LABEL FOCUS: SOLI DEO GLORIA
Soli Deo Gloria is conductor John Eliot Gardiner’s label, established in 2005 to release the recordings from his year-long Bach Cantata pilgrimage tour, eventually totaling 27 albums. The label has since released subsequent Gardiner projects with his Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Singers, and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. SDG are the initials that Bach appended at the end of each of his Cantata scores. It stands for Soli Deo Gloria, to the glory of God alone.
Gardiner’s latest release is Bach: Motets (SDG, $18.99). He’s also completed his ongoing “Brahms: Roots and Memories” project of 5 CDs. Each CD—Brahms: Symphonies 1, 2, 3, 4 (SDG, each CD, $18.99) and Ein Deutsches Requiem (SDG, $18.99)—juxtaposes Brahms’s symphonies and the German Requiem against his “lesser-known choral works and alongside pieces by earlier composer that may have inspired them.” Hear splendid “period instrument” Brahms as you’ve never heard it before, alongside Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bach, Beethoven and Schütz.
Each SDG recording comes in a CD-sized hardback book, with wonderful notes and graphics; look at the Brahms covers with details from paintings by Howard Hodgkin.
