EMA CD & Book Reviews

The 12 pieces on the ensemble's new recording are culled from 2,300 in the collection of the Düben family, whose members over three generations served as Kapellmeisters for the Royal Swedish Court in Stockholm; they are the best of the best.

Peter Holman uses a variety of sources, inclusive of first-hand performance descriptions, iconography, and score analysis, taking aim at certain contemporary assumptions about 17th-, 18th-, and early 19th-century performance practice.

Tenor Karim Sulayman and fortepianist Yi-heng Yang have released a compelling collection of Schubert songs, Where Only Stars Can Hear Us, comprising 18 Lieder spanning 14 years of the composer’s life with texts by 12 poets.

The harpsichordist and musicologist Jane Clark, Swansea University professor emeritus Derek Connon, and Keyword Press have published a third, revised edition of The Mirror of Human Life. They have improved what was already a very good thing.

This immaculate and convincing performance by Astrarium Consort demonstrates obvious knowledge and affection for Francesco Durante’s 1738 creation.

Beethoven’s early symphonies are obviously in the vanguard when compared with the music composed in prior decades. To amplify the comparison, this disc by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin includes two short symphonies by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

This book provides new insights into how benefit performances “for musicians, composers and singers became an integral part of the commercial music business during the eighteenth century.” Little has changed in the music world since that time.

New Trinity Baroque performs 'Membra Jesu nostri,' seven interrelated cantatas each describing a part of the body of the crucified Jesus (thus: feet, knees, hands, sides, breast, heart, and face).

"Gli equivoci nel sembiante" makes a very pleasant impression on the Canadian label Musica Omnia’s well-engineered new recording featuring Capella Intima, Gallery Players of Niagara, and Nota Bene Baroque Players.

Avery Amereau’s debut solo recording, a collaboration with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Nicholas McGegan, covers Handel’s music for star operatic altos of both sexes.