Around 1600, when opera was invented in Italy, venice was resplendent with the works of Giovanni Gabrieli in the Basilica of San Marco. A daring amalgamation of Flemish and Italian styles, this is a corpus of virtuoso pieces in which voices compete with cornetts and trombones for polyphony of rare beauty. In an Italy ravaged by wars, where the Condottieri were the modern Heroes, the souls of these captains rise again thanks to the music of the brilliant Gabrieli, the ultimate representative of a Renaissance that put the fighting Princes into the last cherished armours… Adrien Mabire and his Mercenaries have been recruited to serve under Maestro Gabrieli, to enable his works to resound loud and clear, where we hear the triumphant flapping banners of the Victory at Lepanto, Glory be to the Serenissima!

This truly international ensemble drawn from Japan, Germany and the USA discloses a Newly Planted Thuringian Pleasure Garden virtually unknown on disc. Johann Rudolf Able (1625-73) worked at St Blasius Church in Muhlhausen (a predecessor there of JS Bach), but his stylistic lineage is clearly from Venice and Gabrieli, via Schiitz. Into his ‘garden’ Ahle ‘transplanted… new spiritual musical plants with three to ten and more parts’. The selection here uses four lucid voices, a cornetto and four trombones, a pair of violins and continue organ.

As the mysterious opening bars of the Kyrie gradually emerge into the light, we know that this recording of Mozart’s glorious Great Mass in C minor is a special one: the tempi perfect, the unfolding drama of the choral writing so carefully judged, and, above it all, the crystalline beauty of soloist Carolyn Sampson’s soprano, floating like a ministering angel. Masaaki Suzuki’s meticulous attention to detail, so rewarding in his remarkable Bach recordings, shines throughout this disc, the playing alert, the choir responsive, the soloists thrilling. And there is the bonus of an exhilarating Exsultate, Jubilate with Sampson on top form.

The SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart is one of the few choirs enjoying an international reputation. Their latest recording has “America” as its subject - and presents a tremendously wide range of forms and expressions, from music written under the influence of European masters to works that boldly explore experiments in aesthetic reorientation. The big names of the U.S. composers are of course represented, including Leonard Bernstein with his single a cappella work, the “Missa Brevis”, Steve Reich with his minimalist “Proverb” and John Cage with some of his late “Number Pieces”. Everything is presented at the highest artistic level, with ravishing sonics that cannot be beat.

Eustache du Caurroy is one of the unacknowledged masters of French Renaissaice polyphony whose works are rarely performed, due in part to the general lack of accessible or reliable editions. The majority of his compositions were for liturgical use - probably at the French Royal Court during the reigns of the successive monarchs Charles IX, Henri III and Henri IV. The motets recorded here illustrate two contrasting styles of vocal writing: imitative polyphony and 'musique mesurée', the former equating to the familiar, pan-European idiom of Palestrina and his later Renaissance contemporaries, the latter outlining protracted chord-against chord movement reflecting the natural stress-patterns of the words. The Missa pro Defunctis, the major work on this disc, was first performed at the funeral of Henri IV and remained for many years the official requiem sung at funerals of French monarchs.

Count Pirro Capacelli Albergati (1663-1735) was the descendent of one of the most eminent families of the Bolognese nobility, ambassador, member of the Council of Elders, and gonfalonier of the city of Bologna. Yet his signature on the title page of the collection of monodic cantatas entitled Corona dei pregi di Maria should come as no surprise. Music had for centuries been a well-established and important part of the education of noble youths, alongside rhetoric and dance. Moreover, in this specific case, Pirro Capacelli Albergati possessed exceptional musical talents which were widely acknowledged by his contemporaries and fellow Bolognese citizens.

This offering from the combined forces of Musica Amphion and the Gesualdo Consort is presented as a hardback book with a CD tucked into the back cover. It is the second in the Bach in Context series. The aim of the project is to present Bach’s works in a liturgical format. The book goes to considerable lengths to explain Lutheran liturgy and how Bach’s compositions would have fitted into a Sunday morning service, thus presenting a prelude, cantata, choral, motet, choral and postlude - in this case the fugue. The performers also give concerts using this format.

Bach's setting of the Magnificat is one of his most often-recorded vocal works; as a rule, it's paired with one of Bach's lavishly scored festal cantatas. (The Easter Oratorio seems to be a current favorite.) Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan had a different idea: they've paired Bach's Magnificat with roughly contemporary settings by Johann Kuhnau, who was Bach's immediate predecessor in Leipzig, and Jan Dismas Zelenka, who was a composer at the court of Saxony in Dresden. Zelenka is an interesting composer, among the most underrated of the Baroque era. His writing is less dense and intricate than Bach's–at times it looks forward to the simpler, more elegant style of Haydn and C.P.E. Bach. Zelenka knew his counterpoint, however, and was fond of slipping the occasional surprising chord change into his music.

Matthew Locke, England's leading composer in the 17th century, was also one of the busiest, writing for court, theater, and church. Surprisingly little of his music has been recorded, but this excellent recording helps correct this. The music has a strong emotional character, with dramatic, often pictorial harmonic effects that are less favored by today's choirs, but the quality of these works only makes us wonder why Locke is not better known.

The oratorio Theodora was first performed at the Covent Garden Theatre on 16 March 1750 and clearly took Londoners by surprise. Handel had, after all, made a one hundred and eighty degree turn in his choice of subject. The grandiose episodes of the Old Testament, the glorious struggles of Solomon, Saul or Judas Maccabaeus are no more: the young martyr Theodora leads neither a community nor troops into battle. In a work far removed from the grand spectacle of biblical oratorios, Handel invites us to witness the poignant tale of a personal drama, a drama of the beginnings of Christianity fuelled by conscience, faith, and the heartbreak that they cause.

After the completion, a few months back, of their complete Monteverdi Madrigal Edition, and a Gramophone Award for Orfeo, La Venexiana now issues three discs recorded live at the 2005 Semana de Música Religiosa Festival in Cuenca.The ensemble's founder members, Rossana Bertini, Giuseppe Maletto, Sandro Naglia and Daniele Carnovich, are heard in the company of a select group of instrumentalists and singers, all of them under the direction of Claudio Cavina, for a memorable journey through Monteverdi's Selva Morale e Spirituale.

Teresa Berganza Vargas is a Spanish mezzo-soprano. She is most closely associated with the roles of Rossini, Mozart, and Bizet. She is admired for her technical virtuosity, musical intelligence, and beguiling stage presence.

The Officium defunctorum by Tomás Luis de Victoria, published in 1605, is one of the masterworks of the musical Renaissance, which still moves us with its austerity and expressive power. It was written in the style of a swansong for the funeral rites of the composers patroness, the empress Maria of Austria, sister of Philip II and widow of the emperor Maximilian II. For the first time in a recording, La Grande Chapelle and Schola Antiqua place the work in its liturgical context, restoring the two original days: the vigil for the dead and the mass which concludes with the rite of absolution.

In Minas Gerais, a region which still enjoyed great opulence in the late eighteenth century thanks to the discovery of gold there, Antonio dos Santos Cunha practised a vivid style of composition, with all the hallmarks of Baroque rhetoric combined with musical resources deriving from Italian opera, and spiced with a tropical ‘Sturm und Drang’, thus adding his own dramatic and intense setting to the canon of Passion music.