of life, death, and rebirth.\u003cbr\u003eThe traditional music associated with the mid-winter festival is also interwoven with threads of pre-Christian ritual and folk customs. The concerns of an ancient people dependent upon the whims of nature for food and shelter are expressed not only in imagery of the natural world, but even in the form of the songs themselves. The word “carol” (from Old French carole) originally meant a dance performed in a circle, the dancers also singing a verse with a recurring refrain. This was\u003cbr\u003eprobably derived from ancient ritual dances with call-and-response chanting, used at magical ceremonies throughout the cycle of the year.\u003cbr\u003eEven by the Middle Ages, the carol was not limited to the winter season; only much later\u003cbr\u003edid the term take on its present meaning of a song for the Christmas season.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738614804804,"sku":"HMU907325-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738614837572,"sku":"HMU907325-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738614870340,"sku":"HMU907325-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738614903108,"sku":"HMU907325-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738614935876,"sku":"HMU907325-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":57308007334212,"sku":"HMU907325-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334527754564,"sku":"HMU907325S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334527787332,"sku":"HMU907325S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334527820100,"sku":"HMU907325S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907325-1.jpg?v=1790122560"},{"product_id":"907327di-the-origin-of-fire","title":"The Origin Of Fire","description":"\u003cp\u003eSince almost every bit of sacred music from before 1300 is anonymous, those few works that survive with attributions draw our special notice. We ask not only “who?” but also how and why these works came to be identified with a creator. Even as J.S. Bach signed all his works with “Soli Deo Gloria,” the prevailing attitude among medieval church musicians was that it would constitute pride (if not the “deadly sin” variety then at least the simple human failing) to own music created to adorn the sacred liturgy. And even if not a matter of humility, pieces that were composed for local use did not need an attribution, since it was generally known who had written them.\u003cbr\u003eBut here we have a major repertoire – 76 pieces of liturgical plainchant and the music-drama Ordo Virtutum – attributed not only to an actual composer, but to a woman neither trained nor working as a musician. How could this be?\u003cbr\u003eHildegard of Bingen was born into a prominent Rhineland family in 1098. Her parents dedicated her to the church at the age of eight as a “tithe” – she was child number ten – and entrusted her to Jutta, a noblewoman who was seeking a life of holy reclusion. Jutta took Hildegard with her to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg as a prospective nun and, unlike many children who were “assigned” for family reasons to a monastic life, young Hildegard took up the veil and never looked back.\u003cbr\u003eAlthough she kept them almost entirely to herself, Hildegard had been experiencing prophetic or mysterious lightfilled visions from the age of five. Not until she was 43, nine years after she had succeeded Jutta as abbess at Disibodenberg, did she submit to an increasing inner urge to put these visions into writing, along with her own theological interpretations of them. Like Joan of Arc, Hildegard heard “voices” – indeed she insisted that her musical works were received whole from God – but her mystical experiences were over-whelmingly visual: she describes active, complex, colorful scenes of fantastic elements and beings in marvelous settings.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738615361860,"sku":"907327DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738615394628,"sku":"907327DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738615427396,"sku":"907327DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738615460164,"sku":"907327DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738615492932,"sku":"907327DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308010447172,"sku":"907327DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334529196356,"sku":"907327DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334529229124,"sku":"907327DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334529261892,"sku":"907327DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/907327DI-1.jpg?v=1790122601"},{"product_id":"907331di-baltic-voices-2","title":"Baltic Voices 2","description":"\u003cp\u003eTo the traveller from the West, crossing through Finland or Estonia towards Russia, the intermittent appearance in the landscape of an onion-shaped dome topped by an unfamiliar form of the cross is a reminder of just how far east one has come. The prime building material has become wood or large stone rather than brick, and public signs start to appear in both Cyrillic and the local variant of Finno-Ugrian. It is quite possible to understand neither one of them. A fragment of Swedish may be overheard, and suddenly, even to the nonspeaker, there are familiar sounds in the air whose meanings can be comfortingly half-guessed at. One notices also a style of architecture and painting which might call to mind the Art Nouveau movement, but seems in these regions to have tapped into deeper Nationalist roots and so to have acquired a more lasting significance than its counterparts further west.\u003cbr\u003eVisit the cathedral of St. John in Tampere, for example, or see the paintings of Akseli Gallen-Kallela and his museum-house of Tarvaspää on the outskirts of Helsinki. The same impulse flowered also in Russia, where the re-imagining of folk art and medievalism stimulated a renewal of ecclesiastical art, and this in turn impressed itself upon the avant-garde of Malevich and Goncharova.\u003cbr\u003eBecause of its size and supposed cultural autonomy, it comes as almost a surprise to realise that Russia is a Baltic state too. Peter the Great confirmed this when he built St. Petersburg in the 18th century as his ‘window onto the West,’ and although her foothold on the Baltic may appear slight, when a country as vast as Russia wiggles its toe, it creates ripples which spread out into the whole region in many surprising ways—apart from the obvious militaristic one.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738615722308,"sku":"907331DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738615755076,"sku":"907331DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738615787844,"sku":"907331DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738615820612,"sku":"907331DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738615853380,"sku":"907331DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308019786052,"sku":"907331DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334530638148,"sku":"907331DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334530670916,"sku":"907331DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334530703684,"sku":"907331DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/907331DI-1.jpg?v=1790122642"},{"product_id":"hmu907381-tchaikovsky-symphony-no-5","title":"Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5","description":"Time has tamed Tchaikovsky. Works that once must surely have seemed radical–‘bold’ is a word that won’t do–are conventional to contemporary ears, and the sensibility that inspired Tchaikovsky at his most impassioned has over the past hundred-plus years been diluted. His intensely private drama, which he made public most notably in his final three symphonies, has been obscured by successive waves of culture and commerce that, from Tchaikovsky’s day to ours, have inured us to an exceptional odyssey of passion and pain.\r\n\r\nTchaikovsky remains a conundrum. There is the master dramatist whose finest operas, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, remain stage-worthy and musically sovereign; the ballet composer nonpareil whose Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker seem wellnigh indestructible; the composer of songs which over time gained in technical sophistication and dramatic insights; and the orchestral composer who was best known in his own day not for his symphonies, cornerstones on which our contemporary repertory is built, but for his orchestral suites, works with charms that are abundant and accessible, but works now largely neglected. Yet despite his unquestioned mastery, Tchaikovsky was tormented throughout his life by the most severe selfdoubts, and never more than when writing his final three symphonies. Ironically, however, it was this lack of selfconfidence that became the scenario for what are inarguably his finest symphonic works. The causes of his torment are the stuff of speculation. Imperial Russia, no more than many more modern societies, dealt less than gracefully with alcoholism, with addiction to gambling, with homosexuality. Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality is an aspect of his persona with which he never made peace in the public arena, and, as the leading composer of his day, it was in the public arena where he lived his life. Indeed, his inability to comfortably accept his homosexuality is most often cited as having led to both his ill-conceived marriage and his alleged suicide.\r\n\r\n\u003cem\u003eTrack 5 was not recorded in DSD\/DXD. So it is not eligible for our NativeDSD Music Store. It was recorded in 1998, 2 years prior to the introduction of making DSD recordings. The pricing of the album has been adjusted to match the length of the album without Track 5. \u003c\/em\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738616738116,"sku":"HMU907381-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738616770884,"sku":"HMU907381-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738616803652,"sku":"HMU907381-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738616836420,"sku":"HMU907381-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738616869188,"sku":"HMU907381-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308019884356,"sku":"HMU907381-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334531096900,"sku":"HMU907381S1417","price":24.6,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334531129668,"sku":"HMU907381S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334531162436,"sku":"HMU907381S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907381.jpg?v=1790122683"},{"product_id":"hmu907393-tchaikovsky-symphony-no-4-capriccio-italien-op-49","title":"Tchaikovsky -  Symphony No. 4, Capriccio Italien, Op. 49","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eWhatever else its value – as an avenue for emotional catharsis, an ornament meant to please, an object that serves utilitarian ends – each piece of music is aural autobiography. Composers cannot escape the fact that their creations inevitably reflect their time and their training, their inspirations and insights. At the same time, it is impossible not to notice that in the works of Tchaikovsky, personality became paramount as never before. Not in his earliest works, perhaps, which were products of his conservatory tutelage in Moscow and St. Petersburg and resonate with innate gifts for melody and orchestration. But beginning in the mid-1870s, something changed. Personal struggles were made publicly manifest and inner conflicts found outward expression. Although the value of Tchaikovsky’s works – of the works, indeed, of any composer – resides ultimately in the musicitself, the exceptional nature of their creation demands attention. \u003cbr\u003eIn the Fourth Symphony (1877-78), most notably, composition and confession are confounded. Tchaikovsky composed his prior three symphonies in situations that seem ordinary in comparison to the genesis of the Fourth. The First (called Winter Daydreams ) was the composer’s first major professional endeavor; it emerged with difficulty in 1866 and ’67, but was successfully premiered in 1868. (It would be revised in 1874.) The Second (the Little Russian, a nickname acquired after the composer’s death, in recognition of the Ukrainian folktunes it employs) was composed in 1872 and premiered in ’73; showing Tchaikovsky’s music at its most nationalistic, it was an immediate success (though in 1880 it, too, would be revised). And the Third (the Polish, so named, for the Tempo di polacca of its final movement) was warmly received at its 1875 first performance.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738617753924,"sku":"HMU907393-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738617786692,"sku":"HMU907393-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738617819460,"sku":"HMU907393-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738617852228,"sku":"HMU907393-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738617884996,"sku":"HMU907393-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308025061700,"sku":"HMU907393-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334531686724,"sku":"HMU907393S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334531719492,"sku":"HMU907393S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334531752260,"sku":"HMU907393S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907393.jpg?v=1790122724"},{"product_id":"hmu907394-tchaikovsky-symphony-no6-serenade-for-strings","title":"Tchaikovsky - Symphony No.6, Serenade For Strings","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003eT\u003c\/span\u003ehe conflict between public persona and private feelings was never more deeply felt than by Tchaikovsky in his life’s final years, and never expressed with greater poignancy than in the Pathétique Symphony. Or so we’ve been led to believe. (For a variety of interpretations, see Tchaikovsky: A Self-Portrait, by Vladimir Volkoff, p. 322ff, Robert Hale \u0026amp; Co., London, 1985.