RICERCAR could not miss Willaert's anniversary... This recording of Willaert's secular repertoire gives us a very different vision of his work, compared to his religious music well illustrated by the Vespro della Beata Vergine recording (RIC 325). Here, we can appreciate a musician singing love with sweetness, describing pleasures of the life with a little smile, even sometimes with a bit of salacity. Recorded by Romanesque in 1994, this CD can be listened to with a lot of pleasure. No competition in the market for this recording!

Ricercar's recording of the complete cantatas of Matthias Weckman (RIC 216) is now followed by one of his chamber music. His sonatas for four instruments were intended for the concerts given by the Hamburg Collegium Musicum, the society where the most 'modern' music of the time was to be heard, and were inspired by the virtuoso works by Viennese and Venetian composers. The harpsichord pieces are very much in the style of his friend J.J. Froberger; they foreshadow the works of Bach's generation in that they allude just as much to the style of the French suite as to that of Italian contrapuntal works. The various German songs recorded here are an example of the works that Weckman supplied for the official occasions of Hamburg municipal life.

Vienna was an important musical centre during the Baroque period. Italian composers held most of the important musical positions of the time, in the Imperial Chapel and in many churches. The nearby state of Bohemia also provided the city with several composers, one of these being Frantisek Ignac Tuma, who himself had been greatly influenced by the Italian style. The motets for countertenor recorded here are a fine selection from the repertoire and are also provided with a varied instrumental accompaniment. The English counter-tenor, James (Thomas) Bowman, has been one of the world's leading counter-tenors for nearly 30 years; his career spans opera, oratorio, contemporary music and solo recitals. James Bowman's concert career is equally wide-ranging; in Europe he is well known as a recitalist, and has a large following. In 1992 the French government honoured him with admission to 'L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres' and he was awarded the Medal of Honour of the city of Paris in recognition of long-standing contribution to the musical life of the city. He was appointed a CBE in the 1997 Queen's Birthday Honours.

VIVALDI (Arr. Roos) La stravaganza, op. 4/1,3–6,9,11 • Frédéric de Roos (rcr, cond); La Pastorella (period instruments) • RICERCAR 288 (56:29)


Do you wish that Vivaldi had penned more concerti da camera ? (Not that you were lying awake at night thinking about it!) So do the members of La Pastorella, apparently. Doing nothing worse than what Baroque composers used to do all the time, they have taken seven concertos from La stravaganza , and arranged them for their ensemble, which consists of a violin (played by Mira Glodeanu), oboe (Benoît Laurent), cello (Hervé Douchy), bassoon (Alain de Rijckere), organ or harpsichord (Guy Penson), and guitar or theorbo (Philippe Malfeyt), all under the direction of recorder player de Roos. Does it work? Nicely. Does it replace Vivaldi’s originals? Of course not; but it complements them well.


The originals are violin concertos. Sometimes the solo part remains assigned to the violin, but at other times it is reassigned to the recorder, the oboe, or the bassoon. The solo material is passed from instrument to instrument throughout the course of a movement. If you feel that some of Vivaldi’s concertos for string instruments suffer from a too unvaried texture, these arrangements will remedy that. La Pastorella keeps the concertos’ original keys, although they do transpose some of the slow movements up or down a fifth, to “better suit the tessitura of the new solo instrument.” Again, that’s hardly a hanging offense in this repertoire, and the ends justify the means.


The performances are wide awake, yet relaxed. No one is trying to show off. The music-making is like an afternoon spent at home with friends. Try the slow movement of Concerto No. 11, and see if you don’t enjoy hearing the recorder sing with light melancholy to the accompaniment of the organ and theorbo. De Roos’s recorder has a likeable timbre, and he blends it beautifully with the other instruments. The booklet doesn’t include biographical material, so I don’t know how long La Pastorella has been around—it is not a new group. This CD moves me to explore its apparently extensive back catalog, though. This is lovely, innovative, low-pressure Vivaldi.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

Includes work(s) by Carlo Farina, David Pohle, Johann Jacob Löwe, Johann Jakob Walther. Ensemble: Ricercar Consort. Conductor: Pierre Pierlot. Soloist: François Fernandez.

Includes work(s) by Franz Tunder. Soloist: Bernard Foccroulle.

The purpose of this recording of the songs of Ventadorn, Faidit and Palol and instrumental pieces by anonymous composers of the same period is present the creations of the troubadours and the jongleurs of the Middle Ages. The most interesting aspect of this recording for us as performing musicians was neither the revival of courtly love as it was then experienced, nor the performance of the songs as we may suppose that they were originally sung, but was rather the sharing of the discovery of the astonishing philosophy of life promoted by the totemic phrase ‘motz et sos’ (words and music). The ensemble Millenarium’s previous release of medieval dances received dazzling reviews from fans and critics. This production of Troubadours’ Songs and Jongleurs’ Dances is sure to follow their previous release in stunning fashion.

