Toronto

For more than 25 years, the Toronto Consort has been researching and presenting innovative performances of early music. The seven-member ensemble specializes in music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and often combines with other musicians, dancers, and occasionally actors to bring centuries-old music to life for modern audiences. This wonderful collection of pieces by the great Franco-Flemish master Orlando di Lasso primarily features solo and ensemble vocal works, all of them secular songs and madrigals whose sole subject is love. While most have a certain refinement in both music and text, the disc's final selection depicts a wild, somewhat bawdy street scene "complete with squawking roosters and quarreling lovers." One of the disc's highlights is a gorgeous duet with recorder and organ.

Composer – Born in the Bohemian village of Nechanicz, Vanhal (1739-1813) became a leading composer in Vienna and one of the most popular throughout Europe during his lifetime. As with most Classical era composers, his stock fell dramatically after his death. However, the Naxos series of Vanhal symphonies reveals an expert composer of elegance and hard-driving rhythms with a wealth of melodic invention.

Leopold Mozart’s reputation has suffered more than that of most of his professional contemporaries, due in no small measure to the fame of his peerless son and to much spiteful and ill-informed criticism over the past 200 years. Yet he was an acute and sardonic observer of men and morals, a superlative critic and teacher and, as this recording shows, a fine composer whose works circulated well beyond the confines of Salzburg and made the name Mozart famous before it became immortal.