Duo Gelland was founded in 1994 by the spouses Cecilia Gelland and Martin Gelland, bringing their individual perspectives on contemporary and early repertoire to the ensemble. This recording of their interpretations of four Vivaldi's Sonatas for Two Violins celebrates the Red Priest's physical, virtuosic approach to the instrument. Duo Gelland fills their performances with daring, lithe ornamentation and expressive subtlety and variation not often heard in contemporary readings of these works.

The first Scottish opera. The first ballad opera. A pastoral masterpiece which was ubiquitous on London and Edinburgh stages throughout the eighteenth century. Allan Ramsay's "The Gentle Shepherd" is perhaps the most important work from the British Isles that you've never heard of! Peasants Peggy and Patie plan to wed, but when their liege Sir William Worthy returns from fighting for a noble cause, he upends their lives by revealing Patie's birthright. Will true love prevail? Brilliantly realized by Makaris-specialists in the music of galant-era Scotland-"The Gentle Shepherd" finally receives it's first recording in 2025, on the 300th anniversary of it's initial publication.

Certainly the disc’s title is intriguing. But based on past experience, listening to many recordings with similar hooks where some obscure yet supposedly worthy music just didn’t live up to its billing, the most I expected was an hour of pleasantly undemanding background entertainment. My only previous encounter with the music of Giovanni Valentini (c.1582-1649) was a 2001 review of a disc of vocal works, and I was only marginally aware of the ensemble Acronym (although I was familiar with a few of its members, who also play in other groups).

None of this admittedly minimal cognizance prepared me for the absolutely brilliant performances or the fascinating, consistently engaging, and yes, somewhat “peculiar” music–expertly recorded–that emerged as these exceptional musicians began the first track, a G minor sonata in five parts. Within the first 30 seconds–the delightful oddity of Valentini’s writing had already showed itself–my imagined expectation for “undemanding background entertainment” had turned to rapt, seriously focused listening.

The 12-member Acronym bills itself as a “Baroque String Band”, and that’s exactly what it is; and if you’ve ever been queasy about or dismissive of the sound and substance of period-instrument performance, set your concerns aside and listen to these virtuoso string players–their instruments include gambas, violins, violas, cello, violone, theorbo, and harpsichord–as they play the daylights out of music you didn’t even know you loved. Entertainment, yes; this is exactly what this music is supposed to be about, with its frequent “metric eccentricities”, occasional “whimsical motivic material” and “unprepared modulations”, and often surprising chromaticism. The Acronym musicians are not only are aware of these devices, they fully exploit them in the most affecting and skillful manner, neither overplaying nor apologizing for an expressive utterance or effect.

As you listen you sense an exceptional level of communication is going on among the players–there’s no other way to achieve the remarkable coordination of intricate lines, phrasing, and dynamics–and, owing to a fortuitous coincidence, I can assure you that this is the case. Just as I began listening to this recording I noticed that Acronym would be performing in a summer concert series only a few miles from where I live. They didn’t play any Valentini that evening–the varied program of solo-vocal and instrumental works consisted of, if anything, music even more unusual and often astonishingly virtuosic, by composers such as Poglietti, Thieme, Drese, and Bertali, than Valentini’s work–but to see these musicians play (and play with such passion) is to confirm the strong and powerful connectedness of eyes, body movements, and auditory cues that make the performances here so vital and vibrant.

Finally, to return to the disc’s title, I have one suggestion for prospective listeners: Although the words “oddities” and “peculiar” are to some degree accurate, “trifle” in this case should be taken not in its more common sense–“something of little value or importance”–but would be better regarded in association with something delectable and enticing, such as “a dessert made with spongecake pieces, spread with jam, sprinkled with sherry, and layered with custard, fruit, and whipped cream…”, like this disc, irresistible and well worth indulging.

-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

The first recording of the complete consort music of little known 17th century composer David Funck. The 1677 publication Strictuae Viola-di Gambicae is the only surviving music by David Funck (1648-1699), of whom very little else is known. Stricturae Viola-di Gambice is a collection of dance suites for four viols. This recording features performances by influential performers in the early music scene, hailing from Oberlin, Julliard, Yale, McGill and Boston University.

