Duo Biao 2008

The art of the piano four hands has gone unnoticed for many years and its historical importance has been minimised in comparison with other chamber music ensembles. Nevertheless, the great composers have dedicated works to this formation, and there is an extensive literature for it. “Essenz” was created with the intention of highlighting the exceptional repertoire written for piano four hands, choosing some of the works we consider to be the fundamental pillars of the genre.

The performance of this High Baroque piece in a Classical guise would not be worth mentioning at all if it had not contained the spark for the next folia, the Twenty-Six Variations on La Folia di Spagna of 1815 by Eybler’s teacher, Antonio Salieri (1750–1825). A recording of this instrumentation treatise in sounds, with a scoring enhanced by three trombones, bass drum and, above all, a harp, was included in the third album in our series Beethoven’s World.

In 2021, Stuart MacRae heard a recorded performance by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean of The Lif of this World, his 2008 setting of an anonymous Middle English lyric. Entranced by the way she shaped its phrases and ornamentation, he immediately began to conceive new works for her voice, solo or lightly accompanied, as well as to bring to completion several other works-in-progress.

SIXTY-NINE is a little known German progressive rock duo formed in 1969 by Armin Stöwe (organ, piano, synthesizer, guitar, vocals) and Roland Schupp (drums, percussion, gongs). SIXTY-NINE gained significant popularity as a live act and consequently had the opportunity to play, often as an opening act, at a variety of rock festivals with the likes of popular bands such as GOLDEN EARRING, AMON DÜÜL II, UFO, BEGGAR'S OPERA, PETE YORK, WEST BRUCE & LAING, BIRTH CONTROL, JUD'S GALLERY, AGITATION FREE, FRUMPY, and GURU GURU.

SIXTY-NINE is a little known German progressive rock duo formed in 1969 by Armin Stöwe (organ, piano, synthesizer, guitar, vocals) and Roland Schupp (drums, percussion, gongs). SIXTY-NINE gained significant popularity as a live act and consequently had the opportunity to play, often as an opening act, at a variety of rock festivals with the likes of popular bands such as GOLDEN EARRING, AMON DÜÜL II, UFO, BEGGAR'S OPERA, PETE YORK, WEST BRUCE & LAING, BIRTH CONTROL, JUD'S GALLERY, AGITATION FREE, FRUMPY, and GURU GURU.

The cantata, to some extent, is a development from the madrigal that appeared in Italy at the start of the seventeenth century. While the madrigal was refined and delicate, the cantata evolved because composers felt the need to introduce a dramatic narrative element into vocal chamber music and thusly the music took a lighter, wittier turn.
Scarlatti is considered as one if the initiators, and also one of the reformers of this genre, whose outlines he established. In his cantatas for a single solo voice and continuo, Scarlatti treats the latter as a true partner of the voice.

With its fourteen fugues and four canons, all of which are derived from the same thematic germ cell, J. S. Bach’s "The Art of Fugue" contains within it a veritable cornucopia of constructional variants. In his own Studies, Reinhard Febel takes apart the constituent elements of Bach’s work and reassembles them in completely new ways, occasionally opening up the musical material and allowing it to range over the entire keyboard.

Carlo Domeniconi is a master of guitar composition. His fusion of Western and Eastern elements is a distinctive feature of his writing, and this album presents a body of work for the unusual combination of mandolin and guitar. The large-scale Durandarte charts a medieval knights wild journey through the countryside, which is accompanied by poignant love songs, elegies, and agitated cross-rhythms.