John Burge (b. 1961, Dryden, Ontario) is a Canadian composer who has been teaching at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario since 1987. He has written a large body of vocal, chamber, and orchestral compositions, and received the 2009 JUNO Award for Classical Composition of the Year. Some critics have likened his compositional style to that of Benjamin Britten and Maxwell Davies. Philip Chiu is acclaimed for his brilliant pianism, sensitive listening, and a stage presence that eschews the hermit-pianist image in favour of openness, authenticity, and connection with audiences. Inaugural winner of the Mecenat Musica Prix Goyer, Chiu has become one of Canada's leading musicians through his infectious love of music and his passion for creation and communication. Given the number of precedents in the world of Classical music, it is fair to state that there is a long traditional of composing a set of Twenty-Four Preludes for solo piano. John Burge's preludes draw their primary influence from Chopin's Opus 28 set in that Burge also composes one prelude in each major and minor key, employing the exact same ordering of keys used by Chopin. While Chopin was writing music in the highly chromaticized harmonic language of the early 19th century, in 2015, the year that Burge completed his set, the concept of tonality has undergone so many developments since Chopin's time that there are now whole schools of musical techniques that produce music that is quite atonal. As an all-governing principle for his set of preludes though, Burge made it a personal requirement that each prelude had to embrace it's tonic key in a decisively audible fashion.

Franco Gulli (1926-2001) was one of the finest violinists of the 20th century. He began his violin studies at five at his father's music school in his native Trieste, Italy. After graduation from the Conservatory of Trieste in 1944, he debuted at the Teatro Verdi, performing Beethoven's Violin Concerto. He was the concertmaster of the Milan Chamber Orchestra and soloist with I Virtuosi di Roma. He performed all over the world with leading orchestras with such artists as Menuhin and Rostropovich. In addition to his solo career, he was dedicated to chamber music. In the 1940s he formed a duo with his pianist wife, Enrica Cavallo, and their collaboration extended for many years. He formed the Trio Italiano d'Archi with violist Bruno Giuranna and cellist Giacinto Caramia. Gulli's discography as soloist and chamber musician is extensive. Equally renowned as a teacher, he taught at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1972 until his death. Born in Milan in 1933, the violist Bruno Giuranna has had a very distinguished career as a soloist and chamber musician. He debuted in 1954 under Herbert von Karajan and further performed with renowned orchestras under such conductors as Riccardo Muti, Sergiu Celibidache, Claudio Abbado, Carlo Maria Giulini, and Sir John Barbirolli. Giuranna was a co-founder of I Musici, and the violist of the Trio Italiano d'Archi from its inception in 1957. Like his chamber partner Franco Gulli, he has recorded widely both as soloist and chamber musician. He has had a distinguished teaching career at such leading music schools as London's Royal Academy of Music and Berlin's Hochschule fur Musik. In 1987 he was named Cavaliere di Gran Croce a Merito della Repubblica Italiana. Giacinto Caramia (1923-2015) was a native of Naples and studied with Enrico Mainardi, graduating from the Academy of Santa Cecilia. He performed and recorded widely in many musical contexts, including performances with I Virtuosi di Roma and the Naples Radio Orchestra under Sergiu Celibidache. He became the cellist of the Trio Italiano d'Archi in 1962.

As a team, Osmo Vänskä and his Minnesota Orchestra began their collaboration with BIS in 2004, launching a Beethoven symphony cycle that made reviewers worldwide sit up and take notice: "a modern reference edition" was the verdict on web site ClassicsToday.com, while Gramophone Magazine described it as "a Beethoven reforged for today's world". Twelve years later saw the release of the third and final disc in the Minnesota-Vänskä cycle of Sibelius's symphonies, with individual discs receiving distinctions such as a 2014 Grammy Award (for symphonies Nos. 1 and 4), Gramophone's Editor's Choice, Choice of the Month in BBC Music Magazine and inclusion on the annual list of best classical recordings in New York Times.

