Couperin / Juilliard Baroque - Les Nations - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Andre Cheron was an influential musical personality in Paris during the mid-eighteenth century. He worked at the Paris Opera as a harpsichordist and inspecteur de l'orchestre de l'Opera. In this capacity he supervised several premieres of Rameau's operas and the controversial performance of Pergolesi's intermezzo La serva padrona. With his 1729 sonata collection, André Cheron (1695-1766) cultivates the InchCorelliInch notation, which was so highly regarded in the French Régence. Ensemble Matis is made up of young musicians of various nationalities who originally met at the Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya in Barcelona, and ultimately came together to form the current group at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel. Since the ensemble's inception in the autumn of 2012, they have worked together intensively in formations contingent on the repertoire and have attempted to share and expand upon their experiences in their joint music-making. With Japan, Switzerland, and South Kroea, many different cultures are represented in the ensemble, which enriches and consistently makes the collaboration exciting. The ensemble has specialized in the performance of Baroque chamber music and, as the name InchMatisInch implies, pays special attention to small details, nuances, and timbres in the music and in ensemble playing. The ensemble's goal is to bring the music with it's wealth of color closer to the audience and to bring to life different expressive values.

Acclaimed harpsichordist Guillermo Brachetta returns to Resonus to begin a major recording of the complete Pièces de Clavecin by the French Baroque master, François Couperin. Often wistful and valedictory in tone, the fourth and final book of this landmark collection of keyboard music was completed at the very end of Couperin's life and in the grip of failing health. Containing many vivid musical representations of real characters, Couperin's grace and elegance in writing for this instrument is evident to the very end. Guillermo Brachetta's previous Resonus featuring Concertos from JS Bach, WF Bach, and Carl Graun was widely applauded by audiences and critics alike.

The 17th and 18th centuries marked the era of Enlightenment, overseas exploration, unprecedented European economic expansion and a flourishing of art and culture, not to mention the birth of the greatest composers in history. From concertos to fantasias, suites to sonatas, Brilliant Classics presents a comprehensive and concise overview of this innovative and groundbreaking period in musical history, the Baroque era. The set opens with Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni and his famous Concerti a5, in which he was the first Italian composer to use the oboe as the solo instrument in a concerto. He influenced J.S. Bach, who is fittingly the next composer to feature. Bach pioneered the Concerto Grosso form, with several soloists plus accompaniment, as opposed to just one. There is no better example of this than the famous Brandenburg Concertos, where solos are shared between a group of instruments and the various timbres of the different instruments make for varied and interesting pieces. In the first concerto, Bach employs horns, then mainly used as open-air hunting instruments, a twist on the refined concert piece performed in an elegant chamber setting. Bach also admired the work of Alessandro Marcello. Although Marcello's work is lesser known, his music is notable for it's forward-looking nature. Far from copying the styles and structures of his contemporaries, Marcello's music is unique in it's emotional impact; it's dark and tempestuous, inflicted with a romantic streak. Passing via selected works by Purcell, Corelli and Telemann, Alessandro Stradella's string sinfonias are found towards the end of the set. Stradella lived only to the age of 38 and yet he wrote over 300 works. He also found time to conduct a string of love affairs leading to his untimely demise at the hands of an assassin hired by a rival.