anon.: Greensleeves to a Ground

Admired for her remarkable creative imagination and exemplary musicianship, soprano Patricia Petibon, in her newest album for Deutsche Grammophon, offers a treasure-trove of fascinating Baroque curiosities guaranteed to enthral both the Baroque aficionado and the casual listener.

Nouveau Monde is conceived as a journey from the Old to the New World, a spell-binding collection of arias, songs and pieces from European composers (Charpentier, Händel, Rameau, Purcell) that testify to their composers’ fascination with the exoticism of recently-discovered lands, as well as South American folksongs which boast exceptional rhythmic energy and colour

Spectacularly accompanied by the La Cetra Baroque Orchestra under the excelling direction of Andrea Marcon – who also stands out as a Baroque organist and harpsichordist - Patricia enchants our senses with a mélange of 17th-century arias and folk songs from England, France, Spain, and Latin America

As a follow-up to her best-selling Rosso and Melancolía albums, Patricia Petibon’s 2012 release is guaranteed to be one of the most popular and sought-after Baroque releases of the year

Air sets out to trace a baroque journey. It is the story of four unique composers, three of whom were virtuoso violinists - Falconiero, Matteis and Geminiani from Italy, and Westhoff from Germany. They wandered throughout Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries in search of musical inspiration and cross-pollination, and their music and art of performance intrigued and delighted kings, contemporaries and audiences alike

This album shows how diverse the music of the baroque era was. Air blends the simplest and at times most primitive forms of dance music with the most sophisticated and revolutionary compositions of the day, culminating in a work by Bach - the great master, whose title is Hope’s inspiration for this collection, that also includes hits like Pachelbel’s Canon or Handel’s Sarabande

Daniel Hope, who developed the concept of this album throughout the last months, will be an excellent and charismatic spokesperson for this exciting project.

La Barcha d'Amore is an eclectic, contrasting selection of some of the most beautiful vocal and instrumental music inspired by mythology and 17th-century European love poetry. Music of time and memory, performed by Montserrat Figueras and Jordi Savall, together with Ton Koopman, Hopkinson Smith,Andrew Lawrence-King and other members of the ensemble Hespèrion XX (which in 2001 became Hespèrion XXI) and the orchestra Le Concert Des Nations, have selected recordings that they made from 1976 to 1996 for the labels Emi Electrola, Dhm,Astrée and Auvidis, and from 1998 to 2008 for Aliavox. This anthology, contains vocal pieces directly related to the theme of love, such as the innovative Airs for the recitar cantando of Giulio Caccini's Le Nuove Musiche, the evocative tonos humanos by Spanish Baroque composers Sebastián Durón, Juan del Vado and Juan Hidalgo, Monteverdi's sublime Lamento della Ninfa, the mysterious folia Yo soy la locura by Henri du Bailly, not forgetting the touching Elizabethan lullaby and the tender melody Une jeune fillette, both by anonymous authors, but equally remarkable for their great beauty and depth of emotion. The various instrumental pieces, with such evocative titles as the Gaillarde "La Barcha del mio Amore" by Giacomo de Gorzanis, Samuel Scheidt's Pavane and his "Courant dolorosa", the Elizabethan "Desperada" and the highly popular improvisation piece, "Greensleeves", as well as the great Jean-Baptiste Lully's Rondeau from Le Mariage forcé and the Chaconne from L'Amour Médecin, provide the necessary complement to the vocal pieces, resulting in a great variety of sources and contrasting characters. The Barcha d'Amore is the personal testimony of Jordi Savall's unwavering and rigorous commitment to the performance of music from the Middle Ages to the age of Classicism using 'historically informed' instruments and performance techniques, which emerged in the 1970s.Those years marked the beginning of a great revival in the performance of pre-Romantic music, a continuing revival which offers the possibility of retrieving an important cultural legacy.

Music from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries composed for Shakespeare's plays or to celebrate his work. A wide range of instrumental sounds and some splendid singing create a fascinating programme of dynamic and cheerful English music, performed by one of Britain's leading ensembles.

(arr. for flute quartet)