Baroque

Alexei Lubimov is one of the most admired pianists of his generation, particularly for his exploration of rarely-played repertoire on period instruments. Together with his disciple, harpsichordist and pianist Olga Pashchenko, a rising star of the new generation, and accompanied by the musicians of the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, they embark on a voyage of discovery into the music of Czech composer Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812), with world premiere recordings on period instruments of his Concerto for Two Pianos and Notturno concertant. A trailblazing early romantic composer, Dussek created an innovative piano music style marked by a harmonic richness and intense emotional expressivity.

Northern Europe was a fertile ground for lyrical music: it has borrowed many memorable historical figures but is also indebted to it for many masterpieces by Baroque composers. Handel and Bach come to mind, of course, but we would be forgetting the Heinichen, Schürmann, Keiser and Telemann, whose brilliant opera music is so rarely performed. Many of them have portrayed monarchs, terrible or majestic, in their operatic works - roles that, unlike their southern colleagues, the composers of the Septentrion do not hesitate to entrust to lower voices.

Holland Baroque explores the monastic musical traditions of 17th-century North Brabant, together with a group of established early music vocalists. Brabant 1653 unveils hidden gems of Dutch music history, as well as of baroque music at large. The album’s central figure is Benedictus à Sancto Josepho, pre-eminent organist and composer of Brabant in the late seventeenth century, and known in France as “le grand Carme”. By putting his music and that of contemporaries in the limelight, artistic directors Judith and Tineke Steenbrink search for a distinguishable Brabant Style, and convincingly demonstrate that the Netherlands possessed a much richer musical culture than is usually acknowledged.

This recording realizes Barthold Kuijkens long-held desire to restore to Jean-Baptiste Lully, and to French Baroque orchestral works in general, the power and intensity that once held the musical world in thrall. To the grandeur, finesse and diversity of the genre he has brought original source material to inform specific bowing techniques and the use of ornamentation. The result, as with Telemanns Suite in E minor, which stands firmly in the Lully tradition, and Rameaus magnificent Suite from Dardanus, evokes the spectacle and splendor of Versailles. Barthold Kuijken is an eminent leader in the field of early music. A virtuoso traverse soloist, teacher and conductor, he has shaped the fields of historical flutes and historically informed performance over the last forty years. Kuijken has widely performed and recorded the repertoire for the Baroque flute and has collaborated with other early music specialists including his brothers Sigiswald and Wieland Kuijken, Frans Bruggen, Gustav Leonhardt, and Paul Dombrecht.

Musica Baltica Volume 4 Johann Jeremias Du Grain was on familiar terms with the musical greats of his era. He learned the musical trade from Telemann, who was already famous at the time, and he assisted the very busy Handel with the composition of a festive cantata for the five hundredth anniversary of Elbing, his chosen place of residence. One hears traces of these illustrious surroundings in Du Grain's own cantatas, which Andrzej Szadejko and the Goldberg Baroque Ensemble are now presenting for the first time on this audiophile multichannel release in the Musica Baltica series. Du Grain's cantatas not only represent the very best of their times; they are also extraordinarily appealing.

No opera composer of the Baroque era invested his stage works with more imaginative orchestral music than Jean-Philippe Rameau. The adventurous wind orchestration, rhythmic drive and variety, and complex interplay of voices found in his interludes, dances, and preludes are immediately striking to modern ears in a way that only the dedicated orchestral works of other Baroque masters can match (think Handel's Royal Fireworks Music, for example).

Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), was better-known as an organist than an important Baroque composer during his life time, though he was a prolific and influential composer. It is said that his organ chorales preludes and his fugues had an influence on Johann Sebastian Bach. Pachelbel held the position of organist in several churches and cathedrals in Austria and Germany. While most of his compositions were for the organ, he also wrote some chamber and vocal music.