Rore: Ancor che co'l partire

Bruce Dickey is one of a handful of musicians worldwide who have dedicated themselves to reviving the cornetto. For this collection, he has chosen a wide range of pieces; instrumental canzonas by composers of the Neapolitan school (Tartaglino, Mayone and Trabaci), six canzonas by the Venetian Guami, four sets of divisions on motets and madrigals and three solo motets with basso continuo.

All the music on this CD has a connection with Venice and the collection includes pieces by the contemporary composers Coolen and Vrolijk. Brisk works not only with musicians, but also with actors, directors and film makers for music theatre productions aimed at various audiences.

Compiled during the last third of the 16th C and completed in 1585-1586, the Codex Tarasconi was copied in Parma, probably for use at the court of the Duke of Parma. Performed on traditional instruments, the I Fedeli ensemble are specialists in music from the 16th and 17th centuries.

During the mid-16th century in Spain, it became increasingly common for collections of music to include tablature that would enable performers of other polyphonic instruments to perform the repertoire. With the recent addition of chromatic strings, the harp was one such mechanism to benefit from this, and its presentation in this beautifully performed compilation of works offers a fascinating glimpse into the rich world of Iberian Renaissance music making.

The compositions detailed in this recording are taken from three separate sources of the period: books by Mudarra, Venegas de Henestrosa and Antonio de Cabezón. While Mudarra’s work ‘for harp or organ’ is unique in that it’s the closest thing we have to genuine 16th-century harp music, the compilation focuses primarily on the keyboard works of Antonio de Cabezón and includes in tabulations (arrangements of chansons and madrigals originally written by some of the most renowned mid-century composers), dances, variations and tientos – freely composed polyphonic fantasias. Not only does the recording introduce us to the different genres of the period, revealing an instrument that had grown ‘as perfect as the clavichord’, it honours the work of a man who was in fact one of the foremost keyboard performers and composers of his time. Surveying a lesser known facet of one of the most famous periods in music history, this collection is a must-buy for the Renaissance connoisseur.

The elegant, keyless, cylindrical flute of the sixteenth century had a reedy, penetrating sound, closer to the cornetto than to any other wind instrument of the day. It had an impressive range of two and a half octaves and an evenness of tone quality that would not be matched again until the nineteenth century.

The pieces on this recording focus on repertoire for the renaissance flute consort, almost all of which was originally vocal music.

Winners of the 2001 International Early Music Network Young Artists’ Competition, Apollo & Pan is a dynamic young group which explores the numerous hitherto neglected works for violin, bassoon and keyboard from the 17th and 18th centuries, using both renaissance and baroque instruments.

Tassilo Erhardt and Sally Holman met and formed Apollo & Pan while studying at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague. In England they were joined by the keyboard player Steven Devine who was the winner of the inaugural Broadwood Harpsichord Competition in 1993.

The virtuoso sonatas of Dario Castello offer a synopsis of the crucial stage of development in instrumental music during the early seventeenth century. They are coupled here by dances and an anthology of the most common variations of the time. The instrumentation is particularly noted for the virtuosic writing for bassoon.

Little is known about the life of Castello apart from what can be learnt from the title pages of his collections, where he calls himself the leader of the wind band at San Marco cathedral in Venice. During the sixteenth century it was the duty of the cathedral’s second organist to arrange wind music for special ceremonies. Castello’s two collections of virtuoso instrumental music are milestones in the repertoire, and led to a considerable number of reprints during several decades after their initial publication.

The five sonatas represent the typical virtuoso sonatas of the then modern stile concertato, which implied the interaction of diverse musical forces. The second large group of pieces featured here consists of variation movements, which enjoyed their greatest popularity during the seventeenth century. Apollo & Pan here perform some of the finest and most progressive writers of the age, including Bertoli’s Sonata No.7, Merula’s ciaccona, Turini’s Sonata on E tanto tempo hormai, Marini’s Fuggi dolente core and Rossi’s Sontata on Un aria francese.

Since winning the 2001 Early Music Young Artists’ Competition, Apollo & Pan has performed at the South Bank Early Music Festival, York Early Music Festival, Spitalfields Festival and many other regional festivals across the UK. Radio 3 has broadcast their concerts and they have featured on ‘Music Restored,’ ‘In Tune,’ and ‘The Early Music Show.’ Individually, the members of Apollo & Pan play regularly with leading early music groups and period orchestras such as the The Hanover Band, I Fagiolini, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and The Parley of Instruments.

This recording was created for the Titian exhibitions which took place at the National Gallery in London and the Prado in Madrid.

For Titian music was most certainly the food of love. Musicians appear frequently in his paintings delicately, sensually holding or playing their instruments, often in the company of a naked Venus as in Venus and the Lute Player housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the paintings of Venus and the organ player in the Prado Museum, Madrid and the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.