Pièces en solitude • Nicolas & Payne
North American gambist Caroline Nicolas and her husband Kevin Payne here perform French pieces for the viola da gamba, many accompanied by theorbo.
HIP
Christoph Graupner: Sinfonias • Il Gardellino et al.
Graupner isn't nearly as well known today as Telemann, Handel, and J.S. Bach, though he was a contemporary of all three high-Baroque masters.
Vivaldi: Concerti per fagotto, vol. 6 • Azzolini
I often lament never learning to play the bassoon. Trained as a music educator, I learned to play many instruments, but bassoon, double bass, and saxophone escaped my reach.
Clavecins Concertants • Fortin & Frankenberg
The sound of a harpsichord: two skeletons copulating on a tin roof, in a thunderstorm. The comment is of course a dig at the sound of the instrument, but it was certainly not an original idea.
Hingeston: Fantasy-Suites • Echo du Danube
The liner notes of this album give good context to the composer, John Hingeston, who lived in the 17th century, who may have studied with Gibbons in England.
Geminiani: Sonatas for Violoncello • Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde
Francesco Xaverio Geminiani (d. 17 September 1762) was a Luccan-born violinist, composer, and theorist whose career traced an arc from the studios of Rome to the concert halls of London and Dublin.
J.S. Bach: Organ Preludes & Fugues • David Rowland
This album is as much about Bach's music as it is about the performer and his workspace — Rowland has spent some forty years at Christ's College Cambridge as organist, choir leader, and early piano specialist, and the…
J.S. Bach: The Well-tempered clavier, book 1 • Häkkinen
The question of what Bach meant by clavier is one that rewards revisiting. He could have written cembalo — that is how most HIPP performers approach this work — but he didn’t.
Pyrotechnies • Sarbacanes
This hour-long recital features music for winds—the ensemble's specialty—from Vivaldi, Handel, Califano, Fasch, Zelenka, and Telemann. The French ensemble's recording appeared on Oktav Records in September 2024.
J.S. Bach: Transformations • Nepomnyashchaya
This recital of Bach centers on his transformation of concertos by others into keyboard works. That brings us the Italian Concerto (BWV 971) in addition to the two concertos (BWV 972a and 974, after Vivaldi and after…
Duphly: Éclats et derniers feux • Barrucand
Jacques Duphly's life traces the long twilight of the French harpsichord school. Born in Rouen in 1715, he trained with François D'Agincour and began his career as an organist at seventeen before leaving Normandy for…
J.S. Bach: Suites for Cello • Schiffer
René Schiffer takes on Bach's solo suites here. A founding member of Cleveland's Apollo's Fire, he recorded the set in one of the area churches that has hosted the ensemble.
Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas • Ogawa
Asako Ogawa is a name new to me; this recital offers fifteen of Scarlatti's ~550 sonatas in a seventy-six and a half minute recital upon a single manual Clayson and Garrett harpsichord made in 1978, after a 1782…
Les Voyages de L’Amour • Ensemble Meridiana
It’s funny sometimes how you come into discovering a new recording. And by new I mean new to me, not necessarily new to the world.
A Musical Offering • Le Caravansérail
Violin, flute, harpsichord: Bach specifies these instruments for his famous Musical Offering to Frederick the Great. This album opens with the famous Thema Regium but this isn't another recording of BWV 1079.
Erbarme dich! • Ayres Extemporæ
This album "Have Mercy" includes an interesting combination of instruments: violin, five-string cello, and (4 string) cello. The liner notes explain the concept of the album this way: Erbarme dich!
Bach: Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin • Stefano Montanari
Before us is Stefano Montanari's recording of BWV 1001–1006, released this past November across two releases on his own label. For many years, Montanari led the Accademia Bizantina as lead violin.
Bach: Partitas (for violin) • Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir
I am coming to this album late, as it was released in March of 2016. To my knowledge, a companion recording of the sonatas has not yet been released.
Bach for Two • Lischka & De Cat
I’d never gotten around to reviewing this album which was released in late 2021, recorded in May of 2019: a collaboration between organist Marnix de Cat and viol player Rominia Lischka.
Telemann: 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin
Corelli’s solo sonatas were officially published in 1700, and Telemann came to publish a set of solo violin works in 1735 in the city of Hamburg. As far as we know, Telemann was a self-taught violinist.
