Intimate Companions

The hours I spent learning Beethoven‘s last three sonatas were among the most cherished of my life. They were filled with the exhilaration of being in the presence of something magnificent, something truly meaningful. Over the years, these sonatas have become my intimate companions – a continuous source of learning and an always sympathetic yet mercilessly honest corrective for me… I learned Helmut Lachenmann‘s Wiegenmusik (Cradle Music) as a teenager, around the same time I actually met him at my grandfather‘s home.

SNOWY WHITE is something of an unknown known size. Since the beginning of the seventies he is a fond wanted and booked session musicians, but also with several solo albums at the start as a guitarist (and singer). WHITE played with PETER GREEN, played with THIN LIZZY, he accompanied PINK FLOYD and was traveling with ROGER WATERS. In the "the wall" Zarco 1990 in Berlin even partially in the foreground. But a superstar, a guitar hero never became of him, for he is far too modest, of which you can convince yourself in the 25-minute backstage documentation of this DVD. An esteemed musician who is never verscherzte it with his longtime companions, he always is. And his companions came to apparently happy and in spite of closely packed schedules - also to refer to the interview section, than to record a concert DVD SNOWY WHITE AND FRIENDS. No mega-event, whether outdoors or in a large hall, but rather a club session in the "MuziekCentrum de Bosuil" in the Dutch Weert…..

Ha! compagnons takes the listener back to a time when the voice and the lute were the true companions in the quest for poetic and musical expression. In exploring this fruitful partnership, Canadian soprano Elodie Bouchard and American lutenist Anthony Harvey offer vivid and colourful interpretations of air de cour, ayres and monodies by 17th-century composers Giulio Caccini, Thomas Campion, Sigismondo d’India, Claudio Monteverdi and Etienne Moulinié.