The labels lately established by performing organizations have mostly been devoted to new releases, but there is a lot to be said for using them to resurrect historical performances and recordings. These tend to be ones that have hung in people's memories for years, well after newer recordings have become available. There couldn't be a better example than this, the first historical release from the Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings label. It reproduces a 1984 live performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah, Op. 70 (as Elias, in the original German) from the Nationaltheater München, with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Chor des städtischen Musikvereins zu Düsseldorf. (The latter got involved because the Bayerischer Staatsopernchor was unavailable, but the choir acquits itself very well, unsurprisingly inasmuch as Mendelssohn himself was one of its former directors.) Sawallisch was noted for his way with Mendelssohn, to which he brought a noble Germanic tinge that makes a nice contrast with the usual English performances. He never did better than here, and upon hearing that tapes of this performance had been preserved, he is said to have exclaimed, "Thank God they're safe!" The soloists, led by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the title role and tenor Peter Schreier as Obadiah, are superb. Another attraction is the hardbound booklet, delving deep into Mendelssohn's philosophical place in German society (really philosophical -- Hegel and his dialectic come into it). The live sound from 1984 is impressive indeed, with crowd noise kept to an absolute minimum in a superb display of discipline. A wonderful historical reissue that catches the intense drama in Mendelssohn's oratorio.© James Manheim /TiVo

In this volume recorded on April 23-25, 2000, in the Georgenkirche in Eisenach -- the town of Bach's birth and the church of his baptism -- John Eliot Gardiner has programmed two cantatas for Easter Sunday -- Christ lag in Todesbandend (Christ lies in the Bonds of Death) (BWV 4) and Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret! (The Heavens Laugh! The Earth Rejoices) (BWV 31) -- two cantatas for Easter Monday -- Erfeut euch, ihr Herzen (Rejoice, Heart) (BWV 66) and Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden (Remain with us, it is towards evening and the day is far spent) (BWV 6) -- and two cantatas for Easter Tuesday -- Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiss (The heart that truly knows Jesus) (BWV 134) and Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergotzen (I live, my heart, for your salvation) (BWV 145). And every movement in every work is suffused with spirituality, from the dark night of the soul that is Christ lag in Todesbandend to the bright rejoicing of Der Himmel lacht! to the ethereal serenity of Ich lebe, mein Herze. Although there have certainly been other musical, beautiful, and even spiritual recordings of Bach's cantatas in the past and will surely be other fine recordings of the same ilk in the future, these recordings are bound to be special for a long time. As always in this series, no matter what the venue, the recordings are vivid and immediate. © TiVo

With its forty-five chorale preludes, the Orgelbüchlein bears witness to a mastery of the art of improvisation on the organ, as the congregation heard it at the time before singing the hymn in its turn. It was a tempting experiment to revive this primary function: by collaborating with the combined forces of the Ensemble Vocal Bergamasque and the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, Benjamin Alard gives the "little organ book" its full significance and expressive power. © harmonia mundi

A scribe of Schubert’s lieder, piano virtuoso, composer of powerful symphonic works, a precursor to modern music which would blossom at the start of the twentieth century, Franz Liszt is also the author of many lieder and other melodies. This great European traveller spoke many different languages, never holding back from putting German romanticism to music through the words of Heine, Schiller, Rellstab or Goethe, the French smoothness of Victor Hugo or the perfect language of Petrarch’s Sonnets in Italian. At 35 years old, the French tenor Cyrille Dubois already has a long career behind him. A young singer in the Caen children’s choir in Normandy, he started his solo career at the age of 12, playing Miles in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at the Opéra de Lyon, before joining the Opéra de Paris’ Atelier Lyrique program in 2010. He has since performed on various international stages. His accompanist Tristan Raës studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning several prizes, including that of Anne Le Bozec’s accompaniment class. The two musicians that make up Duo Contraste met for the first time over ten years ago during their studies. Driven by a passion for melody which they admirably deliver, they have dedicated themselves to this repertoire with a skilful blend of simplicity and clarity, as well as a remarkable sense of nuance and expression all while avoiding any over-exaggerated sentimentality. © François Hudry/Qobuz

This 2023 release inaugurates an ongoing series from baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, performing Schubert works two centuries on from their date of composition, and slated to culminate in 2028, the bicentennial of the composer's death. The project begins with one of the most famous Schubert song cycles of all, Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795, depicting the crackup and despair of a young wanderer who falls in love with a beautiful miller's daughter. Hasselhorn has plenty of recent competition in this cycle; listeners can sample the 2017 recording by Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber for another approach, but this one promises well for the ongoing project. Die schöne Müllerin is a work in which Schubert took vast strides toward the emancipation of the piano in the lied, and Bushakevitz leans into this aspect, with details that illuminate and often foreshadow themes developing in the text. Hasselhorn has a warm baritone with an appealing conversational tone that turns chilly and quiet toward the cycle's downer conclusion. Another draw is Harmonia Mundi's sound from the b-sharp studio in Berlin; the engineers put Bushakevitz just a bit forward in the mix, not so much as to sap energy from Hasselhorn's singing, but enough to highlight his perceptive performance. This release bodes well indeed for the duo's future work.© James Manheim /TiVo