Music to Hear: Ferrabosco Volumes 2 & 3 • Boothby
Volume 1 of this set appeared in 2023, played by Boothby. I did not review that edition, but I did this past March audition the release of this music by Paolo Pandolfo on Glossa.
Janitsch: Concertos & Symphonies • Świątkiewicz
Johann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708–1763) was born in Schweidnitz, a prosperous Lower Silesian city that had weathered the Thirty Years' War and rebuilt itself into a significant regional center.
Bach: Lutheran Masses • Willens
The oddity, perhaps, among Bach's vocal works is a set of four Latin masses, BWV 233–236. The scale of these pieces is quite economical compared to the great B-minor Mass, and of course the Passions.
Biber: Harmonia artificioso-ariosa • Harmonie Universelle
I recently did a meta-assessment of recordings of this important collection by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Perhaps I should have waited?
Vivaldi: Concerti per vari strumenti II • Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco
The naïve classics series with Vivaldi's works continues. Six concertos are on offer across a 46-minute program — RV 570, 557, 543, 553, 535, and 555 — covering a pleasing range of combinations: strings alone, strings…
Handel & Purcell: It Love’s a Sweet Passion
Die Freitagsakademie performed with Arianna Savall and Petter Udland Johansen in a recital of works by Purcell and Handel.
Beck: Symphonies Op. 4, 4-6 • La Stagione Frankfurt
Franz Ignaz Beck lived from 1734-1809 and this ensemble has made several earlier recordings of the composer’s symphonic repertoire.
Haydn 2032 – Trauer • Il Giardino Armonico
Readers are likely already familiar with the Alpha Classics project with Giovanni Antonini who is recording all of Haydn’s symphonies by 2032, ping-ponging releases between the Basel Chamber Orchestra and his own Il…
Bach: A Life in Music – Köthen
Les Arts Florissants continue their series of exploring Bach’s music, by location, with this volume 3 release featuring Durchlauchtster Leopold BWV 173a alongside instrumental works and two keyboard works.
Bach on the Edge • Cristiano Gaudio
Gaudio has a great formative resume, having studied with Olivier Baumont, Blandine Rannou, Francesco Corti and Jörg-Andreas Bötticher. His earlier solo album was focused on “Händel vs.
Vivaldi 100 • Giuliano Carmignola
Vivaldi’s concertos are among the most recorded repertoire in early music, and opinions on whether the catalog needs more vary widely.
Bach Gamba Sonatas • Sakaï & Rousset
On the heels of that viola pomposa recording, we get the OG version of Bach's sonatas for viola da gamba and keyboard: BWV 1027–1029.
The Golden Tower • L’Apreggiata
The album takes its name from the Torre del Oro, the twelve-sided watchtower on the banks of the Guadalquivir in Seville — the departure point for Spanish galleons sailing to and from the New World.
Bach: Die Kunst der Fuga • Fretwork
In 2001, a quarter-century ago, the British ensemble Fretwork recorded Bach's Die Kunst der Fuga at Snape Maltings, an arts center in eastern England and the center of activity of the Britten-Pears group, named after…
Bach: Sonates en trio • Les Curiosités esthétiques
With all of the recordings of Bach's "trio sonatas" we might have wanted to send him a message to the past to write more.
Missae Angelus Domini & Dum Complerentur • I Fagiolini
This is the third and final installment of I Fagiolini's series of Orazio Benevoli's mid-17th-century multi-choir masses, directed by Robert Hollingworth.
L’arte della scordatura • Hirasaki
Props to Passacaille for giving us a memorable and interesting album cover. The liner notes are titled “A Chameleon of Sound,” which explains the choice.
Pantheon – Corelli’s Orbit • Evgeny Sviridov
A friend just recently attended a performance featuring Concerto Köln, led by Shunske Sato. He told me it was one of the most powerful sounding baroque ensembles he’d heard, that they’d brought real intensity to their…
Handel: Messiah • Irish Baroque Orchestra and Choir
Handel completed Messiah in an astonishing 24 days in August and September of 1741, and the work received its premiere not in London but in Dublin, on 13 April 1742, at the New Musick Hall on Fishamble Street.
J.S. Bach: St. John Passion • Pygmalion
Raphaël Pichon's recordings of late with his Ensemble Pygmalion have turned out, to my ears, to be extremely engaging performances.