Various Artists - Keynotes - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Some of the greatest works ever composed were conceived for and inspired by keyboard instruments. Today, however, the splendor of the canonical works for keyboard instruments composed after 1600 - Bach's Preludes and Fugues, Beethoven's Sonatas and Chopin's Nocturnes - tends to overshadow works composed earlier, despite there being a rich history of repertoire and a variety of instruments at that earlier time. Corina Marti here not only explores the earliest keyboard music to be composed in Europe but also provides a fascinating insight into a world of virtuoso players and the music composed for them, playing a selection of instruments that are hardly known today a metal-stringed clavisimbalum (an early form of harpsichord), an upright gut-stringed claviciterium, two organetti (portative organs) of different sizes, and the church organ in Altenbruch in northern Germany with it's array of original pipes that date from the fifteenth century.