Monica Huggett has produced numerous best-selling and acclaimed recordings for Avie, notably the Grammy®-nominated Bach Orchestral Suites, which made the Top 10 of Billboard’s Traditional Classical Chart. This ear-opening version, Monica claims, restored Suite No. 2 to its original instrumentation. She makes a similar case with her new recording of Bach’s Saint John Passion, placing oboes where we typically hear flutes and arguing that Bach’s original score was produced during his early years in Leipzig, where flutes were unavailable to him.

Christoph Prégardien’s newest CD features songs by Schumann, Killmayer, and Mahler, arranged for chamber ensemble by Marcus Reißenberger. Well-known works have a fresh glow, and the superb musicians of the ensemble combine with Prégardien’s intensity to make this a classical must-have! Christoph Prégardien needs no introduction, well known for his award-wining recordings of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Schwanengesang, both released in 2008. Die schöne Müllerin was honored with the 2009 MIDEM Record of the Year Award and highly praised by Gramophone (including Editor’s Choice & Best of 2008).

The fifth volume of vocal music in Challenge Classics’ series of Buxtehude’s complete works! On this beautiful CD, Ton Koopman and his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir expose the “unknown Buxtehude.”

Featured Artists
Miriam Meyer, Siri Karoline Thornhill, Bettina Pahn, Dorothee Wohlgemuth: sopranos
Bogna Bartosz: alto
Jörg Dürmüller: tenor
Klaus Mertens: bass
Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra
Ton Koopman: conductor

The immediate cause for this CD is the direction Cage gave in his score of the String Quartet in Four Parts: “Play without vibrato and with only minimum weight on the bow.” It inspired Frank Agsteribbe to arrange this work, originally written for modern string quartet, for Baroque string orchestra instead. It is only to be expected that a Baroque orchestra like B’Rock would take up this project: right from the start it was the group’s aim to present not only Baroque music, but also 20th-century and new repertory. This results in a different, refreshing approach to early music, and one that is full of imagination.

Aside from a handful of cantorial pieces, and despite his fondness for setting vocal texts, Daniel Asia didn’t begin to explore his deep interest in Judaism and his Jewish identity in music until 1988, with his Celebration for baritone, chorus, brass, and organ. This work subsequently provided material for Asia’s Symphony No. 2, an evocation of Jewish prayer, penitence, and praise. After producing another two, purely abstract symphonies in the early 1990s, Asia turned his attention to other genres for the next 15 years. Then, in 2008, came his Symphony No. 5, “Of Songs & Psalms”—not only a return to the symphony, but also a return to exploring facets of Jewish identity via the symphonic medium. Asia’s Fifth, while hardly as histrionic as Bernstein’s, is similarly a work of questioning and unease, at least in part. It also gives Asia another opportunity to set poems by the American Paul Pines, whose work has been coupled to Asia’s music many times since the 1980s. The symphony was premiered in 2008 by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, George Hanson conducting, with soloists Kelly Anderson and Robert Swensen.