In August 1986 two pairs of young sisters (Claudia and Livia Caffagni, Elisabetta and Ella de Mircovich) founded the ensemble La Reverdie. The name, derived from a poetic genre that celebrates the return of Spring, reveals perhaps the principal trait of a group that, for 30 years now, has captivated audiences and critics alike for the variety in its approach to the vast and varied musical repertoire of Middle Ages and early Renaissance. To mark this anniversary, Arcana brings together in a single 5-CD box-set all the themed projects that, over the years, La Reverdie has devoted to various aspects of Medieval culture.
Frieder Bernius and his Stuttgart forces weigh in with one of the finer Mozart Requiems in a very crowded field–and to ensure this performance’s relative exclusivity, it’s one of only a handful of recordings that use the edition by Franz Beyer, an intelligent and persuasive 1971 effort to correct “obvious textural errors” and some decidedly un-Mozartian features in the orchestration attributable to Franz Süssmayr, Mozart’s pupil/assistant who completed the work after the master’s death. This live concert performance from 1999 offers well-set tempos (including a vigorous Kyrie fugue), infectious rhythmic energy from both chorus and orchestra, robust, precise, musically compelling choral singing, a first rate quartet of soloists–and, especially considering its concert-performance setting, impressively detailed and vibrant sonics. The CD also features informative notes by Beyer himself.
In the Middle Ages Italy was not the unified country that we would like to think of since the nineteenth century, following the Romantic era and the formation of the modern state. It was quite the contrary, a nebula in which there was opposition between the great divisions of the Tyrrhenian West and the Adriatic East, as of the South with its memories of Greece and the North which sought links with the Germanic world in a kind of prefiguration of modern Europe: the Alpine range did not constitute a real barrier.
Piet Blank and Jaspa Jones - the producers known worldwide. For two they have let out already many albums and tens magnificent singles, reliably having fixed in world history of dancing music. Their hits more than once appeared at tops of charts, and each new album stably got to number 50 of the best to Germany. It started in 1997 with their debut single "Sunrise", the first step towards producing their own tracks. Nowadays, one cannot imagine the electronic elite without Blank & Jones. During their career they have known no musical boundaries and have worked with Artists such as Robert Smith from The Cure, Bernard Sumner from New Order, Sarah McLachlan, the Pet Shop Boys and Keane to name just a few. Their sound has evolved over the years and so has their worldwide success…