With The Liberation of the Gothic, Björn Schmelzer and Graindelavoix deliver an imaginative reading of music by two English composers active at the end of the fifteenth century, the towering figure of John Browne and the slightly later and much less well- known Thomas Ashwell (or Ashewell). Björn Schmelzer draws a vivid connection between the florid polyphony of these two composers and the freedom of structure and ornament found in late Gothic architecture, notably that of the fourteenth- century Lady Chapel built as part of the “Ship of the Fens”, Ely Cathedral. Performing Ashwell’s intricately-woven Missa Ave Maria – a landmark in polyphony – Schmelzer and his Antwerp-based ensemble echo, in the individual freedom accorded to these virtuoso singers, the rich ornamentation of foliage, seemingly in constant motion, decorating the walls of Ely’s Lady Chapel. The singers add their own “coloratura”, an approach which continues to be central to Björn Schmelzer’s interpretation of medieval and Renaissance works, as have been appearing on Glossa for a decade and a half now. In his booklet essay Schmelzer refers to the British writer and artist John Ruskin describing the “liberation of the Gothic” as also concerning “the workers, who were not submitted to repetitive, mechanical work but invested in continuous and infinite variation.” Acting as surrounding pillars to Ashwell’s Mass on this recording are two of the extended motets, much favoured by early Tudor English polyphonists – and encountered in the famous Eton Choirbook manuscript: John Browne’s Stabat mater and his first setting of the Salve regina.

The latest striking release from soprano Roberta Invernizzi acts as a lightning conductor for this new vocal extravaganza from Glossa devoted to the Italian Baroque composer Francesco Gasparini. Invernizzi finds herself very much home both in the music, but also, so noticeably, with the words: librettos from the likes of Zeno, Piovene or Salvi find this singer exercising her customary intelligence. Carlo Ipata, directing his ensemble Auser Musici, combines his natural and obvious flair for Italian and music of the time - he has also recorded the opera Il Bajazet for Glossa - with the painstaking demands of the research required to identify brilliant arias from slumbering the various shades of neglect. Gasparini wrote some sixty operas, as well as oratorios and many cantatas. For Invernizzi Ipata has crafted a beguiling selection from this abundance of music which proved so successful in both princely soir�es in Rome and public theatres in Venice. Arias come from operas such as Il Roderigo and Amleto and oratorios such as L'oracolo del Fato and Atalia. As well as the cantata, Andate o miei sospiri, composed by Gasparini as part of a challenge undertaken jointly with Alessandro Scarlatti, Ipata and Auser Musici have added an attractive flute concerto written during his time as a teacher at Venice's Ospedale della Piet�

Classical Music

If the history of eighteenth-century cello music and performance in Spain is still waiting to be written, Josetxu Obregón and La Ritirata are bringing us up close to the instrument’s role during that time with their Glossa CD, The Cello in Spain. The selection made by this exciting cellist provides a sample of pieces which undoubtedly would have been heard in Spain during the infancy of the instrument there and in the period leading into the Age of the Enlightenment.

La Ritirata’s choices of instruments and performing styles admirably match the demands of music ranging from the Baroque to the Classical and this disc paves the way for a broader exploration of the presence of the cello in the group’s home country.

With Carlo Gesualdos Third Book of madrigals La Compagnia del madrigal continue their dynamic new view of late Renaissance Italian repertoire, which has seen the vocal ensemble garlanded with critical praises and prizes since the time of its initial Glossa release- Gesualdo’s Sixth Book- three years ago. Although Gesualdo’s Third Book came out but one year after his first two books, it manifests a transitional style that led into the “late style” of the Fifth and Sixth Books. In the texts, joy and grief are frequently intermingled- yet each time freshly considered- and although there are named writers such as Battista Guarini present, many of the texts are anonymous; the interference being that Gesualdo himself might have been their author. In these exposed and unaccompanied madrigals, La Compagnia del Madrigale blends its trademark expertise and vocal freshness to take the listener on a fascinating sound journey. So as to provide a yet more nuanced view of the time of composition, the ensemble has added works by Scipione Stella, Luzzasco Luzzaschi and Alfonso Fontanelli.

