Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Tonus Peregrinus.

Ulrich Krieger (born 1962 in Freiburg) is a German contemporary composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician based in Los Angeles. Krieger's artistic work spans a broad field from contemporary classical composition and free improvisation to experimental fusion with electronic music, rock, metal and noise. His special interest lies in the exploration of the physical fringes between acoustic and electronic produced sounds. In his music and with his instrument, the saxophone, he developed an original style of playing he calls "acoustic electronics". Acoustic electronics is about using sounds that appear to be electronic but are actually produced on acoustic instruments. His probably best known experimental project with acoustic electronics is the transcription of Lou Reed's guitar feedback opus Metal Machine Music, which he rearranged for chamber orchestra. Composers: Ulrich Krieger Performers: Eric Drescher, bass flute; Christian Vogel, bass clarinet; Ulrich Krieger, tenor saxophone; Ulrich Krieger, electronics; California E.A.R. Unit; Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, cello; Vicki Ray, piano; Amy Knoles, percussion; Sonic Boom; Alex Srameck, contrabass clarinet; Chris Kallmyer, trumpet; Luke Storm, tuba; Robert Allaire, accordion; Ami Tamura, inside piano; Lydia Martin, percussion; Aniela Marie Perry, cello; Jake Rosenzweig, bass; Johannes Uhle, organ; Ulrich Krieger, sopranino saxophone; Ensemble Experimente; Dimitri Jurowski, cello; Maria Lobanowa, flute; Johanna Sponholz, recorder; Nikolaj Abramson, clarinet; Jonas Pieper, saxophone; Stephan Bienwald, electric guitar; Julia Schr�der, harp; Alezander Schubert, accordion; Vinzenz Wei�enburger, piano; Friedemann Werzlau, percussion; Moritz Colitti, violin; Antje Wunderlich, violin; Arthur Hornig, cello; Felix Eugen Thiemann, cello; Gerhard Scherer, Conductor

Classical Music

Selection includes a reading of the homage to Dufay and Binchois from Martin le Franc's "Le champion de dames".
Selection includes a reading of the homage to the female form from Martin le Franc's "Le champion de dames".
Selection includes a reading of 'Love according to the Champion' from Martin le Franc's "Le champion de dames".
Selection includes a reading of 'Love according to Brief Counsel' from Martin le Franc's "Le champion de dames".
Selection includes a reading of the homage to Christine de Pizan from Martin le Franc's "Le champion de dames".
Selection includes a reading of Malebouche's attack from Martin le Franc's "Le champion de dames".
Selection includes a reading of the prologue from Martin le Franc's "Le champion de dames".

COMPLETE WORKS

RENAISSANCE BALL IN WARSAW

MISSA PULCHERRIMA MOTETS

Classical Music

ISTANPITTA: Dances of 14th Century Florence

This is a repertoire that's been surprisingly well represented on disc, benefiting from the glasnost/perestroika-inspired revival of liturgical music in Russia in the early 1980s and the coincidental CD-fueled resurgence of the classical recording industry. One of the beauties of the unique, harmonized chant forms that characterize Russian church music is the attention this music received from some of the country's finest composers, some of them well known--Grechaninov, Bortnyansky, Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov--and others more obscure but nevertheless highly skilled. Most of the composers represented here are among the latter category, but the music is first rate and the choir, from Moscow's historic Novospassky Monastery, is equal to the best on disc. It's also a plus that most of the selections, by Lvov, Arkhangelsky, Smolensky, Kastalsky, and others, aren't duplicated elsewhere. The program follows a service of the Divine Liturgy, which includes hymns, antiphons, the Great Litany, the Trisagion, Nicene Creed, a psalm, and the Doxology. I was pleasantly surprised by the exceptional quality of the singing, set in shimmering, vibrant sound made in a Moscow studio but with the kind of (artificial?) resonance that could just as well have come from the wood and stone environs of an ancient church. There are many excellent choices for recordings of Russian religious music, but if you want to hear what the real thing sounds like, you won't go wrong with this--and its budget price makes it especially attractive. --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

LAWES/PURCELL/EXQUISITE CONSOR

Christoph Graupner: The Seven Words Of Christ On The Cross

Classical Music

Monteverdi: Madrigals, Book 4

The cathedral of Tournai in Belgium is one of the most impressive and significant in Europe and has been designated by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage. Music history was written here: the cathedral library contains the manuscript of a polyphonic mass ordinary compiled around the year 1300 which unites movements by various composers and written in different styles. This makes it the direct predecessor of the first masses written by single composers, such as the Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut.