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e“Tchaikovsky Agonistes,” a composer tormented by his homosexuality, is a 20thcentury invention. While not without concerns about his emotional peace of mind – and who can say otherwise ? – the composer’s personal predilections were neither flaunted nor hidden. If homosexuality was not embraced by Imperial Russia, it was tolerated both by members of the Romanov Court and the musical establishment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eOutwardly, Tchaikovsky’s last years were triumphant. In 1892, the Académie Française elected him a member and Cambridge University chose him to receive an honorary Doctorate of Music. His works were performed throughout the Continent, and his career as guest conductor was flourishing, with engagements booked into May of 1894. Most important, perhaps, he continued to compose prolifically. For the Mariinsky stage he created Pique Dame in 1890, Iolanta in 1891, and The Nutcracker in 1892, and his orchestral scores included the symphonic ballad Voyevoda in 1890-91 and the Pathétique Symphony in 1893, his last completed work.\u003cbr\u003eFor the Pathétique and its surrounding mystique, Tchaikovsky himself set the stage. While planning it, he wrote to Vladimir ‘Bob’ Davydov, his nephew and lover and the Symphony’s dedicatee: “During my stay in Paris last December I had the idea of writing a program symphony; but to a program that should remain an enigma for everyone but myself; let them try and guess it! For my part, I intend to call it simply ‘Program Symphony.’ The theme of it is full of subjective feeling, so much so that as I was mentally composing it during the journey, I frequently shed tears…”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738618605892,"sku":"HMU907394-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738618638660,"sku":"HMU907394-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738618671428,"sku":"HMU907394-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738618704196,"sku":"HMU907394-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738618736964,"sku":"HMU907394-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308027486532,"sku":"HMU907394-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334533226820,"sku":"HMU907394S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334533259588,"sku":"HMU907394S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334533292356,"sku":"HMU907394S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907394.jpg?v=1790122766"},{"product_id":"907397di-biber-missa-christi-resurgentis","title":"Biber - Missa Christi resurgentis","description":"\u003cp\u003eDuring 2004, three hundred years after the death of Biber, The English Concert gave the first European performances in modern times of the Missa Christi resurgentis. Although the existence and whereabouts of this Mass have been known for a long time, it is only thanks to the work of Dr James Clements that it can be heard today. Before I met James, I had pictured an intrepid Indiana Jones look-alike, abseiling his way into the candlelit vaults of Krome?r?íz? castle deep in the Czech Republic, sneezing his way along the dusty shelves and finally laying his hand on a pile of music undisturbed since it was placed there by one of Biber’s contemporaries. \u003cbr\u003eMore Bond than Jones, James described a reality far more prosaic, involving cups of tea with helpful librarians, ugly strip-lighting and many silent hours poring over scraps of paper. The result, however, is the same: we can now hear a lavish piece of music that Biber wrote for the Archbishop of Salzburg. This recording was made in London’s Temple Church which, while not as lofty a building as Salzburg’s cathedral, has as voluminous an acoustic. By placing the four main ‘choirs’ of musicians – two groups of singers, one each of strings and winds – approximately at the four corners of a square we were able to create the impression of Salzburg’s grandeur without losing clarity, which can easily happen in Biber’s polychoral works\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738621784388,"sku":"907397DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738621817156,"sku":"907397DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738621849924,"sku":"907397DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738621882692,"sku":"907397DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738621915460,"sku":"907397DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308032237892,"sku":"907397DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334534078788,"sku":"907397DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334534111556,"sku":"907397DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334534144324,"sku":"907397DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/907397DI.jpg?v=1790122808"},{"product_id":"hmu907400-gloryland","title":"Gloryland","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith this recording, the members of Anonymous 4 celebrate our long journey together. We are honored to be able to share this latest voyage with our new friends, Darol Anger and Mike Marshall, whose travels together began even longer ago than ours did.\u003cbr\u003eThe tunes on Gloryland are filled with imagery of the journey, of birds and flying, of reaching and crossing over the Jordan River. Their narrators equate the soul with\u003cbr\u003eNoah’s weary dove, who soars the earth seeking a resting place; they wish for wings, to be a tiny swallow, to fly to the next world on eagles’ wings; or they yearn to gather with loved ones at the river and to find green pastures beyond the banks of that shining shore.\u003cbr\u003eMost of these songs have themselves been traveling for a very long time, in a wonderful intertwining of oral and written traditions that has flourished for many generations. Which of them were newly composed and which were taken down from someone’s singing or playing and then arranged cannot always be determined, but songs like Ecstasy and Saint’s Delight sound equally at home whether sung in their shape-note settings or played on the fiddle, guitar, and\u003cbr\u003emandolin.\u003cbr\u003eThe elements of Anglo-American song take part in an endless game of mix and match: dance airs are set to sacred words; worldly and spiritual texts share the same musical notes; and hymns that we associate with certain much-loved tunes can also be sung to other melodies. The tune most commonly known as Wayfaring Stranger occurs several times: it appears first with the religious ballad text, “I am a poor wayfaring stranger,” again in the lyric folk song You Fair and Pretty Ladies, in the haunting folk hymn Parting Friends, and finally in a bluesy instrumental rendition. Meanwhile, gospel song composer Robert Lowry’s familiar text “Shall we gather at the river” (which we sang to Lowry’s famous gospel tune Shall We Gather at the River, on American Angels) has migrated to the Southern hymn tune Palmetto; and John\u003cbr\u003eNewton’s poem “Saviour, visit Thy plantation” has attached itself to two different tunes: Return Again and Merrick. To further complicate matters in the most wonderful way, the melody of Return Again is a variant of the American Angels tune Invitation.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738623816004,"sku":"HMU907400-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738623848772,"sku":"HMU907400-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738623881540,"sku":"HMU907400-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738623914308,"sku":"HMU907400-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738623947076,"sku":"HMU907400-15","price":25.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738623979844,"sku":"HMU907400-16","price":29.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738624012612,"sku":"HMU907400-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738624045380,"sku":"HMU907400-18","price":25.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738624078148,"sku":"HMU907400-19","price":27.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 512 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738624110916,"sku":"HMU907400-21","price":35.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308037415236,"sku":"HMU907400-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334535553348,"sku":"HMU907400S1417","price":31.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334535586116,"sku":"HMU907400S1517","price":34.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334535618884,"sku":"HMU907400S1617","price":38.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334535651652,"sku":"HMU907400S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334535684420,"sku":"HMU907400S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907400.jpg?v=1790122851"},{"product_id":"hmu907403-cpebach-symphonies-1-4-cello-concerto-in-a","title":"C.P.E.Bach: Symphonies 1-4, Cello Concerto in A","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe four symphonies recorded here display the eternal youth of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s musical spirit, although he was, by eighteenth- century reckoning, already an old man (sixty-one!) when he wrote them. Their subjective intensity, a style referred to then and now as Empfindsamkeit (ultra-sensitivity), was perhaps the com-poser’s own elixir of youth. Bach’s life falls neatly into three distinct periods. \u003cbr\u003eHe learned his trade literally at his father’s elbow, as a student not just of organ, harpsichord, clavichord and composition but of all the skills necessary to be a complete Kapellmeister. He sat at his father’s table copying out material for the Sunday cantata or the weekly Collegium Musicum concerts and met the many colourful characters who visited the Bachs’ Leipzig home. At the age of twenty-four, in 1738, he became harpsichordist to Crown Prince Frederick, later ‘the Great,’ King of Prussia. \u003cbr\u003eIt is hard to imagine how disorientating this change must have been to the young musician who had served his apprenticeship under Johann Sebastian. He found himself surrounded by colleagues, notably Johann Joachim Quantz, Carl Heinrich Graun and the Benda brothers, whose reputations and salaries far exceeded his own but whose talents were clearly inferior. In addition, Bach was now the subject of a royal employer whose tyranny extended to censoring his musicians’ works on matters of musical style. As Burney wrote, “with respect to the  general and  national style of composition and performance [in Berlin], it seems at present, to be formed so much upon one  model [i.e. the King’s], that it precludes all invention and genius.” But perhaps the strangest change Bach had to cope with was the almost complete lack of interest Frederick showed in church music, to which generations of Bachs had devoted their lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738624504132,"sku":"HMU907403-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738624536900,"sku":"HMU907403-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738624569668,"sku":"HMU907403-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738624602436,"sku":"HMU907403-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738624635204,"sku":"HMU907403-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308037841220,"sku":"HMU907403-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334539288900,"sku":"HMU907403S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334539321668,"sku":"HMU907403S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334539354436,"sku":"HMU907403S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907403.jpg?v=1790122893"},{"product_id":"hmu907423-24-beethoven-razumovsky-quartets-op59-nos1-3","title":"Beethoven: \"Razumovsky\" Quartets (Op.59, Nos.1-3)","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThe Beethoven boom continues apace. No other composer so completely defines our concert life in each important genre – symphonies, concertos, and chamber music – and no other is subject to such ongoing scrutiny of his life and his art. Indeed, with the passing of time and a deeper knowledge of historical incident has come increased appreciation of his breathtaking, path-breaking innovation. Perceived as unique in his own day, he remains so in ours. \u003cbr\u003eBeethoven’s early training with Christian Gottlob Neefe affirmed his abilities; the first published notice he received, in 1783, applauded a “youthful genius” (Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, p. 66) and Neefe praised him as “unquestionably now one of the foremost pianoforte players” (Thayer, op. cit, p. 113). His inevitable migration from Bonn to Vienna – the Imperial capital and artistically pre-emminent – came in 1792, when he was 21 years old. \u003cbr\u003eHaydn, we know, taught him briefly in a mutually unsatisfying relationship, and there also was tutelage with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Kapellmeister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the city’s foremost teacher of counterpoint, and with Imperial Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri. But nothing learnt from these men can directly account for the transformations he later wrought in how music was composed and how it was perceived. Although primarily known as keyboard virtuoso at first, as a soloist and improviser second to none Beethoven quickly won acknowledgement as the composer who would inherit the mantle of Classicism – nobody assimilated as fully the ethos of Mozart and Haydn. Yet, from the start of his Viennese career, he set about consciously to undermine the premises and practices of his artistic progenitors and redefine music’s most fundamental assumptions.