Dietrich Buxtehude Collection (17CD)

With this exemplary compilation, Brilliant Classics paints a vivid picture of the composer Dieterich Buxtehude in the most important areas of his oeuvre, drawing on a rich back catalog crowned with new recordings. More than half of the set is dedicated to the ambitious, monumental recording cycle of the complete music for keyboard instruments on 10 CDs, which the organist and harpsichordist Simone Stella carried out in 2010/11. This primacy for the solo piano is only natural when one considers that Buxtehude himself was a gifted performer on these instruments - and it is this repertoire, through its easy dissemination, that exerted its greatest compositional influence on subsequent generations, which included the great Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, born almost 50 years later. But his vocal works were also groundbreaking. For this, Brilliant Classics has licensed important recordings of cantatas for small and large ensembles from 1996 and 2000, originally released by the Danish label Dacapo, featuring the great Emma Kirkby and Danish bass Johan Reuter, as well as a Canadian recording of cantatas for one, two and three soloists from 2002 by Naxos. Brilliant Classics complements these treasures with a vocal gem from its own catalog: Buxtehude's great cycle of seven cantatas, Membra Jesu nostri, in a 2021 recording by the Luthers Bach Ensemble Groningen. Finally, the chamber music is offered in a new release by the Amsterdam ensemble Fantasticus, recorded in 2023 and comprising the trio sonatas Opp. 1 & 2 with an addition of sonatas in manuscript on 3 CDs.