René Clemencic, the great music researcher and interpreter of medieval music, performs the Messe de Tournai along with additional one-voice and polyphonic pieces from the Spanish Codex Musical de las Huelgas. The musicians of the Clemencic Consort bring to life a musical epoch which still fascinates us today with its wealth of stylistic variety and delightful discoveries.

LA MESSE DE TOURNAI
CODEX MUSICAL DE LAS HUELGAS

This recording reconstructs an office of the mass from the first half of the 14th century. Its primary focus is on that polyphonic mass ordinary from circa 1300 preserved in a manuscript in the cathedral of Tournai in Belgium. The copyist retained by the cathedral seven centuries ago took pieces by various composers, even from different epochs and styles, and included them in one manuscript, a procedure which seems to correspond to the slowly developing consciousness for the necessity of a complete polyphonic mass ordinary. This tendency didn’t prevail, however, until the first half of the 15th century. At the end of the 14th century, one composer, Guillaume de Machault, seems to have aspired to such compositional unity, but his successors did not continue consequently in this vein.

Stylistically, the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus of the Mass of Tournai appear to have been written at the end of the 13th century, as they use the modal rhythms typical for that time. The syllabic Credo is very reminiscent of conductus. The freely moving Gloria uses some principles of the motet without really being one. Its Amen includes hocket, the “hiccup” technique which splits up melodic lines among various voices. The three-voice Ite missa est is a bilingual motet; a late Medieval amalgamation of contradictions, a union of the heterogeneous, acoustic synchronicity of completely different worlds. The triplum, or top voice, sings a French love song, the motetus, or middle voice, sings a moralizing Latin text, and the tenor cites a fragment of a Gregorian melody using the isorhythmic technique, in which a rhythmic model is repeated once (as here) or sometimes a number of times.

In addition to the polyphonic mass ordinary, we also bring one-voice Gregorian melodies of the mass proper to life as well as a series of oneor more-voice sacred works, performing them both vocally and instrumentally as they were once played in ceremonial worship services.

With the exception of the motet by Philippe de Vitry, all pieces come from the Codex Musical de las Huelgas. Compiled around 1300 in Spain, this collection is an important source of European polyphonic music from the beginning of the 14th century.

The manuscript contains a number of compositions from the Notre Dame school and its successors. In addition to three-part organum and conductus, we also find here two- and three-voice motets, one- and two-voice prose settings as well as sequence-like pieces with melodic repetitions of various lines.

-- René Clemencic (Translation: Elizabeth Gahbler)

Carissimi: 10 Motets

Classical Music

Steffen Schleiermacher has often fascinated his public with works by Morton Feldman. Along with Christian Giger, the solo cellist in the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra, he is now presenting Patterns in a Chromatic Field - an extensive composition showing us the minimalist master's more entertaining side. Here, highly virtuosic passages alternate with petrified soundscapes; now the instruments seem to melt, now their contrasting nature becomes the point of reference. While avoiding any sort of developmental idea, a tonal process of great suggestive power is produced over the course of some eighty minutes. -- MD&G

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REVIEW:

This is very satisfying and musically highly refined. There is a balance to be struck between enigmatic modernity and romantic affection for an abstract tradition which is in line with both Mark Rothko’s New York and Beethoven’s Vienna, and this is beautifully struck by these musicians. If you are a Feldman fan then this will be a very satisfying addition to your collection. Feldman newbies might find an 80 minute duo for cello and piano on a single CD track more than a little daunting, but, as with his other extended works, if you allow the piece its own space and inhabit it as you would an art gallery, then you will gradually sense your cells and synapses aligning themselves to something rather special.

– MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

EL SARAO DE LA CHACONNA

Classical Music

V 13: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA

French Baroque Cantatas: Ariane & Orphée

V 14: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA