This recording is a live recording of Niccolo Jommelli's one-act opera La Critica from the Order Hall of Ludwigsburg Palace on November 20, 2016. The Austrian ensemble Concerto Stella Matutina, conducted by Thomas Platzgummer, presents the rediscovery of this brilliantly triumphant parody of opera seria with a cast of outstanding singers in fine form, including tenor Jan Petryka and soprano Marie-Sophie Pollak. It is a real pleasure to listen to them!

The manuscript MS 73 Klagenfurt was found by baroque-violinist Veronika Skulpik and is a little treasure of baroque violin music. Almost all of the manuscript pieces are for a violin in scordatura tuning, although this is not always indicated. With some degree of certainty, the above-mentioned manuscripts can prove that the anonymous authors moved in the circle of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer.

After his studies at the Conservatorio C. Pollini in Padua, Francesco Galligioni specialized in playing the baroque cello and the viola da gamba. He is one of the founding members of the Venice Baroque Orchestra, with which he has toured and recorded numerous times. He has worked with conductors and soloists such as John Eliot Gardiner, Andrea Marcon, Gustav Leonhardt, Sara Mingardo, Christopher Hogwood and Magdalena Kozena. With the ensemble gambe di legno, Galligioni dedicates himself to previously undiscovered works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. More recently, Francesco Galligioni has devoted himself increasingly to the baroque solo repertoire for violoncello. His great passion is the suites of Johann Sebastian Bach. After studying these mythical gems for a long time, Francesco will perform these works for the first time in concert over the next three years and he also record them for this album.

With his compositions Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497) had a major influence on the music of the fifteenth century. For example it may have been Ockegham, who founded the long tradition of the artistic compositions of the chanson L’homme arme. In addition to his famous mass for four voices, the German-Belgian ensemble Beauty Farm also interprets the Missa quinti toni for three voices. Beauty Farm specializes in the interpretation of works from the early Renaissance. Their recordings have been described as “extraordinarily sensitive.” Beauty Farm is made up of members of top international ensembles such as La Capilla Flamenca, Huelgas Ensemble, Vox Luminis, Collegium Vocale Gent, and Cinquecento. The ensemble recently won first prize at the international competition for early music ensembles at the Landshuter Hofmusiktage.

This album emerged from the idea of bringing together some very different works by Kapsberger for solo theorbo in order to present a more diverse overview of the German-Italian virtuoso performer and composer. The pieces of music are taken from Books I, III and IV d’intavolatura di chitarrone, currently the only printed sources of theorbo music by Kapsberger available to us. Book I was printed in Venice in 1604, Books III and IV in 1626 and 1640 respectively. - Fra Bernardo

It was clearly of great importance at the start of the 18th century, both to the free imperial city of M�hlhausen in Thuringia and to distant Vienna, metropolis of the Holy Roman Empire, to be recognized and to record signs of both independence and affiliation to the empire and it's ruler. Two musical documents have survived in testimony. One owes it's prominence to the composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, the other, preserved in M�hlhausen's municipal archives and revived in performance today after more than three hundred years, is from the hand of Philipp Heinrich Erlebach.

Beauty Farm is a 2014 founded vocal group focused on the Franco-Flemish polyphony of the renaissance. The international ensemble is based in the Carthusian Monastery at Mauerbach (Austria). The singers are members of well known ensembles like Capilla flamenca, Huelgas Ensemble, Vox Luminis, Collegium Vocale Gent and Graindelavoix. On this extensive release, the ever-acclaimed vocal quartet presents four masses of Pierre de la Rue, all composed during the composer's last creative period. Pierre de la Rue is one of the most fascinating and yet most elusive members of the talented generation of composers from around 1500. On the works recorded here he demonstrates his complete polyphonic skills and thus gives the melancholy an intellectual, complex nuance. The necessary lightness is provided by the voices of Bart Uvyn, Hans Jörg Mammel, Hannes Wagner and Joachim Höchbauer.

“Alexander’s Feast or The Power of Musick. An ode wrote in honour of St. Cecilia” dates from 1736, a time when Handel was attempting to counter the dwindling interest in his Italian operas with oratorios in English. Indeed this work, which resembles an oratorio, found immediate popularity and was quickly counted alongside “Messiah” among his best-loved compositions. Only “Acis and Galatea” and “Messiah” were performed more frequently than “Alexander’s Feast” during Handel’s lifetime. This high-profile recording features the singers Miriam Feuersinger, Danial Johannsen and Matthias Helm, together with the Kammerchor Feldkirch and Concerto Stella Matutina under Benjamin Lack.

