The guitar is not the first instrument one associates with the towering figure of Beethoven, but he did know and appreciate the instrument, and even wrote some chamber music pieces for it.

This imaginative recital of chamber music by Beethoven takes its inspiration from the Romantic poem of the album title which describes the kind of unattainable love to which Beethoven was throughout his adult life susceptible, and from which he appears himself to have drawn creative energy. His own setting of Adelaide (the text of which appears in the booklet in both Matthisson's original and in English translation) was arranged by the 19th-century guitarist-composer Nicholas Coste; it introduces not only the playful Op.8 Serenade, perhaps the most obvious contender among Beethoven's music for a transcription of the piano part to the piano, but movements from two of his string quartets and even the funeral march from his Piano Sonata Op.26, transcribed for guitar solo or duo and played here on instruments of the period by a young and dynamic ensemble of European musicians, led by Izhar Elias, who have already released acclaimed recordings on Brilliant Classics, including guitar music in memory of Debussy (9246), spectacular transcriptions of Rossini arias (93902) and a sparkling survey of 17th-century music from the Spanish territories (94352). Elias himself plays a selection of guitars on this recording, by Guadagnini and Stauffer père et fils, including a rare terz model, which is smaller than the regular model and tuned a minor third higher to produce a more brilliant and penetrating sound in company with other instruments.

Other information:
- New recording made in April 2013.
- This original and appealing programme presents works of Beethoven in chamber music arrangements with guitar, written by contemporaries, a practice that was quite common in the period, playing its role in the popularisation of the music.
Eminent guitarist Izhar Elias plays on several period instruments, including a rare "terz" instrument, smaller in size and tuned a minor third higher in order to achieve a more brilliant sound. He is joined by violin, viola and another guitar, according to the setting of the arrangements.
- Unique album concept.
- Extensive booklet notes written by the artist.

This new release is the recording of the first part of the 2015 Adelaide International Festival. Lento, the first track, was commissioned by the BBC Symphony Orchestra to precede a performance of Wagner’s prelude to Parsifal and uses the same instrumentation. It consists of a sequence of major and minor triads and an implacably steady tempo, rather like Satie’s Les Pantins Dansent. Most of Lento is scored for just strings with a central section for winds alone. Those familiar with Howard Skempton’s work as a whole will recognize the same spirit, clarity of purpose and rigour that appears in his earliest works, though here transposed into a much grander environment. This release also features Gavin Bryars “The Porazzi Fragment,” “Ennelina’s Aria from ‘G,’” and “Epilogue from G,” as well as Arvo Part’s “If Bach had Been a Bookkeeper.”

If you see one opera this year, make it The Exterminating Angel, ran the headline in the New York Times after the US premiere of Thomas Ad�s' "stunningly inventive" opera based on Luis Bu�uel's surreal and satirical 1962 film El �ngel exterminador. Like the British composer's score, Tom Cairns' production is both spectacular and surprising. "Ad�s keeps the listener on edge," wrote Opera magazine, "because one never knows where his dazzling palette of possibilities will take him next." Thomas Ad�s TITLE: Ad�s: The Exterminating Angel (MET)(Blu-ray) Label: PRX/Warner Classics/Parlophone Language: English Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish Number of discs: 1 Run Time: 142 minutes

The London Sinfonietta combine two works from Thomas Adès, one of the most distinctive and popular voices in modern composition. Both works feature accompanying films (by Tal Rosner and Sophie Clements) that are included in this CD/DVD set. This is the second CD for the London Sinfonietta with Signum. It follows their October release of music by Louis Andriessen, featuring the UK premiere of Anaïs Nin, alongside his famed work De Staat. In Seven Days is a musical interpretation for piano and orchestra of the biblical 'creation' by Thomas Adès, composed in collaboration with a film-piece by the artist and filmmaker Tal Rosner. Both music and film evoke the processes of the creation rather than the objects described in the movement titles, using simple elements in repeated and evolving contexts in a perpetual state of flux, change and growth. The Piano Studies Nos 6 & 7 are arrangements of player-piano works by the American composer Conlon Nancarrow. An influential figure to generations of composers, Nancarrow's studies for the player-piano (or pianola) allowed him to generate music of extreme rhythmic complexity in a multitude of inventive ways. These arrangements for two pianos by Thomas Adès capture the strange magic of the originals, where fragmented musical ideas are played off against each other in a wild, almost jazz-like way. The works are accompanied by film-visualisations by Tal Rosner and Sophie Clements.

