Marini, B: Passacaglia à 4, Op. 22

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.

Rare recordings of two settings of Mary’s passionate Easter lament. For their second L’Oiseau Lyre disc, Il Giardino Armonico, again under their director Giovanni Antonini, are joined by celebrated mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink, for a project exploring the Passion of Christ as seen through the eyes of the Virgin Mary. The two central works are both vocal settings of the Virgin’s lament. The first, Il Pianto di Maria, was long thought to be by Handel – a clear reflection of its outstanding musical quality. It was not until the 1990s that handwriting experts established it as the work of the little-known Venetian composer Giovanni Ferrandini. The other key vocal work will be the World Premiere recording of an aria by Francesco Conti – composer to the Habsburg court of Vienna - in which the martyr Lorenzo, threatened with being burnt alive, refuses to deny his Christian faith. This deeply touching aria features a rarely heard ancestor of the modern clarinet, frequently used in ‘pathetic’ arias of the period – the soprano chalumeau. Short instrumental pieces form a musical setting around these vocal jewels, and include music by Caldara, Marini, Pisendel, Weiss and Vivaldi.

Flights of Fantasy' presents Monica Huggett and her Irish Baroque Orchestra exploring the remarkable range, diversity and whimsy of Italian baroque chamber music.

Think you know Italian baroque chamber music? Think again. The range, diversity – and even wackiness – is remarkable, as illustrated by Flights of Fantasy, an album of acute inventiveness by Avie stalwart Monica Huggett and the chamber soloists of her Irish Baroque Orchestra. Take Carlo Farina’s Capriccio Stravagante, which translates as “outlandish whim”, and imitates barking dogs, meowing cats and gunfire. More serious, but no less virtuosic, experimental forms occur in works by Marini, Castello, Legrenzi, and Cavalli – the Venetian best known for his operas – all heard on this album. Created in 1996, the period-instrument Irish Baroque Orchestra occupies a fundamental place in Ireland’s musical landscape. Ten years in, the mantle of artistic director was assumed by Monica Huggett, who has created a decades-long career of critically acclaimed and award-winning recordings, including the Billboard chart-topping, Grammy-nominated Bach Orchestral Suites on Avie (AV2171).

This CD showcases a variety of 17th-century italian. Recognizing the importance and vitality of dance music, these composers used dance forms as a basis for their own music. The popular sounds of dance music thus influence an entire generation of composers. “the power of rhythm” (Descartes) lies in the brevity of the phrases and the simplicity of the material.

The Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca present a selection of wonderfully expressive art through the works on this disc:

Translated literally sonar cantando means ‘playing singing’, or playing as if singing, so as a musical term it is not only manifestly ambiguous and hybrid, it is also a neologism, a contamination of two separate early 17th century Italian musical terms: canzoni da sonar and recitar cantando. It is probably precisely because of this that it fits so well as a title for the content of this recording.