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A veteran of Jordi Savall's Hespèrion XX and XXI, gambaist Marianne Muller makes her Zig Zag Territories debut with this disc of music by the great French Baroque composer Marin Marais. The repertoire is daunting: the ingenious and evocative Le Labyrinthe, the 32 virtuoso variations on Les Folies d'Espagne, and the 12-movement Suite in E minor from Marais' Second Book of Pièces de viole. These are works that require not just virtuosity, stamina, intense expressivity, and soulful beauty of tone.

Adam de la Halle (c. 1237 - 1288) was one of the first composers to receive the honour of having manuscripts copied comprising his complete works, surely indicative of the esteem in which he was held. De la Halle moved between two worlds as the music of the courts of the nobility was moving out into the aspiring merchant classes of the cities.
His songs of courtly love are characterised by, to use his own phrase, "mal joli", or delightful woe.

Period-instrument performances of Beethoven's violin sonatas aren't too common; they pose thorny problems of balance even beyond the question of whether Beethoven wouldn't have preferred modern instruments if he could have had them. But this superbly musical set by violinist Midori Seiler, playing an Italian Baroque violin of unknown manufacture, and fortepianist Jos van Immerseel, on a copy of an entirely appropriate Viennese Walter piano, may well redefine the standard for these works.

One of the darkest corners of Tomaso Albinoni's worklist is his chamber music. Albinoni's Opus 2, published in 1700, is particularly problematical, as half of its 12 numbers are chamber sonatas and the other half consists of concertos, chamber concertos to be sure, but the very word concerto is often taken automatically to mean orchestral music. T

Just a generation ago, Heinrich von Biber's Rosary (or "Mystery") Sonatas were looked upon as ultra-rare repertoire, the sort of thing a Classical record collector would have to go out of his/her way to obtain on recordings. It appears that by now anyone who plays Baroque violin music to any degree of seriousness has had contact with Biber's sonatas, and there are no less than 20 complete or near complete recordings of Rosary Sonatas available.

A terrific idea that almost but not quite comes off, this disc called Chaconne takes as its basis Bach's Chaconne from his D minor Partita for solo violin and adds transcriptions of the work for piano by Johannes Brahms, Ferruccio Busoni, and Rudolf Lutz, the last named the teacher of pianist Edna Stern. It nearly succeeds. Stern's playing in the transcriptions is far more than professional, but not quite up to the level of the music.

Ensemble 415 is a chamber ensemble devoted largely to the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. The numerical reference in the group's name derives from the pitch used for tuning instruments in the Baroque era. In performing chamber music, Ensemble 415 consists of just a few players, but for larger compositions, the number expands to a minimum of 13 and can reach up to as high as 40 performers. The ensemble's repertory has been broad over the years, taking in many Baroque standards by J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel, as well as lesser known fare by Muffat and others.