In the Autumn of 2021, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with its new chief conductor, Nicholas Collon, arranged a Thomas Adès festival in Helsinki devoted to the world famous composer’s music in addition to works by other composers chosen and conducted by Thomas Adès (b. 1971). One of the highlights of the festival’s program was the world première of Märchentänze in its version for violin and orchestra performed by violinist Pekka Kuusisto, Adès’ long-time artistic partner. This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra includes four recent and exciting orchestral works written by the composer between 2016 and 2021 in world première recordings.

In addition to the Märchentänze, this album includes Adès’ orchestral Hotel Suite from Powder Her Face, an adaptation based on the music from the opera through which Adès first made a widespread name for himself in the mid-1990s. The orchestral version of Lieux retrouvés, originally written for Steven Isserlis, could be described as a cello concerto in the spirit of Marcel Proust. Orchestral work Dawn was written for the 2020 London Proms for ‘orchestra at any distance’, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Adès’ Dawn comes across as timeless music floating in a serene universe of beauty all its own.

REVIEW:

These performances by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra (FRSO) under their current Chief Conductor, British-born-and-trained Nicholas Collon (b. 1983) are magnificent and bring out all the subtle colorations in these superbly scored works. That said, Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto gets a big hand for his superb playing in Märchentänze [T-10 thru 13]. And the same goes for Finnish cellist Tomas Nuñez in Lieux retrouvés [T-6 thru 9].

The recordings were made in October 2021 (Hotel… & Lieux…) and April-May 2022 (Märchentänze & Dawn) in the Helsinki Music Center’s Concert Hall. They present consistently generous, dynamically wide-ranging sonic images with both soloists centered, well captured and effectively highlighted. As for the orchestral timbre, it’s characterized by titillating highs, a pleasant midrange and clean bass. While these recordings are good on headphones, this colorfully scored music is even better over a good home theater system.

-- Classical Lost and Found (Bob McQuiston)

The Minnesota Orchestra and it's music director Thomas Sondergard delve into the imaginative world of Thomas Ades, a singular voice in contemporary classical music. Featuring two of his most compelling orchestral works, The Exterminating Angel Symphony - a world premiere recording - and the Violin Concerto, this album captures Ades' uncanny ability to merge intellectual rigor with raw emotional immediacy. With orchestral textures both radiant and unsettling, Ades evokes a surreal musical landscape, brought vividly to life by Sondergard's incisive direction and violinist Leila Josefowicz's electrifying performance. Highlighting two distinct sides of Ades' artistry, cinematic drama and virtuosic intimacy, this recording explores the composer's breadth with striking clarity. Josefowicz brings fierce expressivity and precision to the Violin Concerto, while the orchestra navigates the volatile energy of The Exterminating Angel Symphony with gripping intensity. This album also marks the PENTATONE debut of the Minnesota Orchestra, Thomas Sondergard, and Leila Josefowicz.

Composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Adès has been described by The New York Times as ‘among the most accomplished all-round musicians of his generation.’ His ‘Concert Paraphrase on Powder Her Face’ reflects the glamor of the opera’s subject in the grand manner of Liszt or Busoni, while ‘Still Sorrowing’ and ‘Darknesse Visible’ explore John Dowland’s haunting lute works. Heard here in its world premiere recording, competition piece ‘Blanca Variations’ is lyrical and flowing in character, and ‘Traced Overhead’ is a vivid description of ascent and flight. Adès captures and transforms Polish style in his ‘Mazurkas,’ and the spirit of Satie and Ravel in a ‘Souvenir’ from the film ‘Colette.’

