The Golden Age of Light Music

Universally famous for his glorious overtures Light Cavalry and Poet and Peasant (Naxos 8.553935), Franz von Suppé was one of the greatest exponents of the golden Age of Viennese Operetta. But he was also a master of incidental music for popular plays, one of which is Mozart – an example of Künstler-Lebensbild (‘life portrait of an artist’). Suppé’s music subtly accompanies the stage action as the story of the composition of Mozart’s music unfolds, offering a potpourri of Mozart’s works served up with Suppé’s trademark flair. Die Afrikareise presents a piquant and brilliant travelogue.

Fretwork here unveils some obscure but engaging works from the golden age of English consort music by the little-known but accomplished composers Martin Peerson and John Milton, father of the celebrated poet. The programme combines scholarship, performance and recording technology to bring to light some two-dozen forgotten works, from dancing almaines to brooding intricate fantasias.

Manuel Cardoso (1566–1650) was one of the most important composers of the golden age of Portuguese polyphony around the turn of the seventeenth century. But history has not been kind to him: the 1755 Lisbon earthquake that ruined the Convento do Carmo, where he spent most of his working life, also resulted in the loss of the only attested image of the composer and a good deal of his music – and much of that which survived has been neglected, his Masses included. This series will shed long-overdue light on these forgotten masterpieces, beginning with two ‘parody’ Masses, so called because they are based on existing music, in this instance two Palestrina motets.