la Veillee Imaginaire

The "laude" of the Renaissance Italian city-states have survived in just two manuscripts; until recently they constituted one of the last major genres of Early Music to be reconstructed and performed. Essentially, they were the music commissioned by the guild-like confraternities (with members from the middle and lower economic classes of the cities) for performance by the members and by well-paid professional soloists, at festivals and in the side-chapels of the cathedrals where most lay people attended to their religious devotions. In short, the music of the people rather than the priests.

"It was in the 18th century that the seraglio first excited Western European imagination, not least as a result of the Arabian Nights, which, first published in Europe in 1704, owed its immense and immediate popularity to its combination of the most daring intellectuality and consummate sensuality. With YEHUDI (the Ottoman word for Jew), L'Orient Imaginaire seeks to revive the centuries-old tradition of Jewish music at the court of Constantinople.
THE ANCIENT ORIENT, a land of vivid fantasies, fairy tales and legends. Throughout time, crusaders, adventurers, poets and lovers have all sought to unlock its languishing mysteries in order to gaze upon such a forbidden and unattainable world. In the end, they could only perceive the vision - the Orient of the imagination.".

VA - Folklore Imaginaire
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 200 MB | Full Artwork: 46 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: NRW Records # NRW 2031 | Country/Year: Germany 2005
Genre: World, Jazz, Folk | Style: Future Jazz, Crossover

"Der Begriff der imaginären Folklore, der zunächst von Béla Bartók geprägt wurde, wurde von der Musikerinitiative ARFI - Association à la Recherche d'un Folklore Imaginaire aus Lyon auf den zeitgenössischen Jazz übertragen. Mit ihrem Konzept einer "imaginären Folklore" führte sie den europäischen Jazz zu neuen Improvisationsmöglichkeiten über Strukturen und Harmonien, die vertraut klingen und entfernt an Volkslieder und alte Tänze erinnern…"

Nino Rota’s reputation outside Italy as, at best, a civilised purveyor of minor theatre music is turning out to be hardly even a half-truth. BIS’s series of his symphonic and chamber works, and Chandos’s of the concertos, reveals a composer of incisive gifts and technical brilliance. Civilised the music certainly is, but often far more than that, its pervasive wit enhancing rather than detracting from the elegant suggestions of deep feeling. The wise and wily ‘neo-classicism’ of the Third Symphony sets out like an exercise in updated Mozart, but though Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony is brought to mind it soon becomes evident that a strain of acid melancholy undercuts the dapper phraseology. The model here, if there is one, seems more likely to be late Busoni, with disturbing cross-currents just beneath the surface. The Concerto festivo, more obviously a display piece, takes Italian opera genres (aria, cabaletta, etc) and reinterprets them in fairly irreverent orchestral terms, while the ballet music that Rota produced for the tercentenary of the death of Molière – almost his last work –insouciantly mixes Baroque, modern and popular styles, just as it mixes merriment and melancholy, with constant technical brilliance and utter lack of pomposity. The Swedish performers take to the Italianate gaiety as to the manner born. A delightful disc.

This live recording has a frisson about it and Les Musiciens du Louvre create a sound that blends and blooms in the Théâtre de Poissy. Minkowski has chosen music that contrasts well on many…