Little known today, Pierre de Manchicourt was nevertheless one of the leading polyphonists of the 16th century. Thirty years after recording his music with Paul Van Nevel, Stephan MacLeod returns to Manchicourt with Gli Angeli Genève in an album conceived as both a rediscovery and a tribute.
With “Folías y Glosas”, Concerto Scirocco brings to life the instrumental world of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. From ministriles and dances to ostinato basses and improvised variations, Giulia Genini leads Cabezón, Ortiz, Falconieri and Praetorius through a programme in which forms travel, transform and constantly change colour.
The music of Bach’s “Köthener Trauermusik”, composed for the funeral of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen in 1729, has been lost, but the libretto and many details of the ceremony survive. Solomon’s Knot presents a new reconstruction by Chad Kelly, drawing in particular on the “St Matthew Passion” and the “Trauerode BWV 198”.
Why does an album devoted to Antonio Caldara also feature Legrenzi, Vivaldi, Biber, Muffat, Fux and even Bach? For their debut recording, The BanXhies follow not so much a catalogue as a journey: that of a Venetian who became vice-Kapellmeister at the imperial court, and with him the circulation of musicians and styles between Italy and the German-speaking world at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
From the Lamentations of Jeremiah to the St John Passion, Vox Cantoris explores nearly two centuries of sacred music in New Spain on this new album. Under the direction of Jean-Christophe Candau, the ensemble traces a repertoire in which the Iberian polyphonic tradition is both preserved and transformed, from Hernando Franco to Manuel de Sumaya.
How can we recover the colours Bach may have imagined at the organ? In his complete recording of Part III of the “Clavier-Übung”, Maurizio Croci draws on the registration indications left by Georg Friedrich Kauffmann, a contemporary of the Cantor. On the Treutmann organ at Grauhof, built in 1737, he offers a fresh reading of one of the great monuments of Bach’s organ music.
What do Couperin, Forqueray, Marais and Rameau reveal about one another when they portray each other in music? With “Carré d’As”, Les Timbres brings together self-portraits, tributes and musical evocations, revealing four distinct personalities behind four of the great names of French Baroque music.
How should Handel’s solo sonatas be brought to life when their publishing history, their sources and, at times, even their intended instrumentation remain fluid? Released in MDG’s Preziosa series, this double album by the Ganassi Consort with Anne Röhrig does not opt for uniformity: it entrusts the corpus to a whole range of period instruments, in order to recover, as closely as possible to historical practice, the diversity of a chamber Handel who is by turns lyrical, dance-like, theatrical and inventive.
For her first recital on Harmonia mundi, Gabrielle Rubio returns to the composers who first established the French transverse flute as an instrument of distinction. From Michel de La Barre to Michel Blavet, via Hotteterre, Philidor, Boismortier and Couperin, the young flautist traces a journey through dances, reveries and chiaroscuro, from the hushed intimacy of the King’s Chamber to the salons of the eighteenth century.
Giovanni Acciai and Nova Ars Cantandi bring Antonio Domenico Nola’s “Motetti pastorali per la solennità del Santo Natale” back into the light: an expansive Neapolitan fresco for four voices and basso continuo that had remained in obscurity for almost four centuries. Combining sacred narrative, expressive polyphony and echoes of popular Christmas traditions, this recording reveals a still little-known figure in Neapolitan music at the turn of the eighteenth century.
With “Clavecins concertants”, Olivier Fortin and Emmanuel Frankenberg recreate an entire world of French orchestral theatre on two harpsichords, from Lully to Rameau via Marais, d’Anglebert, Chambonnières, Lebègue and Forqueray. Overtures, chaconnes, dance airs and celebrated pieces acquire a new breadth in this setting: the two instruments do more than simply converse, together they reimagine the colours, textures and energy of a Baroque orchestra.
