Avonmore Books Pacific Profiles

Reference Recordings proudly presents this unique album containing 11 works of early Baroque composers. They are performed by Pacific MusicWorks, founded by GRAMMY® Award winner Stephen Stubbs, Artistic Director. Artists on this album are featured soloist Tekla Cunningham, baroque violin; William Skeen, bass violin; Stephen Stubbs, baroque guitar and chitarrone; Maxine Eilander, baroque harp; and Henry Lebedinsky, organ and harpsichord. "Stylus Phantasticus" was produced by GRAMMY® award winner David Sabee, and recorded by GRAMMY® award winning engineers Dmitry Lipay, Aleksandr Lipay and Kory Kruckenberg.

The final chords of the revolutionary world premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna on May 7, 1824 had hardly faded away (one of the many enthusiastic listeners in the hall was the 27-year-old Franz Schubert!) when the star composer got straight to work on a new string quartet; the work, following his latest string quartet, Op. 45 which was composed 14 years earlier, was commissioned by Prince Nikolaus Galitzin and became the quartet in E-flat major, Op. 127. In the same year, and interestingly written in immediate spatial and temporal proximity to the studio in which Beethoven was just about to open the doors to musical modernism, Schubert, after having spent several weeks in the Vienna general hospital for treatment of his suspected syphilis desease, composed his String Quartet No. 13 in A minor, D. 804, the so-called Rosamunde Quartet.