The present disc launches yet another series, of even more monumental proportions, with Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony, recorded by the orchestra under Osmo Vänskä in Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis in June 2016. Composed in 1902, the purely instrumental work followed upon three symphonies that had all included vocal parts. This and the opening trumpet motif, an allusion to the rhythm that begins Beethoven's Fifth have been interpreted as Mahler's return to a more conventional idea of the symphonic genre. Other features are less traditional, however –a sometimes bewildering mixture of musical idioms reminds us of the melting-pot that Vienna was at the time, with allusions to Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian styles. To an unsuspecting audience, the famous Adagietto for strings and harp –probably the best-known of all of Mahler's music –must also have been surprising, appearing at the heart of a work which is otherwise lavishly scored and orchestrated.

REVIEW:

The orchestral playing is crisp; the conductor, although determined to avoid histrionics, cognizant that emotional extremism is an essential part of Mahler’s idiom even if it need not be indulged. While some might prefer to look elsewhere for the customary Mahlerian blend of anguish, heft, and geniality, there’s more going on here than a thoughtful seating plan and state-of-the-art production.

BIS’s SACD format is certain to wow audiophiles. Even heard through two channels the recording is spacious yet precise and, true to form, the dynamic range is vast, complementing Osmo Vänskä’s partiality for music-making on the threshold of audibility.

– Gramophone

Born in Prague in 1737, Josef Myslivecek spent most of his short life in Italy, where for a while he enjoyed success with his many operas, and became known as ‘Il Boemo’ (‘The Bohemian’). It was also in Italy – in Bologna – that he first met Mozart, in 1770. Their paths would cross again and in letters Mozart wrote about him with affection, describing him as full of ‘fire, spirit and life’. Myslivecek’s influence is apparent in Mozart’s early operas, violin concertos, symphonies and keyboard music. His music soon fell out of fashion, however, and it is only recent decades that have seen more interest in works such as the wind octets, violin concertos and symphonies. In comparison, Myslivecek’s output for keyboard has been somewhat neglected, something which the English pianist Clare Hammond seeks to rectify with her latest disc. The keyboard concertos in particular have barely seen the light of day since Myslivecek’s death and the second concerto is recorded for the first time on this album which gathers all of the extant keyboard works. Clare Hammond, whose imaginative recording projects on BIS have received international acclaim, is here supported in the concertos by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by no one less than Nicholas McGegan, whose expertise in 18th-century style is undisputed.

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REVIEWS:

The two compact concertos have a sparky grace that comes across buoyantly in these performances. Schnabel’s old adage about Mozart’s piano sonatas – “too easy for children, and too difficult for artists” – would come to mind for Myslive?ek’s Divertimenti, were it not for the perfectly judged tone that Hammond strikes with them, preserving their seemingly artless charm while finding a striking profundity in their simplicity.

– Guardian

Sprightliness abounds in the concertos and short pieces gathered here, delivered with deliciously unfussy poise and elegance on a modern Steinway, crisply supported by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the conductor Nicholas McGegan.

– Sunday Times (UK)

This recital could almost have been entitled Around Fauré in Sixty Minutes, as the programme devised by Nicolas Stavy spans the entire career of the composer. In April 1863, when Gabriel Fauré noted down the Sonata recorded here for the first time, his 18th birthday was still a month away – the masterly Nocturne in B minor Op. 119, on the other hand, is Fauré’s final work for the piano, composed only two years before his death in 1924. Between them, and the other works included on the album, a fascinating trajectory takes shape. In the Finale of the sonata we hear a young man enjoying himself as he experiments with a Haydnesque idiom; a few years later there are traces of Mendelssohn and Schumann in 3 Romances, and of Chopin in Mazurke – also a world première recording. Especially when it comes to the choice of genre, Chopin is still an influence during the 1870s and Nocturne No. 1 and the Ballade, but both works testify to a composer finding his own voice. Fauré went on to compose another 12 nocturnes and two of these, No. 6 in D flat major from 1894 and the aforementioned Nocturne in B minor, serve as snapshots illustrating Fauré's later career and the composer's path towards increasing abstraction and a style characterised by timelessness and a detachment from fashionable trends.