Early-music ensembles TENET Vocal Artists and ACRONYM have joined forces to make the first commercial recording of a sumptuous work by composer Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1623-1680), a sepolcro set in the tomb of Christ. The grieving Virgin-played by TENET artistic director Jolle Greenleaf- encounters two angels, three Apostles (Saints John, James, and Peter), three Marys (Magdalene, Cleopas, and Salome), Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea. Each new group sings solos, duets, or trios telling her a story about Jesus, "dolorous memories" which only add to her torment. Preeminent New York City-based early music ensemble TENET Vocal Artists celebrates it's tenth season in 2018/19. Under Artistic Director Jolle Greenleaf, TENET has won acclaim for it's innovative programming, virtuosic singing, and command of repertoire. ACRONYM (After Crucifixion, a Rare Oratorio Needs Youthful Musickers), an "outstanding young early-music string ensemble" (The New Yorker), is dedicated to giving modern premieres of the wild instrumental music of the seventeenth century. The band has released eight critically acclaimed recordings since 2014.

Fresh interpretation and technical brilliance imbue "Mendelssohn: Sonatas from Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood," the first period instrument recording of this repertoire. This debut recording by the New York City based Karr-Yang Duo features three relatively unknown Mendelssohn Piano and Violin Sonatas, including the duo's own version of the unfinished 1838 F major sonata, and the stunning albeit incomplete Fragment in D. As a whole, the works tell the story of Mendelssohn's development as a composer, spanning his artistic life beginning at the age of 11, through the teenage years, and into his mature period. In this recording, the sumptuous tone and refinement of a fully restored Conrad gRaf piano from 1825 converses in equal partnership with the warm, resonant sonority of the violin's gut strings and historical set-up, revealing Mendelssohn's full-blooded, lyrical, and colorful music at its fullest realization. The Karr-Yang duo bridges the divide between musicological research and communicative performance, and presents an album which will appeal to the period instrument aficionado as well as the Mendelssohn lover.

ACRONYM presents forgotten works from the D�ben Collection. The D�ben archive consists of approximately 2300 music manuscripts, assembled by and named after a family of composers who served in succession as Kapellmeisters to the Royal Swedish Court in Stockholm. Much of the music within the collection is unique, and the vast majority of it has neither been published in modern edition nor recorded. ACRONYM previously scoured the D�ben Collection for sonatas that can now be heard on the ensemble's Paradise (Bertali) and Wunderkammer albums, and for this recording they searched this treasure trove of seventeenth-century music for the most beautiful and fascinating works available. It is likely the first time any of these Cantica Obsoleta have been heard in hundreds of years.

ACRONYM's exploration of the wild music attributed to H.I.F. von Biber includes several pieces recorded here for the first time. Works include programmatic battle music, Latin church music, and dance suites. ACRONYM (Anachronistic Cooperative Realizing Obscure Nuanced Yesteryear’s Masterpieces), an “outstanding young early music string ensemble” (The New Yorker), is dedicated to giving modern premieres of the wild instrumental music of the seventeenth century. Since 2014 the band has released seven critically acclaimed recordings. ACRONYM’s performances have been praised for their “consummate style, grace, and unity of spirit.” (The New York Times)

BERTALI 13 Sonatas • Acronym • OLDE FOCUS 901 (63: 59)


Antonio Bertali (1605–1669) is one of those many composers from the Italian States who achieved prominence at the 17th-century Viennese courts of the Holy Roman Emperors. All of the rulers preferred the musical world of late 16th- and early 17th-century Italy, and their various musical directors provided many works along these stylistic lines. Bertali, who assumed the office of Kapellmeister followed Giovanni Valentini’s death in 1649, was especially known for his operas and church music, but his sonatas recall those of Uccellini, Merula, Marini, and Castello. That’s to say, they are a succession of dances, recitatives, fast movements in imitative counterpoint, and slow arias over ostinato basses. They are attractive, distinctive pieces that haven’t lacked for champions in the recent past, though Acronym claims first recordings for six of the sonatas heard on his release.


