Siesta Ensemble & Ovidio Gimenez Bassoon Delights

PHOENIX performs Bach's Goldberg Variations in an outstanding arrangement for strings and continuo made by conductor Bernard Labadie.

The debut album from a Spanish string-bass ensemble with a mission to revive lost treasures of chamber music from the Baroque era.

Marin Marais (1656–1728) besides being Louis XIV’s court musician, was a prolific composer. He composed both operas, certain of which were very successful, instrumental music and some (lost) religious vocal music. As a viol player he published five books which include some of the most interesting and beautiful music for the viol. These five books also are chock full of performance instructions both for the left hand as well as the bow hand. They are a gold mine for viol players and are as relevant to teaching a musician good technique on the viol nowadays as they were when originally printed in the late seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century.

From Ockeghem born around 1420 to Lassus dead in 1594 via Josquin des Prés, this 8-CD collection presents almost two centuries of masterworks from one of the most extraordinary musical school, that could be compared to the Italian Renaissance in architecture or painting. The Hilliard Ensemble, founded by Paul Hillier in 1974 has championed this music with all the virtues of their instantly recognizable style and with a clarity and cleanness of timbre that are matchless.