\u003cbr\u003eBeethoven arrived in the Austrian capital with a modest portfolio; his earliest Viennese works, however, already displayed those characteristics we associate with the mature composer: his “longrange control over bold harmonic action,” (Grove, Beethoven entry, p. 379), including melodic concision, rhythmic vigor, and rigorous motivic development.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738624930116,"sku":"HMU907423_24-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738624962884,"sku":"HMU907423_24-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738624995652,"sku":"HMU907423_24-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738625028420,"sku":"HMU907423_24-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738625061188,"sku":"HMU907423_24-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308042953028,"sku":"HMU907423_24-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334540534084,"sku":"HMU907423_24S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334540566852,"sku":"HMU907423_24S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334540599620,"sku":"HMU907423_24S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU907423_24.jpg?v=1790122934"},{"product_id":"907402di-chopin-piano-concerto-no-1-other-works","title":"Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 \u0026 Other Works","description":"Pianist \u003cstrong\u003eOlga Kern\u003c\/strong\u003e is accompanied by the \u003cstrong\u003eWarsaw Philharmonic\u003c\/strong\u003e conducted by \u003cstrong\u003eAntoni Wit\u003c\/strong\u003e in a performance of \u003cstrong\u003eChopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Other Works\u003c\/strong\u003e. The album from \u003cstrong\u003eHarmonia Mundi\u003c\/strong\u003e is available in Stereo and 5 Channel DSD Surround Sound at NativeDSD.\r\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIn his art at its finest, Chopin represents the marriage of public and private, a reconciliation of extrovert and introspective. Often, in both solo compositions and concerted works, contemplative pages balance and bank the fires of virtuosity, and this potent amalgam helped make the composer into society’s darling and a favored pianist of the Parisian tout le monde. With a gift to not just create stylistic polarities but effortlessly to meld them – technical extravaganzas can have moments of pathos, and inward-looking works are rarely lacking in panache – he was not merely poet or showman, but both of these at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eChopin’s breakthrough work, his passport from the provinces to Paris, was the Piano Concerto No. 1, in E minor (1828). Its idyllic slow movement shines with lyrical ardor, with sentiments to be later explored in the Nocturnes and other miniatures, and its finale is a rousing krakowiak, but the first movement pushes boundaries. Opening with an assertive orchestral introduction of symphonic sweep, it forsakes conventional sonata form with its customary expectations for a more idiosyncratic scenario that reveals itself gradually, incrementally, over time.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIf the movement’s plan was in some ways experimental (for more, see Chopin, Jim Samson, p. 49, Oxford University Press, 1996), Tovey, ever astute, called it “suicidal” (Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Criticism, vol. 3, p. 103, Oxford University Press, London, 1936), and though his observation has merit, we are struck less by the movement’s blemishes than by “the beauties of (its) individual moments… for particular felicities of melody, harmony, and texture which we identify retrospectively as Chopinesque…”\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cstrong\u003eOlga Kern, Pianist \u003c\/strong\u003e\r\n\u003cstrong\u003eWarsaw Philharmonic Orchestra\u003c\/strong\u003e\r\n\u003cstrong\u003eAntoni Wit, Conductor\u003c\/strong\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738632204612,"sku":"907402DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738632237380,"sku":"907402DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738632270148,"sku":"907402DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738632302916,"sku":"907402DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738632335684,"sku":"907402DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308077195588,"sku":"907402DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334557737284,"sku":"907402DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334557770052,"sku":"907402DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334557802820,"sku":"907402DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/907402DI.jpg?v=1790123620"},{"product_id":"807280di-mozart-night-music","title":"Mozart Night Music","description":"\u003cp\u003eNachtmusik was a term Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sometimes used in preference to Serenade or Notturno. The connotations are the same, of music for evening time, performed out of doors, to loved ones, friends, or patrons, to woo, amuse or flatter. But perhaps the term can embrace a more shadowy side of life, the way Mahler or Bartók used it. Not so long ago, one British politician blighted the career of a colleague by saying that there was something of the night about him. This recording explores the night-music of Mozart’s soul.\u003cbr\u003eOn 10th August, 1787, in the catalogue he kept of his own works, Mozart wrote Eine kleine Nachtmusik beside a piece in G major for strings—not so much a title as a description: ‘a little piece of night music.’ It is not known why he wrote it, whether to fulfil a commission or for a private occasion, though it is safe to assume that it was performed. In those days few pieces were written without a particular function in mind. The manuscript shows signs of extreme haste, even for Mozart. For example, doublings are written in shorthand, and large sections of the piece, where the music repeats itself, are simply left out with written instructions about where to find the missing measures. It is this in particular which shows how quickly Mozart was working, since he often took the opportunity to alter small details the second time around. Although his haste is visible, it is not audible, and the work is widely accepted as one of the great masterpieces of the genre. By looking at the other works on this recording, an insight into why this is so can be found. \u003cbr\u003eThe Serenata Notturna (k. 239) is the earliest piece here, written in Salzburg early in 1776. Serenades were often grand affairs, sometimes one hour long and involving as large an orchestra as could be mustered. A few months later in his ‘Haffner’ Serenade Mozart used flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets, as well as a prominent solo violin. So why this Serenata uses the unlikely (and unique) combination of strings and timpani is a mystery, one which probably raised a smile as well as a quizzical eyebrow from Mozart’s employer, Archbishop Colloredo. Despite the restricted orchestration, and the fact that he was becoming increasingly frustrated as a middle-ranking musician in a provincial Austrian court, Mozart’s creativity runs riot. He draws a rich variety of colours from the small instrumentarium, one moment a full-blooded forte, the next a playful pizzicato. At the start, all the parts combine to deliver a pompous, public fanfare. Then the tutti give way while a string quartet of two violins, a viola and a violone (here a small three-string double-bass) play a more private concert. This rocking between public and private, high and low music runs through the whole piece, notably in the (public) Menuetto and (private) Trio. On paper the tutti \/ solo division is reminiscent of a baroque concerto grosso, but the music sounds closer to an operatic scene, such as the party in Don Giovanni. In the final Rondeau Mozart interrupts the flow with a cheeky pastiche of Handel’s pseudo-tragic style, and then immediately brings the music back to the here-and-now by breaking into a low folk tune (as yet unidentified but not unlike the ‘Strasbourg’ tune in the finale of the G-major violin concerto, written just a few months earlier).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738633449796,"sku":"807280DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738633482564,"sku":"807280DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738633515332,"sku":"807280DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738633548100,"sku":"807280DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738633580868,"sku":"807280DI-15","price":25.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738633613636,"sku":"807280DI-16","price":29.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738633646404,"sku":"807280DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738633679172,"sku":"807280DI-18","price":25.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738633711940,"sku":"807280DI-19","price":27.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 512 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738633744708,"sku":"807280DI-21","price":35.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308084568388,"sku":"807280DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334573859140,"sku":"807280DIS1417","price":31.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 128 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334573891908,"sku":"807280DIS1517","price":34.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 256 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334573924676,"sku":"807280DIS1617","price":38.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334573957444,"sku":"807280DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334573990212,"sku":"807280DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807280DI.jpg?v=1790123708"},{"product_id":"807385di-mozart-3-violin-concertos","title":"Mozart: 3 Violin Concertos","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe present three violin concertos were completed during the last four months of 1775. After the success of his operas La finta giardiniera in Munich in January, 1775, and Il Ré pastor  home in Salzburg in April, Mozart was now back in his seat, earning a modest salary as a violinist at the Episcopal court. His employer Count Hieronymus Colloredo was rarely helpful when it came to the Mozart family’s extra-mural activities but he was a keen amateur violinist, so performing entertaining violin concertos was perhaps one of the better ways to keep in his good books. In addition, Mozart was working alongside the Vice- Kapellmeister, his father Leopold, who had taught him the violin and whose letters are peppered with parental pressure on the subject. “Every time I come home I succumb to a feeling of melancholy, for as I draw near to our house I always half expect to hear the sound of your violin.” (6 October, 1777). “Have you been practising the violin at all while in Munich?” (9 October, 1777). “Your violin is hanging on its nail, of that I’m sure” (a reference to a common way of storing a violin in the 18th century, by tying a ribbon to its scroll and hanging it on the wall; 27 November, 1777). Writing and playing violin concertos must have been a good way to keep his father happy as well as Colloredo.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738634039620,"sku":"807385DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738634072388,"sku":"807385DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738634105156,"sku":"807385DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738634137924,"sku":"807385DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738634170692,"sku":"807385DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308086993220,"sku":"807385DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574055748,"sku":"807385DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574088516,"sku":"807385DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574121284,"sku":"807385DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807385DI.jpg?v=1790123750"},{"product_id":"807485di-baltic-runes","title":"Baltic Runes","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat is a rune?  A strange kind of Nordic lettering with magical properties? An outmoded word for a verse of poetry? An incantation? Something belonging to the world of Tolkien’s hobbits perhaps, but of only archaic significance today? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it means these and other things as well. The first meaning is: ‘A letter or character of the earliest Teutonic alphabet, which was most extensively used by the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons.’ There is also an extended sense of ‘a similar character or mark having mysterious or magical powers attached to it’, and an obsolete or rare sense of ‘incantation or charm denoted by magic songs’. And finally there is a more technical sense, ‘A Finnish poem, or division of poem, especially one of the separate songs of the Kalevala’, whence derives the general ‘Any song, poem, or verse’. \u003cbr\u003eIt is the last two meanings that are most relevant here, the notion above all of enchanted song, comprising on the one hand the individual singer with shamanistic power (evoked in Bergman’s Lapponia), and on the other a more widespread tradition of collective singing. And the geographical focus is important too, consolidated in the eastern Baltic lands of Finland and Estonia with their shared linguistic heritage and cultural traditions. \u003cbr\u003eIn that area the word ‘rune’ is primarily associated with a special kind of poem or section within a poem in the Balto-Finnic folksong tradition, and by extension came to be used to describe the singers of such poems and the manner of singing them. This manner is described by Henrik Gabriel Porthan in his Dissertatio de Poesi Fennica pt. IV (Turku: 1778) as follows (I have condensed somewhat): \u003cbr\u003e‘Our peasant singers, when singing their songs, employ a quite special manner inherited from their ancestors. They sing always in pairs, and in a ceremonious way surrounded by a circle of listeners who stand there attentively. The main singer . . . associates himself with a supporting singer, in such a way that after the main singer has brought a verse to about the third syllable from the end, or to the last measure, the supporting singer comes in with his voice. After that, the supporting singer repeats the verse alone in a slightly varied tone. Meanwhile the main singer remains silent until the supporting singer again reaches the final measure, which both utter in unison. Then the main singer alone adds the next, similarly to be repeated by the supporting singer, and so on to the end of the song . . . The melody which the main singer employs is always one and the same, with scarcely no variation; it is very simple and strongly suggests a very ancient origin . . . The singers sit either side by side or facing one another, close enough to bring in contact their right hands and also their knees (the right knee, of course, of one, and the left of the other), on which they prop their clasped hands. While singing they move their bodies gently as if wanting to touch heads, and they assume a reflective and serious expression . . . Whenever our fellow-countrymen entertain themselves with ceremonial singing, they most usually do it to the music of a kantele. If a competent player is available, he accompanies the singers on a harp. If only one person is singing, then the harp player assumes the function of a supporting singer and repeats on the harp the melody which ordinarily is the charge of the supporting singer, the main singer meanwhile keeping silent . . \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738634531140,"sku":"807485DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738634563908,"sku":"807485DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738634596676,"sku":"807485DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738634629444,"sku":"807485DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738634662212,"sku":"807485DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308090171716,"sku":"807485DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574481732,"sku":"807485DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574514500,"sku":"807485DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574547268,"sku":"807485DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807485DI.jpg?v=1790123792"},{"product_id":"807551di-christopher-gibbons-motets-anthems-fantasias-voluntaries","title":"Christopher Gibbons - Motets, anthems, fantasias \u0026 voluntaries","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt was about 15 years ago. As I was gently reading through the magnificent diary of Samuel Pepys, I noted again and again references to a great keyboard master ‘Mr.Gibbons’. I was fully aware of the music by Orlando Gibbons, whose music I had sung and known since the age of eight as a chorister at York Minster. The Gibbons of Pepys could not be Orlando, who died decades before the diary was written. Curiosity duly peaked, I quickly discovered that this famous midseventeenth century Gibbons was Christopher, Orlando’s son. Why, if he was indeed so feted in Pepys’s lifetime had I not come across his music? I was aware of his collaboration with Matthew Locke in the music written for Cupid and Death, but Christopher’s involvement was limited, emerging only in some short undistinguished dances – mostly surviving in only the treble and bass instrumental voices. As an organist and harpsichordist I was astonished that I had not ever heard or seen pieces by this man, especially as he had been one of the great line of Organists at Westminster Abbey, the first to be appointed in 1660 after the Restoration of the Monarchy. During the course of the next years I began digging for information and looking for scores. To my huge surprise there was practically nothing: one dissertation from 1963 and less than a handful of Fantasias for viols. Further rummaging after receipt of the dissertation fuelled ardour and increased my amazement: there was a large repertoire of music by this composer – anthems, fantasies, fantasy-suites and keyboard music. Was this music so uninteresting that it wasn’t worthy of attention? Was that the reason it lay undisturbed in Oxford and London libraries? Discovering Christopher Gibbons \u003cbr\u003eAbove: Christopher Gibbons, from an original painting in the Music School, Oxford I ordered microfilms of all of the music and discovered a mastercomposer of great personality and genius. I first put on a concert of his music in 1999 in Amsterdam and have been airing it ever since that time. It is extraordinary music of great emotional power, and there are real masterpieces\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738635448644,"sku":"807551DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738635481412,"sku":"807551DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738635514180,"sku":"807551DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738635546948,"sku":"807551DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738635579716,"sku":"807551DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308090401092,"sku":"807551DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574809412,"sku":"807551DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574842180,"sku":"807551DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334574874948,"sku":"807551DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807551DI.jpg?v=1790123833"},{"product_id":"807554di-tune-thy-musicke-to-thy-hart-tudor-jacobean-music-for-private-devotion","title":"Tune thy Musicke to thy Hart - Tudor \u0026 Jacobean music for private devotion","description":"\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHistory has, perhaps inevitably, favoured the establishment when it comes to the preservation of documents, and the music of sixteenth-century England is no exception; manuscripts have survived best in cathedrals, educational institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, and the Royal court and other wealthy households – anywhere, in fact, wealthy enough to maintain a library. This has tended to give us a somewhat skewed view of music-making during that period, with a focus on liturgical music, motets, anthems, and some court music, while the music-making of the ‘ordinary people’ has remained more obscure. Nonetheless, domestic music-making was alive and well in England throughout the sixteenth century, and the level of music literacy was both higher than one might expect, and on the increase.1 Indeed, the century saw a significant increase in the popularity of singing amongst the middle classes, and nowhere more so than in the area of ‘secular’ (i.e. non-church) religious music for private or domestic devotion. As early as the last years of the fifteenth century, there was a proliferation of spiritual partsongs and ‘carols’ (a term which in this case has little to do with Christmas and everything to do with the presence of a repeating refrain or ‘burden’ – a defining characteristic of the genre). \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738636431684,"sku":"807554DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738636464452,"sku":"807554DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738636497220,"sku":"807554DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738636529988,"sku":"807554DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738636562756,"sku":"807554DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308093382980,"sku":"807554DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334575759684,"sku":"807554DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334575792452,"sku":"807554DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334575825220,"sku":"807554DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807554DI.jpg?v=1790123873"},{"product_id":"807452di-toivo-tulev-songs","title":"Toivo Tulev: Songs","description":"\u003cp\u003eSongs. Around 2004-5, while Tulev was composer in residence with the EPCC, I proposed that he write an extended new work for us, and ventured to suggest that it might be a polychoral piece with various groups of singers and instruments distributed around the concert venue. The work he came up with certainly matched this idea, but it also exceeded my expectations in every way. The music was designed for the resonant, airy acoustics of the ‘Niguliste’ (St Nicholas church) where the premiere was to be held, and the performers are in fact spaced out in the form of a cross:\u003cbr\u003eThe text is a collage created by the composer from various sources: the Bible in both English (the King James version) and Latin translations (Neo Vulgata) of the Song of Songs; and two poems, Cantico espiritual (Spiritual Canticle) and Coplas del alma que pena por ver a Dios (Stanzas of the Soul that Suffers with Longing to See God), by St John of the Cross. Along with the original text in Spanish, selected passages of the English translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez are used.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese texts, expressing spiritual longing in the terminology of physical desire, seem perfect for the music – even though it may be odd to express it that way around. The words are in three languages – English, Latin and Spanish; says Tulev: ‘The overlapping of languages works like a commentary, re-interpreting the original. When we aren’t listening to our principal language the process of translating forms a kind of gap between the object and the new language, and this gap is filled with interpretation even while we are listening to it. The process of translation gives time for this and raises the activity above the normal.’\u003cbr\u003eThe small orchestra includes recorder and duduk (a Eurasian wind instrument somewhat akin to the oboe). The duduk’s longing quality is well suited to the poems, and the players improvise embellishments, drawing on the background that they share with the composer) in early music performance. The work, which is dedicated to the writer, was premiered in October 2005 as part of the NYYD (‘NEW’) festival. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738636857668,"sku":"807452DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738636890436,"sku":"807452DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738636923204,"sku":"807452DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738636955972,"sku":"807452DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738636988740,"sku":"807452DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308093514052,"sku":"807452DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334576677188,"sku":"807452DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334576709956,"sku":"807452DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334576742724,"sku":"807452DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807452DI-1.jpg?v=1790123914"},{"product_id":"807517di-puer-natus-est-tudor-music-for-advent-and-christmas","title":"Puer Natus Est - Tudor Music for Advent and Christmas","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe backbone of this programme of Advent and Christmas music is Thomas Tallis’s extraordinary, yet incomplete, Christmas mass, Missa Puer natus est. In spite of the work’s phenomenal scope, there is no conclusive evidence as to its origin. One attractive theory holds that the mass was first performed by the joint forces of Queen Mary’s Chapel Royal and Philip II of Spain’s renowned Capilla Flamenca in December 1554 (Philip and Mary had married earlier in the year). It is based on the plainchant Puer natus est nobis – the introit for Christmas Day Mass – and it has been suggested that the plainchant may well have held a double entendre for its first hearers, as Mary was at the time erroneously believed to be pregnant with a much hoped-for heir. The work’s lavish and unusual seven-part scoring – and the presence of Flemish influences in Tallis’s writing – lend weight to this theory. On the other hand, the question of exactly when the first performance might have taken place presents a problem. We know that such a ‘joint service’ took place at St Paul’s Cathedral on 2 December, but that is unlikely to have been the occasion on which this mass was performed: Tallis surely knew the difference between Advent and Christmas – and cared! Furthermore, as one scholar has argued, it seems improbable that Tallis ‘would have been so insensitive as to use a text beginning “Puer natus est nobis” to celebrate the Queen’s rumoured pregnancy when the sex of the child, the survival of both child and mother and the stability of the realm would all have been causes of trepidation rather than rejoicing’.1\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738637283652,"sku":"807517DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738637316420,"sku":"807517DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738637349188,"sku":"807517DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738637381956,"sku":"807517DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738637414724,"sku":"807517DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308098494788,"sku":"807517DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334578446660,"sku":"807517DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334578479428,"sku":"807517DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334578512196,"sku":"807517DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807517DI-1.jpg?v=1790123956"},{"product_id":"807550di-bach-cantatas-arias","title":"Bach: Cantatas \u0026 Arias","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Italian term ‘cantata’ was generally applied to pieces written for a single voice in the eighteenth century and Bach’s practice was no different; he used the term ‘concerto’ for most of his works with multiple voices (now also called ‘cantatas’). But, apart from the presence or absence of a chorus, the two types are otherwise similar, products of the same environment and designed for the same purpose; both consist of sequences of recitatives, arias and chorales. The arias are the most developed musical forms, each generally based on the opening instrumental ‘ritornello,’ which contains the musical seed for the entire movement, setting its tone and mood. The vocal part is woven into this pre-established sound world, perfectly capturing the sense of the individual as part of an overarching order. This is something central to Bach’s religious outlook but it is also relevant for other conceptions of the human condition. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738638430532,"sku":"807550DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738638463300,"sku":"807550DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738638496068,"sku":"807550DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738638528836,"sku":"807550DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738638561604,"sku":"807550DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308102295876,"sku":"807550DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579134788,"sku":"807550DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579167556,"sku":"807550DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579200324,"sku":"807550DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807550DI-1.jpg?v=1790123997"},{"product_id":"807555di-passion-resurrection-music-inspired-by-holy-week","title":"Passion \u0026 Resurrection -  Music inspired by Holy Week","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003eT\u003c\/span\u003ehis programme presents settings of texts inspired by the events of Holy Week and Easter. Two settings of the poem Woefully arrayed provide a particular focal point, one by the early renaissance English composer William Cornysh (1465-1523), and the other a recent setting written for Stile Antico by John McCabe (b.1939). The remaining music presents a crosssection of Renaissance composers from England and the European continent, taking us from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, through Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper, the Crucifixion on Good Friday to the resurrection on Easter day. Stylistically, a particularly interesting comparison can be made between the English pieces presented here and those from the continent. While it was one Englishman (John Dunstaple) who, in the 1420s and 30s had laid the foundations of the Renaissance style on both sides of the Channel, by the end of the fifteenth century English music had developed a strikingly individual voice; this insularity was largely to remain until the early 17\u003cspan class=\"s2\"\u003eth \u003c\/span\u003ecentury, in spite of an unmistakable ‘drip-feed’ of continental influences. This is in marked contrast to the constant cross-fertilization seen amongst composers on the European mainland during this period. This fact can be attributed largely to the fact that, for obvious geographical reasons, English composers were comparatively less-travelled than their continental counterparts, many of whom spent time working in at least two different countries. In sixteenth-century England, political and religious upheaval also had a large part to play in the development of new styles.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738638823748,"sku":"807555DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738638856516,"sku":"807555DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738638889284,"sku":"807555DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738638922052,"sku":"807555DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738638954820,"sku":"807555DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308108652868,"sku":"807555DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579495236,"sku":"807555DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579528004,"sku":"807555DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579560772,"sku":"807555DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807555DI-1.jpg?v=1790124040"},{"product_id":"807558di-brahms-quintets-op34-op115","title":"Brahms: Quintets Op.34 \u0026 Op.115","description":"\u003cp\u003eTwo quintets from two very different periods in Brahms’s life. The Piano Quintet is the work of a frustrated but ambitious man. The Clarinet-led piece is an autumnal serenade by an experienced master. The journey between these two milestones was one marked by criticism, soul searching and ultimate triumph. Weighed down by the inheritance Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, Brahms often hibernated from public statements in the more modest realm of trios, quartets and quintets. But his symphonic ambitions soon found voice, not only in the composition of his first symphony, which he began in 1862, but also in the rich and radical landscape of his chamber music. Conviction and talent paid off and by the time we revisit Brahms in 1891, the year of the Clarinet Quintet, aggravation becomes reflection. 1862 was a crucial year. As well as starting that first symphony, the 29-year-old Brahms travelled to Vienna for the first time. There he met Wagner. Although history relates that Brahms’s conservative abstraction was at the opposite end of the musical spectrum to Wagner’s extremely theatrical music, Brahms felt nothing but admiration for his compatriot.\u003cbr\u003eWhile in the city, Brahms performed many of his new piano and chamber works, garnering the enviable support of Eduard Hanslick, the city’s most-feared music critic. With Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim already on his side, Brahms was set to become a major figure in European music. But rather than pandering to his ego, Hanslick, Schumann and Joachim gave Brahms vital input and criticism. Such friendships fostered genius, though Brahms wasn’t always as grateful as he should have been. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738639118660,"sku":"807558DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738639151428,"sku":"807558DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738639184196,"sku":"807558DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738639216964,"sku":"807558DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738639249732,"sku":"807558DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308108816708,"sku":"807558DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579593540,"sku":"807558DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579626308,"sku":"807558DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579659076,"sku":"807558DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807558DI-1.jpg?v=1790124081"},{"product_id":"907214di-the-cries-of-london","title":"The Cries of London","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe ‘common cryes’ like ‘straberry rype, and chery in the ryse’ crop up in verse as long ago as the fifteenthcentury London Lickpenny (attr. John Lydgate). But words alone bring only half the street to life. Musical settings too clearly existed, though before later Elizabethan and Jacobean times only fragments survive, like an early Tudor parade on Saint Cuthbert’s Day through the streets of Durham. And if you wait long enough, three or four City Cries, from London or the regions, come along together. Why that group-survival, and why that period, around 1605-15? The pieces and their sources are diverse enough to show less the luck of the draw than, for a short while, a fresh and widespread responsiveness to programmatic foreign influences. Italianate engraved sheets of street-sellers in parade were newly available, at just a time when copyists were busy preserving a bundle of settings for voices backed by strings, in consort song or verse anthem form. One abiding pleasure here is the sheer quantity in which authentic cries are captured, unaltered so far as we can tell: a treasure trove for folk-transcription enthusiasts. But weaving their vividness and pathos into ‘art’ textures for the parlour was not intended simply to mirror, in pure ‘slices of life’, the labouring or indigent classes, who are portrayed with some condescension. Copies can include extra glints of derisive innuendo. The slow of uptake should catch on when the Town Crier announces a reward for an article lost on 30th February, especially if the missing item is a spavined horse or, in one of the less indecent interpolated textual curlicues, ‘a young wench of four and forty years.’\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738639708484,"sku":"907214DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738639741252,"sku":"907214DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738639774020,"sku":"907214DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738639806788,"sku":"907214DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738639839556,"sku":"907214DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308109701444,"sku":"907214DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579888452,"sku":"907214DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579921220,"sku":"907214DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334579953988,"sku":"907214DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/907214DI-1.jpg?v=1790124122"},{"product_id":"807410di-a-new-joy-orthodox-christmas","title":"A New Joy - Orthodox Christmas","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe feast of Christmas in the Orthodox Church is properly known as “The Nativity in the flesh of Our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.” For at least the first four centuries in the history of the Christian Church, it was not a separate celebration on December 25: rather, it was part of the feast of Theophany, literally, the “manifestation of God,” which at once commemorated the birth of Christ in Bethlehem and his initial appearance to the world already as an adult, when he was baptized by St. John the Baptist in the Jordan River. This revelation of God as the Holy Trinity – (1) the voice of the Father, (2) the physical presence of the Son, and (3) the Holy Spirit, who descended “in the form of a dove,” – was, for a while, the greatest Christian celebration next to the feast of Christ’s Resurrection, known as the Holy Pascha. Eventually, the Feast of the Nativity was instituted by the Church as a distinct observance on December 25 in the fourth century a.d. to offset the pagan holidays of the Saturnalia, the winter solstice, and the festival of the Invincible Sun (Sol invictus), all of which were celebrated around that day.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738641117508,"sku":"807410DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641150276,"sku":"807410DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641183044,"sku":"807410DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738641215812,"sku":"807410DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641248580,"sku":"807410DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308117532996,"sku":"807410DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334580805956,"sku":"807410DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334580838724,"sku":"807410DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334580871492,"sku":"807410DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807410DI-1.jpg?v=1790124208"},{"product_id":"807429di-dvorak-quartet-no12-smetana-quartet-no1","title":"Dvorak: Quartet No.12 - Smetana: Quartet No.1","description":"\u003cp\u003eDuring the nineteenth-century Czech National Revival, it was the symphonic poem and opera that dominated musical proceedings. The former, with its programmatic clout, and the latter’s ability to embrace politics and pomp made for nimble agents in the nation’s search for its soul. Bedrich Smetana and Anton.n Dvorak, its prime musical movers and shakers, dedicated their lives to these totemic art forms, while the string quartet trailed quietly behind. Intimate and domesticated, its four-way dialogue was seemingly not for the national stage. But as Dvorak and later Smetana demonstrated, their music was not always about the grand gesture. \u003cbr\u003eThese two composers are now inextricably linked, but during the latter part of the 19th century, Smetana and the younger Dvorak were considered total opposites. Smetana was the progressive figure, embracing Liszt and Wagner’s musical innovations and making them apparently indigenous. He was supported by a loyal band of followers called the mladoceši [young Czechs]. Dvorak, on the other hand, was seen as conservative, aligned with the staroceši [old Czechs]. His success in neighbouring German-speaking territories and his friendship with Brahms likewise did him few favours back at home. \u003cbr\u003eTo the outside world, such infighting was irrelevant and Dvorak was as much the quintessence of the Czech sound as Smetana. And it was in that spirit that Jeannette Thurber, the president of the National Conservatory of Music in America, invited Dvorak to New York in June 1891. Dvorak’s Slovansk. tance [Slavonic Dances] had done incredibly well in America and by offering him a new post at the Conservatory, Thurber hoped to provide not only a famous musician for her students but also one renowned for embracing a national style. It was just what was needed, Thurber felt, having always wanted America to have a musical idiom of its own. A generous salary secured Dvorak’s services in December 1891 and he arrived in New York on 26 September 1892.