Fabio Missaggia founded the period instrument ensemble I Musicali Affetti in 1997, and the group has since been performing in numerous concerts and festivals both in Italy and abroad. Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier's 1700 composition La Gloria, Roma e Valore is a solemn cantata composed for the inauguration of the new Venetian ambassador in Rome. Commissions for such occasions were often viewed as special opportunities for a composer to showcase their abilities as the audience often contained many musical experts, and Lullier's composition, as well as it's current performance by I Musicali Affetti does not disappoint.

Carlo Gesualdo’s music is characterized by extravagant harmonies, chromatic modulations, wide intervallic leaps and sometimes hardly catchy melodies, which not only reflect the drama of the text or the mannerism of his time, but also the emotional disorder of his creator. The LuciSerene ensemble and the equally distinguished Mauro Borgioni counter the long-established traditions, characterized by their homogeneity and beauty of sound, with a welcome freshness. In honor of the 450th anniversary of the composer, the ensemble has chosen the music of Carlo Gesualdo.

For the upcoming 500th anniversary of the death of the great Franco-Flemish composer Pierre de la Rue (around 1460-1518), the vocal ensemble The Sound and the Fury, which specializes in early music, has recorded a selection of the composer’s artistic masses for the label FRA BERNARDO, which impressively reflect the high standard at the court of the music-loving and music-savvy Margaret of Austria. The Pierre de la Rue masses on this recording have one thing in common: they are all based on monadic models, thus in keeping with the most traditional of cyclic mass composition models, the cantus firmus mass. Yet in their individual construction they could not be more different. Two of these masses employ just one single cantus firmus. The one based on the secular melody L’Homme Arme is the earliest of them all. L’Homme Arme was the most common secular cantus firmus of all and composers who wrote a mass based on it were aware of competing with their contemporaries. La Rue’s work is no exception and displays an exuberant, almost unashamed virtuosity which only a young and extremely self-confident composer is capable of producing.

The first edition of The Creation by Joseph Haydn from 1803 is not composed with the German version of the world premiere in 1797, but the English version of the text which served Baron Gottfried van Swieten as a master copy. The release features a concert by Musica Saeculorum under the direction of Philipp von Steinaecker in the Cathedral of Brixen who used this English version of The Creation.

Nicolas Gombert’s compositions, all vocal, are for ensembles of up to twelve parts. • His contrapuntal language is based on that of Josquin, but increasingly complex. • Imitation is used even more consistently than did Josquin, and Gombert’s vocal textures are often densely packed, with individual lines characterized by an avoidance of rests. • A substantial number of his compositions survive, including ten masses, over 160 motets, 60 secular chansons, and a set of eight Magnificats (one in each mode). • The motets on this recording, for 4–6 voices, offer fine representations of Gombert’s musical style.

Virtuosity was as intricate issue in the late Baroque period. On one hand, the public attending the concert demanded to be overwhelmed by the performers' technique. On the other hand, virtuosity provided imitation and often revelaed composers' command over their craft. Composers were expected to supply a piece that showcased an artists entire "bag of tricks" including special effects and specific skills. Handel and Vivaldi did not allow the circumstances of the day to hinder their inspiration. The ensemble Barrocade, along with Claire Meghnagi and Shai Kribus showcase Handel and Vivaldi's virtuosic works of their day.

For the 30th anniversary of the Brunnenthaler summer concerts, ensemble director Francesco Cera with the cornettist William Dongois performed music from the 17th century. The repertoire ranges from instrumental motets and virtuoso sonatas to toccatas whose origins lie in Italy.

The Italian Gambe di Legno has evolved into one of the leading ensembles of it's kind in recent years. Originally founded as a consort of viols, the ensemble has grown to include an ensemble of vocalists, instrumentalists and choir.

Before the early 20th century, any list of significant Western composers would have included Benedetto Marcello. Through his advocacy of a return to the proportional values and simplicity of ancient Roman civilization, he helped set the stage for the Classical era in Western music, soon to unseat the aesthetic norms of the Baroque in which he lived.

CARON Masses and Chansons • The Sound and the Fury • FRA BERNARDO 1207302 (3 CDs: 190:22)


Next to nothing is known of more than a few composers from the early Renaissance. Who is “Hyett,” that survives in a single work found in the Gyffard Partbooks? Who was the Trecento composer known only as “Maestro Piero,” of whom eight works (six madrigals, two examples of caccia ) remain?


