For this second part of his anthology of seventeenth-century German harpsichord music, Yoann Moulin takes as his starting point the famous competition organized when Weckmann and Froberger met at the court of Dresden. It was in the 1650s that the influences of the French style were grafted onto models drawn from Italian music. The compositions of this period appear to us in their infinite variety, as illustrated here by the notion of stylus luxurians. Yoann Moulin began his apprenticeship in music with Robert Weddle at the Ma�trise de Caen. There he discovered the harpsichord and studied with Bibiane Lapointe and Thierry Maeder, and after a stint at the Villecroze academy with Ilton Wjuniski he continued his studies at the Conservatoire National Sup�rieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris in the classes of Olivier Baumont, Kenneth Weiss and Blandine Rannou. At the same time, he discovered the clavichord thanks to �tienne Baillot.

In 1535 Sylvestro Ganassi published in Venice the first treatise developing the technique of the art of ornamentation at an unprecedented level of rhythmic complexity and virtuosity. Playing the recorder, the instrument to which Ganassi devoted his work, Denis Raisin Dadre applies the rules of the treatise to the repertoire that Ganassi practiced, frottole and, above all, the madrigals of Philippe Verdelot. With the ornaments, the music proves to be a living art that practices a constant rhythmic shift, the exuberant virtuosity of improvisations and a 'swing' that would be typical of jazz in the 20th century.

After devoting an album to sonatas by Giuseppe Tartini, for this anniversary year of the illustrious Paduan virtuoso, Evgeny Sviridov offers us a recording of violin concertos. This is his first collaboration with Millenium Orchestra, the ensemble founded by Leonardo Garcia Alarcon in the framework of CAVEMA in Namur. Most of the concertos selected come from manuscript copies made in eighteenth century Germany, where Tartini’s reputation was very high. Evgeny Sviridov has found in these scores cadenzas and ornaments which are very probably in the hand of Johann Georg Pisendel, the great virtuoso violinist of the Dresden court, a friend (and interpreter) of Johann Sebastian Bach! Following a practice that was becoming increasingly common in Germany at that time, one of the concertos has two horn parts in addition to the strings. Of the 130 or so surviving violin concertos, Evgeny Sviridov has selected five.

The majority of the sacred music of Johann Christian Bach, the youngest of the sons of J.S. Bach, was written during the time that he was organist of Milan Cathedral. This album includes first recordings of three sections of the Mass, one of these being a large-scale setting of the Gloria in which the music for the solo voices attains an almost operatic quality. The orchestral writing is also particularly brilliant and has already a classical sonority as well as passages in true concertante style. Four soloists perform here, alongside the Choeur de Chambre de Namur and Les Agremens, Les Agremens, founded in 1995 in Belgium, was created by the Namur Chamber Choir to provide them with the support of a reliable, competent partner for their own Baroque music productions.

Includes work(s) for organ by Louis J.A. Lefébure-Wely. Soloist: Joris Verdin.

The celebration of the Nativity has always been a source of inspiration for composers. The different elements of the evangelical narrative evoke numerous images: tender feelings before the Baby Jesus; the gentleness of his mother, the Virgin Mary; the procession of the three Wise Men; the angelic choirs in Heaven; and these shepherds gathered in the manger. All that appears in the musical repertoire linked to this holiday, as well as the presence of colourful instrumentations and themes connected to folk traditions. This set, released by Ricercar, brings together all these elements, drawn from the repertoires of the Renaissance and Baroque eras.

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.

Alessandro Scarlatti’s Sonate a quattro were published in 1725, the year of his death. With their specific marking ‘senza cembalo’ (without harpsichord), these compositions for two violins, viola and cello appear to be, in a sense, the first string quartets in the modern sense of the term. The program is completed by a few sonatas by his brother Francesco, the ‘London Scarlatti’, and Alessandro’s son Domenico, who had so thoroughly absorbed the contrapuntal tradition instilled in him by his father that some of his sonatas can also be played in quartet formation.

