Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

For its new Glossa release of Josquin, Cantica Symphonia (which has given us recordings of Dufay, Isaac and Busnois in recent years) reflect modern performance thinking for one of the greatest composers in music. Giuseppe Maletto has united a strong group of Italian singers to provide distinctive accounts of motets including the Stabat Mater, the five-part Salve Regina, the seven-sectioned Vultum tuum cycle as well as the Ave Maria… virgo serena. To leaven this vocal density a team of organ, harp, fiddle, slide trumpet and sackbut add instrumental versions of a group of Josquin’s secular compositions, as well as selectively combining with the voices in the polyphony. Marco Bizzarini’s booklet essay traces Josquin’s elusive career path, which included Rome, Ferrara and possibly also Milan, and the importance in his output of sacred compositions of Marian works.

A 17th-century manuscript that was compiled by Albert Bobowski, a Polish musician and orientalist, contains songs of the Italian Renaissance and the Ottoman court. Bobowski, alias Ali Ufki, was born around 1610 in Poland and worked in Constantinople at the Ottoman court, where he related to many European diplomats, clerics and travelers as translator, language teacher, mediator and advisor. Thanks to his diverse skills and profound knowledge of the Islamic-Ottoman and Christian-European cultures, he became a valued mediator between the two worlds during his lifetime. In this collection of European and Ottoman vocal and instrumental, sacred and secular, court and popular music, Ali Ufki switches between languages and music genres with a fantastic ease and naturalness. Together with the Italian tenor Marco Beasley,

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Carl Maria von Weber’s works for clarinet number among the most treasured and frequently performed compositions for the instrument. The sheer verve and imagination evident in the Clarinet Quintet, op. 34 presented here manages to embody the same operatic sensibility and compositional rigour of Weber’s large-scale works. Also included in the recording is an Adagio by Heinrich Baermann, whose clarinet playing served as inspiration for Weber’s compositions for the instrument, and the Quintet op. 95 composed by Franz Krommer. Eric Hoeprich, principal clarinet of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century since its foundation, has specialized in performing on the historical clarinet, also being the owner of a large collection of 18th and 19th century instruments. On Glossa he has issued nearly a dozen of recordings, including the Mozart Clarinet Concerto directed by Frans Brüggen. His regular collaboration with the London Haydn Quartet lasts for many years now, with a referential recording of the Mozart and Brahms Quintets being an important highlight. On the recording presented here, Hoeprich and the members of the London Haydn Quartet play on fine historical instruments, which provide a warm, blended sound that is at the same time both transparent and full of detail. All excellently captured by Philip Hobbs in St Martin’s Church in East Woodhay, England, and supplemented by an informative essay authored by Hoeprich himself.