It’s fairly safe to single out Firminus (in the Latin; or Fermin, or Fremin—popular names in Amiens at the time) Caron from that ghostly lot as the most illustrious in his day. Compère, no minor judge in matters musical, referred to Busnois, Dussart, and Caron as magister cantilenarum . Tinctorus wrote of Ockeghem, Busnois, Regis, and Caron as composing the most outstanding music he’d ever heard. (He also named Caron among several composers that were reported to him as poorly educated, as Tinctorus like his contemporaries set great store by a completed university education. But this was probably out of date when it was written, since in that same year, 1473, Caron is mentioned in a legal document as maistre , or Master of Arts.) Others among his contemporaries, as well as scholars of succeeding generations, continued to place Caron among the leading musicians of his time. The manuscript trading trails across Europe (their time’s equivalent of our group emails) that constituted the surest way of circulating sacred and secular music saw Caron’s works turning up repeatedly in Italy. He was popular, and a good thing, too, since although new and doctored texts by unknown hands not infrequently were added to extant works in transmission—editor Jaap van Benthem’s liner notes suggest this occurred to more than half Caron’s chansons—it helped save a good many of his compositions when the French Revolution went on a rampage through the cathedrals of France.


Yet little enough is known today of Caron’s life. Thanks to recently discovered source documents, a possible birth date has been suggested in the late 1430s, in Amiens. He may have come from a well-to-do middle class background, judging from a loan he regularly received payment on later in life, and the registered sale of a house with attachments owned by the man who was probably his deceased father: a well-to-do shoemaker with apprentices and servants. Beyond this lies that shadowy land named vague conjecture. He may have been trained at Cambrai, or in Amiens; may have worked in proximity to Busnois (“Accueilly m’a la belle” suggests the strong influence of the latter), and possibly known Dufay; may have served Charles the Bold in Burgundy—or at least, spent some time in some form of musical service there, accounting for his poor showing in the chansonniers compiled around 1470 in Loire Valley, part of the kingdom of France. His music begins turning up in fewer manuscripts in the mid-1470s, suggesting a possible terminus, but it’s more accurate to simply state that sources for any music he may have written at that time or later, assuming he lived that long, had dried up. Compared to the larger-than-life Busnois, Caron’s personality remains that of a shade.


It is the chansons that history repeatedly praises to us, but only seven are included here, and they comprise just two-thirds of one of the three discs on this new recording. As if to lower our expectations of them further, The Sound and the Fury (or at least their recording company, Fra Bernardo) has left out all texts and translations. I could wish they had done otherwise, as the entire lot collectively comprises a highlight of the set. Caron was innovative for his period, as Montagna notes in his “Caron, Hayne, Compère: a Transmission Reassessment,” for his imitative entrances, though he didn’t stop there. Those imitative textures are apt to occur flexibly, within a carefully varied texture that includes homophony, free movement, staggered, irregular contrapuntal entries (“Helas m’amour”) and the interplay of voices in quick exchange or diverse groups (“Mort du mercy”). The clarity of his parts at all times must be mentioned as well, along with the naturalness with which, at least in some of the of chansons heard here, Caron’s melodic line follows the phrasing of traditional French folksong (the short but charming “Du tout ainsi”). Geneviève Thibault, in her Grove I article on Caron, is just as enthusiastic while pointing out that his superius parts “have a beautiful melodic curve” that does not end with each verse line; and that’s certainly true of “Cuidez vous” and “S’il est ainsy.”


The five Masses supplied in this set ( L’Homme arme, Jesus autem, Accueilly m’a a la belle, Sanguis sanctorum, Clemens et benigna ) are in the five standard movements for their time and place: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. They all survive only in Italian sources, with the already mentioned caveat about text substitution applying. (As well as other caveats to accurate recreation: aging, ink corrosion, editorial transmission errors, and the crude, destructive cutting out of illuminated details have all played their part in rendering the results less than fully satisfactory.) The Sound and The Fury consists of five singers—a countertenor, two tenors, and two basses, along with a lutenist for “Du tout ainsi”—so there’s no doubling. This reinforces to our ears both Caron’s almost obsessively varied textures, and his preference for fragmenting the cantus firmus . Here, too, he was ahead of his time. In turn, Alan Atlas in his Renaissance Music takes evident delight in the way Caron incorporates an Italian song (“Madonna par la torno”), a French chanson (“Hélas, mestresse, m’amie”), and Johannes Joye’s chanson “Mercy mon duiel” into the Marian Mass, Clemens et benigna , in such a way as to make both textual and musical additions function as glosses.


