2024 Holiday Gift List

Every year at this time, I compile a list of some of my favorite recent recordings to recommend for your holiday gift giving. For many years the goal has been pretty straightforward: to give you practical guidance and take away a little bit of the stress of getting ready for the holiday season, which can sometimes be chaotic.

Listening to music is itself a gift. It can provide comfort or brighten our mood, it can be a welcome distraction, or be a soothing balm. As a regular listener, you and I enjoy the music on Sunday Baroque every week.

Not just MORE Bach – this album offers REIMAGINED Bach! Rinaldo Alessandrini created original adaptations of a variety of selections by Johann Sebastian Bach. There’s an orchestral transcription of the Overture in the French Style BWV 831 (originally a solo keyboard composition), a Partita for Flauto Traverso and String Orchestra (derived from a handpicked selection of solos), and an Overture for String Orchestra that is also cherrypicked from selected other compositions and fleshed out for a full ensemble.

In her third volume of the ongoing BACH TO BLACK series of recordings, the brilliant pianist and scholar Rochelle Sennet presents Johann Sebastian Bach’s 6 French Suites, as well as Bach’s Overture in the French Style. These are combined with the world premiere recordings of suites by Adolphus Hailstork and James Lee III, as well as piano solos by Black women composers Margaret Bonds, Montague Ring, Nkeiru Okoye, and Betty Jackson King, and a suite by William Grant Still. Rochelle Sennet’s artistry is supple and elegant, and all the music on this and her other volumes in the series is essential repertory!

The marvelous violinist Rachel Barton Pine is an adventurer with a lot of talented friends! She invited three of them to join her in playing Arcangelo Corelli’s Violin Sonatas – with a twist! Each movement of each sonata is approached with a slightly different combination of instruments by the performers. Rachel also tried out a technique for holding the violin that she’d read about. In 2014, musicologist and Baroque violinist Christoph Riedo published an article “How Might Arcangelo Corelli Have Played the Violin?” which made a compelling case that Corelli played the violin against his chest. No matter how she holds the violin, RBP is always terrific! 

Dutch recorder player and conductor Frans Brüggen (1934-2014) was a trailblazing musician who helped energize the revival of interest in music from the baroque era and the years leading up to it. He was a co-founder in 1981 of The Orchestra of the 18^th Century, and throughout his career he collected historical instruments dating from the 1680s through the 1740s. Those instruments were not played until Brüggen’s widow gave permission for Dutch recorder virtuosa Lucie Horsch to use them for this 2024 recording.

The selections include music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Jacob van Eyck, Franz Joseph Haydn, Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Marcello, and many others.

When he worked in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach frequented Gottfried Zimmerman’s coffeehouse, which attracted a loyal following of musicians and music lovers. This is an enjoyable collection of some favorite baroque era music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Phillip Telemann, and Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrell leads Apollo’s Fire – the Grammy-winning period instrument ensemble she founded in 1992.

As a young musician, Jeannette Sorrell heard three concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach that ignited her passion for the harpsichord. It’s what inspired her to establish her Cleveland-based baroque orchestra, Apollo’s Fire. In 1999, she and her group recorded those three concertos — Concerto in d BWV1052; Concerto in f BWV1056; and Brandenburg Concerto #5 – as part of a set that also included the complete Brandenburg Concertos. This 25^th anniversary reissue celebrates that wildly successful early release with her three favorites.

The top-notch period instrument ensemble Tempesta di Mare continues its love affair with music by Johann Friedrich Fasch, releasing their fourth volume of his music. These musicians give consistently excellent performances of interesting music that you may not know. If you’re a baroque music lover, this is a sure thing – and it’s an especially good choice if you already own the standard repertory of the era by Fasch’s contemporaries such as Johann Sebastian Bach.

When Claudio Monteverdi composed his Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin), he created a monumental sacred composition that was unique for its time. Requiring solo voices, choirs, and instrumentalists, this 2024 recordings features top-tier soloists including sopranos Michele Kennedy, Katelyn Jackson, and Molly Quinn, tenors Aaron Sheehan, Steven Soph, and Oliver Mercer, and bass-baritone Edmund Milly. Monteverdi’s VESPERS is a journey of contrasting sections that showcase the large forces with chamber-like smaller combinations.

Harpsichordist and conductor William Christie is an American musician who went to France in the 1970s, fell in love with French baroque music, and stayed. The Buffalo, NY-born founder of Les Arts Florissants turns 80 on December 19, 2024, and this recording brings together some of the talented young musicians whose careers he has helped nurture. The baroque composers represented on this album include Henry Purcell, George Frideric Handel, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Francois Couperin, Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, and more.