The All Baroque Box

Description

With The All-Baroque Box we realize one of our fondest dreams: harnessing the deep catalogue of Archiv Produktion (supplemented on occasion by Decca L oiseau lyre recordings) to create a comprehensive collection of great music from Monteverdi to Bach.The music ranges from huge Baroque (Missa Salisburgensis, Venetian polychoral, Charpentier Te Deum) to intimate Baroque (the Goldberg Variations, Bach cello suites, solo cantatas) overwhelming in its impact and emotional content. Of course, Baroque music is also an ideal lifestyle choice nothing quite like it to get you going in the morning or to accompany your final thoughts at the end of the day . . . it s all here to sample and to revel in.OVERVIEWThe great names of Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Rameau, Handel and Bach are the main composers included, with vespers, concertos, operas, cantatas, oratorios and passions galore. There are classic recordings of Giovanni Gabrieli (Music for San Rocco), Schütz (Musikalische Exequien), Biber (Missa Salisburgensis), Lully (Le Roi danse), Charpentier, Purcell, Corelli, Couperins, Telemann, Heinichen, Domenico Scarlatti and Pergolesi. In all, the box contains four complete operas: Monteverdi s Orfeo, Purcell s Dido and Aeneas, Rameau s Dardanus and Handel s Giulio Cesare (with synopses in booklet).The perennial favourites are there too: the Allegri Miserere, the Pachelbel Canon and Gigue, Charpentier s Te Deum, Vivaldi withThe Four Seasons, Bach with the Brandenburg Concertos, St. Matthew Passion, Mass in B minor, and Handel with Messiah, Fireworks and Water Music and many more.PERFORMERS AND PERFORMANCESIf the repertoire is wide-ranging, the performances, almost all in the period-instrument tradition bring together the great artists of Archiv of the last 30 years: John Eliot Gardiner, Reinhard Goebel, Paul McCreesh, Marc Minkowski and Trevor Pinnock, each with their respective choirs and bands each of an outstanding quality. Soloists include Anne Sofie von Otter, Andreas Scholl, Emma Kirkby, Simon Preston, Christophe Rousset, Gustav Leonhardt, Simon Standage the heroes and heroines of the early music movement. To help out we have icons like Pierre Fournier and Nathan Milstein for the Bach solo works, like the Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas.BOOKLETThe box artwork captures a real Baroque look five different images of models floating in water, swathed in richly-coloured fabrics. They could be figures from a Roman baroque ceiling or altar. Running to 140 pages, the booklet includes, in addition to a full-scale tracklist, a Baroque timeline (in English) of political and cultural events, with many charming illustrations by Fred Münzmaier, DG s former creative director (selection included here).