Contrary to the norm in such matters, The Sound and the Fury isn’t a concertizing group. Aside from the very occasional recital, they gather solely for recording purposes, though they clearly spend much time in rehearsals. (You couldn’t get through this music with any semblance of dignity if you didn’t.) The Anglo-German ensemble focuses on the Franco-Flemish school and, if comments in the liner notes are any judge, they take the “sweet” side of the debate in matters of musica ficta . Their sound is tight and disciplined, with excellent enunciation and pitch control, though there are some moments (more in the chansons than in the Masses, oddly enough) where a few notes are split for breath’s sake. The engineering is among the best I’ve heard of sacred choral music of the period, being spacious and very forward, with a slight reverberance.


The texts would definitely help with the chansons, and the photographer responsible for the box’s artwork (the upper torso of some late teen looking out sternly, trying to impress us as he makes what he apparently figures is a karate chop with one hand) needs a courteous reminder of the music’s subject. But in all other respects I’m delighted with this set.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

For this CD a chronological cross-section of Anton Bruckner's work was chosen for the recorded concert, from the very first composition of an 11 year-old, a Pange lingua, to the late Vexilla Regis. It's often hard to define Bruckner's musical roots and origins, since his first symphony already bears his unmistakable stamp, but some of these seldom performed early sacred works, still prescribing to 18th and early-19th c. Upper Austrian church tradition, can give an idea of his musical background. The chorale melodies, by Bruckner himself, display typical Alpine regional melodic attributes.

We know relatively little about Froberger. His many journeys point to a restless spirit, to boundless curiosity and a desire for personal development. At the age of 18, Johannes Maria Bogner was led to the harpsichord, where he first encountered the works of Froberger and he was captivated by them. After he changed to playing the clavichord, he came back to the composer's works. On this recording he presents them in all the intimacy and agitation that the clavichord is capable of realizing.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The music of the Renaissance appears to reflect little of the dangers, horrors and violent conflicts of its time. Music written during the Hundred Years War or the French invasion of Italy gives hardly any impression to today’s ears of the precariousness of existence of which its composers, singers and listeners must have continually been aware. Nor do the two masses by Jacob Obrecht (1457/8 – 1505) on this recording betray anything of the restless spirit of the age, despite them both being based on models referring to suffering and misery. Founded by Markus Muntean and Bernhard Trebuch- out of passion for vocal polyphony and a kind of despair about the break in the interpretation of this music which took place in the 1980s- beauty farm gathers young singers, leaving traditions behind, willing to experiment and exploring new musical territory.

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 1 (1866 vers) • Philipp von Steinaecker, cond; Musica Saeculorum • FRA BERNARDO 1310322 (47:57) Live: Musik Meran


The program notes to this recording state that the 60-person Musica Saeculorum opted to record Bruckner’s Symphony No. 1 in its original 1866 edition on period instruments in an effort “to identify any possible connection to Schubert and the early Romantics.” Harmonically, of course, Bruckner is worlds removed from Schubert and his contemporaries. But the use of period instruments does offer Bruckner a slightly more subdued timbral palette than most listeners are accustomed to in his music. The strings are somewhat darker, the brass a bit more veiled. Whether because of instrumentation, recording engineering, or conducting choices, though, I find that the strings have a tendency to overbalance the other instruments in tutti sections, occasionally making melodic material difficult to discern. This is my primary criticism of this disc. Bruckner at his most forceful can and should be overwhelming, but the counterpoint should always be clear; his tuttis mark the apotheoses of thematic material. In this recording, these passages tend to be rather murky and undifferentiated.


This criticism aside, Philipp von Steinaecker demonstrates a keen understanding of Bruckner’s aesthetic. The dotted rhythms of the first movement’s main theme are crisp and energetic, as are the horn’s responses. Von Steinaecker lingers appropriately on Bruckner’s extended passages of dominant harmony, building harmonic tension through strategic ritards in preparation for majestic statements in the brass. Even within string passages, though, figuration occasionally overshadows melody, as in the contrapuntal development of the first theme in the violins against sextuplet scales in the lower strings or the recapitulation of the second theme in the basses against eighth-note figuration in the upper strings. The modulatory passages that follow, however, are forceful and stern, and the rush to the final bars is quite exciting, though I would have liked the thematic material in the winds to be clearer.


Von Steinaecker’s is one of the more expansive readings of the symphony’s second movement, over a minute longer than Jochum’s. I find the expansiveness effective; the chromatic introduction becomes nebulous enough to make the eventual arrival of stable tonality a genuine relief. In the soaring passages that follow, though, minimal differentiation is made between melody and accompaniment. Von Steinaecker is sensitive to the ebb and flow of harmonic tension, but the melodic contours are lost throughout much of the movement.


