Mitzi Meyerson has been delving of late for Glossa into unjustly forgotten keyboard repertory from the Baroque. Praised by no less a critic than Nicholas Kenyon for her recording of Gottlieb Muffat’s Componimenti Musicali per il Cembalo (“Eureka! I’ve known these wonderful pieces for years, having bought an old edition of the music, but have never heard them properly performed. So it’s a joy to hear Mitzi Meyerson’s glorious realisation of these 18th-century suites, which lie at the heart of the high baroque style...”), Meyerson now turns her attention to the shadowy figure of Englishman Richard Jones. [read more...]

A well-established Baroque music ensemble is joining Glossa, with Antonio Florio and the Cappella della Pietà de’ Turchini making an agreement to record one or two discs per annum here. Founded in 1987, the baroque orchestra and its vocal soloists connected with the Centro di Musica Antica Pietà de’ Turchini in Naples have become internationally-celebrated for their exploration of Neapolitan music from the 17th and 18th centuries. Florio – aided by eminent scholars such as Dinko Fabris – has successfully breathed new life into a forgotten repertory, with a string of recordings and concerts as testament to the vitality of the musical scene in Naples in these times, especially through its operatic and sacred music. [read more...]

There is still much work to be done in creating performing editions of Baroque music originating in Spain (and then going out and performing it...), yet this is just one area of musical life today that Emilio Moreno is contributing to. To follow on from delving into the popular culture of the turn of the 19th century, as epitomized by the tonadilla, which he successfully recreated for Glossa on La Tirana contra Mambrú, Moreno – along with El Concierto Español – turns now to the world of allegorical courtly serenatas as the shifting political national landscapes of the 17th century were disintegrating into the War of the Spanish Succession. [read more...]

Fabio Bonizzoni’s series, with La Risonanza, of Handel Italian cantate con stromenti for Glossa has now come to a conclusion with seven volumes recorded, but not before the group were awarded the 2010 Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize for the fifth instalment, Clori, Tirsi e Fileno (with sopranos Yetzabel Arias Fernández and Roberta Invernizzi and contralto Romina Basso in the three named roles). In commending the disc the jury of the Recording Prize made the following comments, “La Risonanza produces a delightful performance that presents all of the strengths and virtues we have come to associate with their recent explorations of Handel’s music. [read more...]

Central to the research into and the performance of early music since the beginnings of the renewed interest into music from previous centuries the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB) remains an extraordinary powerhouse of talent ranging over music from the early Middle Ages through to the 19th century. Today its pupils are legion, as too are its teachers, amply fulfilling the aspirations of Paul Sacher when he founded the institution in Switzerland in 1933. In an agreement recently made between Glossa and the SCB fresh new life is being breathed into the desire to bring the fruits of all this musical activity to a much wider worldwide audience through recordings. [read more...]

Hervé Niquet prefiere ser conocido por la pasión que siente por la música francesa en general (con especial interés por la lírica y vocal) que por ser un especialista en música barroca; en este sentido se siente tan a gusto dirigiendo una orquesta sinfónica como su propio ensemble de instrumentos de época, Le Concert Spirituel. A algunos les sorprenderá saber que Niquet ha estado trabajando estrechamente con la Filarmónica de Bruselas preparando una grabación de Debussy, que de hecho será el primer lanzamiento de la nueva aventura emprendida por Glossa dirigida a la exhumación del repertorio del concurso Prix de Rome, que desde su creación ha ido jalonándose con música de los más importantes compositores que ha dado Francia entre 1803 y 1968. [read more...]

Para su primera edición en DVD, Glossa ha elegido un espectáculo verdaderamente extraordinario, que combina las potentes ideas creativas representadas por uno de los pilares artísticos del sello, Hervé Niquet y Le Concert Spirituel, con el divertidísimo dúo de comediantes franceses Shirley & Dino (Corinne y Gilles Benizio en la vida real) y Olivier Simonnet, director de cine con probada experiencia en la música barroca, en una obra maestra de Henry Purcell, King Arthur, dramatick opera estrenada en 1691.[leer más...]

There are keyboard players whose names adorn books of technical exercises – Carl Czerny, Charles-Louis Hanon and JB Cramer spring to mind – but Mitzi Meyerson, Glossa’s very own expert in sumo wrestling, social work and a Persian cat named Yofi, is cast from a somewhat different mould. It will not just be piano and harpsichord students who will have cause to recall the Chicago-born artist but any number of her fellow citizens (including non keyboard-playing cabbies) now that the ‘Mitzi Meyerson Way’ has officially been opened outside the main entrance to Roosevelt University on downtown Wabash Avenue in Chicago’s 2nd Ward. [read more...]

