Oswald

For this new instalment of their series devoted to British music of the eighteenth century, the musicians of La Rêveuse take us to London in the 1740s. The leading Italian and German virtuosos Handel invited to play in his orchestra brought a powerful wind of change to English musical life, while the Scot James Oswald achieved the tour de force of making the music of his country fashionable in the drawing rooms of London.

This is a splendid collection of German music from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. In under an hour, sixteen distinctive and beautifully evocative accompanied songs are performed with style and commitment by the Swedish ensemble, Oliphant (Uli Kontu-Korhonen, chant, drum; Eira Karlson, fiddle, slide trumpet; Leif Karlson, lute, symphony, percussion; Janek Öller, recorders, hümmelchen, bomba). The four person group specializes in medieval music – performed on period instruments where possible. The perform with an "edge" that's at the same time gentle, considered and highly communicative. Indeed, the acoustic on this CD is close and warm without being at all cloying. That has the result of thrusting the very essence of the words (whose articulation is clear and penetrating) and the production of the sounds – on the fiddle, for instance – to the forefront of our attention over and above any more general impression we may have as a result of the music's strong aural flavor.

Wondrous Machine is the title of an air from Purcell's Odes for St. Cecilia's Day, a hymn of praise to the music of which Cecilia is considered the patron saint, and to the instruments from the flute to the organ, of which she is considered the inventor. Not as an inventor, but as an innovative rediscoverer and ambassador of an equally "wondrous" instrument, namely the historical harp and its "entourage", is Margret Koell. She programmatically places the title "Wondrous Machine" above a project that focuses on the tonal mutability of the triple harp. The programme focuses on George Frideric Handel: the Concerto Op. 7 No. 1 for harp, lute and orchestra is Koell's arrangement of the original concerto for organ and orchestra. The Concerto Op. 4 No. 6 is presented here for the first time in the extremely rarely heard version of 1736 for harp and lyrichord (viola organista) - the latter, a bowed keyboard instrument, is based on sketches by Leonardo da Vinci.

In the 1730s, many composers tried their luck in London. Geminiani revolutionized instrumental writing with his famous treatise on interpretation and presented an amazing version of La Folia; his pupil Avison orchestrated concertos by Scarlatti, and Porpora ventured away from opera to rediscover the vocality of the cello with one of the most beautiful concertos of that period. Ophélie Gaillard and Pulcinella treat us to a frenzied and poetic night in London. They meet Vivaldi, Hasse, Scottish composer James Oswald and virtuoso cellist Giovanni Battista Cirri. Guest artists Sandrine Piau and Lucile Richardot take on magnificent vocal pieces by Geminiani and Handel.

Grayfolded is a two-CD album produced by John Oswald featuring the Grateful Dead song "Dark Star". Using over a hundred different performances of the song, recorded live between 1968 and 1993, Oswald, using a process he calls "plunderphonics", built, layered, and "folded" all of them to produce two large, recomposed versions, each about one hour long.