Winter - from First Frost to Carnival Festivity A sparkling musical panorama of winter - harking back to the legendary Great Frost of 1708/09. From the beginning of the season over Christmas to a festive carnival: songs, opera scenes, instrumental as well as traditional pieces from France, Germany, and Great Britain. Music by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michael Praetorius, William Byrd, among others.

With this "colourful" selection of pieces, we intend to give an impression of the diverse repertoire collected in the Turin Tablature. The motets and liturgical works were most likely intended for performance in church, whereas dances and madrigals were intended more for secular settings: at festivals, celebrations, and for domestic music-making. Toccatas and ricercars could be played in both ecclesiastical and secular settings. [In light of the wide variety of purposes of this repetoire, we utilized a wide variety of instruments.] Thus, in addition to the Marx-Gunzer organ, three other stringed keyboard instruments were used: a clavicytherium in southern German design from the 17th century, a virginal after Michael Praetorius (1619), and a harpsichord of a seventeenthcentury Italian design.

Rarely heard Fandangos combined with known Fandangos. Unique arrangements & improvisation. Unique instrumentation: trombone, recorder, guitar, harpsichord, guitar, percussion. Early music approach to the origins of the popular dance "Fandango"

American Record Guide:�The music is melodious and the playing and sound exemplary.

First recording of this special collection of very early chamber music. Several pieces are world first recordings. Beautiful acoustics of a church of the time when the music was composed. Very diversified instrumental settings. Use of some nstruments that are nearly unknown today.

Music of the (early) Baroque evokes sympathy, provides opportunities for identification and serves as a vehicle for moral or religious teaching. And finally, the Baroque musical 'exploration of the soul' as a soundtrack of life can and intends to give support, comfort and strength. Soprano Isabel Schicketanz's recording displays this impressively. It is a compilation of towering works from the 17th�century.

The variation cycle is without a doubt one of the most important works of keyboard instrument literature, played time and again, both in the original version and in miscellaneous adaptations and instrumentations. Framed by the unforgettably beautiful aria in a form similar to a sarabande, the 30 variations are bound by the bass framework and divided in two larger parts. A French overture marks the beginning of the second part. Every third variation, composed as an interval canon and in which the parts begin in an ever-increasing interval, additionally subdivides the work into ten groups of three. This wonderful work with its plethora of possible structures and symbols concealed in numbers has kept generations of musicians and musicologists busy and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come. The best thing to do is to lean back, leave the task of hitting the right key at the right time to the musicians and let the music speak for itself! Or, as Albert Einstein once said, "What I have to say about Bach's life work: Listen, perform, love and adore it! And shut up!"

DANZAS - from Taboo to Triumph: Initially frowned upon and forbidden, then socially accepted and the height of fashion.�Despite being at times banned by the authorities, their popularity was not reduced. In this "crossover" project by La Ninfea, the genres and dances meet and mix. Historical dances suddenly turn into tangos, while a tango shows itself in baroque dress -� a musical bridge spanning centuries and social conventions.

They played from towers and plazas, in town halls and churches, on feast days and to sound the alarm; they played for kings and landed gentry, for church dignitaries and diplomatic envoys, but also for the entertainment of the common people: the musicians of the alta capella or wind band, active throughout Europe between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of these musicians, who were often organized in guilds and paid by the ruling council of their cities, were masters of not just one instrument, but many, playing at the highest level of quality and with astounding virtuosity. In Spain, they were called ministriles, and we aim to present their magnificent music- particularly from the “Siglo de Oro” or Golden Age of Spain between 1550 and 1600- on this album in all its varied aspects and as many different contexts as possible.

Do you want to live in perfect health - forever? This album will not only attempt to cure all imaginable ailments - it will even promise you immortality! For, like our historical counterparts, we are all familiar with the ups and downs of sickness, recovery and health, no matter what our age, provenance or status. Perhaps you're asking, "An album that makes me healthy and immortal? How does that work? And wherever did La Ninfea get that idea?" Well, I would like to say that we found the magical musical instructions for creating the philosophers' stone in a 17th-century alchemical codex hidden in a dusty coffer in the attic of a charming little castle, but the truth is that we found dozens of prescriptions for musical cures hidden away in archives and manuscript collections. Six musicians united by one idea, playing 20 instruments in 27 formations, present a baroque kaleidoscope of pieces from the musical medicine chest.

