With this set, RICERCAR is beginning the rerelease of one of the jewels in its catalogue: the large collection devoted to sacred music of the German Baroque. Each set will group pieces by theme, the first being devoted to music for Passiontide, Easter and funeral cantatas. This long page in the history of music stretches from Schütz to Bach with the first release of a highly moving live recording of Bach's Johannes Passion by Les Agrémens and the Chamber Chorus of Namur conducted by Guy van Waas.

Includes work(s) for organ by César Franck. Soloist: Joris Verdin.

The opening of Venice's first opera house, the Teatro di San Cassiano, in 1637, was one of the major events in the history of opera. The protagonists of these new operas henceforth represented all the social categories making up this public and who, in fact, had to be able to find themselves onstage. The gods were no longer the only ones to lay down the law, challenged by the Vices and Virtues who preached in the Prologues. The new heroes are kings, emperors, dictators, courtesans, as well as nurses, valets, soldiers, philosopher, and, above all, lovers. Whoever they might be, we find them sympathetic or antipathetic; all are glorified, all are ridiculed. With his 27 existing operas, Francesco Cavalli gives us a fascinating version of this theatre of life. A single main thread runs through the excerpts drawn from each of them by Leonardo Garc�a Alarc�n: the expression of human passions. They are all there, from ingenuousness to ecstasy, joy to anger, passionate love (and it's erotic, sensual expression) to despair. This fascinating program represents a new contribution to the knowledge of Cavalli's operas and allows for unveiling part of the mystery still surrounding his works.

In 1694 Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, kapellmeister at the court of Count Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, published a collection of trio sonatas for a typical German ensemble of the period: violin, viola da gamba, and bass continuo. Pairing the violin with the viola da gamba seems to exemplify the fusion of Italian and French musical traditions, and this same fusion is found in the forms of these compositions, with an Italianate sonata followed by a suite of French dances – a model that Johann Sebastian Bach would later recall. These sonata-suites are endowed with undeniable charm and an infectious liveliness, and François Joubert-Caillet, with his ensemble L’Achéron, give us a particularly seductive interpretation of them.

We know now that Purcell's three Funeral Sentences were not written for the funeral of Queen Mary in 1695. Following the tradition of the English court, it was pieces by Thomas Morley, originally written for the funeral of Elizabeth I, that were sung there. Purcell's only contribution to the ceremony was the composition of two pieces for slide trumpets (March and Canzona), and the anthem in the archaic style Thou knowest, Lord. During the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey, a band of oboes played two marches written by John Paisible and Thomas Tollet. This recording assembles the music composed for the funeral of Queen Mary and that used at the funeral of Elizabeth I in 1603. The programme is completed by Purcell's sublime a cappella anthems and a moving anthem by Weelkes on the death of Thomas Morley. After the success of the recording of Schütz's Musicalische Exequien, voted Record of the Year by Gramophone magazine, this disc will be one of the major events of spring 2013.

Brussels cultural life entered a golden age during the reign of the Archducal couple Albert and Isabella. Various paintings of the time depict an ensemble of six of the city musicians, that was termed the Alta Capella, and consisted of a cornett, a shawm, two bombards, a trombone and a bassoon. The La Caccia Ensemble has researched the repertoire of the Alta Capella and here presents an attractive and varied selection of its repertoire, showing its presence in churches, processions, deivertissements and Court balls.

There is a positive kaleidoscope of textures, with every conceivable combination of voices culminating in powerful blocks of choral sound.

Du Mont, though thinly represented on disc, was highly influential in modernising French sacred music of the 17th century. He was Belgian-born, from Liège, where the Italian continuo-based style was firmly established. After he moved to Paris in 1640, several large collections of his music played a significant part in changing French taste from Renaissance-style polyphony to the new idiom. This performance reproduces the scale likely in Louis XIV’s Court Chapelle – five solo voices of the Petit Choeur, 19 more for the contrasting Grand Choeur and a small string ensemble. The choirs contrast not in complexity but in weight – thrilling at the start of the Magnificat. Pierlot sustains the driving pulse implicit in Du Mont’s setting, despite the fragmenting tendency of continually changing text. Within the limited palette – voices and strings – there is a positive kaleidoscope of textures, with every conceivable combination of voices culminating in powerful blocks of choral sound. Of the five motets, ‘O flos convalium’ is performed with solo voices and strings only, demonstrating an option described by a 17th-century commentator. The brief six-syllable lines of this Marian adoration invite short dancing phrases framing a touchingly poignant plea for mercy. Very warmly commended, though, at 52 minutes, a touch parsimonious.