As for the ensemble, it performs with a rich, full-bodied sound in unison, as I remarked on its almost concurrent release of Pezel’s Opus Musicum Sonatarum Praestantissimarum Senis Instrumentis Instructum (Olde Focus 903). That precision is especially welcome in the faster movements, and the ensemble catches some of the extravagant “take stage” expressivity in the more freely phrased of the recitatives. However, in solo passages, at least one of the violinists (four are named collectively, but never separately) has an unappealingly thin tone and occasional difficulties with going off pitch. They’re not quite as adverse to vibrato here as they are on that Pezel release, but they come close: I counted only two brief uses apiece of slow and fast vibrato applied in the first six of the 13 sonatas. It would at least help with the tonal issues, as would other experiments with violin color that were written about at the time.


Overall, then, this is an enjoyable release, mitigated by anemic tone and pitch issues in some of the solo passagework. Consider as well Quicksilver’s Stile Moderno , which includes one of Bertali’s sonatas, along with many by his contemporaries (Acis 72546). Sadly, Andrew Manze’s tribute to Biagio Marini, Curiose e Moderne Inventioni , is no longer in print on Harmonia Mundi HMX 2907175, though his recording of Uccelini’s sonatas (Harmonia Mundi 907196) still is. All three albums provide a mix of first-rate playing and stylistic sensibility in much the same kind of music.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

PEZEL Alphabet Sonatas • Acronym • OLDE FOCUS 903 (75: 15)


Pezel’s Opus Musicum Sonatarum Praestantissimarum Senis Instrumentis Instructum , or “Musical Publication of the Finest Sonatas for Old/Revered Instruments,” was published in Frankfurt in 1686. It may well have been a joint commission from all of the members of the ancient Six Cities’ Alliance, for a handsome sum was paid for it by each: Bautzen, Görlitz, Lauban, Kamenz, Löbau, and Zittau. (Pezel himself was then employed as Stadtmusikant , or director of instrumental music, in Bautzen, a prestigious post in what was at the time a decent-sized metropolis.) The work consists of 24 sonatas given alphabetical names, such as Sonata Abella in G Major, and Sonata Bacca in D Minor. In addition, there is a final Sonata Ciacona that features an eight-chord bass ostinato in its ripieno sections, which is doubled and extended again by a further four chords for concertato statements. It’s a fairly massive single movement of its variational type for its time and place, though such things were more common in Elizabethan keyboard music.


The Alphabet Sonatas themselves are actually proto-sonatas, meaning that they’re a grab bag of movements strung together, often in the same key. They descend from the first wave of violinist-composers who emerged from the late 16th century courts of the Sforza who ruled Milan, and the Este who ruled Ferrara. But where those Italian sonatas mixed dances, highly imitative contrapuntal movements, and dramatic recitative, often with highly chromatic harmonic progressions, Pezel’s sonatas include homophonic dances, less complex examples of counterpoint, and the occasional voluntary, all of it less venturesome harmonically. The composer’s previous experience as a Kunstgeiger (city-employed fiddler) and later Stadtpfeifer (member of a typical loud ensemble, with cornetts and sackbuts) in Leipzig can be heard in the distinctively instrumental character of wind, brass, or strings in various movements; though the work was published in seven string parts, with continuo furnished by bassoon and an unspecified additional instrument.


As to why Pezel would give his sonatas feminine names drawn from Greco-Roman history and mythology: Like many academics since the late Middle Ages, he relished showing off knowledge garnered from the Attic Greeks and Romans. So the Sonata Dejanira refers to the tragically unconfident woman who was married to Heracles, while the Sonata Quinquatria highlights the Roman festival held in honor of the goddess Minerva. None of this has any bearing on the music itself.


Acronym is a string ensemble formed in 2012 specifically for this CD project. But as only nine of its 12 members perform here, and other projects including tours are underway, we can safely assume the group has taken on a life separate from Pezel’s work. It was still common enough during Pezel’s lifetime for music to be performed in any variety of arrangements, reduced or augmented, as circumstances warranted. Here, the continuo is provided by either of two performers who handle the honors for theorbo and guitar, and harpsichord and organ, while there’s some trading off among viols and violas—as Pezel didn’t specify da bracchia or da gamba.


