Bengt Bitter Funeral Beer Band Berger - Praise Drumming - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

'Ottavio Bariola represented absolute musical perfection. The organs of the [church of] Madonna di San Celso are honoured to have passed through the hands of such an excellent performer. His listeners rejoiced while he pressed the keys, and the original way he moved up and down the keyboard provided an earthly imitation of the harmony of heaven.' This rapturous description, provided by the abbot Filippo Piccinelli in his work L'Ateneo dei Letterati Milanesi (Milan, 1670), provides a good summary of all the biographical information available for the organist and composer Ottavio Bariolla. The organist and organ builder Costanzo Antegnati, son of the renowned Graziadio Antegnati who built the organ for the church of Santa Barbara in Mantua played on this recording, bears witness to the fact that Bariolla was still alive in 1608, naming him in his Arte Organica (Brescia, 1608) as one of the many 'illustrious and most excellent composers' that inspired him to write his treatise. The only copy currently known of Ottavio Bariolla's Ricercate per sonar d'Organo (the original has been lost) is contained within the German organ tablature held in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino (Fondo Giordano 8). This tablature, which has been dated to between 1637 and 1640, was drawn up by scribes working in southern Germany and is the largest manuscript source of keyboard music, featuring an incredible 1770 compositions. Bariolla was one of the first composers in the prime of the ricercar to break away from monothematic composition, preferring to use multiple themes in his Ricercate and therefore pre-empting the direction taken by his successors, including Giovanni Maria Trabaci, the best-known composer of the Neapolitan school, and Girolamo Frescobaldi.

World premiere recordings for recorder and accordion are presented by the two artists Sabine Ambos (recorder) and Mirjana Petercol (accordion) on their GENUIN debut . The program is dedicated exclusively to works by Romanian composer Diana Cemeryte. We find ourselves deeply immersed in a strange and quiet world that leaves much room for listening and re-listening, feeling, and sensing. Never-ending breaths and undreamt-of sound effects are just as much a part of this sound universe as breathtaking virtuoso passages and a Babylonian plethora of languages without words. A composer and two musicians to remember!

The quintet from Bengt Berger's much praised last album Beches Brew has grown to nine members in this live recording from two nights in Stockholm and Gothenburg. The mix of tradition and new modes of expression, as well as the impulses from some of the great traditions of the world, and the collective approach to ensembles and solo work shows a strong relationship to Charles Mingus' way of making music.