Cappella Amsterdam / Daniel Reuss ROLAND DE LASSUS Inferno

INFERNO

Cappella Amsterdam / Daniel Reuss JOSQUIN DES PREZ Miserere mei Deus

'To lament, to mourn, to memorialise: such was the new fashion at the very end of the fifteenth century', writes Alice Tacaille. 'The poet, in mourning the musician, attains an expressive intimacy ... a eulogy of art that places the lamenting poet himself at the origin of the immortal memory which the artist will enjoy.' Such is the case with the celebrated 'Deploration' on the death of Ockeghem, which, alongside Nymphes, nappées, forms a pair of superb musical epitaphs by the illustrious Josquin. With this programme combining secular homages and sacred polyphony, Daniel Reuss and the singers of Cappella Amsterdam launch a magisterial trilogy devoted to the Franco-Flemish masters of the Renaissance.

Cappella Amsterdam / Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century / Frans Brüggen JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH St. John Passion, BWV 245

One of the many delights coming from Frans Brüggen’s distinguished career has been the understanding which he brings to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach – such as here with the St John Passion – whether on the concert platform or on record. Brüggen’s cultured feeling for Bach’s musical structures as much as for its style and expressive content permits a textural clarity enjoyed by few of his directing colleagues. A special wealth of experience in the music of Bach has also been gained by the members of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century across the three decades of its existence and as part of its regular concert series (there have now been over a hundred of these tours!) and with a concentrated opportunity to focus on one work, Bach’s masterpiece was performed and recorded in Spring 2010.
Also of special note on this new recording is the presence of a solo group comprising both distinguished and rising talents, led by Markus Schäfer as the Evangelist and Thomas Oliemans as Jesus, and with Michael Chance and Marcel Beekman singing arias together with the added luxury of the present-day “Bach bass” par excellence in Peter Kooij and the radiant-voiced Carolyn Sampson. Choral support comes from the Cappella Amsterdam, also present (as was Peter Kooij) on another of Frans Brüggen’s recent revisitings for Glossa and The Grand Tour of the glories of Bach’s choral music, the B minor Mass. (Glossa)

Cappella Amsterdam / Daniel Reuss ARVO PÄRT Kanon Pokajanen

Since his conversion to the Orthodox faith in the early 1970s, Arvo Pärt has composed a large number of works of religious inspiration. He is attached to the Latin language, and has borrowed numerous texts from the Roman Catholic liturgy (masses, Stabat Mater, Salve Regina and others), but he naturally feels particularly close to Orthodox spirituality, which has been the source of both instrumental compositions (Silouan’s Song, Trisagion) and vocal works. In his settings of Orthodox prayers, Pärt sometimes makes use of English translations (Litany, Triodion), but on certain occasions he prefers to retain Church Slavonic, the of cial language of the Russian Orthodox liturgy. This is the case with the Kanon Pokajanen (Canon of Repentance), at once his most monumental work and one of the very rare musical settings of a canon (kānon), a poetico-liturgical genre dating from the Byzantine era.

The Kanon Pokajanen (Canon of Repentance), premiered in March 1998, is Arvo Pärt’s most monumental composition. Its prolonged genesis, a meticulous process of assimilation of the text in Church Slavonic, the austerity and subtlety of its style embody the same sincerity, the same spiritual and contemplative radiance as icon painting. A dialogue with the Sacred in which time stands still.