Since 1998, renowned Spanish conductor and gamba player Jordi Savall’s Alia Vox label has been synonymous with stylish packaging of equally stylish performances of early music.   In 2007 Savall launched the Alia Vox Heritage collection in order to “offer a fresh vision” of the recordings he and his then wife, the soprano Montserrat Figueras, made with their instrumental and vocal ensembles on the Astrée label between 1977 and 1996.   The remastered recordings on the four CDs contained in this handsomely packaged boxed set were originally made on that label between 1987 and 1995. Together they offer a snapshot of the kinds of vocal genres that flourished in Spain between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries, including the secular villancico and ensalada (“salad” – a variety of madrigal) and the sacred mass and motet.   El Cançoner del Duc de Calàbria features music associated with the court of the Duke of Calabria in Valencia by composers such as Aldomar, Flecha, Morales and Guerrero; another CD is devoted to the sacred music of Joan Cererols, a monk who contributed much to the musical life of the monastery at Montserrat. The remaining two discs are given over to the villancicos and…

When a jury comprising Martha Argerich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alexis Weissenberg, Nelson Freire and Joachim Kaiser announced Kazan- born, now Munich-based Anna Gourari the winner of the First International Clara Schumann Competition in 1994, apparently praising her “almost mystical playing”, she knew she had arrived. Nearly 20 years and nearly a dozen recordings later, it’s astonishing she isn’t better known internationally. Because she is that rare thing – not merely a pianist with a formidable technique; not merely a musician with a knack for clarifying the underlying musical structure as Michelangelo clarified the skeleton and musculature of the human body, but a true artist and poet. If there is one work on this recording capable of revealing the full range of Gourari’s technical, interpretative and yes, artistic gifts, it’s Busoni’s magisterial piano arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor for solo violin. Quite simply, this is one of the finest interpretations of this work that I have ever heard – and my favourites include wonderful recordings by Arthur Rubinstein and Alicia de Laroccha. Despite Gourari’s having technique to burn, her playing is spacious, lyrical, profound, imbued with an almost Celibidache- like mysticism. Not that there is any lack of excitement in…

Czech composer Jan Zelenka (1679-1745) was held in high regard by masters such as JS Bach and Telemann. Today his majestic church music is finally receiving the attention it deserves. But his six sonatas ZWV181 have been popular with modern wind players since the mid-1950s. Unsurprising, given the virtuosic treatment. These sonatas are superb examples of the quadro sonata, a genre in which all four voices were given fully independent parts. In Janice B Stockigt’s excellent booklet to this equally excellent recording, she quotes one of Zelenka’s students, JJ Quantz referring to the quadro sonata as “the true touchstone of a genuine contrapuntist”. Ensemble Marsyas, named after the satyr of Greek mythology who challenged Apollo in a reed-playing competition (he was skinned alive for his trouble), here perform sonatas III, V and VI; they are joined in Sonata III by that doyenne of the Baroque violin, Monica Huggett. Performances are dazzling throughout, with Josep Domenech Lafont and Molly Marsh (oboes) and Peter Whelan (bassoon) negotiating Zelenka’s dazzling, inventive and sometimes dense but never unclear writing with style and élan. Violone player Christine Sticher likewise relishes her part while keyboardist Philippe Grisvard and theorbo player Thomas Dunford add harmonic richness to…

  Following on from Reinventing Guitar Vol 1, Greek classical guitarist Smaro Gregoriandou here combines innovative guitar technology with wide-ranging musicological research and a formidable technique to bring ancient sound worlds alive. For this recording Gregoriandou uses four extraordinary modern instruments: a double-course pedal guitar and a single-stringed pedal guitar with scalloped frets, both in soprano and alto sizes. It might sound gimmicky but the results speak for themselves. Take the five Scarlatti sonatas with which the program begins, all but one played on the double-course instrument. The rich, bright sonority of the harpsichord is evoked rather than made explicit, while the Iberian flavour of the music is underscored by the complex timbre and Gregoriandou’s fluid articulation and ornamentation. Bach’s famous Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV 998 benefits from the crisp, slightly dry sonority of the scalloped frets while in the following Toccata BWV 914 Gregoriandou employs the double-course instrument to great effect; the fugue is especially impressive in clarity and colour. The scalloped-fret guitar works well with the Handel items, The Harmonious Blacksmith and the Chaconne No 2. Gregoriandou’s phrasing and tonal balance is incisive and compelling, the cumulative effects the luminous offspring of the union between intellect and…

Just as flamenco guitarists Paco Peña and Paco di Lucía have stretched the boundaries of what constitutes flamenco, so too does Barcelona-born José Luis Montón draw on “new characters in the alphabet of flamenco” in his inspired, impassioned creations, while introducing a few of his own. As Montón writes in his brief booklet note: “In this music I have tried to translate all the sincerity and love of art that I appreciate so much when I encounter it.” Thus most of the pieces start
from a traditional base – bulería, tango, soleá, seguirilla and so forth – before pushing off from the shore in search of new horizons. Works such as the opening Rota (farruca) and the percussive Al oído (cantiñas) combine sweetly ornamented melodies with flurries of punteado and machine-gun bursts of rasgueado, while rhythms and harmonies take unexpected twists and turns. One of the biggest, and most enjoyable, of those twists is Montón’s beautiful, flamenco- inflected arrangement of JS Bach’s Air from the Orchestral Suite No 3 in D. Here, as in many other pieces on this recording, the main melody sneaks up on you amid a fresh, lyrical introduction. Other highlights include the intense Altolaguirre (tango), the exciting…

