Echo Vocal Ensemble

Capella de la Torre is a German early music ensemble led by Katharina Bäuml, founded in 2005. In 2016 Katharina Bäuml and Capella de la Torre won the ECHO Klassik Ensemble des Jahres for their CD Water Music. In 2017 Capella de la Torre was awarded again with ECHO Klassik for the CD "Da Pacem" with Rias Kamerchor conducted by Florian Helgath. The ensemble is a wind ensemble, but has enlarged to include singers, lute, organ and percussion.

This recording offers us a close look into Michael Haydn's musical activities for the church, the court and its surroundings. The Missa is perfectly in accord with the then current ideals for reform in the Catholic Church: functional, short, simple, modest and linked to the Gregorian tradition. It is amazing how Haydn was able to compose such varied, lively and attractive music within these strict guidelines.

This recording offers us a close look into Michael Haydn's musical activities for the church, the court and its surroundings. The Missa is perfectly in accord with the then current ideals for reform in the Catholic Church: functional, short, simple, modest and linked to the Gregorian tradition. It is amazing how Haydn was able to compose such varied, lively and attractive music within these strict guidelines.

Ensemble Providencia - Crossing The Channel: Music From Medieval France & England 10th-13th century
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 267 MB | Full Artwork: 120 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Tacet # TACET 201 | Country/Year: Germany 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Early Music, Medieval, Vocal

"…The singing, as has been observed, is extremely good. The recording is also excellent, with plenty of echo but without excess resonance to cloud the crystal clarity of the individual voices. The booklet note draws attention to distant bird noises from outside the church, despite the recordings being made late in the evening and at night. One would like to think they were attracted by the music. In any event their vocal contributions are hardly detectable and need no excuse. The booklet provides full texts in the original languages – not only Latin, but mediaeval French and English as well – with excellent translations into modern English, modern French and German. The sleeve-notes were originally written in French, but the English translation is both idiomatic and informative, and give a very full and detailed list of all the sources employed. A model of how such material should be presented." ~musicweb-international

This disc contains some sonatas for wind instruments by Johann Sebastian Bach from his years in Weimar (1708-17) and Cöthen (1717-23), having in common – as they have come down to us or as several musicologists have proposed – their being intended for the recorder and/or the oboe. The interchangeability of instrumentation, linked to different creative periods, to practical contingencies, and to the inexhaustible desire for perfection that induced the genius of Eisenach, according to the testimony of his earliest biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, to continually revise his own works, often makes it difficult to go beyond their sterile catalogue dates in tracing their evolution. For this reason an experimental approach was chosen here, to bring back to their presumably original state what today is a handful of works, which were part of a much larger repertory. Chamber music was becoming the composer’s principal occupation in the time period under consideration, which was decisive in the progress of Bach’s career from organist to Konzertmeister (1714) and then to Kapellmeister of a Calvinist court (1717) essentially devoted to the cultivation of secular music.