Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger, viol player at the court of Elizabeth I and Charles I, was the most innovative and influential composer of viol consort music of his generation. Following the steps of his father, composer Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder, he continued the specifically English "In Nomine" tradition for viol consort into the seventeenth century while adding his own special touch in the "In Nomine through all parts" in using the cantus firmus in all voices with various rhythms and transpositions. His greatest achievement was the development of an imitative counterpoint perfectly adapted to the viol. The particular character of Ferrabosco's music was determined by his love for architecture and symmetrical forms which were integrated in all possible ways into his Fantasies: flexible motives, augmentations and diminutions of themes and a clear harmonic structure. On this release, the Hathor Consort explores his works.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

In earlier times, adaptations and rearrangements of their own works or those of others formed an integral part of the daily lives of musicians and composers. So-called 'historically informed' performance practice, which has developed out of a strictly historical perspective on past eras of music, long left this way of treating an existing composition almost totally unexplored. Today, however, it is enjoying a renaissance and is part of a musician's training. The idea of arranging Bach's works is a natural one, since the composer himself was an inveterate transcriber. Most of the programme recorded here consists of solo keyboard works rescored for a chamber formation - in other words, the performers have chosen an approach that is the contrary of Bach's usual practice. A fascination for the timbral possibilities of the viola da gamba trio and a shared passion for Bach's music prompted the Cellini Consort to create this original and personal programme.

Classical Music

Although we know of at least five concertos J.S. Bach wrote for solo organ we have no surviving Bach organ concertos with orchestral accompaniment. Contrast this with the 200+ cantatas: of these, 18 feature organ obbligato, which Bach uses as a solo instrument in arias, choral sections and sinfonias. The most obviously conspicuous date to 1726. In May to November of that year, Bach composed six cantatas which assign a prominent solo role to the organ. Most of these are reworkings of movements of lost violin and oboe concertos written in Bach's time at Weimar and K�then. Why Bach wrote such a number of obbligato organ cantatas in such a short period remains unknown. One possible explanation may lie in Dresden, where Bach had given a concert on the new Silbermann organ in the Sophienkirche in 1725. Some scholars think that, in addition to other organ works, he also performed organ concertos, or at least a few earlier versions of the sinfonias, with obbligato organ and strings in order to show off the organ. From the cantatas mentioned above, along with the related violin and harpsichord concertos, it is perfectly possible to reconstruct a number of three-movement organ concertos of this type. By using this method, we hope to bring some of the music which Bach may have performed in Dresden in 1725 back to life on this release.

In this programme, La Boz Galana takes a journey through the popular idioms of Italian and Spanish composers who worked in Italy, among them Kapsberger, Landi, and other less well-known figures such as Ara��s, Stefani and Milanuzzi. As a result of a centuries-old practice - the repertoires of frottole and strambotti, for example - these composers created a 'lighter' genre using popular musical forms based on poetic texts related to them, both Italian and Spanish. Meant to transmit the expressivity of exquisite poetry in conjunction with music, these short and seemingly simple songs appear as succinct miniatures embodying the boundless desire of amateur musicians to shape their intimate musical worlds and engrave the poems in their memories. These pieces were the 'pop songs' of their time, and are often true gems of their kind.

Classical Music