Metaphor

Foreign Insult: English Baroque Music by Expatriate Composers - La Ricordanza
(G. F. Handel, F. Barsanti, G. Finger, J. C. Bach, N. Mattteis, C. F. Abel)
Classical, Baroque | 1 CD | EAC | FLAC, CUE, LOG | Scans | 339 MB | RS
Recorded: 5-7 Oct. 2004, Schloß Gifthorn, Germany | Released: 2006
Label: Dabringhaus und Grimm MDG 505 1381-2 | TT: 65:58
La Ricordanza

Accurately titled or not, this is a superb recording of English Baroque music. It captures the crackling commercial energy that united the music of the Germans and Italians at work in the English capital. Most interesting of all are the four short selections from A Collection of Old Scots Tunes by Barsanti. Preceding Moore's Irish songs and Beethoven's and Haydn's arrangements of Scots and Irish songs by nearly 100 years, these are very early examples of musical exoticism. (James Manheim, All Music Guide)

The Umbra Lucis Ensemble present an intriguing disc portraying the Anghiari Battle in works by Byrd, Dowland, Andreuccetti, Dufay, de Victoria, Hume and others. The relationship between music and war bears witness to the ethical dimension of music and its impact on the human. But warfare is also a metaphor and sign of the battles to which the existence is voted: amorous disputes, moral duels … In a word: the dialectic between shadow and light that which incessantly beats life. Shadow and light that has marked, according to the contemporary chronicle, also one of the symbolic events of the Italian Renaissance: he Battle of Anghiari.