REVIEW:

There is Lisztian panache in the 2009 “Concert Paraphrase,” some almost Japanese sounding Dowland-lute-influenced expression with dampened strings on “Still Sorrowing” (1992) and the epically stretched and trilled impact of the companion piece “Darkness Visible.” The world premiere recording of “Blanca Variations” shows us a thoughtful, pensive side, lyrically robust. You can hear a kind of Modernist post-Scriabin on “Traced Overhead” (1996). Then there are haunting, mysterious post-Chopin explorations and playfulness on the “Mazurkas for Piano” (2009). “Souvenir” (2018) closes out the program with a kind of heartbreaking lyricism. It sounds like peak experience filtered in somewhat melancholy memory.

The music has some teeth, some bite. It challenges the player with original ornateness yet never seems to lose the center of its melodic-structural thrust.

It’s a vital set of works played with obvious relish and sympathy. Anyone who lives to hear the ivory-ebony towers of sound possible in our times will no doubt find this one as fascinating as I have.

– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

ADESTE FIDELES! - CHRISTMAS DO

This new release from The Choir of Chapel Royal features Christmas carols both old and new. These songs were recorded in St. James’s Palace, London, and the stunning acoustics can be heard in each track. Huw Williams currently serves as Director of Music at Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal, St. James’s Palace. He also directs Cantemus Chamber Choir and Stroud Choral Society, and is on the faculty at Eton College.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Baltimore Consort.

Few of Gioachino Rossini's operas are less well known than Adina. This production by Rossini Opera Festival and Wexford Opera Festival revives a masterwork of glittering arias and rich orchestral textures. The oriental tale, where Adina is a slave in a Baghdad seraglio, is set by Rosetta Cucchi on a giant and colorful wedding cake. The vocal star Lisette Oropesa "gave a splendid rendition as Adina. Her voice was brilliant, shiny on top, warm and round in the middle." (Bachtrack) World Premiere Recording on DVD and Blu-ray

Few of Gioachino Rossini's operas are less well known than Adina. This production by Rossini Opera Festival and Wexford Opera Festival revives a masterwork of glittering arias and rich orchestral textures. The oriental tale, where Adina is a slave in a Baghdad seraglio, is set by Rosetta Cucchi on a giant and colorful wedding cake. The vocal star Lisette Oropesa "gave a splendid rendition as Adina. Her voice was brilliant, shiny on top, warm and round in the middle." (Bachtrack) World Premiere Recording on DVD and Blu-ray

The six-person Baltimore Consort is one of the oldest early-music ensembles still on the performing scene. It employs a relatively small number of instruments at any time and produces a varied, sometimes intimate, result. This works well with some of the more expressive songs on this new release that features countertenor José Lemos, who sounds remarkably like a dark-voiced mezzo. (He’s listed as a full member on the album, but is described as a guest artist on its Web site.) The pieces are varied in subject and tone, from the usual digs at cuckolds to a couple displaying the religious triumphalism that followed in the wake of Castile’s historical ascension.

The program is one the Baltimore Consort has been performing for several years, mixing simple, popular songs and dances from the three monotheistic religious cultures that occupied the Iberian peninsula before the conclusion of the Reconquista in 1492. Much of the content is necessarily anonymous, and much else credited by tradition to arrangers, as in the dances drawn from Diego Ortiz’s Trattado de Glosas . Several selections are frequently played in concert by early-music ensembles, such as “Cucú, cucú, cucucú” (with some lovely tone here from recorder specialist Mindy Rosenfeld), Ortiz’s Italian-influenced “Recercada segunda,” and de la Torre’s “Danza Alta,” which if memory serves, I first heard live at a Terpsichore concert while recording it for Minnesota Public Radio in the early 1980s. “Ríu, ríu, chiu” is another perennial favorite, as is “Oy comamos y bebamos.” It all adds up to an exciting, strongly folk-flavored concert, varied in timbre, tempo, and expressive mood from moment to moment, though always played with the expertise one might expect from this group of musicians.