With his new recording of Telemann’s Fantasias Paolo Pandolfo is continuing to take the viola da gamba in directions little chartered previously. After his Kind of Satie release, Pandolfo once again demonstrates his musical versatility – whether he is drawing from the within the established gamba repertory or from beyond it. Here, Pandolfo delves into the astonishingly prolific instrumental output of Georg Philipp Telemann, a composer so well-versed in the musical diversity of his time that he was more than capable of writing for instruments of which he was not a master. Such was the case when Telemann was writing various sets of Fantasias for solo instruments, and tapping into the demand coming from the burgeoning amateur market in Hamburg. One of these sets of 12 unaccompanied Fantasias – for the viola da gamba – was known to have been composed around 1735 but had been lost until very recently and it is only now that modern-day players are exploring Telemann’s approach to a revitalized genre but on what – by the 1730s – was becoming an increasingly outmoded instrument. From fugal writing to the galant idiom and different reflections of the French and Italian styles, Telemann packs a great deal of variety into these typically three-movement Fantasias. Paolo Pandolfo, who contributes an incisive performer’s note in the booklet, additionally records the 1728 D major Sonata from Der getreue Music- Meister, the only other work for the viola da gamba known by Telemann, whilst Peter Wollny reflects on Telemann’s compositional development in his own essay.

Georg Philip Telemann, capable, as few others were, of depicting the aesthetic ideal of the time, with elements of Italian, French, English and even Polish styles. Telemann positioning the traverso in its rightful place really provides the starting point for this recording, made in December 1997 with Wilbert Hazelzet alongside his old friends and colleagues, Jaap ter Linden, Jacques Ogg and Konrad Junghänel.

In the summer of 2009 Harry van der Kamp and his Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam finished, with the recording of these Cantiones Sacrae, their epic journey through the complete vocal oeuvre of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. All in all, a total of 17 CDs of music had been recorded, giving rise to the publication by Glossa of "Het Sweelinck Monument", a collection of six limited-edition CDbooks, with texts in Dutch and distributed solely in the Netherlands. This is music of the highest quality, whose circulation shouldn't be limited, however, to Sweelinck's home country. For that reason, following the international release of The Secular Vocal Works in 2009 (GCD 922401), and before publishing in 2012 a grand box set containing the 150 Psalms, we are now presenting this double disc set of the five-part motets. Brought together in 1619, the collection Cantiones Sacrae quinque vocum was published in Catholic Antwerp by Petrus Phalesius, the same publisher who a quarter of a century previously had issued the Chansons by the same composer. These are motets which present a special mastery of counterpoint and an uncommon sense of melodic and harmonic refinement. An expertly- nowledgeable article from specialist Pieter Dirksen and a cover design which portrays the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam (the church in which Sweelinck was organist for a large part of his lifeand where he is buried) complete this stimulating release.

As his starting point for a brand new recording of the music from the polychoral Renaissance and the "monumental Baroque", with Alessandro Striggio's 40 and 60-part Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno leading the way, Hervé Niquet turns to the musical celebrations for a feast day occasion in the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence in honour of St John the Baptist, adding a trio of works by Orazio Benevoli, another specialist in multi-parted choral works, and Striggio's motet Ecce beatem lucem, also scored for 40 voices. For sessions in Notre-Dame du Liban in Paris, using an edition of the Mass by Dominique Visse, originating in 1978, Niquet gathered 60 singers (as called for in the Agnus Dei) plus instrumentalists of Le Concert Spirtuel around him in a circle (conductor and microphones inside) for a new SACD surround sound experience from Glossa, that calls on all the ceremonial pomp and flair which the French musicians have been showing themselves to be the masters of over the years in concert and on disc. And who better than the famous French countertenor Visse himself to be drawn into that circle as one of the 60 singers! Added in, for good measure, for this programme of Florentine flamboyance from the Renaissance and Baroque are polyphonic arrangements of Gregorian plainchant Mass Propers by Franceso Corteccia, maestro di cappella in the Cathedral of Florence in Striggio's time.

Classical Music

One of the most attractive and poignant repertories from across the whole Renaissance is undoubtedly to be found in the output of John Dowland, the composer of the greatly-admired Lachrimae and the musical representative of a whole philosophical, literary and artistic outlook when it comes to evoking melancholy. Lutenist José Miguel Moreno, co-founder of Glossa and architect of cult recordings devoted to Sylvius Leopold Weiss, JS Bach and Robert de Visée, could not miss out on his encounter with English repertoire and, in 2002, he recorded this double disc covering, across some 32 pieces, the most significant of Dowland's works, and accompanied by Eligio Quinteiro on the theorbo or gittern (renaissance guitar). This is one of those albums which define the whole aesthetic standpoint of a label...