Sing Me at Midnight

Released in 2016 - the 150th anniversary of the birth of Erik Satie - the first volume of the series was warmly greeted by reviewers worldwide, who paised the clarity of Noriko Ogawa's interpretations as well as teh crystalline sound of her chosen instrument, an Erard grand piano from 1890. Like its predecessor, this second instalment takes in music from different phases of the composer's career, including the very early Three Sarabandes from 1887. A few years later Satie became involved with an esoteric society called ''The Catholic Rosy Cross of the Temple and the Grail'' for which he composed works such as the Sonneries de la Rose+Crois. Throughout his life, Satie identified strongly with children and famously said of himself that he ''came into the world very young, in an age that was very old''. In 1913, during what is often termed his ''humorous'' period he composed the four sets of children's pieces included on this album. Hailing from the same period are the two sets of ''Flabby preludes for a dog'' as well as the suite Sports et divertissements. Often regarded as one of the finest examples of Satie's art, this consists of a prelude and 20 musical snapshots depicting different sports and leisure activities, including golf, fishing and dancing. The suite was first published as a collector's album, accompanied by illustrations by Charles Martin and Satie's own prose poetry and calligraphy.

Born in Naples in 1893, Teresa de Rogatis was a child prodigy who gave her first recital at the age of seven. She studied piano, composition, counterpoint, harmony, conducting and voice at the Conservatorio San Pietro in Naples. While in Egypt on a concert tour, she met and soon married a Swiss man of means living in Cairo, Paolo Feninger. Settling there in the 1920s, Rogatis helped to found the National Conservatory of Egypt, where she also taught piano and guitar for over 40 years. Her husband’s death prompted her retirement in 1963 back to Naples, where she lived quietly until her death in 1979. Her career as a teacher allowed little time for composition, but de Rogatis took a selfless attitude to her own work. ‘If teaching hundreds of young people about the poetry and beauty of music, instead of composing works and symphonies, means giving one’s life up, then that’s what I’ve done. But if some of these young people, who are now adults, can understand a Beethoven symphony or sonata and find in it solace and a guide for their own lives, then I will live in their memories just as I would have done in my works, and my life will have been equally useful.’ Her relatively slender output – 60 acknowledged works – is dominated by piano music, but de Rogatis also wrote instrumental songs and dances for the guitar, and a four-movement Sonatina of no less ready melodic appeal, all presented here by her modern-day counterpart, the Italian guitarist Cinzia Milani. In a personal introduction to the scholarly booklet note, Milani observes how de Rogatis ‘reconciled brilliant virtuoso flair with an elegantly feminine touch, even when the overall tone is jocular or ironic.’ Milani’s decision to record this music on a distinctly modern instrument is part of ‘an imaginary dialogue between different periods and the changes they heralded: like glancing backwards while walking towards the future.’

Doug Rosener, a master of the marimba, presents a great program of contemporary works for Marimba. Works from composers Takatsugu Muramatsu, Dwayne Rice, David Gillingham, Gordon Stout, and Joaquin Turina are included, as well as Daniel Levitan's Baroque Suite, where Rosener is joined by flutist Alina Windell. Dr. Doug Rosener serves as Associate Professor of Percussion and Associate Director of Bands at Auburn University. In addition to teaching the applied percussion studio, Dr. Rosener teaches courses in percussion literature, percussion skills, Finale techniques, and directs the Auburn percussion ensemble and Auburn University Marching Band drumline. During Dr. Rosener's tenure, the drumline has been the subject of two separate features on VicFirth. Com, and both the percussion ensemble and steel band have appeared on Alabama public television.

Curious, open-minded, fascinated by other cultures, Ondrej Adámek assimilates every aesthetic whose path he crosses. His works reveal all these influences, stamping them with a very individual sound colour that, combined with a powerful rhythmic sense and solid formal solid architecture, creates highly personal music by no means exempt from dramaturgy. Adámek seeks out specific playing techniques for classical instruments and creates new and original instruments. Here the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain under the direction of Daniel Kawka lays before us an eclectic panorama of his music, from the ritualised, even mechanised sinuosities of a lullaby to the disconcerting mechanism of the strange musical machines he invents, which he does not hesitate to place in front of the orchestra.

Whether singing, conducting, dancing or acting, the Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan is a source of fascination. Alpha Classics is proud to enter her world today and to present in 2017 her very first album as singer and conductor: with the Amsterdambased orchestra Ludwig, of which she is associate artist, Barbara Hannigan has devised a programme including Berg’s Lulu Suite and Gershwin’s Girl Crazy in a Suite newly arranged by the multiaward-winning American composer Bill Elliott. To complement these two pieces, she has recorded Berio’s spectacular Sequenza III for solo voice. An outstanding soprano, a distinguished interpreter of the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, an all-round artist who creates a sensation on concert platforms and in opera houses throughout the world, Barbara Hannigan has enriched her palette over the past few years by devoting a portion of her activities to conducting. This album in the form of a musical portrait of the artist, is completed by a film made by Mathieu Amalric during the rehearsals and recording sessions. It plunges into the heart of the orchestra with a very personal look at the exchanges between conductor and musicians. Over the next few years, Alpha will accompany Barbara Hannigan in a number of projects from very varied horizons . . .

Supporting new talents is in Alpha's DNA. Here is the very first recording of the Italian pianist Filippo Gorini, who was recently awarded First Prize in the Telekom-Beethoven Competition in Bonn. He has also won the same competition's Audience Prize twice over. At just twenty years of age, he has already played in such prestigious venues as the Berlin Konzaerthaus, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Liederhalle in Stuttgart, Die Glocke in Bremen, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the Moscow Conservatory. Strongly supported by Alfred Brendel, with whom he studies, he has chosen to tackle a monument of the piano repertory, the Diabelli Variations, a work whose interpretation he has matured through frequent performance, notably at the Beethoven Competition where it was the key item in his winning programme. And, appropriately, it is at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn that he made this first albu, the start of a highly promising recording career.

Early in his career Carl Roskott wrote atonal compositions. He became increasingly frustrated with the expectations for modern music, though. He ultimately abandoned atonality, and in his later career wrote music that, while it incorporates some 20th Century techniques, is first-rate, melodic music that is readily accessible to all. On this release, his Concerto for Violin Solo and Orchestra and his Sonata for Violin and Piano are presented by violinist Akemi Takayama, pianist Silvan Negrutiu, and the Shenandoah Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. Akemi Takayama appears internationally as a soloist and chamber music collaborator. She was a violinist in the retired Audubon Quartet, of which she was a member for fourteen years. She serves as associate professor at the Shenandoah University Conservatory of Music and concertmaster of both the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and the Williamsburg Symphonia in Virginia.

Scot LaGraff is a Professor of Voice at Stephen F. Austin State University. He is a graduate of the Tri-Cities Opera Resident Artist Training Program in Binghamton, New York, where he sang title roles in Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro. He is an advocate of contemporary American song, and his first album- Songs by Stephen Lias, Michael Patterson and Lee Hoiby- was released by Centaur in 2009. Incline Thine Ear and Other Sacred Songs is his second album. A number of composers are featured on this album, including Carl F. Mueller, Oley Speaks, Albert Hay Malotte, and more. LaGraff is joined by pianist Andrew Hudson, and his wife Kimberly performs alongside him on the Hal Hopson arrangement of the traditional English melody, “The Gift of Love.”

This is a first-rate program of works for clarinet and strings. Tasha Warren brings these works to life, aided by a superb group of instrumentalists. Tasha Warren, assistant professor of chamber music at the Michigan State University College of Music, is an avid teacher and international performer. She has premiered numerous solo clarinet and chamber works working closely with composers and conductors including Shulamit Ran, Augusta Read Thomas, Cliff Colnot, and Oliver Knussen. She has recorded with Innova, Alba, and SCI Records, the I.U. New Music Ensemble, Hal Leonard Productions, CBC Radio, and PBC Korea Television. Crystal Records released her album, The Naked Clarinet, in December 2009, which garnered praise in reviews from International Record Review, Fanfare Magazine, The Clarinet Magazine and others.

Tomas Cotik, violin and Tao Lin, piano, continue their series of recordings for Centaur with this new release. Their Schubert recordings have been released to great acclaim. Here they brilliantly perform the complete Mozart Sonatas for Violin and Piano. Hailed by Michael Tilson Thomas as “an excellent violinist,” Tomas Cotik is internationally recognized as a soloist, chamber musician, and professor. A much sought-after recording artist, Dr. Cotik is currently involved in more than fourteen album recordings for Naxos and Centaur records, which have received over a hundred reviews and the highest praises from some of the best-known publications. Committed to passing on his passion for music, Dr. Cotik taught at the University of Miami, Florida International University, and West Texas A&M University. He was appointed assistant professor of Violin at Portland State University in 2016. Described by critics as possessing “Keen musical intelligence and excellent facility” (Miami Herald) as well as “opulent and romantic tone” (Fanfare), Chinese-American concert pianist and Steinway artist Tao Lin has performed in Asia, North America, and Europe. A versatile musician, he is equally at home as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician.