Some listeners may flinch at the near-rock bass line established (but quickly abandoned) by “Calabaça, no sé, buen amor,” or the full, strummed guitar chords and syncopated vocal line in “Tu madre cuando te parió” that come close to modern popular music. The Baltimore Consort may be engaging in a little épater le bourgeois in these cases, or it may just be offering proofs of concept—that rock rhythms do on occasion reproduce much older folk ones, and that the casual speech rhythms of Spanish folk song bridge popular music across the centuries. Regardless, if you can accept and enjoy what you hear, fine and well. In any case, with full bilingual texts and translations, and good if general notes, this one’s definitely recommended.

FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Guitarist Daniel Lippel's "Adjacence" features a collection of new chamber works for guitar, including works by Tyshawn Sorey, Charles Wuorinen, Tania Leon, Nico Muhly, Mario Davidovsky, Ken Ueno, Peter Gilbert, Tonia Ko, Bernadette Speech, Peter Adriaansz, and Sidney Boquiren. The works occupy a broad range of aesthetics, from modernist to minimalist, incorporating improvisation and microtonality, and featuring a variety of instrumentations with Lippel's colleagues in the International Contemporary Ensemble, counter)induction, as well as other active performers in the New York contemporary music scene.

Formed in 2020 and comprised of veterans of New York City's vital contemporary music community, the Anzu Quartet - Olivia de Prato, Ashley Bathgate, Ken Thomson and Karl Larson - is an ensemble dedicated to the music of our time and the recent canon. The quartet's first full-length studio release of premiere recordings features new works by Thomson (?) and fellow composer Anna Webber (?, which lends the album it's title). Relentless, kinetic and emotive, Thomson's ? reflects the pace and anxieties of modern life, while Webber's ? explores the liminal space between classical contemporary music and experimental jazz. Both works, composed between 2019 and 2022, highlight the quartet's prowess as interpreters and performers of demanding, modern repertoire, and fulfill Anzu's mission of commissioning and promoting new repertoire for the instrumentation of Messiaen's elemental "Quartet for the End of Time," a new recording of which the group will release later in 2025.

The youthful agility of Samuel Adler – born in Mannheim in 1928 but long since regarded as the dean of American music – would appear to contradict the fact that he reached his 95th birthday in March 2023. This celebration of his productive life – as composer, teacher, writer and conductor – testifies to his ongoing vigour with a programme of songs and piano works composed, for the large part, after his 90th birthday, many of them tributes to musician friends. His music has its roots in the Neo-Classical clarity of composers like Copland and Hindemith, who were among his teachers, but has a raunchy energy entirely Adler’s own – and which would be remarkable in a composer half his age.

The works of Samuel Adler - born in Mannheim in 1928 but long since one of the leading figures of American music - are both modern and approachable: the blend an edgy angularity with long flights of lyrical melody, and are often informed with both a buoyant charge of energy and an impish sense of humour. This conspectus of his chamber and instrumental music covers almost sixty years of his activity as a composer and thus presents a kind of portrait in sound.

The music of Samuel Adler – born in Mannheim in 1928 but long since one of the leading figures of American music – has its roots in the Neo-Classical clarity of composers like Copland and Hindemith, who were among his teachers. The works on this album arose from a range of impulses: a Neo-Baroque concerto grosso and a tribute to Bach encase a series of tributes to lost individuals and traditions; and two jeux d’esprit – Ives’ tongue-in-cheek Variations on America and Holst’s ‘Jupiter’ from The Planets – both bring jollity in Adler’s idiomatic arrangements for string orchestra.

