György Vashegyi’s love affair with French Baroque repertoire continues with Rameau’s Naïs from 1749 in a Glossa release complete with a characteristically appealing design. Subtitled “Opéra pour la paix,” Naïs features demanding and extended leading roles for soprano Chantal Santon-Jeffery (Naïs) and high tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen (Neptune), ably assisted by Florian Sempey and Thomas Dolié, in an everyday eighteenth-century tale of a lovesick god in disguise, a misinterpreted prophecy and an alternative version of the Olympic Games (the score demands much from the chorus and Vashegyi’s refined Purcell Choir is up to the mark). Rameau was a master orchestrator, no more so than in this pastorale heroïque, stuffed full of ballets figurés, airs, minuets, rigaudons and tambourins, and with his Orfeo Orchestra – led by the peerless Simon Standage – Vashegyi harnesses the music’s graphic and dramatic energy, complete with giants toppling off mountains, tidal waves swamping jilted lovers, underwater palaces, bucolic scenes (which include that characteristic French Baroque instrument, the musette – here played by Patrick Blanc), and even a chaconne for wrestlers.

This recording of Rameau’s Les Fêtes de Polymnie (1745), directed by György Vashegyi, features Aurélia Legay, Emöke Barath, Mathias Vidal, and the incomparable Véronique Gens in the various vocal roles that appear in the work’s Prologue and three Entrées. Rameau, aided by his reformist librettist Louis de Cahusac, conjured up – in addition to sparkling arias and recitatives – a dazzling mosaic of intermèdes, passacailles, chaconnes and descriptive symphonies interspersed with vivid choral contributions, delivered with taste and aplomb by the Purcell Choir and the Orfeo Orchestra.

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Emöke Barath is superb as Polyhymnie as she is in her other roles. Mathias Vidal is dramatic, lyrical and commanding as the "Leader of the Arts" and most especially Alcide, while Aurélia Legay is compelling…. György Vashegyi's direction… produces both stylish playing and… striking ensemble.

– BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

Nicola Porpora’s Op 1 set of Italian chamber cantatas receive a new and striking reading directed by Stefano Aresi, a leading interpreter of the Late Baroque composer. Neapolitan-born Porpora brought his nuove musiche with him in the early 1730s when he had set out for London to take advantage of the perceived wavering of Handel’s operatic fame there. Porpora, espying an opportunity there just as Handel himself had done before, quickly ingratiated himself with the nobility in Britain and his 12 cantatas, though probably written in Naples, were published under the patronage of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales of Great Britain. They enjoyed substantial success at the time, and reflecting the primacy of Italian music across Europe, not least through Porpora’s masterly settings of Pietro Metastasio’s texts extolling Arcadian tastes and ideals. These dozen works are shared between four singers from Stile Galante – Francesca Cassinari and Emanuela Galli, sopranos, Giuseppina Bridelli and Marina De Liso, contraltos – who have developed their interpretations, including the use of contemporaneous embellishments, with the assistance of Livio Marcaletti.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Dominique Vellard's interest in music from the Iberian Renaissance has been constantly reflected in the performances and recordings of his Ensemble Gilles Binchois across the last three decades and all his experience and insight in this area is now being brought to bear on a new recording (a sparkling addition to his work for Glossa) of the Missa Nunca fue pena mayor by Francisco de Peñalosa, a composer who Vellard regards as being "a composer of extreme importance and a 'classic' of the Spanish Renaissance long before Cristóbal de Morales." In addition to the Mass - regarded as Peñalosa's masterpiece - Vellard adds a selection of motets and hymns, which includes not just Sacris solemniis but also the Memorare Piissima. Dominique Vellard (together with four other singers specially chosen for this repertoire) is joined in these performances - made in Maguelone Cathedral - by the rich instrumental brass talents of the Toulouse-based Les Sacqueboutiers, led by Jean-Pierre Canihac and Daniel Lassalle. This new Glossa release, demonstrating once more the label's happy and skilled flair with early music from Spain, adds significantly to the meagre selection of recordings devoted to the music of Francisco de Peñalosa, one which is graced inside by a thoughtful essay on the composer by the leading scholar of all that there is in early Iberian music, Tess Knighton, and on the outside by a striking usage of a painting by another of Peñalosa's contemporaries, Pedro Machuca.

OCKEGHEM Missa Caput. anonymous Mandatum antiphons ? Björn Schmelzer, dir; Graindelavoix ? GLOSSA P 32101 (58:52)


This is a remarkable disc, quite unlike most of the rival issues. Despite the attention paid to the three ?Caput? Masses (an anonymous English work long attributed to Dufay, Obrecht?s, and this one), this Mass has rarely been recorded. Alejandro Planchart recorded all three Masses; then Edward Wickham (22:5) included this one in his complete traversal of Ockeghem for his quincentenary; and Guy Janssens included the work in a sizable traversal of Renaissance polyphony, soon to be reviewed.


Inserted among the movements of the Mass are six antiphons for the foot washing ritual observed on Holy Thursday. The first is ?Mandatum novum,? still found in modern liturgical books. This is the text (?A new commandment I give you, that you love one another?) that gives the day its name (?maundy? being a corruption of ?mandatum,? like Bedlam for Bethlehem, maudlin for Magdalen, and tawdry for St. Audrey). The series concludes with ?Venit ad Petrum,? which ends with the long melisma on ?caput? (?not only my feet but also my hands and my head ?) that forms the cantus firmus of these three Masses. As it happens, these six antiphons are exactly the set found in the 13th-century Sarum Gradual (facsimile 1894, Gregg reprint 1966), though they are also found in Rouen, Paris, and St. Martial. It was Manfred Bukofzer?s discovery of this overlooked source that led to his identification of the origin of the cantus firmus in his celebrated article, ?Caput: a Liturgico-Musical Study? in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music . (The source later reinforced the identification of the composer of the original Mass as anonymous English rather than Dufay.) The chant is rendered with the ?flowers? (hence florid singing) that Mother Thomas More (Mary Berry) described in her 1968 dissertation on late medieval chant, ?The Performance of Plainsong in the Later Middle Ages and the 16th Century.? Very few recordings of chant have adopted this practice. I alluded to florid chant in my review of Marcel Pérès?s Josquin des Prez (10:3), pointing out that Jerome of Moravia called for ?flowers? only on the first two notes, the last two notes, and plicas. Yet here, as in Pérès?s practice, the singing of most notes is florid. I can?t recall another recorded example of this in the intervening two decades.


Hence, this disc is a major contribution to our appreciation of the ?Caput? Masses. It should not be a first choice for Ockeghem, but it will repay close study. Schmelzer writes of singing the Mass a fourth lower than written, suiting his all-male ensemble. Yet Planchart and Wickham, using mixed voices, sing a whole tone lower than this, though Planchart uses only instruments on the bass line (Janssens is only a half-tone higher than this). The tonal weight of his ensemble is in the bass, as if a drone has been added to the polyphony. It?s also the slowest of the four performances. The layout of the disc is an accommodation to variety, the antiphons alternating with the Mass movements, but it is not useful, in spite of the connection between the final antiphon and the Mass from which it draws its cantus firmus. The foot washing ritual never took place during Mass until 1970, and the antiphons would not be scattered through the Mass in any case. Give it a chance, though, for such thoughtful work doesn?t come along every day.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber

With Occhi Turchini inspiring singer, instrumentalist and actor Pino De Vittorio has returned to the recording studio, fixing his sights on the musical culture of the Italian region of Calabria. For a new recording for Glossa, Franco Pavan and his Laboratorio ’600 have been researching back over the centuries the rich musical texture of the region, known as the “toe” of the Italian “boot”. Most recently, singer and ensemble worked together for the Siciliane recording, also for the Spanish label. This new programme embraces traditional songs, examples of the adulteration of the local language for comic effect in Baroque Neapolitan opera, and even a parody of the text for the Te Deum in the same Calabrian, but also reflections of other – Byzantine, Greek, Albanian and Arabic – cultures which have permeated the region over the centuries. Pino De Vittorio – that versatile powerhouse of mood – is the ideal vocal interpreter for this multi- layered chequerboard of the region’s cultural history, with Pavan and his ensemble imparting colourful accompaniment for De Vittorio or spirited soloistic playing in instrumental works such as the Tarantella ’nfuocata, La calabrisella, and especially the Canzona a morto, played on the harp by Flora Papadopoulos. Pavan, as well as playing theorbo and the Calabrian chitarra batente, also acts – through his booklet essay – as guide across this rugged, isolated, but immensely rich cultural terrain.