The late 17th and early 18th centuries were the Golden Age of the Recorder. Played by amateurs and professionals and admire by musical connoisseurs, the recorder was everywhere. From Italy to England, the greatest composers of the day were writing hundreds of masterworks to meet the public's demand! Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, a scrappy group of colonists were carving a new nation out of the wilderness... But where were the recorders? It is one of the great ironies of the recorder's long history, that despite being ubiquitous in nearly every American public music school program, few American composers ever explored writing for it. In order to set this egregious state of affairs to right, Michala Petri, the first Lady of the Recorder, invited four American composers to make their own discovery of just what an Old World Recorder can do! For the newest installment of her ground-breaking Concerto Project, four works have been specially commissioned to showcase the sound of the modern recorder, including the late Steven Stucky's thoroughly contemporary Etudes, Roberto Sierra's Latin-tinged Prelude, Habanera and Perpetual Motion, Harpsichord virtuoso Antony Newman's Neo-Baroque Concerto for recorder, harpsichord & strings, and Sean Hickey's boldly-wrought A Pacifying Weapon.

This series explores China’s rich and diverse musical heritage. The songs featured in this recording are folk songs of five minority ethnic groups of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang—Mongol, Daur, Oroqen, Evenki and Hezhen. As with Chinese traditional visual arts, the song titles explain their mood and origin.

Throughout his life, Eduard Strauss's compositions were unfavorably compared with those by his elder brothers, Johann II and Josef, yet many of his works, especially those dating from the 1870's and 1880's, easily stand comparison with those crafted by his two famous siblings. Moreover, in two particular dance genres - the quick polka and the galop - Eduard was in a class of his own. As the Strauss authority Professor Franz Mailer stated: ''Posterity must make restitution to Eduard Strauss.'' It is to be hoped that, at the very least, this present recording will encourage a reassessment of ''handsome Edi's'' unique musical genius.

Tenebrae join the Aurora Orchestra with mezzo soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and narrator Simon Callow for ‘A Walk with Ivor Gurney’, an album of choral music celebrating the works of Ivor Gurney whose promising career as a composer was interrupted by World War I. Alongside four pieces of Gurney’s own music are works by his contemporaries, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells. The recording features a new piece by Judith Bingham commissioned by Tenebrae in 2013 for the choir with Dame Sarah Connolly. Described as “phenomenal” (The Times) and “devastatingly beautiful” (Gramophone Magazine), award-winning choir Tenebrae, under the direction of Nigel Short, is one of the world’s leading vocal ensembles renowned for its passion and precision. “For purity and precision of tone, and flawless intonation, Nigel Short’s chamber choir Tenebrae is pretty much unbeatable.” (The Times)

As Jacob Kellermann points out in the commentary to this album, there is an unbroken tradition of performing arrangements of Franz Schubert’s music on the guitar. Already in his lifetime some of his most popular songs appeared with simplified guitar accompaniment, marketed by music publishers wanting to exploit the growing market for domestic music-making. Schubert himself composed very little for the instrument, and there are doubts regarding Schubert’s own skills on the instrument. Nevertheless it is well known that the guitar was in fashion with the middle-class Viennese among which Schubert and his circle of friends moved. In his notes, Kellermann argues that elements of the light, melody-driven and carefree musical style favoured in that environment and present in stylized form in much of Schubert’s music is the very aspect that makes it so inviting to play on the guitar. DuoKeMi was formed by Kellermann and Daniel Migdal in 2006, and the two are constantly aiming to expand the repertoire for their combination of instruments. This has resulted in a number of commissions as well as new transcriptions, often by Kellermann himself as in the case of the much-loved Arpeggione Sonata recorded here.

During his lifetime, Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) was best known as an organ composer. He wrote more than two hundred pieces for the instrument, both liturgical and secular, and explored most of the genres that existed at the time. He is considered to be the apex of the 17th century’s south German organ school and generally one of the most important composers of the middle Baroque. His sphere of activity included central and southern Germany (modern Bavaria, Thuringia and Stuttgart), as well as important formative years in Vienna in his early 20s, during which he absorbed the Habsburg Empire’s dominant Italian and south German influences. The southern organ-builders’ emphasis on manual divisions is also apparent in much of Pachelbel’s liturgical organ music, which is relatively simple and written for manuals only. With this 13-disc set covering Pachelbel’s pivotal contributions to the chorale prelude, fugue and variation forms, internationally acclaimed organist Simone Stella adds another milestone to his already prolific discography of baroque keyboard music surveys on Brilliant Classics.