REVIEW:

Adler’s arrangements not only provide string orchestras the opportunity to perform these works, they offer considerable excitement and impact in their own right. The performances by the New York Classical Players and conductor Dongmin Kim are excellent throughout. The playing is incisive, tonally rich, and phrased with great care. The featured soloists are first-rate as well. Jürgen Thym’s excellent liner notes, including commentary from the composer, are brimming with information offered with erudition, clarity, and enthusiasm. Samuel Adler: Music for Chamber Orchestra is a marvelous tribute to an American musical treasure who has long distinguished himself as a composer, teacher, and writer. Recommended.

-- Fanfare

Adolf Busch had been one of the highly celebrated violinists and greatly admired exponents of the Beethoven concerto in Europe before WWII, but had never recorded it prior to his emigration to the U.S. in 1939. After a period of relative neglect, he was invited by American Columbia to record the work in 1942, but the outcome was not a success. Critic Tully Potter tells the story in his linernotes: "On 7 and 8 February [1942] the Busch brothers ... collaborated with the Philharmonic-Symphony, in the Beethoven Concerto, Adolf airing a new set of cadenzas written the previous year. ...the Saturday-evening interpretation gained mixed notices, the best being very good, the worst very bad; and perhaps the violinist was not at his best. Two critics indicated that he seemed nervous--hardly surprising, when it was his first performance for years of a work he had been accustomed to play almost every week. He was certainly in excellent form on the Sunday afternoon: the CBS network broadcast was taken down by at least two home recordists and one of those documents is here released for the first time. It makes an admirable corrective to the official Columbia recording, made next day at Liederkranz Hall. Unfortunately the production was delegated to the talented but inexperienced Goddard Lieberson. Busch was palpably under strain in the opening movement, his nervousness exacerbated by Lieberson's insisting he stand on a raised platform, which made him feel remote from his brother and the orchestra and brought him too close to the microphone. The resulting poor balance caused him to reject the recording and it was not issued until after his death. The live performance is everything one might expect." The fillers include a Bach concerto (in a minor) never commercially recorded by Busch.

Composer, educator, performer, and author Bruce Adolphe has a close affinity to the piano, and he acknowledges the transformative influence of Chopin on the way the instrument has been perceived right up to the present. Chopin Dreams places the Romantic master firmly into modern times, building on his models and imagining him as a jazz pianist or exploring what he might have played at a Bar-Mitzvah. The Chopin Puzzlers take Chopin’s style and mixes it into what Dick Hyman has called “the wittiest and funniest musical parodies imaginable.” Seven Thoughts Considered as Music vividly depicts profound and provocative statements from the past in a philosophical and sometimes explosive musical journey

Ilya Kuzinets, leader of the group Adon Olam, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He began to study the violin at the municipal music school in St. Petersburg and finished the class with honors. He continued his study at the Rimsky Korsakov College, St. {Petersburg, and then at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. There he received his diploma with honors with Professor Anatoly Reznikovsky. In 1991 he emigrated to Israel and continued his studies at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy. In the following years, he played in various orchestras and folk groups with whom he toured Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, and South America. Since 1996, parallel to all of his concert and touring activities, he has been the house composer for The Israel Stage Orchestra, writing new pieces and arrangements for the orchestra. He also wrote arrangements for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and other orchestras in the area. This group presents traditional Israeli songs arranged by Kuzinets for his group Adon Olam.

ADOPTED HIGHWAY

Winner of the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022 and an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2023, the Isidore String Quartet makes it's recording debut on Delos. Formed at The Juilliard School and coached with members of the Juilliard String Quartet past and present-the name Isidore comes from the legendary violinist Isidore Cohen, one of the Juilliard Quartet's early members-the quartet is rapidly making a name for itself on the international concert scene. The album Adorations is a celebration of chamber music at it's essence: a tapestry of joy, human connection, and the enduring resonance of lives intertwined. Each work on the album reflects a unique form of adoration, offering it's own expression of wonder, reverence, and the profound beauty of shared musical experience. Comprising Joseph Haydn's String Quartet in C major, Op. 20, and Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 44, the recital also features Samuel Barber's celebrated Molto adagio and Florence Price's Adoration.

