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.

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."

In the early eighteenth century, a number of the most popular traditional Scottish songs were bizarrely attributed to David Rizzio, who more than 150 years earlier had been brutally murdered while serving as secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots. For their second recording on Olde Focus, Celtic HiP ensemble Makaris explores arrangements of the "Rizzio melodies" by galant-era composers including Francesco Geminiani, Johann Christian Bach, and James Oswald. MAKARIS formed in 2018 and the following year released its first album, Wisps in the Dell, to critical international acclaim. (“Absolutely wonderful ... one of the very best releases of 2019” (MusicWeb International); “Marvelous ... Highly recommended” (Fanfare); “Delightful ... a winning combination” (Early Music Review.) The ensemble’s second recording was the EP Tam Lin, a modern fairytale folk opera composed by Fiona Gillespie and Elliot Cole.

TENET Vocal Artists, NYC’s pre-eminent early music ensemble, releases an album of the final performance of its Green Mountain Project. For the past ten years, the Green Mountain Project has been made up of some of the best Baroque specialists in the United States for concerts of Claudio Monteverdi’s iconic Vespers of 1610 (Vespro della Beata Vergine). This live recording is a culmination of years of musical collaborations, and a celebration of the artists and supporters who made the past decade of performances possible. The Green Mountain Project began its tenure with the first performance to honor the 400th anniversary of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 publication on Sunday, January 3, 2010. Spearheaded by artistic director Jolle Greenleaf and music director Scott Metcalfe, the concert was offered free to the public, and received a rave review from The New York Times. Ten years later, The New York Times published another article, this time celebrating the decade of performances that followed this initial concert. During the project’s decade history, the Green Mountain Project performed Monteverdi’s works in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to glowing reviews, sold-out audiences, and in radio broadcasts. The cast of the Green Mountain Project features America’s best early music vocal and instrumental specialists, including Dark Horse Consort brass ensemble.

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)

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)

Cellist Guy Fishman releases a follow up to his critically acclaimed Vivaldi Concertos on Olde Focus with this recording of the concerti of C.P.E. Bach. Along with his colleagues from the Handel and Haydn Society, Fishman's performance underscores the angularity, unpredictability, and most of all unique creativity of this music by J.S. Bach's unconventional son.

Guy Fishman is the principal cellist of the Handel and Haydn Society, with which he made his Symphony Hall solo debut in 2005. He is in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and in Europe, performing in recital with some of the biggest names on the early music and classical scenes. His playing has been praised as “plangent” by the Boston Globe, “electrifying” by the New York Times, and “beautiful… noble” by the Boston Herald. The Boston Musical Intelligencer related that in a performance of Haydn’s C major concerto “… I heard greater depth in this work than I have in quite some time.” He plays a rare cello made in Rome in 1704 by David Tecchler.

The Elizabethan manuscript from which this album is entirely drawn is known by its British Library shelf-mark: Additional Manuscript 31390. Add. MS 31390 contains 135 pieces, which capture a snapshot of musical life in the 1570s. Some of the pieces reflect the “hottest new releases” of 1578 (when the manuscript was copied) while others are “golden oldies” from the first half of the 16th century. During the reign of Elizabeth I, there was no way to record music other than by putting musical notation onto paper. In creating an audio recording of this notational record, we aim, as the portrait painter does, to capture not merely the likeness, but the liveness of our subject: musical manuscript as mix-tape or playlist that gathers together music for later hearing and for posterity. Some of the pieces on this album are standards. Those who have sung in a choir will surely know and love Tallis’s O sacrum convivium. Aficionados of viol consort music will be familiar with a number of the In nomines. We hope putting these gems of the repertory in proximity to unknown and previously unrecorded works recontextualizes them to offer a more complete view of this important and beautiful manuscript.

Johann Rosenmüller was one of the mos ttalented and prolific young composers in Germany: he was organist at Leipzig's Nikolaikirche and all-but-assured the upcoming Thomakantor position, when in 1655 he was arrested due to a sex scandal. Rosenmüller escaped from prison and fled to Venice, where he spent mos tof the rest of his life, performing at Saint Mark's Cathedral and teaching at the Ospedale della Pieta. This recording presents music from the time of Rosenmüller's exile in Italy, and alternates large-ensemble chamber sonatas published in Venice in 1670 with the first recordings of unpublished bass cantatas - featuring the outstanding young baritone Jesse Blumberg - which ACRONYM has freshly transcribed from a manuscript collection.

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.

"Brilliant and moving" vocal ensemble Les Canards Chantants and "groundbreaking, gutsy" (Early Music America Magazine) Baroque string band ACRONYM present the first recording of Giovanni Valentini's "Secondo libro de madrigali" (Venice, 1616)—the earliest known madrigal collection to call for instruments other than continuo—exactly four hundred years after its publication. Giovanni Valentini was born in 1582 in or around Venice. In 1614 he joined the court of the Archduke Ferdinand at Graz, and upon Ferdinand’s 1619 election Vaneltini moved to Vienna to serve as Imperial organist. From the 1620s through the 1640s, Valentini oversaw much of the musical life of Vienna. He was music tutor to the Imperial family and retained his position of Hofkapellmeister under Ferdinand III, who took the throne in 1637.