Soprano's

This programme represents most of Pablo Ortiz’s recent choral writing, the multifaceted variety of which reflects the composer’s intense emotional connection with the past. Maizal del gregoriano uses a musical language that is reminiscent of Benedictine chant, while The Darkling Thrush absorbs Thomas Hardy’s melancholy depiction of the end of an era. Mozart is referenced in the operatic Teatro Martín Fierro Suite, as are the beauties of 16th-century madrigals in E ne la face de’ begli occhi accende. The final Metamorphoses is a remarkable superimposition of Medieval motets, expressing the essence of Ortiz’s belief in music as the ultimate time machine.

Arnold & Hugo de Lantins (1415-1430) - Secular Works - Le Miroir de Musique, Baptiste Romain (2016) {Ricercar}
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© 2016 Ricercar / Outhere Music | RIC 365
Classical / Early Music / Medieval / Renaissance

The composers Arnold and Hugo de Lantins were natives of the diocese of Liège, but it was in Italy, principally in Pesaro and Venice that their presence is confirmed between the years of 1420 and 1430. As with the works of Johannes Ciconia, a fellow native of Liège whose time in Italy had preceded theirs, their secular and sacred compositions are preserved in manuscripts copied in Italy. Closely rubbing shoulders with their illustrious contemporary Guillaume Dufay, the Lantins brothers combined archaic traits with the earliest characteristics of the Renaissance. Le Miroir de Musique presents a large selection of French and Italian chansons which enriches our view of the cultural sophistication of the Italian courts at the start of the 15th century.

...Ton Koopman is an exclusive artist of the Time-Warner organization for which he is recording the complete cycle of the sacred and secular Cantatas of J.S. Bach as well as the integral of the works for organ. The organ recordings have been completed in July 1999. The cantatas will be completed in 2004. In September 1997 Ton Koopman was rewarded the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis "Echo Klassik 1997" for the Bach Cantatas...

Ton Koopman (Conductor, Harpsichord, Organ) - Short Biography

The chamber cantata flourished in Italy as a counterpart to public opera and oratorio, cultivated by aristocratic patrons for their personal enjoyment. Perhaps because of its essentially private origins, this pervasive Baroque form remains little known today. During his years in Italy (1706-1710), George Frideric Handel composed nearly 100 cantatas for a series of important patrons, but they have tended to be passed over in favor of his larger operas, oratorios, concertos and orchestral suites. The plan of La Risonanza to perform and record all of the cantatas with instrumental accompaniment (about one-third of the total) is therefore of signal importance for all music lovers, as it will bring this extraordinarily beautiful music once again to life (2006-2009).

Originally composed for the funeral of the dauphine, Princess Marie-Anne-Christine-Victoire of Bavaria, on May 1, 1690, this remarkable setting of Dies irae was revised in 1711, either because of the dauphin's death, or that of Lalande's two daughters, both distinguished sopranos ; all died from smallpox within a period of six weeks. Lully's setting of Dies irae, for the death of the queen in 1683, had shown the possibilities of this text as a grand motet for soloists, choirs and orchestra. But it was Lalande, seven years later, who developed the concept, and produced a much more striking result - perhaps the first setting of Dies irae in the history of music where the composer exploited in such dramatic style the contrasts inherent in the 18 rhyming stanzas and final couplet of this 13th-century poem.

The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir (= ABO&C), founded in 1979 by Ton Koopman, are a group of musicians from all over the world, with a particular passion for the Baroque. About seven times a year they get together to perform live and make CD-recordings under the inspired direction of Ton Koopman...

The Bach Cantatas Website