Articles
# TopicsAnniversary Baroque CD New Releases Early music festival Focus guests Heritage History interview music pictures of the Week Playlist of the week Portrait Presto Record of the month Records Report Video of the week Young talents
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Women ComposersAntonia Bembo, a Venetian at the Court of Louis XIV
Having fled to Paris, the Venetian composer and singer Antonia Bembo (1643–1715) led a truly romantic life, marked by a marital escape, royal patronage, and the creation of a musical language that blended Italian and French styles. A pupil of Cavalli, her only opera, “Ercole amante”, is on the bill at the Paris Opera from 28 May.
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Pygmalion Turns 20!Raphaël Pichon, Following in Bach’s Footsteps
To mark Pygmalion’s 20th anniversary, Raphaël Pichon conceived a unique pilgrimage: to retrace on foot, along with his musicians, the journey that the young Johann Sebastian Bach undertook in 1705 from Arnstadt to Lübeck, in northern Germany, to further his musical education under the great Dietrich Buxtehude. After a first stage in Thuringia in 2024, which resonated widely through ARTE and France Musique, Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble are now setting off once again for Wolfenbüttel, Lüneburg, and Lübeck, in northern Germany.
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Young TalentsPassiSparsi, the Morescas and a Black Cat at the Window
PassiSparsi are Italian and unapologetically unconventional. This vocal quartet has chosen a little-known Renaissance polyphonic repertoire: the morescas, irreverent secular songs that composer Orlando di Lasso wrote following a stay in Naples. Discover the mystery of PassiSparsi’s black cat in this many-voiced interview.
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Marta Gawlas & Natalia OlczakWomen composers
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, the child prodigy of Louis XIV’s court, is familiar enough; Anna Bon and Wilhelmine von Bayreuth, musicians connected with the Bayreuth milieu and with the flute, an instrument dear to Frederick II, are heard less often. With Compositrices, the flautist Marta Gawlas brings these three figures together in a single gesture: to reveal, without any heavy-handed manifesto, the refinement of their writing and the inventiveness of women composers still too rarely represented on disc. A luminous way into a repertoire waiting to be rediscovered.
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Atsushi Sakai & Christophe RoussetBach: Sonatas for Viola da Gamba
We may think we know Bach’s sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord; here, Atsushi Sakai and Christophe Rousset restore them to their share of mystery. Works that are hard to place, whether a genuine cycle or a gathering of independent pieces, they become here a space of close dialogue between viol and harpsichord, between contrapuntal rigour, inner song and meditation.
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Xavier Sabata & Le Concert de l’Hostel DieuFurioso
Orlando furioso never ceased to exert its pull on the Baroque imagination. With “Furioso”, Xavier Sabata, Le Concert de l’Hostel Dieu and Franck-Emmanuel Comte offer a concentrated journey through it, in which Ariosto’s hero appears by turns as knight, lost lover, figure of fury and wavering soul. An album built like an inner theatre.
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The Canadian Renaissance Music Summer SchoolsGreg Skidmore: A Renaissance Man from Canada
As a teenager in Canada in the 1990s, Greg Skidmore could not fully pursue his passion for Renaissance polyphony. Having since become a London-based baritone, he founded the Canadian Renaissance Music Summer Schools to offer others what he himself had lacked: the opportunity to study, sing and pass on this repertoire at the highest level.