Classical Music

2021 sees the 500th anniversary of the death of Josquin Des Pres, the most celebrated composer of his day. Dominique Visse and the Ensemble Clément Janequin are recording a selection of his chansons from one of the most important editions of his works, Tylman Susato’s Septiesme livre de Chansons published in 1545. This edition bears witness to the diversity of Josquin’s chanson writing, but above all to the melancholy and sorrow so present in his works, and is clearly a tribute, as is also evident in the two Deplorations on his death, Musae Jovis by Nicolas Gombert and O mors inevitabilis by Hieronymus Vinders. This recording endeavors to present a Josquin legacy, a post mortem illustration of his chanson oeuvre, in remembrance of his musical genius. It has also enabled Dominique Visse and the Ensemble Clement Janequin to express their profound musical passion for this major Renaisance composer who has accompanied them for more than 40 years.

Classical Music

Although Girolamo Frescobaldi's organ works draw on the polyphonic tradition of the Renaissance, few virtuosos of the early 17th century tackled with as much originality the expressive movement that opened the way for what we consider 'Baroque music'. He transposed for the keyboard this sense of the affect and virtuosity that, in the sphere of opera, overturned all the conventions of vocal music. He recommended flexible playing, freed of any overly strict constraints, insisting on the fact that the musician must play 'con affetti cantabili' (with the affects of singing). Belgian organist, composer, conductor, and opera director Bernard Foccroulle performs these works beautifully. He is currently the director of the Theatre royal de la Monnaie.

Prague has always been regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The name 'Cor Europae' (Heart of Europe) probably dates from the country's early history, in the thirteenth century, when the Kingdom of Bohemia stretched from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. This was a period of great prosperity, especially under King Wenceslaus II Premyslid, and culminated with the reign of Charles IV, who was both King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor. Despite the fact that Bohemia was the centre of Europe and benefited from the presence of many scholars (more especially after the foundation of the university in 1348), the local culture also preserved an older tradition there. This can be seen in the beautiful repertory for the Advent and Christmas period that have survived in the sources of Prague Cathedral and the Benedictine abbey of Prague Castle. These sources make it possible to reconstruct the liturgy of the Feast of the Nativity as it was celebrated there, with organa and tropes in the tradition of twelfth-century music, at a time when the new Ars Nova style was flourishing elsewhere in Europe. It is this music that the wonderful voices of the Tiburtina Ensemble bring to life for us.

For his first recording with Ricercar, and as a prelude to an anthology of German Baroque harpsichord music, Yoann Moulin tackles works by two of Sweelinck's most illustrious disciples. The preludes, chorales, fugues, dances and arias with variations of this repertory offer great diversity and enable us to grasp the personalities of the two composers, the introverted Scheidt and the more flamboyant and Baroque Scheidemann. Yoann Moulin began his musical education with Robert Weddle. He discovered the harpsichord later, and studied with Bibiane Lapointe and Thierry Maeder before continuing his education at the Academy Villecroze and the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris. He has since performed in numerous solo and chamber music recitals and at different festivals including the Folles Days of Nantes, the Philharmonie de Paris, La Roque d'Antheron, and more. Recently, he cofounded the ensemble "A Band of Harpsichords," a consort of ancient keyboards that focuses on the music of the Renaissance, both written and improvised.

Classical Music

When Claudio Monteverdi arrived at the court of Mantua, he was initially engaged as a viol player. This is an aspect of his musical personality that is too often forgotten. Yet his brother Giulio Cesare reminds us in a letter that his improvisations on the viol alla bastarda were remarkable. At the time of his arrival, instrumental music played an important role at the court, which was dominated by the personalities of several musicians, chief among them the violinist Salomone Rossi. This programme illustrates the richness of the instrumental repertory at the Mantua court with the compositions of this virtuoso. But Monteverdi too was a master in the domain of instrumental music, which he handled with exceptional skill, as may be heard in the ballets of L’Orfeo, in the Ballo delle ingrate and in certain madrigals, such as Tempro la cetra, where the concertante role of instruments is fundamental. This evocation of music in Mantua at the time of Monteverdi also includes the irresistible Ballo di Mantova, a popular song that went through countless instrumental arrangements.