One might react to this album with initial annoyance and ask whether it is really necessary to hear orchestrated versions of Schubert's supremely pianistic songs. It may come as a surprise, then, to find that most of these Lieder with Orchestra were arranged by great composers. They include Benjamin Britten, Jacques Offenbach, and Max Reger, who took on the job because, he said, he hated to hear a piano-accompanied song on an orchestral program. Perhaps the most surprising name to find is that of Anton Webern, but his arrangements are not the minimal, pointillistic things one might expect; he wrote these arrangements as a way of studying Schubert's music, and they are quite straightforward. Indeed, it is somewhat difficult to distinguish the arrangers simply by listening to the music; Schubert's melodic lines tend to suggest distinctive solutions. Perhaps Reger's are a bit more lush than the others, although his version of Erlkönig, D. 328, is one of the few numbers here that just doesn't work (there is no way to replicate the percussive quality of the accompaniment). As for the performances as such, Benjamin Appl is clearly an important rising baritone, and he has a wonderful natural quality in Schubert. An oddball release like this might seem an unusual choice for a singer in early career, but he contributes his own notes, and he seems to have undertaken the project out of genuine enthusiasm for the material. At the very least, he has brought some intriguing pieces out of the archives and given them highly listenable performances. The Munich Radio Orchestra, under the young Oscar Jockel, is suitably restrained and keeps out of Appl's way. This release made classical best-seller lists in the autumn of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo

Beethoven's nine symphonies -- what can one say? The greatest body of orchestral works ever composed? Probably. The most performed body of orchestral works ever composed? Certainly. The most recorded body of orchestral works ever composed? Absolutely. Not only has virtually every conductor recorded a Beethoven cycle, some of them have gotten to record it multiple times: Abbado, Bernstein, Solti, Karajan, and Haitink, among others. What does this proliferation tell us? Usually nothing about the music that hasn't been heard before, but sometimes something about what the conductor thinks about the music. These performances with the London Symphony Orchestra recorded in 2005 and 2006 tell what Bernard Haitink thinks about the greatest body of orchestral works ever composed. And what does Haitink think? Pretty much nothing that hasn't been thought before. His tempos are neither too fast nor too slow, but straight down the moderato. His dynamics are neither too loud nor too quiet, but right in the mezzo. His textures are clear and lucid. His colors are blended and smooth. His interpretations are solid and sincere. But what does Haitink tell us about what he thinks about Beethoven's symphonies? Pretty much nothing except that he is an experienced conductor with a superb baton technique who keeps his opinions to himself. The London Symphony's playing is enthusiastic but too often ragged around the edges for comfort. LSO Live's recording is transparent but the perspective seems to shift from work to work -- sometimes the strings are too far away, other times the brass are too close.© TiVo

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner, said England's Independent newspaper, "has had the last laugh" -- Vol. 1 of his Bach cantata series was named Record of the Year at the 2005 Classic FM Gramophone Awards in London, after the big Deutsche Grammophon label pulled out of the project and dropped Gardiner just before it got underway in 2000. No doubt a bit of gloating is appropriate along with justified satisfaction in a tough job well done -- Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists undertook a "Bach cantata pilgrimage," singing all of Bach's cantatas on their liturgically appropriate dates while making a grand tour of acoustically appropriate European churches, many of them with links to the original circumstances in which Bach worked. The recordings, Gardiner said, were "a corollary of the concerts, not their raison d'être" prior to each night's concert, engineers recorded the final rehearsal in situ. By the time these recordings were made in London, the concert series was well under way, and, in the words of bass Dietrich Henschel, the performers "had become spiritually familiar with one another." The results, issued on Gardiner's own SDG label, fully live up to the awards hype. Gardiner's interpretations, though they fall under the historical-performance classification, are personal, subjective, dramatic, and romantic. The program naturally coheres thanks to the common origins of the works in the phases of the liturgical year around which Bach organized his thinking (six cantatas are presented on two discs, three for the Feast of St. John the Baptist in mid-June and three for the first Sunday after Trinity), and every element of the sumptuous booklet presentation contributes to an appreciation of Bach's religious language, as audiences in German churches of the eighteenth century would have understood it. So Gardiner has indeed had the last laugh. But perhaps he would be the first to concede that the difficult birth of this project helped him push classical music toward its future, and even that the music is perhaps better, more urgent, than it might otherwise have been. In place of what would have been a series of implacably standardized albums on Deutsche Grammophon, we will now have releases that are individual, committed, and free. Gardiner's liner notes are taken from journals he wrote during the Bach pilgrimage, and they help bring home the immediacy and excitement of this project. The next step, as recordings like this move online, will be to turn this kind of journal into a blog. The old superstructure of the classical recording industry is collapsing into ruin, but this recording provides some of the clearest testimony yet that new and exciting small enterprises will fill the void. © TiVo

No doubt fairies exist. Mendelssohn spoke their language well. When he considered composing music to Shakespeare’s play, he decided to focus on the scenes with fairies.Humans like this music. It entertains them. They are allowed to listen to this cd, too. However, we made this recording for fairies. They listen differently. This recording is full of hidden messages, which they will understand.Fairies are around us all the time. They occasionally interfere but sometimes they take a long time waiting for the right moment. If you keep your voice down and open your eyes, you will notice them. They listen to this music with more attention.- Iván Fischer

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Baritone Thomas Guthrie gets top billing, as is usual for the singer, on this recording of Schubert's song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, but equally important is the ensemble Barokksolistene, contributing a string quintet and a pair of guitars as accompaniment to Schubert's familiar songs about the fair maid of the mill. The arrangements are by Guthrie, but this release was the product of a musical-theatrical presentation by Barokksolistene, a group that has tried, so to speak, to bring classical music back to the barrooms, with performances of Baroque music in pub-like settings. It is hard to evaluate the recording without the theatrical context; the backing group is different from the usual ones offered by Barokksolistene, and there is something of the flavor of two projects going at cross purposes. On the other hand, arrangements of all kinds were common in the 19th century, and even if a string quintet would be unlikely for an informal musicale, nothing here goes beyond the bounds of what is reasonable. Guthrie has an appealing baritone, and as an introduction to the undoubtedly experimental spirit of Barokksolistene, this album succeeds. It made classical best-seller charts in the holiday season of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo