In the latest volume of the complete works for harpsichord, the seven Toccatas (BWV 910-916) and teh large Fantasias, Preludes and Fugues (BWV 903-904, 894, 944) are presented as the culmination of the 17th century Stylus Phantasticus tradition. In this installment the pedal harpsichord is explored as a rich medium for Bach's harpsichord and organ works, its clarity and power bridging the gap between the two instruments. With its rich bass sonority and clarity, the pedal harpsichord comes into its own as an ideal performance medium for many of Bach's greatest works for keyboard. This album marks the first performance of all these works on a pedal harpsichord in over 60 years.

“JS Bach’s seven concertos for solo harpsichord & strings, occupy a significant place in the history of music, marking as they do the origin of the keyboard concerto genre. Collectively, they encompass the gamut of Baroque rhetorical expression; indeed, leaving aside the six ground-breaking ‘Brandenburg’ Concerts avec plusieurs instruments, it is difficult to think of a more diverse, revolutionary and technically refined set of instrumental concertos from the Baroque period” - Andrew Arthur; Their second recording on Signum Classics, The Hanover Band play-directed by Andrew Arthur present four of these revolutionary concertos, following their successful first album “BMV 1052, 1054, 1055 & 1058 Harpsichord Concertos”. The Hanover Band’s players are amongst the finest in their field and the orchestra has built an international reputation for the excellence of its performances and recordings of eighteenth and nineteenth-century music. Andrew Arthur is best-known for his work in the field of historically informed performance, he is in great demand as a conductor, keyboard soloist and continuo player, working with many of the UK’s leading period-instrument orchestras and professional choirs.

Harpsichordist, fortepianist, and modern pianist Melody Lin enjoys an active musical career in Asia, the United States, and Europe. Lin holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Historical Performance Practices and Keyboard Studies from Claremont Graduate University, where she studied harpsichord with Prof. Robert Zappulla and modern piano and fortepiano with Prof. Jenny Soonjin Kim. Lin has had the pleasure to work with many renowned artists and has participated both domestically and internationally in music festivals. Lin is currently a member of the Music Teachers Association of California.

In November 1973, the music press was ablaze with announcements about the ‘first new major British classical record label to hit the market for many years’ and the ‘hush-hush recording sessions’ that had been in progress to mark its launch. These sessions included bringing harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock to listeners worldwide with his debut album Trevor Pinnock at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Released to critical acclaim, this album cemented the direction of the eagerly awaited new label, CRD Records: to champion new artists and to celebrate the full gamut of listening experiences offered through classical repertoire.

Fifty years on musical tastes have expanded and the harpsichord often gets overlooked, undeservedly so. The harpsichord is an instrument that takes no prisoners; it demands precision and craft, musical sensitivity and more. In Melody Lin’s performances, the rewards are great: as listeners, we are treated to the translation of black dots to bursts of exuberant colour, from elegance to joy to thunderous expressions of foreboding. If the music were to be represented in film, we would move from calm, pastoral scenes to mountainous terrain. This is in fact riveting cinema. We hope you enjoy the views.

Lovers and Mourners: Variations and Sonatas from 17th-century Germany, offers a comprehensive glimpse into the lives of virtuoso composer-performers Johann Jakob Walther, Heinrich Biber, and Johann Georg Pisendel. The Composers featured on Lovers and Mourners drew upon the “stylus phantasticus,” a 17th-century Italian idiom whose features were marked by jagged shifts of affect and intended to display the player’s technical command and expressive abilities.

Bandy nimbly guides the listener through a labyrinth of variation sets and themes, simultaneously reproducing faithful interpretations of the music while injecting his own unique touch. Lovers and Mourners boasts a brief, yet intense survey of one of the richest chapters in the history of the virtuoso composer-performer.

Unfortunately we know absolutely nothing about the life of Charles Dollé. Not even his approximate birth and death dates are known. From his six collections of instrumental works published between 1737 and 1754 we can logically infer that he was a Frenchman, a viola da gamba virtuoso, and a composer. The chronic dearth of further information about this musicians is evidently the reason why music historians have either completely passed him by or relegated him to mere footnote, in the shadow of his contemporaries Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray who are generally regarded as representing the best and technically most difficult works for viola da gamba. Petr Wagner get Dollé's music out of his undeserved shadowy existence.

This is Volume 4 in Centaur's integral edition of the Complete Pieces de Clavecin of Francois Couperin, performed on harpsichord by Mark Kroll. Mark Kroll has made a specialty of Couperin throughout his long and distinguished career. Mark Kroll has performed on four continents as a harpsichordist and fortepianist, in both solo recital and as a collaborative chamber musician. Highlights include an appearance as the official guest of the city of Barcelona; featured soloist in Germany’s Regensburg Early Music Festival, France’s Festival Ambronay and the Bordeaux Hummel Festival; two concerts for the Czech Republic’s Prague Spring Festival; and recitals at Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation, Rome’s Conservatorio Santa Caecilia and Associazione Musicale Romana, Poland’s Dni Bachowski, and Slovenija’s Radovljica Festival. This recording was made on a 1974 William Dowd harpsichord at Brooks Concert Hall, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, and a 1769 Pascal Taskin harpsichord in the private instrument collection of Marlowe A. Sigal, Newton Centre, Massachusetts.