Performance: *****
Sound: *****

-- George Pratt, BBC Music Magazine

An intoxicating blend of voices makes the Stabat mater a profound experience

"Sheer joy in music-making is as evident here as the sense of piety required by what are, after all, holy works. Yet it is difficult to begrudge Vox Luminis some feeling of joy at the astonishing sounds they are able to produce. The spirit of devotion is very much alive here too, in an album that pays equal attention to the holy and to the heady." -- Gramophone [4/2008]

This second set of Les Pleiades, ‘the collection of Ricercar re-releases’ is again devoted to the German Baroque religious repertoire. + Focusing on the Nativity repertoire, it extends from the early 17th c. to the generation of Bach: Schütz’s Christmas Oratorio, Yuletide cantatas by Christoph Graupner, Scheidt, Selle, Tunder, Lübeck, Buxtehude, Bruhns and more, recorded by world-class artists. + Also in this set one finds the evocation of Nativity scenes, from the Annunciation up to the Presentation in the Temple, as well as the reconstruction of a Lutheran Christmas service.

This reverie offered by Brice Sailly in homage to François Couperin is presented in the guise of a trip to Arcadia, that utopian land which lies hidden in the heart of European geography. The selected harpsichord pieces, most of them evoking childhood and the birth of love, sit beside excerpts from the Concerts royaux that set the scene rather as Watteau might have done, leaving to the less well-known airs de cour the task of describing sentiments in words. Couperin discreetly whispers the most luminous of truths. Here all is benevolence, a smile on the lips, a light heart, and melancholy is gently dismissed in favor of consolation. Open to various musical activities, Brice Sailly is a member and founder of the Franco-Icelandic group Susser Trost and has done projects with many artists, from early music specialists to musicians of the electronic music scene.

After the success of its CD devoted to the Sonatas of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Florence Malgoire's ensemble Les Dominos now explores the first French sonatas. All of these works date from the 1680s, the time when the French had just discovered the Italian sonata style and had begun to use it, albeit in some secrecy. This recording contains the complete sonatas of François Couperin, four of which are the original versions of sonatas that Couperin would later make use of in Les Nations. This is the first recording to present the sonatas in their entirety, in particular because the sonata La Convalescente is here recorded for the very first time; this sonata was discovered only recently in a manuscript copy in Germany.

It is now twenty years ago that Henri Ledroit left us. He had been one of the first artists to have faith in the grand enterprise that Ricercar launched in 1980; the recordings that we then took such great delight in making now enshrine priceless memories of him and his art. Henri Ledroit personified the both the joy of singing and the intelligent delivery of the text; these qualities, combined with his richly warm and yet so delicate and fragile voice, created his magic. This recording -- our 2009 catalogue is included with it -- is devoted in the main to repertoire that is indeed seldom performed: the cantatas and airs de cour by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. We are now proud to present it for re-release, accompanied by an introductory text by Catherine Cessac. The recording has been completed with several sacred compositions that were amongst Henri Ledroit's first recordings. This compilation also marks the re-release of the complete recordings made by this wonderful musician. This recording offers the listener the pleasure of rediscovering the unique moments of emotion that Henri Ledroit shared with such generosity with all who had the pleasure of hearing him. These same emotions are still alive today: those that he brought to us and those that we experienced as we listened to him.

Although the madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa constitute the best-known part of his oeuvre, his religious music is no less important, revealing a completely different facet of the composer. Aside from the Responsoria (1611), of which Philippe Herreweghe recently made a magnificent recording (LPH 010), most of Gesulado's religious music was published in 1603 under the title Sacrarum cantionum. Unlike the Responsoria, intended for Holy Week services, the motets of 1603 are settings of texts for all circumstances of the liturgical year. For this recording, made in the Santa Trinità abbey church in Venosa, ODHECATON has enriched the sound palette of its men's voices with a few instruments, including an ensemble of violas da gamba. Liuwe Tamminga counterpoints this programme with selected pieces by Giovanni Maria Trabaci and Giovanni de Macque on an historical organ of the Venosa region.

World premiere recording Henri IV of France married Maria de' Medici in 1600. A new art-form -- opera -- played an important role in the wedding celebrations in Florence, with Jacopo Peri's L'Euridice being performed on 6 October at the Palazzo Pitti. Giulio Caccini, however, was clearly in some opposition to his illustrious colleague and beat him to publication; his own version of the same Rinuccini libretto appeared in print in December of the same year. Caccini's lyricism, emotion and skilled vocal writing show clearly that his L'Euridice is the true forerunner of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. Ricercar now proudly presents this world premiere recording of Caccini's masterpiece.

An agreeable musician, clever, sociable, a shaper of verse, a man of wit whose sallies were greatly appreciated and whose fertile pen was guaranteed to turn out another volume of works every month, Boismortier was the perfect man of his time, courteous, cultured and able to adapt to his surroundings. In this, their first recording, Le Petit Trianon have chosen pieces from his immense body of work that felicitously blend the sonorities of the flute, violin, bassoon, cello and harpsichord.