REVIEW:

The organ used here has much greater possibilities in variety of tonal colors, and Stella uses it to fine effect in the many fugues and chorale variations – and, it must be said, the music is in need of it. Pachelbel’s technique for toccatas is also consistent; based on pedal notes, the keyboard figurations of parallel 3rds, 6ths and 10ths predominate. Although not difficult to improvise, Pachelbel is always surprising in his modulatory shifts and textural changes.

-- Choir & Organ

The choral works of Duruflé, like his organ works, are small in number but beautifully crafted. Frequently written and rewritten until he was completely satisfied, he was a composer who rethought and re-configured his music right up to the moment he had to let go of it. Often described as a man out of step with his times, his pieces look back to Gregorian chant and plainsong at a time when the musical life of his home city of Paris was steeped in radical new compositional ideas – a testament perhaps to Duruflé’s enduring love of France’s choral heritage. In a new recording produced by Grammy® winning producer Blanton Alspaugh, the Houston Chamber Choir are led by artistic director Robert Simpson on their first release with Signum Records.

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REVIEWS:

Recorded in warm, though not too reverberant acoustics, the choir’s tone is open and bright, and they and their conductor are sensitive to Duruflé’s demands. While they can be dramatic when needed, nothing is ever overstated – a temptation in this work, where there is little variety in tempi. The four unaccompanied Gregorian motets show offthe choir’s strengths to their best advantage.

– Choir & Organ

The unique selling point here is the highly polished, virtually flawless sound of the Houston Chamber Choir. Here is a group that clearly enjoys the art of choral singing and in Robert Simpson they have a director whose focus on producing a superbly homogenous sound makes for warm, comfortable listening.

– Gramophone

The 'living Baroque' idiom of Federico Maria Sardelli has been extensively documented on Brilliant Classics, with albums of concertos (BC94749), cantatas (BC95068) and harpsichord music (BC95488) that have advanced the reputation of this modern composer and scholar and won international attention, with 5-star reviews in Diapason and elsewhere. Now Sardelli turns his imagination to the genre of the trio sonata that exemplified chamber music-making in the Baroque era. The collection of six presented here divides into two sub-genres, of the church sonatas (Nos. 2, 4, 5) and chamber sonata (Nos. 1, 3, 6) which would have been heard in a domestic, albeit aristocratically appointed, context. Sardelli makes passing and subtle allusions to poignant melancholy (in the Larghetto of the First Sonata), to an infernal rhythmic impulse (the second movement of the Fifth), to more profound meditations on mortality (such as the Adagio without bass of the Third), and even to declarations of love (the opening of the Sixth) - though the subject of Sardelli's affection is surely Vivaldi himself. According to the composer, this is not Baroque pastiche. Rather, as a noted scholar of Vivaldi, he seeks to recreate such music in his own image with music of the present which 'regains it's own original language and adheres to it's own original criteria, expressing vibrant new ideas that are in keeping with it's identity.' It would be quite possible to think that the trio sonatas here had been written with a goose quill in 17th-century Venice, but they are by no means dry exercises in imitation. Rather they are full of an authentically Venetian vibrancy and color from any age, sparkling with a variety of knowing brilliance that belongs to the temperamental character of the city. The performances here are given by musicians who have long worked with Sardelli in his Modo Antiquo ensemble which has made highly praised recordings of 'real' Vivaldi as well as Sardelli.

Du bon du cueur is a courtly chanson of the early 16th Century. The poem hearkens back to 15th Century life, but the melody that resonates throughout this recording was first set by Jean Mouton, a contemporary of Josquin DePrez and court composer to the French Kings. Capella Alamire was formed in 1984 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the purpose of exploring the repertoire of the Renaissance. The word Alamire is a solmization term for the pitch A, sung as la, mi, or re; it was also the pseudonym of a Flemish music scribe employed by the Habsburg court at the beginning of the 16th century in the region of present-day Belgium and northern France, an area that produced many of the greatest composers and singers of the time.