Ensemble Il Caravaggio / Camille Delaforge / Anna Reinhold / Guilhem Worms MADONNA DELLA GRAZIA

 

MADONNA DELLA GRAZIA

Il Ricercar Continuo PULCHRA ES

 

PULCHRA ES

 

Heidi Maria Taubert / Instrumenta Musica / Ercole Nisini PASSACAGLIE D'AMORE

 

PASSACAGLIE D'AMORE

Lina Tur Bonet / Musica Alchemica LA BELLEZZA

LA BELLEZZA

Capella de la Torre / Katharina Bäuml CIACONNA

Capella de la Torre is a group of musicians who have made a name for themselves as specialists in historical performance practice. The ensemble's aim is to give listeners an immediate experience of the rich and hitherto neglected repertoire of mediaeval and renaissance music by performing it to a professional standard. 

The name "de la Torre" has a double meaning. In the first place, it pays homage to the Spanish composer Francisco de la Torre, who wrote his "Danza Alta" at the beginning of the 16th century. This is probably the most famous piece for what was then known as "capella alta", an ensemble of wind instruments such as shawms, dulcians, sackbuts and cornetti. Capella de la Torre has specialized in music written for the "capella alta". Secondly, the name may be taken in a literal sense: "de la Torre" means "from the tower" and groups of wind players (Spanish: ministriles) often played on towers or balconies at festivals and other official occasions. "Torres de los Ministriles" are still to be found in many Spanish towns today. 

Capella de la Torre does not confine itself to Spanish music, however, but also plays music written throughout the rest of Europe for the "hauts instruments" or "loud instruments". In general, it tries to breathe life into the old traditions of "ministriles", "piffari" and "Stadtpfeiffer". In the music world of today there are very few ensembles centred around historical double-reed instruments. This is particularly so in Germany.

Stephanie D'Oustrac / Amarillis / Héloïse Gaillard / Violaine Cochard FERVEUR & EXTASE

Stéphanie d'Oustrac (born 1974 in Rennes) in is a French mezzo-soprano. Before she had even won a prize a the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Lyon, William Christie offered her the leading role - Medea - in ‘Lully's Thésée’, at the Académie d'Ambronay in 1998. Her carrier leads her to the Opéra Bastille were she performs ‘Carmen, Bizet’. In 2012, Stéphanie d’Oustrac sung in ‘Roméo & Juliette, Berlioz’ at the Opéra Bastille.Her talent leads her to many great mezzo roles of baroque and classical opera. She also worked with great directors such Laurent Pelly , Robert Carsen , Vincent Vittoz , and famous conductors as Myung Wung Chung, John Eliot Gardiner and René Jacobs.

raised for her sensitivity as a musician and for her talents as a virtuoso, Héloïse Gaillard soon made a name for herself as a soloist. She plays with several excellent ensembles: first oboe with Le Concert Spirituel (Hervé Niquet), first recorder with Les Talens Lyriques (Christophe Rousset), recorder and oboe with Le Concert d'Astrée (Emmanuelle Haïm), as well as regular appearances with Les Arts florissants (William Christie).

Héloïse Gaillard studied at the Conservatoire (CNR) in Tours, where she was awarded first prizes for recorder and modern oboe, before going on to the Rotterdam academy, where she gained her soloist's diploma (recorder) with distinction, the Lemmensinstitut in Louvain, where she obtained a first-prize with distinction, and the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM), where she was awarded her higher diploma (Baroque oboe). She has worked with Jean-Pierre Nicolas, Han Tol, Paul Dombrecht and Marcel Ponseele. And she also has a degree in musicology from the Sorbonne and was awarded in 2005 the Certificate d'Aptitude to be a director of an early music department. She teaches baroque oboe at the Aix en Provence academy in the baroque department since 2009.
Baroque music is a passion in which she indulges above all as a member of Amarillis, with which she performs the solo recorder and oboe repertoires, as well as chamber works. The international press has praised the precision, dynamism and subtlety of her playing. France Musiques, the BBC and Mezzo have broadcast several of her concerts.
Héloïse Gaillard appears as a soloist or with orchestras in France and other countries: in Paris (Salle Gaveau, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Cité de la musique), Metz (Arsenal), Nantes (Palais des Congrès), at numerous festivals (including Folle journée in Nantes, Sablé-sur-Sarthe, Beaune and Ambronay...), London (Barbican), Madrid, Seville, Granada, Amsterdam (Opera House, Concertgebouw), Dresden and Leipzig (Opera), Berlin (Philharmonic hall), Stockholm (Konzerthuis), Boston, New York (Lincoln Center), Latin America, Russia, India, China, Japan...
 

