The Hilliard Ensemble

25 years on from the release of Officium, the groundbreaking alliance of Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble, comes Remember me, my dear, recorded during the final tour the group made in October 2014. The program is emblematic of the range of repertoire the Norwegian saxophonist and British vocal quartet explored together– from Pérotin, Hildegard von Bingen, Guillaume le Rouge, Antoine Brumel to Komitas , Arvo Pärt and more. It could be said that the Hilliard/Garbarek combination, in concert, transcended its source materials, with early music, contemporary composition and improvisation interfused in the responsive acoustics of sacred spaces. And this final album reminds us that the unique Garbarek/Hilliard combination, and its unprecedented exploration of sound, was consistently breathtaking.

The Golden Age of Music & Theatre: The times of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) offered much more than great theatre. Those were years when music flourished, a time of saucy street ballads, of melancholy lute-songs and madrigals. Great artists of the early music scene convey us into this seemingly distant world and bring it to life…

This recording represents a wide and diverse repertoire. The virtuosic singing of this male quartet will just blow you away. The vocal style has that distinctly renaissance sound to it, yet put with this modern repertoire the juxtaposition is just wonderful. As previous reviewers have mentioned there are very good liner notes, and much of the material has been written specifically for this ensemble and can be found nowhere else.

These first reissues in Virgin Veritas’s new Hilliard Edition mark a belated tribute to one of the most enduring names of the early music scene, and the long-awaited return to the catalogue of some of its finest work. English music often has the knack of bringing out the best in The Hilliard Ensemble, so it is appropriate that three of the present batch of discs are devoted to the period when English music was at its most influential, the early- to mid-fifteenth century. Last year’s Gramophone Early Music Award, given to a recording of the music of John Dunstable by the Orlando Consort (Metronome, 2/96), was actually the second time the composer has been so honoured: The Hilliards’ disc won the award in 1984. Nearly 15 years on, it is more than worthy to stand alongside its successor.

These first reissues in Virgin Veritas’s new Hilliard Edition mark a belated tribute to one of the most enduring names of the early music scene, and the long-awaited return to the catalogue of some of its finest work. English music often has the knack of bringing out the best in The Hilliard Ensemble, so it is appropriate that three of the present batch of discs are devoted to the period when English music was at its most influential, the early- to mid-fifteenth century. Last year’s Gramophone Early Music Award, given to a recording of the music of John Dunstable by the Orlando Consort (Metronome, 2/96), was actually the second time the composer has been so honoured: The Hilliards’ disc won the award in 1984. Nearly 15 years on, it is more than worthy to stand alongside its successor.