Tanya Bannister - Piano Sonatas - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The term 'brunette' refers not only to a young woman with brown hair, but also to a musical form that was highly fashionable from the late seventeenth century to the early eighteenth. The genre evolved from the air de cour, extremely popular in France since the beginning of the seventeenth century. The compositional process, however, remained very similar to write a short, tender song, dealing with themes of love or nature, which could be sung alone or accompanied by a harmonic instrument. The late seventeenth century also saw the appearance of an instrument that soon became a favorite of composers and amateur musicians the German flute, now called the traverso or Baroque flute. In this new program, tenor Reinoud van Mechelen, flautist Anna Besson and A nocte temporis present an anthology of airs and brunettes ranging from the most touching song to the heartiest drinking song (air à boire).

Tanya Tomkins - Works for Cello & Piano [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/25/2005

Performer and scholar Vania Dal Maso has constructed an innovative programme exploring music for stringed keyboard instruments from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Based on the study and interpretation of sources, both on the instruments' construction and musical interpretation, she explores the profoundly different sounds and tone-colours of the clavichord, hammered clavicymbalum and clavicytherium. The music ranges widely in forms and genres from across Europe, including music sourced from the oldest-known manuscript for keyboard instruments - the Robertsbridge Codex (c. 1320) - to create the widest possible stylistic panorama of keyboard music of the time.