If Spanish music from the Renaissance has become increasingly appreciated in recent decades that from the turn of the 19th century remains a blur for many. Not so for Emilio Moreno who – in addition to his musical expertise inthe Baroque and Classical, especially that gained through long association with the Orchestra of the 18th Century – has become something of a specialist in the music of the Age of Enlightenment in Spain. Moreno has been combining Herculean labours transcribing the scores of tonadillas from two centuries past with bringing their populist texts and music to audiences of the 21st century – both with singular success. Here he describes the nature of the dramatic genre that is the tonadilla and the level of its original success acting as barometer of the feelings of the ordinary people in Spain, especially those of Madrid. [read more...]

Not content with a career as a bass soloist (in music extending from 1300 to the present day) or as a teacher (he holds a professorship in early music in Bremen), Harry van der Kamp has for over two decades been directing the Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam, an ensemble whose repertoire encompasses the entire madrigal repertoire of the 16th and 17th centuries. Precious recording activities of the group have extended to music by Emilio de’Cavalieri, Scipione Lacorcia as well as by Carlo Gesualdo himself. Yet van der Kamp has been stirred by the fact that no fitting tribute – no monumental representation wrought in stone or metal – exists to commemorate the composer who he regards as “the greatest that we ever have had in Holland”: Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.[read more...]

Mitzi Meyerson’s insight into (and experience with) the harpsichord literature of the Baroque is such that when she makes a visit to the recording studio, one knows that something rare, fascinating and illuminating will emerge. This has been the case in recent years with both the Claviersuiten by Georg Böhm and the Musique de Salon of Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (which have also appeared on Glossa); the latest exploration beyond the mainstream undertaken by Mitzi Meyerson – Muffat’s Componimenti Musicali – is charged with the same character and sense of expectation. This is not the Georg Muffat who studied in Paris with Lully but his son, Gottlieb (also known as Theofilo), who spent much of his career in Vienna and whose set of six harpsichord suites Componimenti Musicali appeared towards the end of the 1730s. [read more...]

En Glossa estamos muy orgullosos de poder aplaudir, una vez más, el talento musical de nuestros artistas, cuyas espléndidas grabaciones recibieron en 2008 un especial apoyo por parte de la crítica internacional, que no es sino el reflejo palpable de las reacciones de otros muchos amantes del sello. En septiembre de 2008, Claudio Cavina de La Venexiana recibió su segundo Gramophone Award en Londres, cuando su grabación de L’Orfeo de Monteverdi fue premiado con el galardón a la mejor grabación vocal barroca. [leer más...]

It seemed that the music of Carl Friedrich Abel was proving singularly impervious to modern performance initiatives. More is known about the life and times of this Köthen-born composer than about his actual music (he can be placed as a pupil of JS Bach and as someone who died in the year of the 17 year-old Beethoven’s first visit to Vienna). Yet it was as a virtuosic improviser on the by then (surely?) outdated instrument of the viola da gamba that Abel was equally known for by his contemporaries. So, the most suitable candidate in the 21st century for bringing back Abel’s music to its rightful place needs to be not only a supreme interpreter on the viola da gamba and steeped in its repertory but one capable of understanding the almost lost art of improvisation. [read more...]

“It is the same effect as when you see the sun shining through stained-glass windows in a church: suddenly all the colours are singing.”

After nearly three decades of carving out a niche (as rich as Romanesque statuary found in the Burgundy where he lives and works), Dominique Vellard has returned with a new vigour for performing (and recording), whether it is with his colleagues from the Ensemble Gilles Binchois or as a solo singer. The tenor voice of this deeply-thinking musician has the capacity to explore and explain the messages and subtleties of liturgical traditions that range far beyond the Western tradition. [read more...]

Con el que es sólo su tercer trabajo discográfico, Björn Schmelzer y Graindelavoix acaban de conseguir un premio doble en la ceremonia de los Klara-Muziekprijzen, celebrada a principios de noviembre en el país natal del grupo, Bélgica.

Poissance d’amours –editado por Glossa– ha sido seleccionado por el jurado de la emisora de música clásica Klara como la mejor producción realizada en Flandes en este año 2008, mientras que los oyentes de la cadena le han otorgado el premio del público.[leer más...]