Arpeggiata Yarantella

Philippe Jaroussky (born 13 February 1978 in Maisons-Laffitte, France)[1] is a French sopranist countertenor. He began his musical career with the violin, winning an award at the Versailles conservatory and then took up the piano before turning to singing. He is noted for a virtuosic coloratura technique and for compelling and enlivened interpretations of baroque cantatas and operas…

If you like Christina Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata’s wonderful way with old music, you’ll love this vibrant romp through some of the most engaging music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Frescobaldi and Handel are the best known of the composers here—the latter’s “Eternal Source of Light Divine” is magically updated. Rolf Lislevand’s lute- and theorbo-playing underpins the music with boundless imagination while some decidedly 21st-century muted brass-playing seems to take us into a Baroque jazz club. But then we are whisked back across the years for a thrillingly toe-tapping Pass’e mezzo e passacalli. Irresistible.

The works of the theorbist Bellerofonte Castaldi and the guitarist Domenico Pellegrini are little known but nonetheless remain fascinating to their performers today, as they not only give clear proof of fertile musical imagination but also raise many questions about how they should be performed. Although Castaldi was the first to praise the innovative style of his friend Monteverdi, his works are marked by a strong Renaissance spirit. Castaldi and Pellegrini chose not only the most classical forms (dances, courantes, galliards) but also the most archaic (branles, batailles, canzoni). Lutenist, theorbist and baroque guitarist Albane Imbs now presents her first solo album after having founded her own ensemble, Les Kapsber'girls and played in ensembles led by Jordi Savall, François Lazarevitch, Raphaël Pichon and Rolf Lislevand, the great Norwegian lutenist/theorbist who was her teacher. Here, Imbs and Lislevand perform Castaldi’s Capricci a due stromenti, the only example of music written for a duo of theorbo and tiorbino, this latter being a miniature theorbo conceived and played by Castaldi himself.

Over a period of five years, Swiss directors Norbert Wiedmer and Peter Guyer documented the activity of legendary producer Manfred Eicher, the founder and driving force behind ECM Records, whose advocacy of progressive jazz and of classical composers like Arvo Pärt, Meredith Monk, Valentin Silvestrov, and György Kurtág changed the landscape of contemporary music in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The film Sounds and Silence: Travels with Manfred Eicher was released in 2009 and this 2011 soundtrack album is made up largely of tracks taken from previously released ECM albums that Eicher produced, some from as early as 1980. Most of the pieces are low-key and understated and feature chamber ensembles, although there are several piano tracks and several featuring orchestra or chorus. The album has a mix of selections from ECM's classical and jazz repertoire, and from the label's specialty, the many pieces that lie somewhere in between the two.

Jakob Lindberg was born in Sweden and developed his first passionate interest in music through the Beatles. After studying music at Stockholm University he came to London to study at the Royal College of Music. Under the guidance of Diana Poulton he decided towards the end of his studies to focus on Renaissance and baroque music.