L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar FRANCESCO CAVALLI L'Amore Innamorato

With L’Amore innamorato – ‘Love in love’ – Christina Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata return to their own first great love, Italian music of the 17th century, and specifically to composer Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676).

A luminary of the glamorous and innovative world of Venetian opera, Cavalli was a protégé of Claudio Monteverdi – the composer around whom L’Arpeggiata built Il teatro d’amore, the ensemble’s first Warner Classics album, which was released in early 2009. “Cavalli’s music excites my passions”, says Christina Pluhar. He composed some 40 operas, some of which have achieved new currency since the 1960s, such as La Calisto, Il Giasone, L’Egisto and L’Ormindo and La Didone. Arias and instrumental numbers from six of his operas feature in L’Amore innamorato. The instrumentalists of L’Arpeggiata are joined for the album – which also includes pieces by two of Cavalli’s contemporaries, Girolamo Kapsperger and Andrea Falconieri – by two sopranos, the Catalan Núria Rial and the Czech Hana Blažíková.

While L’Arpeggiata’s recent Warner Classics CDs – Music for a While, Mediterraneo, Los Pájaros perdidos and Via Crucis – have explored fusions of cultures and musical styles, L’Amore innamorato adheres to the conventions of historically informed performance of Baroque music. The members of the ensemble use stringed, keyboard, wind and percussion instruments to flesh out Cavalli’s score, which comprises only a vocal line, basso continuo and indications for the ritornello (a recurring instrumental section). As Christina Pluhar points out, the line-up of instruments is unusually lavish: she herself performs on theorbo and harp and is joined by the other players who create a sumptuous soundworld, accompanying arias for goddesses and nymphs with a fascinating array of instruments: cornetto, violin, archlute, guitar, harp, psaltery, viola da gamba, lirone, cello, violone, double bass, organ, harpsichord and percussion.

In April 2015, after L’Arpeggiata performed L’Amore innamorato at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times wrote:

“In some ways, L’Arpeggiata represents the state of the art in early-music practice … The most compelling performers today have come to realize how much was left unsaid by composers in scores prepared on the run for use by performing colleagues who were, if not immediately at hand, at least immersed in the style of the period and locale. These performers see conjecture not as a worrisome chore but as an opportunity; improvisation as a matter of course; invention as a necessity.

L’Arpeggiata showed those traits in abundance in a delightful program on Tuesday, L’Amore innamorato: Arias by Francesco Cavalli … Núria Rial, a splendid Spanish soprano, sang numbers from operas including Calisto, Didone and Ormindo beautifully, and the ensemble filled out the 75-minute program with instrumental ditties by Cavalli and others.

The selections tended toward works with variations above repeating bass figures, which come as catnip to these players, inviting, as they do, the extemporization of new variations. Such forms are widespread in the Italian Baroque literature.

Cavalli’s operas have been gaining fitful exposure in recent years … Still, his music is not well known, and it was good to hear these delicious samples in something like their original form. Christina Pluhar, L’Arpeggiata’s artistic director, played theorbo throughout, giving a wonderful, firm basis to the sound.” (Presto Classical)