Buxtehude on the lute? Yet the composer from Lübeck left no works for the instrument. On this album, Elias Conrad transposes preludes, suites and sacred works into the more intimate world of plucked strings. A change of scale that casts the richly textured writing of the North German master in a different light, between counterpoint, dance and meditation.
A viola da gamba, a theorbo and painted flowers: with “Baroque Flowers”, Maurizio Di Chio and Nicola Pignatiello bring Marais, Kapsberger, Boismortier and Forqueray into dialogue with Caravaggio, Zurbarán and the great masters of still-life painting. From dance to melancholy, from love to the passing of time, each piece finds its visual counterpart in a project that brings the affetti back to the fore – those passions that Baroque music sought to stir in the listener.
In a castle in the Apennines, the chirping of crickets mingles with Purcell and Handel. For its first release, La Maddalena Records brings together soprano Laura Baldassari and Ensemble Sezione Aurea in six works where myths, identities and transformations take shape within a very real soundscape. Here, the recording venue becomes part of the music itself.
From Stockholm to Rome, Christina of Sweden moves through Europe and the Baroque with the same freedom. In this album, the first instalment in the “Tides of Scandinavian Baroque” series, Concerto Copenhagen and Lars Ulrik Mortensen follow the path of this queen turned patron, from dances at the Swedish court to Corelli’s sonatas and concertos, via Stradella, Pasquini, Scarlatti and Gesualdo. A wordless portrait of a queen who made music one of her kingdoms.
Estampie, virelai, ballata, rondeau, lauda or bassadanza: for its 40th anniversary, laReverdie sets the Middle Ages dancing. With Venite alla danza!, the Italian ensemble journeys through three centuries of sacred and secular repertoire, from Montserrat to Machaut and Du Fay, reminding us that medieval dance belonged neither exclusively to secular entertainment nor, for that matter, to a purely instrumental repertoire.
A jealous Portuguese, an Italian shepherd, bells, dances and the Christ Child at the heart of the festivities: with ¡A la fiesta!, Cantoría revives the Christmas villancicos of Joseph de San Juan (1687–1735), a Catalan composer celebrated in the Spain of his day before almost disappearing from memory.
Over four centuries of performance, recording and reinterpretation, Monteverdi’s “Vespers” have accumulated traditions that have gradually transformed their character. With InAlto, Lambert Colson chooses to look back beyond that accumulated history: specific antiphons, reduced forces and a return to the pulse embedded in the score underpin a historically informed reconstruction of an Office for the Assumption within the context of 1610.
How might an eighteenth-century cellist have played Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s concertos? For Elinor Frey, the answer does not lie in the score alone. Ornamentation, varied repeats, cadenzas and the freedom afforded to the soloist shape a reading of the three concertos in which the performer recovers some of the inventiveness then expected of a virtuoso.
Long overshadowed by his nephew François, Louis Couperin here becomes the centre of an entire world. Ten CDs, five harpsichords, two organs and twelve hours of music make up the first complete recording to encompass all of his known works, including the pieces for small ensemble. A monumental undertaking, but also a deeply personal one: Couperin was the first composer Jean Rondeau encountered at the harpsichord, at the age of six.
What might life have been like for a violin consort in sixteenth-century Venice? For its debut album, La Capriola imagines an evening around St Mark’s Square, from the basilica to the palaces and then on to the taverns. Willaert, Rore, Gabrieli and Bendusi punctuate a journey in which sacred music, madrigals, dances and songs reveal the many faces of what was still a relatively new instrument.
As Handel shaped the English oratorio in London, he did not turn his back on the great Italian opera stars, even adapting his scores to suit their voices. With “Handel’s Italians”, Carlo Vistoli, Emmanuelle Haïm and Le Concert d’Astrée bring these tailor-made versions back to life.
Why is Rameau holding a violin in one of his rare portraits? Taking this mystery as their starting point, Théotime Langlois de Swarte and William Christie explore the instrument’s little-known place in the composer’s world. From operatic transcriptions and dances to sonatas by his contemporaries, an intimate portrait of Rameau in which the violin becomes by turns singer, dancer and actor.
