CALDARA IN VIENNA: FORGOTTEN CASTRATO ARIAS, Philippe Jaroussky, Concerto Köln, Emanuelle Haïm (director) (Virgin Classics). Antonio Caldara belongs to that company of baroque composers whose sometimes stellar careers 
were followed by almost complete obscurity, and a gradual revival centuries later, often at the instigation of dedicated musicologists. Caldara produced some 50 operas for one of the most opulent European courts of the early 18th century – that of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in Vienna. It is unlikely Jaroussky’s soprano falsetto voice replicates the dramatic power of the castrated males who were the operatic superstars of Caldara’s world, but the agile and sensitive performances of the French countertenor show how this vast reservoir of fine music can still live.
MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 2 ‘AUFERSTEHUNG’, Ricarda Merbeth (soprano), Bernarda Fink (mezzo-soprano), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Choir, Mariss Jansons (conductor) (RCO Live); MAHLER: ORCHESTRAL SONGS, Katerina Karnéus, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Susanna Mälkki (conductor) (BIS/Ode). These recent Mahler recordings explore the two genres that this most intense of late Romantic composes made his own – the expanded programmatic symphony and the orchestral song cycle. In his Second Symphony, he buries the hero of his First, and it is rich in that extreme narrative emotionalism and juxtaposition of the sublime and the gauche that leave most listeners firmly in one or the other camp of Mahler lover or hater. Either way, one can only be impressed by the live performance of this huge work by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, especially when seen as well as heard on the bonus DVD. On the other disc, mezzo Karnéus gives a sensitive performance of the Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen, Rückert-Lieder and, that most poignant of cycles, Kindertotenlieder (who else could make one love a series of “Songs on the Death of Children”?). Mahler is at his best with a guiding text, and these are masterpieces given the controlled but moving delivery they deserve.
CARL PHILIPP EMANUEL BACH: SEI CONCERTI PER IL CEMBALO CONCERTATO WQ43, Andreas Staier (harpsichord), Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans (director) (Harmonia Mundi/Ode). CPE Bach’s music lacks the timeless stature of the work’s of his father, JS, but was much more influential on the following generation of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. This is partly due to the abrupt shifts of mood in CPE’s music that came to be known as the “Expressive Style”, but in these six harpsichord concertos from the 1770s the formal surprises come as much from a sense of play as expression. Some things need getting used to: the disjunctive style, and the authentic balance between orchestra and Staier’s quiet German harpsichord. But it is the sort of experience that blossoms with familiarity.