This is volume 9 in Centaur's traversal of the Complete keyboard works of Couperin, performed on harpsichord by Mark Kroll. Mark Kroll has performed Couperin's works throughout his long performing life. He has performed on four continents as a harpsichordist and fortepianist, in both solo recital and as a collaborative chamber musician. Highlights include an appearance as the official guest of the city of Barcelona; featured soloist in Germany’s Regensburg Early Music Festival, France’s Festival Ambronay and the Bordeaux Hummel Festival; performances and lectures in Beijing and Shanghai; two concerts for the Czech Republic’s Prague Spring Festival; and recitals at Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation, Rome’s Conservatorio Santa Caecilia and Associazione Musicale Romana, Poland’s Dni Bachowski, and Slovenija’s Radovljica Festival. Mark Kroll has been one of the few harpsichordists to devote a significant part of his career to the contemporary literature for the instrument. He has commissioned and premiered a large number of works, and released several recordings of this repertoire.

This release offers one potential answer to a particular question: what happens to a musical performance when it is directed towards the bringing-to-life of a story? In this case, that story is the iconic one of Orpheus and Eurydice, realized in eight different ways by eight different composers of the past. Multiple prizewinning harpsichordist Mark Edwards—whose interpretations challenge the usual boundaries between musical text and act—performs works that, if they don’t explicitly refer to the Orphic narrative allying music, death, and rebirth, surely cast some light on it and are in turn illuminated by it. Mark Edwards reveals himself a lucid and inspired performer, following the hero as he descends, like him accomplishing wonders along the way through his art. First prize winner in the 2012 Musica Antiqua Bruges International Harpsichord Competition, Canadian harpsichordist and organist Mark Edwards (b. 1986) is recognized for his captivating performances, bringing the listener “to new and unpredictable regions, using all of the resources of his instrument, [...] of his virtuosity, and of his imagination” (La Libre Belgique).

While for the most celebrated instrumentalists who defined the period straddling the seventeenth century and the eighteenth, the subsequent interest in the magnificence of late Baroque music promoted their relaying and study, this fate was not shared by Martino Bitti. After having been relegated on the fringe of the history of music, and perfunctorily accused, in the earliest, scanty biographic notes, of lacking in originality and innovative qualities, only in recent times did he begin to be the object of in-depth investigations and writings on the analysis and cataloguing of his works (see Michael Talbot’s ground-breaking essays).

In any case, what emerges from an examination of the sources relevant to Bitti’s biography is the figure of a musician who was fully integrated in one of the contexts that were most lively and stimulating for the Italian musical production between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth: the court of Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (Florence 1663-1713), eldest son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de’ Medici.

The recording of the Sonatas presented here is the final stage of a work of in-depth research that began with the study of the first editions and the experimentation of timbres and interpretations on copies of the early instruments, leading to the creation of a historically informed product.

Songs of love and loss by a trio of early 18th century Spanish composers, showcasing the vocal art of a distinguished early-music soprano. Cristina Bayón Álvarez has sung with early-music luminaries such as Christophe Coin, Diego Fasolis and Carlos Mena. She has also recorded a pair of warmly received albums for Brilliant Classics, reviving the sacred music of Juan Francés de Iribarren (95859) and Romantic-era songs by female composers (‘Boulevard des femmes’, 96729). For her latest album, Cristina Bayón Álvarez turns to 18th-century Spain, presenting for the first time on record a sequence of newly edited secular cantatas. These are all brief pieces, taking amorous and pastoral themes for their subjects, alternating recitative and aria, conveying the pain of a lover separated from the object of their affections, or rejected by them. One piece stands out for its relative modernity of sentiment: La picarilla más bella by José de Torres y Martínez Bravo (ca. 1670-1738), highlighting the contempt for love on the part of a woman who prefers freedom of spirit to the suffering caused by sentimental passion. The least unfamiliar of the three composers featured on the album is Emanuele Rincón d’Astorga (1680-1775), best known for a Stabat mater of plangent expressive quality. The affecting, Italianate vocal lines of this sacred work also colour the three cantatas recorded here: Filis, que abrigas, Respirad, mas sea quedito and Sean, Filis, de mi llanto. Astorga made his name outside Spain, though eventually settled and died in Madrid; Juan de Serquiera (ca. 1655-ca. 1726) was likely also active in the Spanish capital, though of Portuguese origin. Almost nothing survives of his life and work, which makes the survival of Oh, corazón amante all the more precious, especially since it demonstrates Serquiera’s skill at affective word setting. José de Torres y Martínez Bravo is recorded as master of music at the Royal Chapel in Madrid from 1697 until his death in 1707. Not least thanks to this distinction, much more is known of his activity, including a keyboard-instruction manual and a set of Masses dedicated to Philip V of Spain. As recorded here, La picarilla más bella and Por el Tenaro monte share the expressive flair and rhythmic energy of his vernacular villancicos. Taken together, the works here make an exciting addition to the catalogue of Spanish Baroque vocal repertoire, especially in such accomplished and stylish performances.