If Johannes Tinctoris (1435-1511) is today widely recognized as one of the most renowned music theorists of his time, he was also a perceptive observer of the musical practices of the Renaissance. After studying in Orleans, he held several positions in Cambrai, Liege and finally Naples. Here his gifts as a composer could flourish at the court of King Ferrante of Aragon as a chaplain, legal advisor and music tutor of Ferrante's daughter Beatrice. This programme retraces his career through his extremely varied output: French and Italian songs, Mass movements, and instrumental pieces.

The second volume in the History of Early Music series on Ricercar, this staggeringly voluminous 8 CD compilation covers the period of almost a century ranging from the late 1500s to late 1600s with the transition to the Baroque era. With the profane and sacred intersecting and the birth of various idioms including opera and oratorio, along with forms such as the sonata; this collection features a comprehensive survey of the composers of this era enlivened with performances by acclaimed ensembles and soloists. A collection to be reveled in and lived with, it also features a book discussing the Baroque aesthetic and written by J�rome Lejeune.

Classical Music

This extensive release, recorded between 1995 and 2000 make up a fabulous anthology of early seventeenth-century Italian music. A large number of composers are gathered around the central figure of Claudio Monteverdi; while some of them, like Salomone Rossi, Biagio Marini, and Dario Castello, are among the musicians with whom he worked in Mantua or Venice, others illustrate the extraordinary musical creativity of the period, whether it be Sigismondo d’India, Tarquinio Merula, Francesco Cavalli, Alessandro Grandi, or so many other lesser-known personalities, each of whom helped to build the rapidly growing edifice of Italian Baroque music.

The old instruments of the Stadtpfeiffer were replaced by French-styled oboes and bassoons in German courts and cities at the beginning of the 18th century. These became the bandes de hautbois to which trumpets were added, the combination becoming the basis of the military band. After the marches and the parades, however, these musicians were also invited to take part in the court's formal entertainments. It was for these circumstances that Georg Philipp Telemann and his contemporaries created a completely new type of repertoire that was linked to the French and Italian genres of the Suite and the Concerto. Hunting horns were also added to the ensemble at certain moments. This is the repertoire that Eolus tackles here, with total respect for the characteristic techniques of horn and trumpet harmonics; others have attempted to conquer this repertoire by completely unhistorical performance practices.

The Russian violinist Evgeny Sviridov, winner of the MA Festival Bruges Competition in 2017, has chosen to devote his first recording to the sonatas of Giuseppe Tartini. As heir to the Baroque tradition of the early eighteenth century, Tartini developed technical concepts much bolder than those of his predecessors, thus preparing the violin for the language of the Classical period. His treatise served as a model for Leopold Mozart and his reputation was still very much alive in the Romantic era, which continued to propagate the famous anecdote of his dream during which the Devil suggested to him how to perform reputedly impossible trills. Born in 1989 in St-Petersburg, Evgeny got his first education at the Conservatory there. While studying he had already become a laureate of major international competitions such as Menuhin Competition in Cardiff and Paganini Competition in Genova in 2008. In 2010, on the sly from his conservatory teacher, he joined a Bach Competition in Leipzig and suddenly got a first prize. This prize persuaded him to turn to authentic ways of playing and to studying baroque more thoroughly. In 2016 he got a first prize and audience prize in “Concours Corneille” in Rouen, France.

Le Miroir De Musique is an ensemble specialized in the music of the late middle ages and Renaissance, from the golden age of the troubadours to the humanist movements of the 16th century. The ensemble is based in Basel (CH) and brings together the most prolific of early music performers, many of whom are graduates of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. The image of a "Mirror of Music" is borrowed from Jacques de Li�ge's treatise (Speculum Musicae), and reflects our goal of painting a vivid picture of medieval and Renaissance music, in a spirit of fidelity to the original sources. This project was first conceived for the Festtage Alter Musik in Basel in 2013, at the suggestion of Peter Reidemeister. The program was developed in close collaboration between the five musicians and the musicologist Martin Kirnbauer.

Salaverde's music is at once lively, sparkling and at times surprisingly virtuosic. Like all other instrumentalists of his time, Salaverde made use of every type of stylistic device, mixing the dynamics of dance forms with variations on famous songs and crowning the blend with a feeling for touching emotion. In short, this is music that brings together everything that instrumentalists require to seduce their listeners: virtuosity and tenderness. His music possesses the same emotions as Monteverdi's but it is intended for instruments alone. This music demands to be heard!