SACDs - Sweelinck

These keyboard works are composed relatively late in Sweelinck's career, and are an effective summary of his improvisatory and pedagogical activity.

Setting off on a sonic journey through Europe, Gregorio Paniagua and his acclaimed ensemble Atrium Musicæ de Madrid took the famous theme known as La Spagna, used widely by composers across Europe for several centuries, as the starting point in their quest to bring to life the many and varied old scores that used this themes.

In their recording, the ensemble used a huge range of instruments, from clavicytherium (a ‘vertical harpsichord’) to a simple plastic cup, and the vivid performances and no less vivid recording enchanted both early music fans and audiophiles.

This is the first re-edition of the entire programme from this legendary 1980 recording.

Harald Vogel plays these works on a 400 year old “swallow's nest” organ in St. Mary’s Church in Lemgo. He presents a rich and varied programme of works by Sweelinck, some of which are receiving their recording premiere.

All the music on this CD is associated with the festival of Christmas. Bach wrote the cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (BWV 110) for morning service on Christmas Day 1725, and the first version of the Magnificat in E flat major (BWV 243a) for Vespers on Christmas Day 1723, seven months after the Leipzig town council appointed him cantor of the Thomaskirche. It would hardly be exaggerating to say that Bach thus presented his visiting card to his new employer. According to the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, the work is his "first really large-scale and complex piece of church music".

'Christmas was not the only occasion to sing the Magnificat text, however, for it was also a standard part of the Vespers liturgy. This may explain why Bach made a second version some years later (in D major, BWV 243). (...) For a Christmas CD in the year 2010 it is obviously attractive to add new movements to Bach's Magnificat, entirely in keeping with the tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His own choice, in the E flat major version, remains unsurpassed. By adding extra Christmas music to the second version in D major, however, a new and unexpected form arises which lends the performance a certain topicality. What is more, it gives us the opportunity to present Bach with several Netherlands composers of the seventeenth century. Jos van Veldhoven (from: liner notes)

“Trumpet Masque” sees renowned trumpeter Jonathan Freeman-Attwood explore his passion for expanding the instrument’s limited chamber repertoire by imaginatively arranging Baroque works previously scored for alternative forces.

In “Trumpet Masque”, Jonathan Freeman-Attwood and Daniel-Ben Pienaar take a radical new look at the 17th century with a compelling vision of repertoire historically far-removed from the traditional contexts of both trumpet and piano.

Through wonderfully vibrant programming and arrangements, this invigorating and warm-hearted chamber duo present music from Dowland to Purcell in an energetic, innovative and 21st century fashion.

The aim of this recording is to open our ears to a period of unequalled variety, colour, regional diversity and expressive freedom: the Venetian world of Gabrieli, the great pre-Bach North German lineage of Buxtehude, Jacobean dances and songs and the great G major sonata from Muffat’s ‘Armonico Tributo’ with its virtuoso and valedictory passacaglia, which appropriately ends the disc.