Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv Blue Series

Another great early music collection: Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv Blue series. Quote the intro from the official site:

"This is the dedicated reduced price catalogue series for Archiv Produktion.  It offers the same wide selection of Early Music and features all the top artists on the label, including Trevor Pinnock, Paul McCreesh, Reinhard Goebel and Marc Minkowski.

Archiv Produktion has established itself as a landmark label for early music, documenting since 1947 the rediscovery and innovative interpretation of early music by the great performers of the day.  From the early recordings of Helmut Walcha, through Karl Richter, and more recently, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock to today's lineup of Reinhard Goebel, Paul McCreesh and Marc Minkowski, Archiv Produktion continues to offer a wide palette of recordings in which today's great artists focus on the areas of their greatest expertise. "

Here's the Spotify playlist: DG: Archiv Blue Series (467 track, total time 1 day) It's a great addition to the Naxos Early Music Collection I posted last week, the Pérotin and Notre Dame school recordings are magnificent. Do check DG's official site for the introduction text to every recording.

Naxos Early Music Collection

"This collection focuses on music from the early Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Enjoy our albums and listen to early music from Italy, France, Flanders, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Finland, England, among others, performed by outstanding ensembles and soloists playing on authentic or modern instruments." from Naxos' official page.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Naxos Early Music Collection (1659 tracks, total time: 4 days) The recordings are arranged alphabetically by composer names, just like in the Naxos page, and I put the sampler disk An Introduction To Early Music at the beginning.

For those of you who think that mp3 downloads is still necessary, Amazon is now offering Very Best of Naxos Early Music for free.