Just listening to soprano Maria Cristina Kiehr in her early collaborations with Gabriel Garrido is a sheer pleasure! This recording has been available first on Symphonia, then on Pan Classics, but now it arrives on Glossa Cabinet for a new life. Garrido is the big ''discoverer'' of music created in Latin America after the arrival of the ''conquistadores'' - this music bears strong traditional flavors, while at the same time reflecting the strong influences from Spain (especially) and Portugal. A big line-up of fine singers and instrumentalists supports the reconstruction of an essential repertory.

Giovanni Sollima has been successfully pursuing a twin career as cellist and as a composer and it is in both capacities that the Palermo-born musician appears now on a new recording from Glossa. Sollima teams up with I Turchini of Antonio Florio in a captivating demonstration of virtuoso concerto treasures from Leonardo Leo, Giuseppe de Majo and Nicola Fiorenza. Giovanni Sollima's empathy with the spirit of the 18th century concerto allows him not only to provide - and to play masterfully - elegantly appropriate cadenzas for the works of his forebears but to compose a modern work comfortable and at ease with its Neapolitan past (and entitled 'Fecit Neap. 17..', mirroring the frequentlyfound ascription found on manuscripts in the 18th century). With a solo cellist in Giovanni Sollima, who is equally at home in the musical worlds of Patti Smith, Claudio Abbado and Philip Glass, and a director in Antonio Florio, who is equipped with his own masterful overview of Neapolitan music from the Baroque onwards, this new disc was recorded in a venue, the old S Anna dei Lombardi monastery complex in the heart of Naples, which serves to point up how powerful a forging ground for cello music Naples was from the end of the 17th century and into the 18th, as well as in our own time.

Claude Debussy presented himself as a candidate for the Prix de Rome on three separate occasions during the 1880s, the most innovative decade in the history of that competition; a time when success entitled the victors (at the French government's expense) to spend several years at the Villa Medici in Rome. Names of prize winners from this time include Debussy, Dukas, Leroux and Charpentier. Presented on this two CD set is a group of little known compositions by Debussy, dating from between 1882 and 1888: Le Gladiateur and the first versions of L'Enfant prodigue (of which only the 1906 reorchestration is occasionally performed) and Printemps - a highly individual piece (scored for choir and piano, four hands) later turned into a symphonic suite. A version for piano and voice of La Damoiselle élue and the choruses written for the competitions of 1882, 1883 and 1884 complete this survey of hitherto unknown works by Debussy. This release represents the first issue in a new collection from Glossa centred on music associated with the Prix de Rome. This is being prepared in collaboration with Hervé Niquet, who here is conducting two of Europe's foremost ensembles: the Flemish Radio Choir and the Brussels Philharmonic.

Benedictine Monks Ensemble Gilles BinchoisDominique Vellard, director; with Wulf ArltRaphael Boulay, tenor; Gerd Turk, tenor; Dominique Vellard, tenorJacques Bona, bass; Stephen Grant, bass Music and Poetry in Saint GallenSequences and Tropes (9th century)

Following the death of Frans Bruggen in August 2014, the decision was taken by the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century to continue touring the world and inviting various guest conductors such as Daniel Reuss, Jonathan Darlington and Andrea Marcon. The first recorded result of the new post-Bruggen era is this Mozart album with a program centered on the oboe, which has been devised by the long-standing orchestra member, Frank de Bruine.

If the precise, original performing locations for these symphonies remain elusive, the three works - "Jupiter", K551, the E flat major, K543, and that "evergreen study in the key of G minor", K550, known by people all around the world as the "Mozart 40" - all clamour for constant and fresh interpretations; these are precisely what Frans Brüggen delivers. Recordings on Glossa from Brüggen in recent times - always made whilst on tour - have included Mozart's concertos for horn, clarinet and violin, as well as the Requiem. With Stefano Russomanno providing a wellconsidered booklet essay, this new release of the three final Mozart symphonies, available on two CDs and recorded live in Rotterdam, provides eloquent testimony to Frans Brüggen's ability to summon up the expressiveness and spontaneity demanded by Mozart's masterpieces from 1788.