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738641445188,"sku":"807429DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641477956,"sku":"807429DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641510724,"sku":"807429DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738641543492,"sku":"807429DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641576260,"sku":"807429DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308121530692,"sku":"807429DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334581133636,"sku":"807429DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334581166404,"sku":"807429DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334581199172,"sku":"807429DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807429DI-1.jpg?v=1790124250"},{"product_id":"807453di-the-cherry-tree-songs-carols-ballads-for-christmas","title":"The Cherry Tree: Songs, Carols \u0026 Ballads for Christmas","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the much-beloved miracle ballad, The Cherry Tree Carol, Joseph doubts the divine origin of Mary’s pregnancy; but to his astonishment, and to his shame, Jesus speaks from within Mary’s womb, causing a cherry tree to bend its branches and offer his mother its fruit. This ballad originates in medieval England; we know that it was spoken or sung during the Coventry Plays for the Feast of Corpus Christi, around 1400. The Cherry Tree Carol was passed on from singer to singer in the British Isles for hundreds of years, and eventually established roots in America, as well. The cherry tree story also made its way into medieval British carols of the mid-fifteenth century. On this recording, The Cherry Tree, we sing an American version of The Cherry Tree Carol, some of its medieval carol ancestors, and other medieval British carols and British-rooted American tunes.\u003cbr\u003eEarly in the thirteenth century, Franciscan missionaries traveled to the British Isles, preaching a return to a simple, selfless form of Christianity. As in Italy, where Franciscans composed or inspired the composition of numerous laude spirituali (sacred refrain songs in Italian, based on popular models), Franciscans in Britain set in motion a wave of religious poetry and song in English, the language of the common people.\u003cbr\u003eThe medieval English carol is a product of this same vernacular-religious song tradition. We now associate the word carol with Christmas, but this was not the rule in the fifteenth century, when carols were written to celebrate other feasts, saints and occasions, or to teach a moral lesson. The origin of the medieval British carol has been the subject of musicological debate in the twentieth century: were these carols composed to accompany liturgical processions, or were they church-sanctioned alternatives to rude and rowdy dance songs with pagan roots? If it was the latter case, it stands to reason that many of these songs would be appropriate to the Christmas season, which was, since ancient and pagan times, an season of riotous festivity and unruly celebration. Fifteenth-century\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738641838404,"sku":"807453DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641871172,"sku":"807453DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641903940,"sku":"807453DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738641936708,"sku":"807453DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738641969476,"sku":"807453DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308127527236,"sku":"807453DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334581559620,"sku":"807453DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334581592388,"sku":"807453DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334581625156,"sku":"807453DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807453DI-1.jpg?v=1790124292"},{"product_id":"807489di-song-of-songs","title":"Song of Songs","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat is the Song of Songs? Why is it in the Bible? And why did it gain such popularity amongst Continental composers of polyphony in the sixteenth century? In short, it is a love poem (or perhaps a collection of poems), ascribed to King Solomon, who reigned over Israel between 971 and 931 BC, and after whom the work is sometimes named. The beautiful and often erotic poetry tells of the relationship between the lover and his beloved, traditionally thought to be Solomon and a Shulamite girl. It speaks in colourful and poetic terms of the joys, delights, and the sorrows of their relationship, as well as relating the girl’s dialogue with the young Israelite girls around her. Above all, it consists in rich expression of the love of one for the other, in all its facets.\u003cbr\u003eFor many the literal sense of the book alone has not been considered sufficient grounds to merit its place in the canon of holy writ (in spite of the fact that it contains inspiration and wisdom for many an aspiring couple!). Surely it must have a yet more profound meaning! The most established tradition of interpretation reads the relationship between the lover and his beloved as an allegory for the covenant relationship between God and his people. It is a long tradition: as early as the first half of the first century BC Jewish interpreters understood the book as an allegorical account of God’s dealings with Israel; Christian commentators from the early Fathers onwards have continued this tradition, seeing it as referring to the relationship between Christ and his Church, or Christ and the Soul. Such a reading is supported by similar allegories used elsewhere in both the Old and New Testaments. \u003cbr\u003eYet the surge in the book’s popularity in medieval times, and the resulting proliferation of musical settings, often revolved around the practice of Marian devotion. The so-called ‘Marian interpretation’ of the Song of Songs has sometimes been misunderstood: it is not that the beloved of the poem has ever been seriously understood to refer exclusively to Mary – but rather that, if Mary is revered as the church’s most perfect flowering (as she often was in medieval times), then the poem is about her inasmuch as she ‘represents’ the Church. It is for this reason that the poem was adopted (and often adapted) for use in various medieval Marian liturgies, and seen as prophetic in justifying certain Marian doctrines.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738642133316,"sku":"807489DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642166084,"sku":"807489DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642198852,"sku":"807489DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738642231620,"sku":"807489DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642264388,"sku":"807489DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308129755460,"sku":"807489DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334581985604,"sku":"807489DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334582018372,"sku":"807489DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334582051140,"sku":"807489DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807489DI-1.jpg?v=1790124335"},{"product_id":"807490di-oregan-threshold-of-night","title":"O'Regan - Threshold of Night","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe two short Emily Dickinson settings that open and close this programme of premiere recordings were commissioned by Conspirare and Craig Hella Johnson for this recording. They frame the programme rather like a compositional ‘inhalation’ and ‘exhalation’, a crescendo and decrescendo or a prelude and postlude. Densely textured, the music aims to hint at the myriad readings Dickinson’s surface-simple poetry yields in its many readers. Each setting uses a solo soprano and tenor, their voices referencing the polarities inherent in each poem (‘sun’ and ‘shade’; ‘love’ and ‘hate’).\u003cbr\u003eThe Ecstasies Above takes for its title a phrase found in the lyric poem, Israfel, by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), which was first published in 1831 in The Southern Messenger. The poem is set in its entirety, with the exception of one stanza. Through his creative description of the angel, Israfel, and the heavens, Poe creates a virtuous image of the supernatural. Poe compares this heavenly vision to the harsh reality of human existence. Whilst the beauty of Israfel’s voice and lyre can silence even the moon and the stars in the heavens, Poe suggests that if Israfel were placed in an earthly environment, he would not sing with such zest. From the Koranic source of the name for the protagonist, the story is refashioned by Poe into an homage of ecumenicity to an all-encompassing angel of music. \u003cbr\u003eMusically the score makes much use of textural variation between the three groups (full chorus, solo octet and string quartet). The tug of war between material that is almost childlike in its playfulness and sections that seem more sombre reflect my own thoughts on Poe’s oeuvre. As a European transplanted to North America, I am intrigued by the seeming disparity between the quasi-adulation of Poe’s poetry in Europe and the much cooler reaction he has always encountered in his native environs.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642460996,"sku":"807490DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738642493764,"sku":"807490DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738642526532,"sku":"807490DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642559300,"sku":"807490DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642592068,"sku":"807490DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308132540740,"sku":"807490DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334582313284,"sku":"807490DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334582346052,"sku":"807490DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334582378820,"sku":"807490DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807490DI-1.jpg?v=1790124374"},{"product_id":"807509di-john-sheppard-media-vita","title":"John Sheppard - Media vita","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe early life of John Sheppard (c.1515-1558) remains a mystery. Tradition holds that he was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral, but the first time he appears with any certainty is on his appointment to the post of Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1543. He left Magdalen in 1548 to become a ‘Gentleman of the Chapel Royal’, though the exact date of his taking up this post is uncertain. He seems to have maintained some unofficial association with Magdalen in the 1550s, though he is not to be confused with the unruly Richard Shepper, a fellow of Magdalen, whose violent physical abuse of young boys on two occasions in 1555 has at times been erroneously attributed to the composer. Sheppard can certainly be counted amongst the latecomers in the modern revival of sixteenth-century music; it has only been in the last two or three decades that his music has been performed or recorded in any quantity, and even now his reputation still has a good deal of catching-up to do. This is in stark contrast to his contemporary in the Chapel Royal Thomas Tallis, for example, whose music has been in the British choral repertoire for over a century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738642854212,"sku":"807509DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642886980,"sku":"807509DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642919748,"sku":"807509DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738642952516,"sku":"807509DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738642985284,"sku":"807509DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308135391556,"sku":"807509DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334583918916,"sku":"807509DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334583951684,"sku":"807509DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334583984452,"sku":"807509DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807509DI-1.jpg?v=1790124416"},{"product_id":"807565di-the-christmas-story","title":"The Christmas Story","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe idea behind this recording was shaped by the English tradition of Nine Lessons and Carols. Like the story of Christmas itself, this tradition had humble beginnings. A thousand years ago, Cornwall (in the southwest of England) was joined to the Diocese of Devon under the Bishop of Exeter. It was only many centuries later – in 1877 – that it was finally given its own diocese once again, this time at Truro. A new cathedral was immediately planned, but while it was being built services had to be held in a temporary wooden building – often referred to as a ‘hut’, but large enough to hold 400 parishioners. This is where, on Christmas Eve 1880, the first service of ‘Nine Lessons and Carols’ was given and, unwittingly perhaps, a new tradition was created. \u003cbr\u003eThe service was designed by the Bishop of Truro, E. W. Benson. In the words of his son, the writer A. C. Benson: ‘My father arranged from ancient sources a little service for Christmas Eve – nine carols and nine tiny lessons, which were read by various officers of the Church, beginning with a chorister, and ending, through the different grades, with the Bishop.’ In 1918 the service was adopted at King’s College Cambridge by the Dean, Eric Milner-White. In 1928 it was first broadcast by the BBC and it has now become one of the fixtures of Christmas broadcasting around the world. \u003cbr\u003eI have lived in Denmark for nearly ten years. It is a country with a strong sense of tradition beneath the sophisticated veneer of its relaxed modernity, and this manifests itself strongly at the solstices. At midwinter the intense darkness, the crisp cold, and the Danes’ addiction to candlelight have made me nostalgic for the Christmas services of my youth. So with Ars Nova Copenhagen we started in 2008 to present our own version of the service – usually as a concert programme in churches rather than as part of the liturgy. It proved very popular and has become part of our annual season. Sometimes the singers give the readings (in Danish, naturally, though some of them have Swedish or Norwegian accents), and sometimes they are given by members of the community. All agree that the music gains an extra dimension by being folded into the spoken narrative, especially when the readings are shared among audience and performers alike. \u003cbr\u003eI then thought of making a recording that would include the readings. But in which language (or languages) should they be given? Rejecting the idea of a mixture of many languages (attractive to me, but perhaps not to all) I looked instead for pieces of music that would go some way towards filling out the narrative in a suitable fashion. The following synopsis is drawn from the readings that form part of our presentation. Those familiar with the King’s College tradition will notice close resemblances, but also differences – in the latter part especially. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p3\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738643214660,"sku":"807565DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738643247428,"sku":"807565DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738643280196,"sku":"807565DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738643312964,"sku":"807565DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738643345732,"sku":"807565DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308135424324,"sku":"807565DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334585131332,"sku":"807565DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334585164100,"sku":"807565DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334585196868,"sku":"807565DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807565DI.jpg?v=1790124457"},{"product_id":"807510di-secret-voices","title":"Secret Voices","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the early 1180s, at the request of his wife Leonora, daughter of England’s Henry II and Alienor of Aquitaine, King Alfonso VIII of Castile founded a convent near Burgos in north-central Spain. It became a retreat (Las Huelgas means “place of refuge”) for royal and noble women seeking the religious life, and a mausoleum for the royal family. In 1188 it was incorporated as a house of the Cistercian order, part of the reform movement seeking to bring Benedictine monastics back to St. Benedict’s pure rule of ora et labora (prayer and work). Although Cistercians were supposed to live a simple life and subsist by the labor of their own hands, the ladies of Las Huelgas (who included members of the royal family) were granted, and did exercise, a degree of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and independence that would seem shocking today. Their abbesses could say mass, hear confessions, and make other decisions and rulings such as a priest or bishop might do. Indeed, these privileges were not completely rescinded until late in the nineteenth century. \u003cbr\u003eThe Codex Las Huelgas, copied in the first quarter of the 14th century, is an anthology of European polyphony and monophonic Latin song that spans the entire 13th and early 14th centuries. The finest examples of every style and genre of sacred and secular music are found among the 186 works in the collection: many are unique to this source, many others are only found in Iberian sources, and several come from the mainstream of the Parisian school of composition. Numerous well-known secular works have been contrafacted (retrofitted) with sacred Latin texts, to make them appropriate for liturgical or devotional use. The Codex is written in a clear hand, not overly ornate, and appears to be arranged and laid out for practical use. Its notation reflects a transitional state between the older Nôtre- Dame modal notation and the clearly defined mensural notation of c.1300. Our new transcriptions were made with a flexible, intuitive approach to the relationship between rhythm and notation in this source. There is some controversy about the singers of these songs. Some scholars believe that a hired choir of male chaplains did the singing. Others believe as we do: that this repertoire – ranging from simple plainchant and rhythmic monophonic song, to the most complex and virtuosic polyphonic conductus and motets – was collected for nuns themselves to sing. From the text of the hexachord solfeggio exercise, written as a two-voice discant, Fa fa mi \/ Ut re mi, it appears that there was a strong musical tradition among the sisters. Despite the Cistercian rule that prohibited these ladies from singing polyphony, it seems to have been an “open secret” that polyphony was both sung and enjoyed at Las Huelgas, and that the musical rights and privileges accorded only to male clerical singers were enjoyed there as well. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn Secret Voices, we have created a “day” of music in honor of the Virgin Mary, and have also included songs with texts that refer to the monastic life of the nuns themselves. \u003cbr\u003eThere are elegant French motets here, like the Benedicamus domino setting Claustrum pudicicie\/Virgo viget\/FLOS FILIUS, the original text of which describes pastoral love in the springtime; and the hybrid 4-voice conductus-motet O Maria virgo\/O Maria maris stella\/[IN VERITATE]. There are virtuoso conductus, like Ave maris stella and Mater patris et filia, with unpredictable rhythms and lively hockets. A playful Benedicamus domino à 3 is written in rondellus fashion – like a catch or round – typical of 13th-century British polyphony. There are also heartfelt laments, like the monophonic song O monialis conscio, a planctus written on the death of a beloved member of the sisterhood; and elegant duos with intertwining lines, like the \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738644918596,"sku":"807510DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738644951364,"sku":"807510DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738644984132,"sku":"807510DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738645016900,"sku":"807510DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738645049668,"sku":"807510DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308141650244,"sku":"807510DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334588801348,"sku":"807510DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334588834116,"sku":"807510DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334588866884,"sku":"807510DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807510DI.jpg?v=1790124667"},{"product_id":"807380di-mozart-violin-sonatas-1781","title":"Mozart - Violin Sonatas, 1781","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eT\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003ehe violin sonatas recorded here were composed during a pivotal year for Mozart. During a visit to Vienna in May, 1781, Mozart had, according to his version of events, resigned – or more likely was sacked – from his position as court organist and concertmaster to the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus Colloredo. His father, Leopold, also a Colloredo employee, was none too pleased for many reasons. As a respected servant of the court he was embarrassed by his son’s behaviour and possibly jealous of his new-found freedom. He was especially unhappy that the now homeless Mozart had taken lodgings in Vienna with the Weber family, of which Leopold was endlessly suspicious. Mozart had known the Webers since 1777, when he had fallen in love with their eldest daughter, a coloratura soprano named Aloysia. (Although she turned him down, he went on to compose much wonderful music for Aloysia. In 1780 she married Joseph Lange, the painter who was to leave unfinished one of the most famous, and certainly the most poignant, portraits of Mozart.) With a roof over his head, Mozart could pursue a freelance career in Vienna. Performing, composing and publishing might all further one’s reputation, and Mozart did all three tirelessly, but they did not necessarily generate income. The first performances of Die Entfu?hrung aus dem Serail, for example, were a critical and box-office success but earned the composer himself only one hundred ducats. To put this in perspective, he had been paid fifty ducats by Emperor Joseph II for playing in a competition with Muzio Clementi. (Evidently both the Emperor and Mozart felt the Italian was well beaten: “He doesn’t have a penny’s worth of taste or feeling – he is a mere Mechanicus,” wrote Mozart to his father.) \u003cspan class=\"s2\"\u003e1 \u003c\/span\u003eOther high profile concerts, such as for the Wiener Tonku?nstler-Sozietät, a charity that supported the widows and orphans of musicians, raised his profile but no money. And although the list of princes, barons and counts whom Mozart counted amongst his friends and admirers is an impressive one, he was forced to rely primarily on teaching. “I’ve three lady pupils – that brings 18 ducats a month – for I don’t teach [a series of ] 12 lessons any more, but on a monthly basis. – I have learned the hard way that they often skip whole weeks – now, whether they learn or not, each must pay me 6 ducats.” \u003cspan class=\"s2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738657337668,"sku":"807380DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738657370436,"sku":"807380DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738657403204,"sku":"807380DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738657435972,"sku":"807380DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738657468740,"sku":"807380DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308183822660,"sku":"807380DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334604857668,"sku":"807380DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334604890436,"sku":"807380DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334604923204,"sku":"807380DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807380DI.jpg?v=1790126115"},{"product_id":"807588di-sacrifices","title":"Sacrifices","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis reaction by French traveller André Maugars to music he heard at the Oratorio del Santissimo Crocifisso in Rome in 1639 almost certainly describes the work of Giacomo Carissimi (1605- 1674). Renowned as a composer at home and abroad, Carissimi was memorably described by his successor Pitoni as ‘very frugal in his domestic circumstances, very noble in his manners towards his friends and others ... of tall stature, thin, and inclined to melancholy’. Carissimi was born in the small town of Marino, fifteen miles from the centre of Rome. We know little about his musical education, but as the youngest son of a cooper, he was presumably the beneficiary of church schooling often made available to boys with strong singing voices. After working in Tivoli and Assisi as organist and maestro di cappella respectively, he was appointed to the Collegio Germanico in Rome at the age of just 23.\u003cbr\u003eVery quickly thereafter he became maestro di cappella, a prestigious post previously held by Tomás Luis de Victoria. Conditions at the well-funded Jesuit college were excellent and Carissimi stayed for the remainder of his life, during which time he became arguably Europe’s most admired composer. His fame grew not through publishing or self-promotion, but via countless hand-written copies of his music being transported across the continent by his many students and admirers. From Purcell’s London to Buxtehude’s Lübeck, the work of Carissimi came to be regarded by the cognoscenti as the epitome of fine vocal style. When 17th-century musicians spoke of music in ‘the latest Italian manner’ it would have been the style defined by Carissimi they often had in mind. This fame and respect led naturally to offers of employment, including one enticing opportunity to succeed Monteverdi as maestro di cappella at San Marco in Venice. Carissimi seems to have appreciated life at the Collegio Germanico however, and all such offers were turned down.