2019 release. The Adornment of Time is a monumental meeting between drummer Tyshawn Sorey and pianist Marilyn Crispell, two titans of contemporary music. Recorded live at The Kitchen in New York City, the performance is the apotheosis of fully-improvised music, a dialogue between two artists who are masters at bringing compositional form to their improvisations. Sorey, a 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, has been named by The New Yorker as "among the most formidable denizens of the in-between zone... An extraordinary talent who can see across the entire musical landscape," and by The Wall Street Journal as "a composer of radical and seemingly boundless ideas." Crispell, whose playing has been described by The New York Times like "monitoring an active volcano," is perhaps best known for her association with Anthony Braxton in his classic quartet of the 1980s and 1990s, but also for her many projects as a leader and highly-regarded releases on the ECM label. Comprised of a single, uninterrupted movement, the performance is by turns placid and tumultuous; quietly contemplative until exploding in intensity. Their performance together is an act of collaborative spontaneous composition of the highest order.

Classical Music

Adouna (Life) by Senegalese singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Cheikh Ibra Fam is a rich and deeply personal album that reflects on knowledge, faith, unity, migration, love, and the courage to transform one's circumstances. Recorded between Reunion Island, Senegal, France, and Canada, the album blends Afro-pop, soul, and the traditional musical languages of West Africa with a modern sensibility shaped by Cheikh's extensive travels and spiritual perspective. Cheikh describes Adouna as "a mirror of life's beauty and struggle," and each song offers a different facet of that reflection. The track, "Xam Xam," honors the influence of his uncle Coly Ciss�, the beloved guitarist who first awakened Cheikh's artistic curiosity. Built on a shimmering foundation of kora, zouk, and Angolan kizomba rhythms, the song celebrates knowledge as the key to empowerment-an idea that has guided Cheikh since childhood. From there, the album moves into tender territory with "Sali," a celebration of African femininity and grace that features warm mbalax rhythms infused with funky interwoven guitar lines. As Adouna unfolds, Cheikh expands his storytelling into larger social themes. "Gnou Mbollo," meaning "Let's Unite," is a resounding call for connection across the African diaspora, weaving together rhythms and imagery that travel "from Congo to Panama, from Gor�e Island to Brazil." Musically, it draws inspiration from James Brown's classic funk and mixes it seamlessly with West African guitar lines and grooving drums. "Amoul Solo" speaks to the strength that emerges when individuals and communities refuse to face adversity alone. Musically, the song reflects Cape Verdean inspirations with it's lilting swing buoyed by Wilfrid Zinsou's captivating trombone lines. Elsewhere on the album, Cheikh reflects on faith and perseverance in "Weurseuk," urges the power of communication in "Wakhtane," and honors the strength, dignity, and essential role of African women in "Mama Africa." Together, these songs form a cohesive mosaic-one that captures both the complexity and the hope of modern African life. After releasing several albums under the stage name Freestyle, Cheikh joined the legendary Orchestra Baobab, a turning point that awakened a deeper connection to his African heritage. Touring the world with Baobab inspired him to embrace singing in Wolof and Bambara and to align his music more closely with his cultural roots. "Baobab awakened the Africa that was sleeping in me," he recalls, reflecting on the mentorship of figures like Balla Sidib� and Issa Sissokho. The making of Adouna reflects both Cheikh's nomadic life and his collaborative spirit. He began shaping the songs in his home studio on Reunion Island, sketching out melodic ideas, rhythmic frameworks, and vocal arrangements before inviting musicians from Senegal, The Gambia, France, Rwanda, Canada, and Reunion Island to contribute their parts. A crucial creative partner throughout this process was producer and arranger Hakim Abdulsamad, an American producer living in Rwanda whose deep musical intuition and attention to detail helped refine the album's sound and bring Cheikh's vision into focus. Together, they crafted a collection that feels grounded in West African heritage yet expansively connected to the broader African world.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the first appearance on disc of three historic live recordings by Sir Adrian Boult to mark the 40th anniversary of the pre-eminent British conductor’s death, including his complete 1949 account of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, Stravinsky’s Capriccio (1948), and Vaughan Williams’ Fourth Symphony (1965).