All we know about Richard Jones is that he was an accomplished violinist in London, who started leading the Drury Lane Orchestra in 1730. The only notice of his death was an obituary that appeared in a local newspaper in 1744. He produced two collections of sonatas for violin and basso continuo, and this volume of harpsichord works dated 1732. The American harpsichordist Mitzi Meyerson, after her brilliant forays into the music of Claude- Bénigne Balbastre (GCD 921803) and Gottlieb Muffat (GCD 921804), now presents for the first time a complete recording of Jones' Suits or Sets of Lessons for the Harpsichord or Spinnet (sic), a collection of pieces which is English Baroque at its finest. This music was much loved when it was composed, but could not compete with Georg Friedrich Handel's overwhelming popularity in England at the time, a fact which caused Jones and many of his English-born contemporaries to virtually disappear in the shadows. Meyerson, in the interview included in the booklet, mentions that in the compositions of Richard Jones she hears "many influences - the depth of Johann Sebastian Bach, the wildness of Vivaldi, and the fresh tunefulness of Purcell". A great discovery which deserves being enjoyed by all lovers of Baroque keyboard music.

The indefatigable Antonio Florio, along with his associates from Cappella Neapolitana, has succeeded, with a work by Donato Ricchezza, in unearthing another major rediscovery from the Neapolitan Baroque. The labors of Florio - coupled with the ability to turn dry notes on a dusty manuscript into a sumptuous audio feast - can be no better demonstrated than with this release on Glossa of Los Santos Ninos: "Oratorio di San Giusto e San Pastore", written by a composer who was a pupil of the great Francesco Provenzale. Very little else is known about Donato Ricchezza, apart from him bequeathing a quantity of scores to the Oratory of the Girolamini in Naples where he worked. The oratorio relates the story of the defense offered by the "holy children" - the brothers Giusto and Pastore, to be martyred in Spain during the Persecution of Diocletian in 303/4 - against the charge of being Christians, as leveled against them first by a soldier and then by the Roman governor Daciano. Marta Fumagalli (contralto), Federica Pagliuca (soprano), Luca Cervoni (tenor) and Giuseppe Naviglio (bass) vividly occupy these four vocal roles. Meager additional knowledge about Ricchezza says that he wrote eight other oratorios and, as a bonus, an aria from La gara degli elementi is included here, as are a pair of sinfonias by Ricchezza's contemporary Gaetano Veneziano.

It's a rare treat to hear instrumental music of any era that's invested with such tightly packed, colorfully expressive drama, portrayed with just enough instrumental volume and weight that the result is neither undernourished nor overblown. Although Handel usually gets the credit as the numero uno Baroque theatrical master, this disc goes a long way to show that he had serious competition across the Channel from his almost exact contemporary Jean-Philippe Rameau. Frans Brüggen and his Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, which behind Quebec's Les Violons du Roy is one of the world's finest interpreters of repertoire from this period, gives us two "suites" chosen from the instrumental sections of the tragic opera Zoroastre and the pastorale Naïs. In his stage music Rameau's two chief concerns were to go as far as possible in the scoring to depict the action, and never to be boring. For the former, he allied pure ingenuity with optimal use of his compositional bag of tricks, combining surprising harmonies – "les libertés harmoniques" – and key changes with startling dissonances, prodigiously attractive melodies, and lovely "impressionistic" scene-painting effects. This is really great stuff, and although we don't get the complete works here, the sheer impact of Rameau's orchestral craft (and craftiness) almost tells the stories without need of texts. Okay, that's going a bit far (contrary to the hyperbolic claims in the liner notes), but nevertheless, Brüggen and his able forces do keep us close to the edge of our seats wondering what will happen next, while the multi-colored instrumental timbres, volatile dynamic effects, and unfaltering pacing do the rest. The sound is a bit cluttered – that is, inner detail is sketchy and balances favor the higher-register parts – but overall we get a listening perspective that places us in ideal proximity to the action, helping to fulfill Rameau's second aim – never to be boring.

– David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com