Weronika Ratusinska - Polish Contemporary Music: Chamber Music - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Yakov Zak - Russian Piano Tradition [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/12/2007

Ensemble Syntagma - Stylems Italian Music from the Trecento [COMPACT DISCS] date 11/11/2008

In this programme, La Boz Galana takes a journey through the popular idioms of Italian and Spanish composers who worked in Italy, among them Kapsberger, Landi, and other less well-known figures such as Arañés, Stefani and Milanuzzi. As a result of a centuries-old practice - the repertoires of frottole and strambotti, for example - these composers created a 'lighter' genre using popular musical forms based on poetic texts related to them, both Italian and Spanish. Meant to transmit the expressivity of exquisite poetry in conjunction with music, these short and seemingly simple songs appear as succinct miniatures embodying the boundless desire of amateur musicians to shape their intimate musical worlds and engrave the poems in their memories. These pieces were the 'pop songs' of their time, and are often true gems of their kind.