Articles
# TopicsAnniversary Baroque baroque masters CD New Releases Early music festival Focus guests Guide to the Baroque Summer Heritage History interview music pictures of the Week Playlist of the week Portrait Records Report Video of the week Young talents
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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.
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Les Épopées & Stéphane FugetQueen Dido Returns to Tunis
On May 14 and 15, Les Épopées and Stéphane Fuget bring Queen Dido back to the Tunis Opera House in her homeland, since, according to Purcell’s opera—based on Virgil’s Aeneid—she was the one who founded the nearby city of Carthage. This new production is distinctive in combining the ensemble’s historically informed performance practice with Middle Eastern music and dance.
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Young TalentsManon Papasergio, the musical triathlete
At 23, the French musician Manon Papasergio is already pursuing a distinctive path between the viola da gamba and early harps, placing them at the service of rarely explored repertoires, from the Renaissance to the threshold of the Baroque. Invited by ensembles such as Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien and Il Caravaggio, and the author of a much-noticed first recording, she moves forward with insatiable musical curiosity and a firmly embraced refusal of boundaries.
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Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe RoussetTraetta: “Ifigenia in Tauride”
We all know “Iphigenia in Tauris” by Gluck; here is the rarer setting by Tommaso Traetta, brought to disc by Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques. Recorded in Innsbruck, this release brings to light a different musical reading of the myth, poised between the legacy of opera seria and emerging dramatic priorities, and carried by a committed vocal cast. A discovery.
