Carlos Mena

Weckmann's musical training took place in Dresden under the direction of Heinrich Schütz, then in Hamburg where he worked with Praetorius. Weckmann travelled to Denmark in 1637 with Schütz, where his Lüneberg manuscript has been lurking, wrongly attributed to Christoph Bernhard. Weckmann became organist in Dresden at the Electoral Court of Saxony from 1638 to 1642, and returned to Denmark until 1647 (during the Thirty Years' War).

During a new (and his last) stay in Dresden from 1649 to 1655, he met Johann Jakob Froberger during a musical competition which had been organised by the Elector. They remained friends and in correspondence with each other. In 1655, after a competition, he was named titular organist at Saint James church (Jakobkirche) in Hamburg, and spent his remaining life there. He founded a renowned orchestral ensemble, the so-called Collegium Musicum in Hamburg in 1660. This was the most productive period of his life: his compositions of this time include this collection of 1663, which sets visionary settings of biblical texts evoking images of desolation and destruction, but also struggle and hope. It was inspired by the terrible plague which killed his first wife and many of his colleagues in Hamburg that year, including Heinrich Scheidemann.

Matthias Weckmann died in Hamburg c1674 and was buried in a family grave in the Jacobkirche, beneath the organ.

These "Paisajes del recuerdo", calling to mind landscapes found in both music and the mental terrains of the memory bring forth emotions of tenderness, melancholy, love and fear; all universal sentiments. Yet, along that pathway of the universal to the particular, there clearly rings in every one of these songs the culture, homeland and the highly personal voice of the Basque Country. In short, what is resounding here is what we describe as 'identity'.

A new recording from the Ricercar Consort is always special and this is no exception: here we have from Mirare, a new St John Passion.

Last year’s Bach Magnificat received excellent reviews including Gramophone Editor’s Choice, BBC CD Review disc of the week and a Critics’ Choice in Gramophone.

Scarlatti composed his Salve Regina for voice and strings after completing all the sonatas and here it is performed by a countertenor. Interestingly, this CD also includes Avison’s Concerto No.5 in D minor In seven parts done from the lessons of Scarlatti and Scarlatti’s Sonatas based on Avison’s concertos Nos. 5 and 10. Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla is one of the foremost Spanish early music ensembles.

There is no record of how Purcell's unprecedented youthful genius was received by his contemporaries, though it seems logical that it must have caused considerable wonder in the musical world centred around Westminster. The reality of London musical life was in fact difficult, frenetic, and grossly underfunded, and, along with the whole city, was thrown into confusion with the outbreak of the plague, the war with the Dutch and the catastrophic fire of London. Suffice it to say that a lifelong friendship developed with John Blow, who relinquished his post as organist at Westminster Abbey to the 20-year old Purcell in 1679.

Blow's music in the Ode on Purcell's death is probably the most coherent melodious and inventive, outside his beloved Church music. It is also his most Purcellian. The choice of two countertenor voices was fundamental in this respect, and this conscious evocation of the Purcellian sound world is extended in the use of the two recorders, stressing both the funerary and other-worldly associations of the instrument. With this collaboration in memory of Purcell however, he achieves the highest level of expression. Early death, in his time was an unremarkable commonplace, and Dryden and Blow are deploring something rather different, the catastrophe of losing a friend who represented both their own hopes, and the energy and potential of English music in full flood.

CD+DVD

Continuing their exploration of the sacred vocal music of the great Johann Sebastian Bach, Philippe Pierlot and his Ricercar Consort couple the Magnificat with the Mass BWV235 for their latest release on Mirare. They are joined by the distinguished soloists Maria Keohane,Anna Zander, Carlos Mena, Hans- Jörg Mammel and Stephan MacLeod, all of whom appeared in the same programme at La Folle Journée in Nantes and Tokyo in 2009. The DVD shows the singers and Pierlot recording their solos whilst the orchestra mess around!

The Ricercar Consort have already been awarded a Radio 3 disc of the Week and a Gramophone Editor's Choice for their Bach recordings for Mirare. Here they present three sacred cantatas, among the earliest written by the young Johann Sebastian in his first posts as Kapellmeister in Mühlausen and Weimar, for Easter. They display the heritage and influence of the old master Buxtehude, but also the force, the modernity, and the genius of the future Kantor.

After their recording of Stabat Mater settings by Vivaldi and Pergolesi,

Carlos Mena, the Ricercar Consort and Philippe Pierlot offer us the more

intimate version by Giovanni Felice Sances.The programme is completed by

motets dedicated to the Virgin, written by Italian musicians who held the

post of Kapellmeister at the Viennese court, and a Regina Coeli by Emperor Leopold I.