The third movement is perhaps the most successful, with strong, almost violent accents and sharp contrasts in dynamics. At nearly a minute shorter than Jochum’s performance and 90 seconds briefer than Barenboim’s, it is among the more energetic recordings of this movement. I only wish that the brass dissonances toward the end received more weight. And the trio has the same problems with balance as the previous two movements: the motivic fourths in the horn are quite difficult to hear.


The fourth movement has almost no balance issues, although Bruckner’s orchestration is not particularly different in this movement than in the others. The opening pages are powerful and imposing, though I would have liked von Steinaecker to take an even greater ritard over the extended dominant harmonies that precede the second statement of the first theme. The second theme, stated in the violins with offbeat accents in the basses, is appropriately rustic. Likewise, von Steinaecker builds tension admirably before Bruckner’s characteristic pauses. The development maintains a consistent sense of direction. Von Steinaecker is particularly effective in his treatment of Bruckner’s obsessively-repeated scale fragments in the strings, which he leads gradually from background to foreground against the melodic material in the horns. The ending is triumphant and grand, though a broader ritard before the final cadence would have made it more so.


Because of the balance issues mentioned above, I cannot give this recording a wholehearted recommendation, but von Steinaecker’s conception of the piece is intelligent and appealing. The sound is generally crisp and live, with very slight tape hiss apparent at the beginnings and ends of tracks.


FANFARE: Myron Silberstein

"• A live 1943 wartime recording of Haydn's Creation oratorio. • “Clemens Krauß both delighted and enthralled with a vivid performance of Haydn‘s Creation oratorio.. Three outstanding singers from his Munich entourage, Trude Eipperle, Julius Patzak and Georg Hann, together with the opera choir and Vienna Philharmonic, followed his unaffected musical direction as a masterly ensemble, lending this utterly native and yet world-famous work the musical honour it deserves.” - Wiener Krone Zeitung, March 1943"

This CD of the Italian harpsichordist and organist Maurizio Croci is dedicated to keys works of Bach, which were designed for both organ and harpsichord. Frequently Bach transformed his compositions between the two keyboard instruments back and forth in order to get a better understanding of the relevant technical and idiomatic possibilities and limitations. As a keyboardist, Bach was admired by all who had the fortune to hear him and was the envy of the virtuosi of his day. The cornerstone of this album is Bach’s thirty variations. This admirable work includes a regular four part Fugue, several extremely brilliant Variations for two Claviers, and concludes with a Quodlibet, as it is called. Born in 1958 in Melk, Wolfgang Gluxam studied harpsichord with Ton Koopman at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam and organ with Alfred Mitterhofer at the Vienna Conservatory. He has won prizes at international competitions, and has been teaching harpsichord at the Vienna Music University since 1985.

Italian composer, gambist, singer, and priest Claudio Monteverdi is regarded as a revolutionary composer, as his compositional style ended the Renaissance and heralded in the ornate virtuosity of the baroque era. While a great deal of his works were sacred, he also wrote a great deal of secular music as well. This album is unique in that the tracks selected are secular works which have been converted into sacred compositions. Il Pegaso has gained critical acclaim for their interpretations of Middle-Ages and Renaissance music. They perform the works on this album on period instruments.

This new release gives us a small impression of what was played for entertainment in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in the houses of London's high society. The variety of the programme ranges from typical British melancholy to ostinato melodies by Nicola Matteis, an Italian violinist who, like Handel, who is also represented here, enriched the musical life on the Thames as a musical guest worker and Englishman of choice, to the exuberance of the 'Ayres'. The famous baroque violinist Amandine Beyer and the recorder player Michael Oman are supported by the ABC - Austrian Baroque Company.

At the center of this production are three of the most extended chorale fantasias of the North German Baroque, which superbly showcase the richness of sound of the Schnitger organ in Stade. Reincken's fantasies have survived only through the enthusiasm of the young Johann Sebastian Bach, who improvised on the same chorale for half an hour during a personal meeting with the aged master - years after he had made a copy of the latter's fantasy on An Wasserflüssen Babylon. In addition, organ works by Buxtehude and vocal works by Tunder will be heard.

A glance at ensemble concert plans, opera and festival programmes and recording catalogues shows that George Frederick Handel's music enjoys enormous and unwavering popularity today. Even during his lifetime, Handel's works could be heard in his homeland as well as in his adoptive country. Following a roaring success as "Caro Sassone" among the Italians his fame spread like wildfire throughout Europe before the composer finally settled among the British in London. This release from Le Petit Concert Baroque presents some of Handel's most famous selections, including several pieces from the opera "Rinaldo," from which this album takes it's title.