Ebreo da Pesaro: Falla con misuras (La Spagna)

This collection features secular works by Du Fay and his contemporaries. The Greek singer Theodora Baka regularly performs with the early music ensemble Ex Silentio. Arkys specialises in the study and reconstruction of sacred and secular vocal music and focuses particularly on Greece.

On their first CD, Qualia presents a collection of polyphonic music from late medieval sources, especially from manuscripts around the year 1500.

In a very short period of time around the turn of the 15th century, the European music culture changed from the ancient phytagoreic to meantone temperament and created some astounding, highly complex and intellectually as well as musically challenging works, taking inspiration from both old and modern musical influences.

Qualia lets the listener immerse into an almost alien musical world, into the deep roots and sources of being of European music history, which in today’s perception is almost lost completely.

The reign of the Catholic Monarchs - corresponding to the last decades of the 15th and the first decades of the 16th century - laid the foundation for Spain's power and prosperity in Early Modern Europe. Those were the days of Christopher Columbus’s expeditions, but also the days of the War of Granada and the expulsion of Jews from Spain… This stormy period in Spanish history has left a rich musical legacy. An essential part of it is the vast repertoire of Spanish secular art song written to amatory, political propaganda, philosophical and devotional texts.

Most of this repertoire was written down in the manuscript widely known as Cancionero Musical de Palacio. With more than 450 pieces composed over several decades by several generations of both identified and anonymous composers, Cancionero Musical de Palacio ‘towers above every other secular monument of Spanish Renaissance musical history’ (Robert Stevenson). Arianna Savall, Petter Johansen, Corina Marti, Michal Gondko and Tore Eketorp join forces to bring their public the gems of this madly beautiful music, which - according to the contemporary witness - was once ‘all the rage’ among members of the aristocratic society of the Early Renaissance Spain. An extremely "easy-to-the eargoing" programme, with Arianna Savall's touching singing coming straight from the heart.

An exceptional programme from two consummate performers, blending new arrangements of classical and baroque works with the premiere recording of Roger Steptoe’s 'Sonata for Trumpet and Organ'.

Graham Ashton is professor of Trumpet at Purchase Collage, New York, and as a performer over the past 25 years has given over 200 master classes and recitals in 21 different countries, recording for Signum, Nimbus, Virgin Classics and many more. Michael Matthes is a similarly esteemed performer: a tenured organist of the Cathedral of Troyes, France and a recipient of the prestigious French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his services to music.

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.

Words were more important than music in the Italian 16th century and song was therefore a higher art form than instrumental music. Composers such as Cipriano da Rore who observed the natural speech rhythms were afforded the highest accolades.

Wordplay presents a collection of highly decorated vocal music in purely instrumental performance. In the two centuries that this repertoire covers the borrowing and reworking of the music of earlier composers was regarded as creative, original and even as an act of respect or homage.

The disc is structured around instrumental divisions on five famous songs of 16th century and one bass-dance tenor. These divisions are for recorder, for bass viol or for lute. In total 17 different instruments are used including three types of recorder, three types of lute, seven sizes of viol, and a chamber organ.

Wordplay is one of the first recordings made in York's newly opened National Centre for Early Music in the church of St Margaret, Walmgate.