Oriol Ribera

The Bernardino de Ribera whose works are recorded here, all but one for the first time, is all but unknown; he is not to be confused with the Spanish-Mexican composer Bernardino de Ribera Sahagún. He was active in the city of Toledo, Spain, a generation before Tomás Luis de Victoria, whom he taught and influenced. His obscurity is due to vandalism rather than to any issue of musical quality: the splendid manuscript that forms the main source for his music was cut up by someone who wanted the illuminations, and on the reverse of those were many sections of Ribera's works.

Thanks to recordings such as this one, the figure of Johann Wilhelm Wilms (1772-1847) is increasingly coming into focus and prominence as a notable contemporary of Beethoven who deserves better than his previous obscurity. In 1807, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung described the Wilms as ‘one of the most ingenious, spirited, and best educated artists’ of his generation: a judgment borne out by the this trio of high-spirited chamber works.

How do you present music by an unknown composer on a market which already overflows with discs and in particular in a time of economic decline? You can devote a whole disc to this repertoire, but there is a good chance that a considerable part of the target group would remain sceptical. So many interpreters pretend that the music they have discovered is of world-class quality. Do we need to believe them? Emilio Percan tries to convince us that the music of Giovanni Antonio Piani is really worthwhile. He does so by presenting it together with music by two well-known masters of his time. That seems the most sensible way: if the listener is disappointed about Piani, he still has Handel and Geminiani to enjoy.
– Johan van Veen, MusicWeb International