Andreas Hammerschmidt is undoubtedly the most unjustly neglected composer of seventeenth-century Lutheran Germany. Very few recordings have been devoted to him, even though his music was widely published during his lifetime. The fifteen or so published collections offer a great variety of works, which, like those of his famous contemporary Heinrich Schutz, illustrate the fusion between the Lutheran polyphonic tradition and the various stylistic influences of the Italian Baroque. For this musical portrait of Hammerschmidt, Vox Luminis has drawn on several of these collections in order to offer as rounded a picture as possible of the variety of the composer’s styles. The entire programme is structured around texts for Passiontide and Easter, introduced by an intensely moving madrigalian motet on the death of Christ, Ach Jesus stirbt.

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.

Lassus & Palestrina: Motetti, Madrigali e Canzoni diminuiti

This release presents some of some of the best-known works from the Renaissance, recorded by Vox Luminis and originally included in various boxed sets on historical themes (Flemish Polyphony, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Music in Europe at the time of the Renaissance) that Ricercar has released over the last years. Vox Luminis was established 15 years ago; today, the ensemble uses its sparkling traits to enhance the world of early music! The push was made in 2004 by Lionel Meunier – bass and founding base of Vox Luminis. The objective is to gain access to the Light through the Voice. Every year, the ensemble releases on average two discs and offers its audience more than 60 concerts on Belgian, European and international stages.

Frescobaldi's renown primarily stems from his keyboard works and from his position as organist at St. Peter's in Rome, although a certain number of his compositions are nonetheless linked to his connections with Florence and with the Grand Duke of Tuscany. In the city that saw the birth of accompanied monody Frescobaldi published two volumes of Arie musicali; these demonstrate a mastery of dramatic and theatrical expression that could have easily allowed him to become an opera composer. The instrumental Canzoni are dedicated to the same patron and are presented here as a subtle counterpoint to the vocal works.

Marin Marais published his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole two years after the death of Louis XIV, establishing himself as the undisputed master of the genre and providing pieces not only for musicians who had achieved some skill on the viol but also for the most virtuoso players. Here Marais reshaped the classical forms, altering the traditional sequence for the suites and making an increasing use of character pieces. The sometimes whimsical imagery and the new freedom of form that these pieces contain reach their peak in the astonishing Suitte d'un goût étranger; these thirty or so pieces employ as yet unheard-of keys and offer a multitude of characters and representations that can tend towards the exotic. Breaking further new ground, and somewhat influenced by the Italian trio, Marais ended the Quatrième Livre with two suites for three viols, a genre he claimed to be new to France.

Funerary cantatas are highly individual works within the German Protestant liturgy, often calling for specific instruments such as the recorder and the viola da gamba. This release includes not only J.S. Bach's youthful Actus Tragicus but also three other works that belong to this genre and that make full use of all its characteristics, including the string pizzicati that imitate the tolling of the funeral bell. Ricercar, to seek, has been the underlying motto of the Ricercar Consort ever since its foundation. It was in 1985, with J. S. Bach’s Musical Offering, that the ensemble made its first concert tour, having already acquired a solid international reputation with its recordings, notably in German Baroque cantatas and instrumental music. Today, under the direction of Philippe Pierlot, the Ricercar Consort continues to explore the Baroque repertoire, from chamber music to opera and oratorio, and to enthrall music-lovers with performances that are both profound and rigorous.

After having been organist at the church of Saint-Paul in Paris, the Li�ge-born Henry Du Mont became ma�tre de chapelle to Louis XIV. His first volume of motets, the Cantica Sacra, was published in 1652, thanks to which he made a name for himself as one of the creators of the motet fran�ais; he also composed the first motets � voix seule, a genre that would develop greatly over the following generations. This recording also includes several motets by L�onard Hodemont, ma�tre de chapelle of the cathedral of Saint-Lambert in Li�ge.

Whether it was called Krummhorn in German, storto in Italian or tournebout in French, this was an instrument whose performing life was limited to the Renaissance. After having carried out a great deal of research on the adjustment and tuning of these instruments, the musicians of Syntagma Amici have now turned their attention to its repertoire. They now shed light on several compositions for these instruments, having chosen pieces that suited the instruments best from German, Low Countries and Italian sources. This recording provides a touch of folly for all those who are devoted to this ephemeral instrument: its swan song was a Padouana by J.H. Schein that was published in 1617.