Pedro Lamebel

Pedro de Escobar (c. 1465-c.1535) was a composer of the same renaissance generation as Josquin, Isaac, Mouton and De La Rue. He was born in Porto, Portugal but was of Castilian ancestry; his work was in great demand in his time and he spent part of his working life in Spain, much of this in the service of the Catholic Queen Isabella I. His best-known works today are a Requiem Mass (recorded twice so far), a Magnificat setting and a handful of motets, but this present CD brings us the first recording of a complete ordinary Mass setting, simply titled ‘Missa 4v.’

A native of Cuba, Leo Brouwer is universally acknowledged as one of the most challenging and innovative of contemporary composers. This programme brings the guitar into consort with the bandurria, a small lute dating from the 16th century and perennially popular in South America, the combination perfect for expressing the rustic rhythms of Cuban folk style in Música Incidental Campesina. This recording covers a kaleidoscopic range of techniques and emotions, from political martyrdom in Chile to the immense vistas of Brazil. The Sonata para Bandurria was composed for one of the virtuoso performers on this recording, Pedro Chamorro.

This is the second monographic CD dedicated to Jorge Grundman on the prestigious Sony Classical label. It contains the first three world premiere recordings of three orchestral works by the composer. The Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra under the baton of the prestigious conductor and composer Pedro Halffter, accompanies pianist Eduardo Frías and cellist Iagoba Fanlo in the recording.

At the beginning of the 17th century the Brussels court experienced an extraordinary cultural splendour thanks to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Eugenia, during a period of peace and prosperity in the Southern Low Countries under Spanish Habsburg rule. The sovereigns, who were great collectors and patronized artists such as Brueghel de Velours and Rubens, maintained a magnificent musical chapel with a substantial number of Spanish, Italian and English musicians. It was in this context that the work of the Zaragoza native Pedro Ruimonte unfolded. Master of chamber music under the Archdukes, his Parnaso español (1614) represents one of the capstones in the history of Spanish music.

This selection of chamber music by leading Portuguese composer Pedro Faria Gomes was written between 2007 and 2018. The works encompass themes of memory, change and waiting, with the concept of time being a central preoccupation. Though he has drawn on music from his country’s folk traditions – in Memória and in the Sonata – it is always with new harmonic insights and subtlety, creating undeniably invigorating additions to contemporary chamber music repertoire.

Portuguese composer Pedro de Cristo is nowhere near as familiar as Duarte Lobo or Manuel Cardoso, who may show up on general concerts of Renaissance choral music. Cristo's music was never published and was largely lost to history until some painstaking research work, described in the booklet of this Hyperion release. That is likely to change after this 2022 release by the eight-voice choir Cupertinos, which made classical best-seller charts late that year. The music is lovely, with the limpid, reverential treatment of text found in the works of Cristo's greatest Spanish contemporaries. There are long homophonic stretches in the motets that have a starkly emotional effect. The Missa Salve regina, whose motet exemplar is included, is more thoroughly polyphonic, but Cristo's orientation toward directness and clarity remains. Sample the gorgeous Crucifixus section.

Ondulation is a fascinating album featuring spellbinding recordings of Bach’s Suites and Partitas on the guitar, interspersed by first recordings of György Kurtág’s four short pieces extracted from “Darabok a Gitáriskolának”…

There have been two recordings so far of this Requiem by the Portuguese renaissance composer Pedro de Escobar, the other being Requiem , sung by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois directed by Dominique Vellard. The present disc, by the one-voice-per-part ensemble Quodlibet, was recorded in 1989 and reissued in 2005. The group sing with spirit and conviction; their ensemble and blend are not always ideal, but they rise to the occasion as we get to the Requiem itself halfway through the programme. In fact, among the motets and other items we find on the first eight tracks, there are also some lovely things, including a beautiful `Stabat Mater' (track 3) and a splendidly theatrical `Clamabit autem mulier' (A Canaanite woman cried out, track 5), where the ensemble admirably conveys the human drama of this gospel story.