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738713305412,"sku":"807588DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738713338180,"sku":"807588DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738713370948,"sku":"807588DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738713403716,"sku":"807588DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738713436484,"sku":"807588DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308335079748,"sku":"807588DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334657745220,"sku":"807588DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334657777988,"sku":"807588DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334657810756,"sku":"807588DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807588DI-1.jpg?v=1790129938"},{"product_id":"807590di-a-royal-trio","title":"A Royal Trio","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn 27 July 1719 the Royal Academy of Music was established as joint-stock company by a prestigious group of seventy-three British aristocrats. George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) had been living permanently in or near London for seven years, so it was logical for the Academy to appoint him as their salaried ‘Master of the Orchester’. He was issued a warrant by the Duke of Newcastle (the Lord Chamberlain and the governor of the Academy) to travel to the continent to recruit a suitable company of singers: in Dresden he hired the soprano Durastanti (who had sung for him in Rome and Venice, 1707–09) and the bass Boschi (who had also sung for Handel in Venice and in his first London opera Rinaldo in 1711); the Academy had stipulated that Handel should hire the castrato Senesino, who joined the new company a few months late because he first had to contrive craftily to have his contact with the Elector of Saxony terminated. Closer to home, Handel recruited the English singer Anastasia Robinson, who retired from the stage in June 1724 after her secret marriage to the Earl of Peterborough (an Academy director).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv title=\"Page 2\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe new opera company eventually opened for business on 2 April 1720 with a performance of Giovanni Porta’s Numitore at the King’s Theatre on the Haymarket; the theatre had been built a decade earlier by the great architect and Royal Academy subscriber Sir John Vanbrugh. For the next few seasons the Royal Academy of Music produced a bal- anced programme of works mostly by its double-act of imported foreign composers, the Saxon harpsichordist Handel and the Modenese cellist Giovanni Bononcini (1670–1747). The latter’s music was already popular in London: his Neapolitan opera Il trionfo di Camilla (1696) had been performed in London sixty-three times between 1706 and 1709, and un- successful attempts were made to bring him to London in 1707. In 1719 Lord Burlington (a Royal Academy director best known to posterity for his architectural endeavours such as his Palladian villa at Chiswick) travelled to Rome and personally hired Bononcini for the Royal Acade- my’s 1720\/21 season. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738713567556,"sku":"807590DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738713600324,"sku":"807590DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738713633092,"sku":"807590DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738713665860,"sku":"807590DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738713698628,"sku":"807590DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308337013060,"sku":"807590DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334657909060,"sku":"807590DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334657941828,"sku":"807590DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334657974596,"sku":"807590DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807590DI-1.jpg?v=1790129979"},{"product_id":"807595di-from-the-imperial-court-music-for-the-house-of-hapsburg","title":"From the Imperial Court - Music for the House of Hapsburg","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne of Europe’s most extraordinary ruling dynasties, the Hapsburgs ruled greater or lesser portions of Europe fromthe 11th century until 1918, their heyday coinciding with the supreme musical flourishing of the 16th century. Their rule saw a particular increase during the reign of Maximilian I (son of Fredrick III, Duke of Austria, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor) – secured first by his marriage to Mary of Burgundy in 1477 and then by the union of their son Philip ‘the Handsome’ with Joanna ‘the Mad’ of Castille. Thus his grandson Charles V essentially ruled Spain, Germany, Austria, Burgundy and the Low Countries, before he in turn divided his territories between his son Philip II and his brother Ferdinand of Austria in 1555-6. As these successive generations enlarged their power and territory, they gathered around themselves the leading composers of the day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv title=\"Page 3\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaximilian’s most notable court composer was Heinrich Isaac, whom he appointed in 1497 and who remained in his employment until the composer’s death in 1517. Though he was often overshadowed in his lifetime by the renowned Josquin, a famous letter advising the Duke of Ferrara on the appointment of a court composer in 1503 is revealing: ‘[Isaac] is of a better disposition... and he will compose new works more often. It is true that Josquin composes better, but he composes when he wants to and not when one wants him to.’ Duke Ercole favoured prestige over reliability and hired Josquin; meanwhile, in Maximilian’s service, Isaac’s Virgo prudentissima is a good example of a piece written to order: it was composed for the Reichstag of 1507 which confirmed Maximilian’s position as Holy Roman Emperor, and was performed under the direction of a certain ‘Georgius’ – Jurij Slatkonja, who was Maximilian’s first Kapellmeister and can therefore be considered the founding director of what is now the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Rather unusually, he even receives a mention in the motet, the text of which is a somewhat unwieldy one written for the occasion – and one at which a less obliging composer might perhaps have protested! Isaac’s motet is a work of stunning grandeur, employing a musical language which is both strikingly individual, yet self-consciously influenced by the music of the previous generation: full sections with monumental block chords and slow-moving harmony alternate with florid, virtuosic passages for reduced forces.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738714059076,"sku":"807595DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738714091844,"sku":"807595DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738714124612,"sku":"807595DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738714157380,"sku":"807595DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738714190148,"sku":"807595DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308337963332,"sku":"807595DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334658597188,"sku":"807595DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334658629956,"sku":"807595DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334658662724,"sku":"807595DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807595DI.jpg?v=1790448898"},{"product_id":"807610di-carols-from-the-old-new-worlds-vol-iii","title":"Carols from the Old \u0026 New Worlds, Vol. III","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e The “O Antiphons” that frame this collection of Christmas music properly belong to the week before Christmas. They are the culmination of Advent in preparation for the celebrations of Christmas Eve and Day. Advent itself begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas of course. Children start to open the pictures on their Advent calendars. Advent candles are lit to measure off the days left. Christmas fairs are set up across Germany. In Provence the crèche is peopled with santons. In Denmark the traditional Christmas lunch (an allafternoon affair at the very least) puts politics and business on hold. Across America the Christmas shops that have been open most of the year suddenly begin to make sense. And everywhere the carol singers begin to gather. Putting aside the commercial mayhem that surrounds a modern Christmas, all of these activities contrive to remind us that Christmas begins, musically as well as theologically, about a month before the day itself. Properly speaking it continues for some time afterwards as well, although carol singing, indoors or outside, tends to stop rather abruptly once the presents have been unwrapped.\u003cbr\u003eI don’t know if my musical colleagues have similar experiences – I expect they do – but my musical encounter with Christmas tends to run well into the New Year, either with more seasonal concerts or a carols recording on the back of December’s music-making. And it picks up again quite early in the summer when I start to plan the final details of my carol concerts for the following winter. Actually there is nothing I enjoy more on a hot June afternoon than to cool off indoors by playing through some favourite carols and perhaps starting to work on a new arrangement of one tune or another. This may all seem a bit weird to more normal people, for whom the onset of Christmas is probably signaled by the appearance of decorations in shops, but it was ever thus in my experience.\u003cbr\u003eThis is the fourth in a series of carol recordings for harmonia mundi that have featured a number of my own carol arrangements. Most of these arrangements have now been published by Theatre of Voices Edition: https:\/\/www. tov-edition.com. The first two CDs were Carols from the Old and New Worlds volumes 1 and 2. Next came The Christmas Story (2011), which follows a narrative pattern built loosely on the plan of Nine Lessons and Carols, and including early music as well as traditional. This newest addition maintains the transatlantic approach of the first two CDs, but because the singers here are Chamber Choir Ireland, I have flavoredthe mixture with a hint of Irish music for good measure.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738714353988,"sku":"807610DI-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738714386756,"sku":"807610DI-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738714419524,"sku":"807610DI-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738714452292,"sku":"807610DI-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738714485060,"sku":"807610DI-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308339175748,"sku":"807610DI-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334658793796,"sku":"807610DIS1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334658826564,"sku":"807610DIS69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334658859332,"sku":"807610DIS710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/807610DI-1.jpg?v=1790130069"},{"product_id":"hmu85748183-beethoven-the-late-string-quartets","title":"Beethoven: The Late String Quartets","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIt reads like irony from a master of the art. Reflecting on a performance of the Quartet in C sharp minor, op.131, George Bernard Shaw characterized Beethoven’s formidable late quartets as \u003cem\u003e‘. . . simple, unpretentious [and] perfectly intelligible . . . ’.\u003c\/em\u003e Yet Shaw was serious in his contrarian estimation, preferring the valedictory works to the ‘\u003cem\u003ewayward caprices of self-conscious genius\u003c\/em\u003e’ which, to his ear, were the quartets of Beethoven’s middle period.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e‘Are they always to be avoided?’\u003c\/em\u003e, asked Shaw, referring to the quartets commencing with op.127, ‘\u003cem\u003ebecause the professors once pronounced them obscure and impossible?\u003c\/em\u003e’ For decades, regrettably, the answer was yes. We thank Joseph Kerman for this sobering statistic: ‘\u003cem\u003e. . . in the twenty-five year period after Beethoven’s death, Vienna – that great musical center – can boast a grand total of no more than seven public performances of any of these works\u003c\/em\u003e.’\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003eTastes, however, change. In 1928, just a century after the composer’s death, music aficionado J. W. N. Sullivan wrote in his Beethoven biography that '\u003cem\u003eIn the last string quartets spiritual experiences are communicated of which it is very difficult to mention even the elements. And yet it is just this music that most moves us and impresses us as containing the profoundest and most valuable experiences that any artist has yet conveyed.\u003c\/em\u003e'\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cspan style=\"color: #993300;\"\u003ePlease note that track 16 is not included as it was not recorded in DSD.\u003c\/span\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cstrong\u003eTokyo String Quartet\u003c\/strong\u003e\r\nMartin Beaver, Violin\r\nKikuei Ikeda, Violin\r\nKazuhide Isomura, Viola\r\nClive Greensmith, Cello","brand":"harmonia mundi","offers":[{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738715042116,"sku":"HMU857481.83-7","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738715074884,"sku":"HMU857481.83-9","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738715107652,"sku":"HMU857481.83-10","price":19.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":56738715140420,"sku":"HMU857481.83-14","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 5ch Surround","offer_id":56738715173188,"sku":"HMU857481.83-17","price":23.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo","offer_id":57308339437892,"sku":"HMU857481.83-6","price":20.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"DSD 64 \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334658990404,"sku":"HMU857481.83S1417","price":32.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 192 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334659023172,"sku":"HMU857481.83S69","price":30.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"FLAC 96 kHz \/ 2ch Stereo \u0026 5ch Surround","offer_id":57334659055940,"sku":"HMU857481.83S710","price":29.49,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/files\/HMU857481.83-1.jpg?v=1790130111"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0966\/7900\/2436\/collections\/Harmonia_Mundi_Weblogo.png?v=1789307096","url":"https:\/\/www.nativedsd.com\/collections\/harmonia-mundi.oembed","provider":"NativeDSD Music","version":"1.0","type":"link"}