The Tigress Of Forli: Renaissance Italy's Most Courageous And Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza De' Medici

Praetorius devoted most of his life to church music: he published more than twenty collections, mostly of settings of Lutheran chorales, and a number of others are known to have existed in manuscript. He also planned a series of collections of secular music named after the various Greek muses, including Euterpe (Italian and English dances), Thalia (toccatas and canzonas) and Erato (German secular songs). Unfortunately, in the event he managed to publish only one, Terpsichore, musarum aoniarum quinta (1612), consisting of 312 dances in four, five and six parts.

Once, Portugal ruled the waves, sending explorers round the Cape of Good Hope to India and across the wide Atlantic to Brazil. After the death of King Sebastian and the end of the Age of Discovery, however, Spain ruled Portugal, and it is from this period that the works on the disc called Masterpieces of Portuguese Polyphony come. But although the sacred a cappella music here was clearly influenced by the Spanish sacred a cappella music of the same period, it is still clearly not Spanish music. In these beautifully sculpted and richly textured performances by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral under Master of Music James O'Donnell, there is a clarity, a lightness, an openness, and a spiritual optimism evident that Spanish music from the same period often lacks. Featuring five motets and a set of Lamentations by Manuel Cardoso, a Panis angelicus by João Lourenço Rebelo, five motets and a Magnificat by Pedro de Cristo, and an Alma rememptoris mater by Aires Fernandez, this 2007 reissue largely consists of works heretofore known only to listeners who heard the disc when it was first released in 1992, but anyone who enjoys sacred choral music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century will surely enjoy this disc. Hyperion's sound is lush, round, and full.