For a long time Johannes Ockeghem (ca.1420-1497) was one of the most famous Unknown Persons in music history. There is no doubt about his position as the most important representative of the second generation of Franco-Flemish composers.

Lilting melodies and exhilarating dance rhythms; gentle pathos, brooding drama and robust high spirits; the spirit of rural Bohemia and the sophistication of Prague, Vienna, New York and London in the late 19th century: Antonin Dvořák’s music is unfailingly distinctive and captivating. In all his works – from the epic ‘New World’ Symphony and Cello Concerto to the irresistible Slavonic Dances, haunting ‘American’ String Quartet, quirky violin Humoresque and yearning Song to the Moon – he is a composer whose heart is open and generous, and whose love for his homeland always shines through. This box provides an illuminating and enriching survey of his works, including his complete symphonies. A number of the celebrated performers have Slavonic roots themselves; all their interpretations draw on a deep affinity with Dvořák’s inspiration and humanity.

The Brook Street Band join forces with the Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, and their director Owen Rees, for the first ever pairing on disc of the two settings of the Dixit Dominus by Alessandro Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel.

The Brabant Ensemble continue their investigation into unknown jewels of the Low Countries Renaissance, researched by their director Stephen Rice and recorded with equal amounts of passion and erudition by the young singers of the group.

Most of Monteverdi's motets for one voice were among his late publications, like the celebrated Selva morale e spirituale (Venice, 1640). An aboluste master of what he called the seconda prattica, he demonstrated in these pieces all of the skill he had acquired over the years in writing for the solo voice. Just as he had taken the madrigal to its peak of perfection, Monteverdi here realises the achievements of the Baroque period in this form of religious music inherited from the early centuries of polyphonic writing. The performers have striven to revive the typically Venetian context of the time, placing these sublime works in a framework of instrumental toccatas and sinfonias by his contemporaries Marini, Merulo and Antegnati.

A pupil of his uncle Don Angelo Durante, head of the S Onofrio Conservatory in Naples, Francesco Durante established himself as a leading composer of church music, after a period of further study in Rome. He served as primo maestro at the Neapolitan Conservatori Poveri di Gesù Cristo, where his pupils included Pergolesi, later moving to the same position at the S Maria di Loreto Conservatory and finally at S Onofrio. His later pupils included Piccinni.
Durante’s fame as a composer rested on his achievements in the field of church music. His works include Masses, motets, antiphons, canticles, psalms and litanies.

Jean Mouton was a Renaissance French composer and choirmaster, much acknowledged but more rarely recorded, who wrote a body of music that’s both technically inventive and immediately appealing. Here Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble—renowned exponents of sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish repertoire—perform all Mouton’s eight-part music, two four-part motets, and his only five-part Mass setting, the Missa Tu es Petrus. The latter is characterized by light, clear textures and a soaring cantus firmus, while the double-choir Nesciens mater is rightly famous for its ingenious canon. Sheer compositional skill aside, all these works demonstrate Mouton’s vivid and original imagination—one that has the ability to speak directly to our time.

Mayr’s Masses were in demand across Europe, and their composition is rooted in the Italian tradition of the messa concertata which demands division into separate vocal numbers. The Mass in E minor has long been recognised as an outstanding example of Mayr’s late style, with its polyphonic mastery and dialogues between singers and concertante solo instruments being exceptionally convincing. The Mass in F minor evokes both joy and deep melancholy, though accompanied, as always, by Mayr’s notable gift for melodic beauty.

Celebrated in his time as a 'man of great worth', who 'really knew how to play well and compose well', Annibale Padovano's modern-day neglect doesn't refect the high regard in which he was held. Cinquecento deliver fawless accounts of two major Mass settings as they might have been heard in Karl II's Habsburg court.

Over the first half of the sixteenth century this Flemish composer was one of the key figures in Western music, instrumental in the development both of the madrigal and of church music fro double chorus. From 1527 until his death he was maestro di capella at St Mark’s in Venice, but this music dates mainly from his earlier years, when he achieved nine setting of the Mass. This splendid offering from Summerly and his Oxford Camerata is the only one available, a magnificent ‘parody mass’, using as its base a motet by Jean Richafort, a piece included here as a prelude. Willaert’s setting rises to a sublime conclusion in the extended Agnus Dei, in flowing polyphony. The Magnificat and Ave Maria offers inspired music too, performed with equal freshness and dedication. Vividly atmospheric sound.

Although the works of Josquin DesPrez (cl440-1521) are better known today than those of any other fifteenth-century composer, his biography remains shrouded in uncertainties. The general outlines –- his birth in the area of northern France that produced so many composers of the day, his travel to Milan, Rome and Ferrara, and then his return to the north at the end of his life - are clear. But, his connections to the Court of France, to the Provençal court of King René, to the court in Hungary, and many other details about his life remain contested or simply unknowable.

This release concludes the critically acclaimed series of Jir¡ Belohl vek's last recordings of Czech masterworks for Decca Classics before he passed away in 2017. The album features Dvor k's Requiem (with star soloists including Ailyn Perez) as well as new additions to the Decca catalog, the composer's Biblical Songs and Te Deum.

The Yorkshire Baroque Soloists and Yorkshire Bach Choir were formed in 1973 as the basis of the famous York Early Music Festival, and have built a firm reputation as one of the finest ensembles in the world in their performance and interpretation of 17th and 18th century music. Under their director Peter Seymour they return to disc with a fine selection of soloists to perform Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Their 2009 disc of Bach’s St John Passion, also on Signum, was released to excellent reviews.

This disc is a sampler of Vivaldi discs released by France's Naïve label, and it's highly recommended to listeners who haven't yet given these recordings a try. The group of performers is pan-European, with French singers and Italian instrumentalists especially strongly represented, but a compilation like this brings home how well this label has done at forging a unified artistic vision. Its Vivaldi indeed tends toward "furious," as the title proclaims; it is also garish, energetic, dynamically extreme, and in every way devoted to making Vivaldi out as a rebel in his time.