Boult had led the UK premiere of Berg’s excoriating opera in 1934, although only Act II of that performance survives. This complete 1949 recording with the BBC Symphony, Heinrich Nillius as Wozzeck, and Suzanne Danco as Marie – only the second UK performance – adds to Boult’s and the opera’s stature on disc. Recorded live in London’s Royal Albert Hall, it is a remarkable document of an exhilarating performance.

Boult’s pioneering championing of ‘new’ music is also heard in his recording of Stravinsky’s Capriccio, with the BBC Symphony and the prodigiously gifted Australian Noel Mewton-Wood at the piano.

Boult’s rare outing in 1965 with the Royal Opera House Orchestra saw him returning to a work he premiered 30 years earlier, Vaughan Williams’ Fourth Symphony. Under Boult’s baton it is a stirring and startling statement of loss and grief.

A bonus track features a revealing discussion of his 19-year tenure at the head of the BBC Symphony by Boult with Bernard Keeffe for BBC Radio in 1965.

The forgotten figure of a 17th-century Dutch recorder virtuoso, illuminated by a unique synthesis of art history, scholarship and modern musicianship.

Der Fluyten Lust-hof (The Flute's Pleasure Garden, or Garden of Delights) is the largest collection of music for a single wind instrument ever published by a single composer, and has supplied recorder players, amateurs and professionals, with music for reflection and entertainment ever since the publication of its initial volume in 1644.

An overlooked detail is the dedication of the first volume, to one Adriana vanden Bergh. Who was she? This book and CD tells the full and fascinating story, shedding light along the way on many aspects of culture, religion and everyday life in Amsterdam during the 17th century. As both a musicologist and art historian, Thiemo Wind is uniquely placed to tell this story. He has identified Adriana as the subject of a famous painting by Jacob Adriaensz Backer (1608/09–1651), hitherto anonymous but considered one of the most beautiful portraits of the Dutch Golden Age.

Through original research, Thiemo Wind has assembled an eventful biography, which moves in short and lively chapters, each of them illustrated with a telling image, from her family background to her birth in 1631, her complex religious inheritance of both Protestant and Catholic observance, her apparently rapid mastery of the recorder, her participation in Amsterdam’s lively performing culture and her status as a musical celebrity even as a teenager, to her marriage in 1650, which probably occasioned the commission of Backer’s portrait. Thereafter the story turns darker, with a tale of bankruptcy, child-birth and -death, family splits and reconciliations, obscurity and ultimately Adriana’s death in 1668, having given birth to her ninth child.

The accompanying CD takes its cue from Der Fluyten Lust-hof, and from the music publications featured in Backer’s portrait, to present new recordings of music with which Adriana would have delighted audiences in her time. Performed by the internationally renowned virtuoso Erik Bosgraaf, in company with his Cordevento ensemble, the recording complements Thiemo Wind’s scholarship to present Adriana’s life and music in the round."

Classical Music

Dionysos Now! Contributes to the preservation of cultural heritage by presenting musical works that have not been widely heard or performed for centuries.�ore Tom Denys, the artistic leader of the ensemble, has done a�scholarly exploration of the compositions that pay tribute to Adriaen Willaert to creatate this collection of musical pieces.