The performances of the livelier dance movements have a fine rhythmic bounce, especially the start of the Sonata Nabathea. Any unison playing on this release has a rich, full sound. Individual instrumentalists can at times display an unattractive tone, however, made more evident because none of the performers use vibrato. (As Sergiu Luca once told me, just because you don’t use vibrato doesn’t mean you have to display an ugly tone. Quite the opposite. You don’t have vibrato to cover for you, and have to work to improve your sound.) The Sonata Ciacona exposes this mercilessly, with a very occasional note tonally off-center. Most of the playing aside from this is first-rate, while tempos are varied and well-sustained. There’s an attractive legato in slower movements, and a judicious amount of accenting on both the beat and at cadences.


A final word or 111 about the liner notes. Written by one of Acronym’s musicians, they evidently draw upon some historians of Leipzig who are very much of the Annales School, emphasizing cultural matters by way of source studies in surviving town hall records, legal documents, etc. It’s a pleasure to read someone take such joy in relating more than the usual born/educated/married/died information, right down to the social distinctions between the various music guilds: the Kunstgeigeren, Stadtpfeiferen , lowly Bierfiedlers , and the haughty trumpet players, the top-of-the-heap Kammeradschaft —even to mentioning the brawls on record that resulted when some Stadtpfeiferen employed trombones provocatively shaped and played like trumpets, but with alternative names.


All in all, these are successful readings of attractive music. Recommended.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Violinist Andrew McIntosh and fortepianist Steven Vanhauwaert collaborated on a historically important volume of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges's Op. 1b sonatas on Olde Focus Recordings. Interest in Bologne's music has surged in recent years, exposing contemporary audiences to his refined catalogue. These works were published in 1781 during the height of his career, are in two movements each, and reflect Bologne's grounding in the elegant grave of late 18th century aesthetics.

In the late-classical era, an Edinburgh publisher commissioned the most famous composers in continental Europe to orchestrate traditional Scottish folk songs in their original English. A lush sampling of this music is performed here by Makaris, a new early-music super-group headed by soprano Fiona Gillespie. (Olde Focus)

Encouraged by Camille Saint-Saëns, violist/composer Henri Casadesus founded the Société des Instruments Anciens in 1901. Casadesus played viola d'amore, his brother Marius played quinton, and additional Casadesus family members and friends played viols, keyboards, and plucked strings. Unlike other early period-instrument revivals, the Casadesus ensemble performed not only baroque pastiche, but also new works which they commissioned and composed for their rediscovered instruments. This disc presents the premiere recordings of music written in the first decades of the twentieth century by Henri Casadesus and Ottorino Respighi for a "quartet of viols."

The title of this release, Wunderkammer, is named for the “Cabinet of Curiosities” that was frequently found in the home of a seventeenth-century German aristocrat. The cabinet held some sort of private museum collection. For this album, Acronym has found a great deal of previously unrecorded sonatas composed by forgotten composers.Like the Wunderkammer of German aristocracy, many of these works contain eccentricities, irregularities, and curiosities. Composers featured on this recording include Samuel Capricornus, Adam Drese, Johann Philipp Krieger, Andreas Oswald, Antonio Bertali, Daniel Eberlin, Philipp Jakob Rittler, Georg Piscator, Alessandro Poglietti, and Clemens Thieme.

Guy Fishman, principal cellist of the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra, presents a brilliant and energized period-instrument performance of seven miraculous and seminal concertos by the Red Priest, Antonio Vivaldi. Fishman made his Symphony Hall solo debut in 2005, and is in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and Europe, performing in recital and with Arcadia Players, Querelle des Bouffons, Boston Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Emmanuel Music, the Boston Museum Trio, Les Violons du Roy, and El Mundo, among others. He has toured with the Mark Morris Dance Group and Natalie Merchant, and has appeared in recital with Dawn Upshaw, Eliot Fisk, Gil Kalish, and Kim Kashakashian. His playing has been praised as “plangent” by the Boston Globe, and “electrifying” by the New York Times. He plays a rare cello made in Rome in 1704 by David Tecchler. Founded in Boston in 1815, the Handel and Haydn Society is internationally acclaimed for its performances and recordings of Baroque and Classical music. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Harry Christophers, H+H’s Period Instrument Orchestra and Chorus delight more than 50,000 listeners each year at Symphony Hall and other leading venues in Boston.