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THE HIGH ROAD TO KILKENNY
GAELIC SONGS AND DANCES FROM THE 17TH & 18TH CENTURIES
Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, François Lazarevitch, Robert Getchell

After the success of For ever Fortune, early music from Scotland, François Lazarevitch continues his exploration of the ‘Celtic’ repertories with a new programme devoted to early Irish music. This repertory of old airs from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries consists of dances, songs in Gaelic and varied instrumental pieces: they tell tales of wars, of love, of strong drink and tobacco, of children and bards. A leading specialist in the flute and bagpipe families, François Lazarevitch opens out new horizons of colours and sounds. He has gathered around him here a number of distinguished performers of early music (including the fabulous Baroque violinist and fiddler David Greenberg) and invited the American tenor Robert Getchell, who cuts a very credible figure as a singer going back to his roots.

Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien give a summer course at Vernong Giverny in France from  4 to 8 July 2016 (look at earlier post)

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CONVERSATIONS
Nevermind
(Louis Creac’h, Robin Pharo, Anna Besson, Jean Rondeau)

NEVERMIND is made up of four young musicians and friends whose passion for early music and for the influence of jazz and traditional music stimulated them to form an ensemble whose virtuosity is equalled only by their youthful impetuosity and their love of fine music . . . For its first disc, Nevermind tackles the treasures of the Baroque in the shape of two totally neglected French composers.

The first one, Jean-Baptiste Quentin, a dessus de violon at the Académie Royale de Musique (forerunner of the Paris Opéra), was a habitué of the Parisian salons, where he frequented Rameau among others. The second, Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, studied in Italy before joining the court musicians at Versailles. Sometimes whimsical and often very complex in Guillemain, invariably lucid and classical in Quentin, their style nonetheless presents a common feature: the dominance of the Italian idiom.

Alpha Classics continues its discovery of young talents with this project conceived by the inspired musicians of Nevermind. Their credo is to introduce the widest possible audience to the riches of music that has been too long ignored.

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ANTONIO BERTALI
LA MADDALENA
Scherzi Musicali, Nicolas Achten

Through the combination of sacred and profane that she embodies, the profoundly human personality of Mary Magdalene greatly inspired artists of the Baroque era, whether painters, poets or composers. It was in the sphere of influence of Italian oratorios, highly prized at the court of Vienna, that Antonio Bertali devoted a most moving sepolcro to her in 1663, a genre traditionally played during Holy Week. In 1617, in Mantua, it was in the form of theatrical interludes that she was honoured by court composers such as Salomone Rossi, Muzio Effrem and Claudio Monteverdi, who wrote the prologue for this other Maddalena.

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and more

By Axel De Schrijver