Even today, exactly two hundred years after the beginning of their creation, the "Diabelli Variations" still have a reputation among many concertgoers and organizers as being 'awkward' or 'unwieldly' and, in any case, difficult to understand. Jacob Leuschner proves the opposite. Indeed, it is not an immediately accessible piece, let alone one that ingratiates itself the first time you hear it; like most of Beethoven's later works, it requires intense, concentrated engagement before it reveals it's complex beauty. Jacob Leuschner, born 1974 in Freiburg, studied with Helmut Barth and Michel B�roff in Freiburg as well as Konrad Elser in Luebeck. Numerous prizes and distinctions at important piano competitions attest to his artistic ranking: Beethoven (Vienna), German Music Competition and German University Competition, Leeds, Rina Sala Gallo (Monza), Mozart (Salzburg), Schubert (Dortmund) and Viotti (Vercelli). Since 1989 concert trips have led him to China, most European countries, Japan and USA. Jacob Leuschner has made many radio and TV productions as well as several recordings. In 1997 he founded with his year-long duo partner Angela Schwartz (cello) and violinist Alexander van Wijnkoop the Ariadne Trio Basel; furthermore, Jacob Leuschner is among other things duo partner of cellist Sebastian Klinger and clarinetist Clemens Trautmann. With those last named, he founded in 2003 the Feuerbach Trio. In 2008, Jacob Leuschner was appointed professor at the Music University Cologne.

This new release is a great celebration of Handel in the first decades of the eighteenth century in London. One can almost imagine the musical global citizen at the harpsichord, surrounded by friends and colleagues. Works by this famous Saxon are performed, but also compositions from the pens of his by no means less distinguished orchestral musicians please the ears of excited listeners. Sometimes a movement from a favorite opus is heard, or an arrangement of a currently popular aria from an opera, and sometimes a freshly composed sonata. Mr. Handel's Musicians- this doesn't refer to just anyone: several of Europe's most sought-after musicians performed among the ranks of the opera company at the Haymarket Opera House. The brothers Castrucci, John Loeillet of London, Johann Ernst Galliard, and Giuseppe Sammartini played under Handel's direction at the King's Theatre, and thereby contributed to the overwhelming success of his works. Benoit Laurent studied recorder, baroque oboe, and modern oboe in Belgium. In 2008 he was a prizewinner in the renowned competition Musica Antiqua in Bruges. He currently serves as Professor of Baroque oboe at the Conservatoire Royal in Brussels.

A festive Christmas concert of motets, songs and instrumental settings, telling about the coming Saviour and his birth. A 17th century Christmas night in Augsburg. It is part and parcel of the close relationship to Augsburg shared by all of the featured composers that the concerns of both Christian faiths, the Catholic and the Protestant, are taken into account in their music. The music as such was considered to be above and beyond denomination. The music's striving for "harmony" overcomes all human conflict with the promise of the eternal peace of Christmas, disclosed by the angel's hymn of the biblical Annuciation: "Et in terra pax hominibus".

In the manuscript Tonk Schl. 23, a large choir book from the former Benedictine Abbey St. Ulrich und Afra in Augsburg which is currently housed at the Augsburger Staats-und Stadtbibliothek, musicologist Dr. Tobias Rimek discovered a previously unknown copy of Orlando di Lasso's Requiem for four voices. The version found in the Augsburg choir book is not only the oldest, but most certainly the original version of the Requiem, including a setting of the sequence "Dies irae", which is missing in all o fthe later transmissions. The original version from Augsburg is a perfect fifth lower than later printed editions of the composition, which puts all four voices of the ensemble into an extremely low register, requiring the following vocal ranges: tenor, baritone, bass und basso profondo. In our rendition the voices are reinforced with instruments playing colla parte, consistent with performance practice of the period: three sackbuts, bass dulcian and organ magnify the solemn gravity of the composition. Ensemble Capella Foccara, made up of internationally renowned musicians devoted to historically informed performance practice, focusses on lesser-known music from the 16th to 18th century, performing primarily works from the regions of Bavaria and Swabia, and from the imperial center Augsburg. The point of depareture for this album was a convention of the Association for Augsburger Diocesan History, the occasion being the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Prince-Bishop Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg in the preceding year. In order to add an appropriate air of splendor to this commemoration of such an illustrious personality, we reinforced Orlando di Lasso's Requiem, originally for four voices, with three sackbuts, bass dulcian and organ. In this magnificent constellation the Augsburg version of the Requiem was recreated on November 21, 2014.

This release from Cologne-based ensemble Exquisite Noyse explores the diverse and colorful musical world into which the violin was born- anonymous dances, arrangements and improvisations, instrumental renditions of vocal works including beautiful and haunting madrigals, chansons and motets by Arcadelt, Janequin, Josquin and Verdelot. This music of the Renaissance is brought to life in a very special way. Exquisite Noyse performs on instruments of the violin family and a Renaissance triple harp, giving life to a pivotal and important repertoire. Their choice of music, instruments, and performance techniques conjure an image of the violin as a new technology in a world undergoing radical musical changel. The violin’s earliest voice leaps off the strings and across the centuries to new ears. The mission of Exquisite Noyse is to work with the repertoire, performance techniques and instruments of the Renaissance creatively and imaginatively in order to reproduce the surprising and fresh sound the violin family made when it was still a new technical achievement in a time groundbreaking changes in music.