When the renowned flautist Johann Joachim Quantz visited Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples in 1725, it seemed he inspired the ageing composer, hitherto ambivalent about wind instruments, to write some flute sonatas for him. Not only that; in the years that followed, the younger composers of the Neapolitan School also wrote specifically for the recorder – the flauto dolce, or transverse flute. This had not happened in Naples before, and only once again in the same period, during an amateur flautist’s reign as Viceroy between 1728 and 1733. So it is that a talented player often inspires composers. Likewise, recorder virtuoso Maurice Steger inspires his fellow instrumentalists here, with compelling performances of music from the mid-1720s by Alessandro Scarlatti and his “spiritual heirs”. Using a range of alto recorders and, in the Leo concerto, a soprano recorder, Steger leads a small band comprising strings, psalterium and continuo in a selection of concertos, sinfonias and sonatas by Scarlatti father and son, Sarro, Fiorenza, Barbella, Mancini and Leo. Throughout, Steger emulates the great singers of the day such as Farinelli, with beautiful cantabile lines tastefully ornamented to complement the sparkling allegro movements. The band is superb, with violinists Fiorenza de Donatis and Andrea…

A cri de coeur across periods, cultures and artforms, this package comprising a 1,191- page illustrated hardcover book in eight languages including Hebrew and Arabic, a Multichannel hybrid SACD and a collection of postcard-size artwork is priceless – that said, it costs under $50. As Jordi Savall writes in the introduction to the book, Pro Pacem is a project that “makes a plea for a world without war or terrorism and for total nuclear disarmament.” Essentially, Pro Pacem forms a small but profoundly eloquent contribution to the cross-cultural dialogue necessary to create the conditions for world peace. Thus the music, drawn from Alia Vox’s extensive catalogue, brings East – Armenia, China, India, Israel and Turkey – and West
 – Belgium, England, Estonia, Greece, Italy and Spain – in song and instrumental music, much of which is sacred or whose texts deal with themes of peace. There is Binchois’ Da pacem, and Gregorian and Sibylline chant, the latter sung with great beauty and delicacy by Savall’s late wife, Montserrat Figueras. There is Hebrew prayer and Turkish improvisation on the Turkish lute. There are excerpts from the Koran. There is polyphony by musical giants such as Lassus and Guerrero. There is instrumental…

A student of Berio, Richter is
 a stylistic magpie whose music 
is accessible yet inventive and thought-provoking.

In his booklet notes to this most bewitching of releases, David Cranmer quotes from a 1787 journal entry by the English traveller William Beckford, in which he refers to modinhas, or Portuguese love songs: “This is an original sort of music different from any I ever heard, the most seducing, the most voluptuous imaginable, the best calculated to throw saints off their guard and to inspire profane deliriums.” Wow. Fans of Portuguese fado
 will find these songs, which effortlessly bridged the gap between the popular and the courtly, immediately attractive, languid and sensual. Just listen to a modinha such as Tempo que breve passaste (“So short a time you passed”) by Antonio da Silva Leite. Then there are those, such as the bright, cheeky Onde vas linda Negrinha (“Where are you going, pretty black girl”) by the same composer, alive with Afro- Brazilian rhythms. L’Avventura London director Zak Ozmo, who also plays Spanish and English guitars, has wisely broken up the songs and instrumental works with more “classical” fare with a Portuguese connection – keyboard pieces by Carlos de Seixas and Domenico Scarlatti. The performances by sopranos Sandra Medeiros and Joana Seeara, violone player Andrew Kerr and guitarists Taro Takeuchi…

A musical ménage-à-trois of three composers from three cities.

What a journey it’s been. Since 1987, Australian classical group Guitar Trek has been at the forefront of commissioning new works for guitar quartet, as well as working with luthiers to develop different-size guitars to form a true guitar family: treble, standard, baritone and bass (steel as well as nylon string guitars are utilised). This recording, actually made in 2007, has been released to celebrate 25 years of Guitar Trek and features works by some of Australia’s best-known composers for the instrument: Nigel Westlake, Phillip Houghton, Richard Charlton and Martin Wesley-Smith. The Guitar Trek line-up here features Timothy Kain, Minh Le Hoang, Daniel McKay and Harold Gretton (it’s since changed, with Bradley Kunda and Matt Withers replacing McKay and Gretton). If Westlake’s Six Fish scintillates with shimmering water, pointillistic textures and playful melodies, Houghton’s Nocturne, originally for piano, is a study in meditative if occasionally ruffled calm and moonlit passages. Charlton’s Capricorn Skies is “an attempt to capture in sound the mood or resonance of a variety of Australian skies and landscapes”. It’s a tour-de-force of sound-painting that finds Guitar Trek at its most dramatically expansive. The following non-linear Wave Radiance by Houghton, who describes it as a “sonic event”…

Thanks to the wholesale appropriation of popular song by court and church composers, there’s something at once vibrant and austere about the early Baroque music of Spain and Portugal. The program on this new recording by Australian period instrument ensemble La Compañia comprises mostly villancicos (rustic songs) in vocal and instrumental settings by 16th-century Spanish and Portuguese composers such as Pedro de Cristo, Manuel Machado, and Francisco Guerrero. Some travelled to take up positions in churches and cathedrals in the New World, where their music was inflected by indigenous and African rhythms. The anonymous pieces included here are all taken from the Cancioneiro de Paris manuscript of c1523. Under their director Danny Lucin, La Compañia perform these works on period wind instruments such as cornetti, sackbuts and dulcians, as well as the viola da gamba, vihuela, guitar, cavaquinho and percussion. Joining them is young Australian soprano and early music exponent Siobhan Stagg, winner of the 2012 Australian International Opera Award. Throughout, La Compañia’s relaxed and improvisatory yet passionate and precise playing is a delight, recalling the best of Hespèrion XXI, The Harp Consort and L’Arpeggiata in similar repertoire. Listen to the rich textures of De Cristo’s Ay mi Dios,… Continue…