Records
Each week, Total Baroque Magazine brings you an in-depth review of a recently released early music album.
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Voces Suaves & Michele VannelliCarissimi: Historia di Jephte
Voces Suaves and Michele Vannelli approach Carissimi’s “Historia di Jephte” with attentive care and a palpable sense of engagement: nothing is overstated, the unfolding of the narrative speaks for itself, and it is from this precision that the emotion arises. Composed in the 1640s, the work has never left the repertoire, admired up to Handel, who reworked its final chorus in his “Samson”.
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Hannah de Priest & Les DélicesArcadian Dreams
“Arcadian Dreams” brings together the ensemble Les Délices and soprano Hannah De Priest in a Baroque program inspired by Arcadia. Featuring works by Rameau, Handel, and other rare compositions, the album combines refinement, expressiveness, and musical rediscovery.
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Laberintos IngeniososNuove Musiche
At the sources of Italian Baroque, “Nuove Musiche” brings together Furio Zanasi and Xavier Díaz-Latorre around Caccini and Kapsperger. Between vividly shaped monodies and toccatas for chitarrone, this programme in six “canti” explores the birth of the stile moderno. A Passacaille recording of striking expressive clarity.
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Hervé Niquet & Le Concert SpirituelThe Recording that Electrifies the Exodus
The supplications of the chosen people, the relentless yet exultant unleashing of the Plagues of Egypt, and the brilliance of divine triumph over paganism all feature in the new recording of Israel in Egypt, released by Alpha Classics.
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Il Caravaggio & Camille DelaforgeBreathing life into Rameau’s Pygmalion
From statue to living body: based on the myth of Pygmalion, Camille Delaforge brings together two 18th-century French scores, Rameau’s ballet act and an unpublished cantatille by Antoine Bailleux, a contemporary composer who has fallen into oblivion. Performed by Mathias Vidal, this recording uses music to explore the very act of creation.
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Gabriel SmallwoodJuvenilia
Juvenilia presents the early works of Bach and his contemporaries, revealing their effervescent creativity and inventiveness. Gabriel Smallwood interprets them with finesse and clarity. An album that invites listeners to rediscover the youth of one of the greatest composers of the 18th century.
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Concerto SoaveCampra and Bernier: a shared psalm
Concerto Soave brings together the two Venite, exultemus settings by Campra and Bernier, highlighting the techniques that shaped the French motet at the dawn of the eighteenth century: Italianate writing, rhetorical contrasts, text-painting, and an interplay of forces that reveals each composer’s unique voice.
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Manuel Granatiero & Eleonora BišćevićW. F. Bach: “Six Sonatas for Two Flutes”
Published in 2026, the Six Sonatas for Two Flutes reveal the unique style of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: bold composition based on constant dialogue between the voices, where virtuosity and expressiveness respond to each other with rare intensity.
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Martin Gester18 Bach Poems for a Desert Island
With the 18 Leipzig Chorales, Bach brings together, at the end of his life, a fully realized reflection on the organ, the chorale, and counterpoint. On the Thomas organ in Namur, Martin Gester approaches these pages as a space for sonic invention, playing with styles, colours, and balances to create a dialogue between learned elaboration and expressive intensity.