O Púbis da Rosa

5.11.25

MARCELLO : Complete Sonatas for Organ and Harpsichord (Chiara Minali · Laura Farabollini) 3CD-SET (2018) FLAC (image+.cue), lossless|

Historically informed performances of poised and inventive keyboard music from the Golden Age of the Venetian Baroque.

The epitome of a Renaissance man, Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) won success and acclaim as a poet, writer, musician, lawyer, judge, administrator and philologist. Though his keyboard sonatas have appeared on several recorded collections of the Italian Baroque, they have rarely been presented in a comprehensive manner. In doing so, this album celebrates the personal even idiosyncratic style of a composer whose technical accomplishment facilitates rather than stifling his creative voice.

The 12 Sonatas were later published as Op.3. They date from early in Marcello’s career, and are mostly cast in three andfour brief movements, though the first and last of them, in D minor and C minor respectively, feature more extended forms. The minor-key sonatas are generally more dramatic and varied in mood; two complementary performances of the G minor Sonata afford the opportunity to compare the tone-colours of the different instruments used on the recording.

There are several sonatas not belonging to the Op.3 collection which are less often heard, and their inclusion here is valuable, alongside Marcello’s magnificent chaconne, subtitled ‘La stravaganza’: a 15-minute tour-de-force of keyboard invention.

The album is enhanced by a vivid account of Marcello’s music, life and career, written by the harpsichordist Laura Farabollini. On this recording she plays a modern Italian copy of a late-18th century French instrument by Taskin, with two manuals and four registers. Chiara Minali plays an organ built by Gio’ Batta Sona in 1812, in the Cornu Evangelii choir of the parish church of San Pietro in Cattedra at Valeggio sul Mincio near Verona.

From an early age Benedetto Marcello (Venice 1686 - Brescia 1739) proved to be a man of great versatility: a poet, writer, musician, lawyer, judge, administrator and philologist, holding important posts in these functions during his entire life. As a composer he wrote a substantial oeuvre, covering all important fields of composition: sacred and secular choral works, opera and a large body of instrumental music.
This 3CD set presents Marcello’s complete works for keyboard, both harpsichord and organ: the 12 Sonatas for harpsichord and a variety of works specifically written for organ. The Sonatas are in 3 or 4 movements, the slow movements showing an elegant lyricism, while the fast movements brim with vivacious energy.
Played by two expert Italian musicians: organist Chiara Minali on an 1812 Gio’ Batta Sona organ, and Laura Farabollini, who already recorded to great critical acclaim the complete keyboard works by Zipoli for Brilliant Classics. brilliant
BENEDETTO MARCELLO (1686-1739)
Tracklist :
Harpsichord – Laura Farabollini (tracks: 2-1 to 2-24, 3-1 to 3-7)
Organ – Chiara Minali (tracks: 1-1 to 1-21, 3-8 to 3-11)

AUGUSTE FAUCHARD : Complete Organ Works (Friedhelm Flamme) 3CD (2021) SACD Hybrid | FLAC (tracks), lossless

"After many attempts to secure the rights to all the scores, we are now finally able to release the complete organ works of Auguste Fauchard in congenial interpretations by Friedhelm Flamme. Fauchard enjoyed the greatest success as a student of composition under Vincent d’Indy and organ under André Marchal and Louis Vierne, with Vierne doubtless exercising the greatest influence on our composer. The heart of Fauchard’s organ oeuvre is formed by four symphonies representing the highest level of compositional and playing technique; here his model, Vierne, frequently registers his presence, both in view of thematic design and compositional-technical details. This applies in special measure to Fauchard’s harmonies, though his amalgamation of modulatory processes bringing Sigfrid Karg-Elert to mind lends them a thoroughly individual coloration. It is thus that it may rightly be claimed that Auguste Fauchard, with his four symphonies, once again made very important contributions to the genre of the organ symphony." prestomusic.com
AUGUSTE FAUCHARD (1881-1957)
Tracklist :
Cover Painting : Aguste Renoir (L'église d'Essoyes)
Organ – Friedhelm Flamme
Notes
Friedhelm Flamme plays the Schuke organ at Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, Detmold, Germany.

ANDRÉ ISOIR — Le Livre D'Or De L'Orgue Français (2013) 6CD-SET | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Recorded between 1972 and 1976 and winner of the most prestigious awards, Le Livre d'or de l'orgue français (Golden Age of French Organ Music) is one of the most comprehensive anthologies ever dedicated to this instrument. Leaving aside the six Messiaen albums entrusted to Louis Thiry, André Isoir recorded the remaining twenty-four LPs in a trajectory leading from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Nearly twenty of these titles survey the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it is these that are now reissued here. André Isoir evokes here his memories of this extraordinary undertaking.
While a certain universality guided the language of organ music in Europe until the late sixteenth century, nurtured on polyphony and transcriptions of vocal repertory, on free preludes or fantasias, the French school began to go its own way in the course of the following decades. It developed in the service of the Roman Catholic Church, in a context where plainchant retained great resonance, while the dominance of colour and a kind of intoxication with timbre resulted from techniques of instrument building that anticipated the tendencies of the repertory itself. From Titelouze to Dandrieu, the programmes presented here bear witness to the constancy of these factors throughout one of the most prosperous periods for French organ music, which coincides almost exactly with the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV.
Tracklist :
Organ – André Isoir
Notes
Coffret regroupant une anthologie des enregistrements réalisés de 1972 à 1976 par Calliope
Orgues :
-- J.G. Koenig Saint-Georges de Bouquenom, Sarre-Union (2-1 to 2-35, juin 1973)
- J.E Isnard Saint-Maximin la Sainte-Beaume (4-1 to 4-20 - 5-29 to 5-34, 1972)
- L.A Clicquot Saint-Jacques et Saint-Christophe Houdan (5-1 to 5-28, 1974)
- A. Kern Saint-Séverin Paris (6-18 to 6-31, juin 1974)
- F.H Clicquot Château de Fontainebleau (6-1 to 6-17, 1975)
- F.H Clicquot Saint-Pierre Poitiers (3-1 to 3-24, 1972)
- J.G. Koenig Bon Pasteur Angers (1-26 to 1-29, juillet 1973
- Haerpfer-Erman Saint-Germain des Prés Paris (1-1 to 1-25 , juin 1973)

4.11.25

ALEXANDRE GUILMANT : Complete Organ Sonatas = Sämtliche Orgelsonaten (Ben Van Oosten) 3CD (1989) MDG Gold Series | Two Version | APE (image+.tracks+.cue), lossless

The clarity of expression is mostly excellent with well defined phrasing and clear attention to the staccato sections. Even the addition of the solo stops in Sonata 1 is well handled. There are just a few places where the playing is not as transparaent as the score inficates (sounds fluffy) but there are not many of these.
This album will give years of pleasure both for listening and as a guide to playing the sonatas. amazon
ALEXANDRE GUILMANT (1837-1911)
Tracklist :
Ben Van Oosten
Cavaillé-Coll-Organ St. Ouen, Rouen

LUDOVICO EINAUDI : Waves -The Piano Collection (2013) 7CD BOX-SET | FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Ludovico Einaudi’s aesthetic of emptiness has won him legions of fans worldwide, and Jeroen van Veen’s survey of the piano music which is central to Einaudi’s style belongs with his survey of minimalists including Glass and Nyman who are less concerned in music as an expressive language than as a commercial artefact. Likewise, his listeners absorb the music less in the sense of engaging with meaning than as backdrop to activity or release from stress. The works on this compendious collection are nearly all ‘songs’ of between 3 and 7 minutes, with the influence from pop culture that this brevity implies, and sharing with the pop world an economically aware employment of simplicity and repetition so as not unduly to tax the attention-span of the consumer. As Jeroen van Veen remarks, ‘Contrary to ordinary classical music, minimal music demands little of the listener but to escape life’s troubles for a moment; no comprehensive musical structures ask their full attention.’

All his compositions are more or less based on the music he heard when he was a child, when his mother played Chopin Preludes. Einaudi (grandson of the politician Luigi Einaudi) loved the almost hypnotic soft sound of the upright piano. Because of her he started to play the piano and tried to find his own way. The melody (if there is any at all) always goes down, hardly leaving the classical path of harmonies. His music is ambient, calm, meditative and often introspective, drawing on minimalism and contemporary pop.

Other information:
- Ludovico Einaudi may well become the “Satie of the 21st century”. His minimalist, deceptively simple piano works reach a massive audience well beyond the strict boundaries of traditional classical music. CDs with his music break sales records, the hypnotic calmness of his works being the perfect recipe against modern world’s stress and fatigue.
- Einaudi’s piano works fit in logically with Jeroen van Veen’s survey of Minimalist Piano Music, and this 7-CD set is the most substantial collection available at present.
- Booklet contains an introduction by Jeroen van Veen to the popular success of Einaudi. brilliantclassics.com
Tracklist :
CD1. Le Onde (1996)
CD2. Eden Roc (1999)
CD3. I Giorni (2001)
CD4. Una Mattina (2004)
CD5. Divenire (2008)
CD6. Nightbook (2009)
CD7. In A Time Lapse (2013)
Piano – Jeroen van Veen

3.11.25

THOMAS TOMKINS : Keyboard Music Vol. 1 (Bernhard Klapprott) (1996) MDG Scene Series | Two Version | FLAC (image+.tracks+.cue), lossless

Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656) was the last of the English Virginalists. After him, the style died out entirely. Although he was something of a late starter (being the Chapel Royal's junior organist to Gibbons, despite being more than ten years older), he spent much of the later part of his life writing keyboard music (whereas Gibbons died thirty years earlier). Although he was content largely to adopt the forms and figures of the old masters, Tomkins did this expertly, due to his large collection of manuscript sources. By that time, no one cared about the English keyboard style at all (a fact Tomkins lamented), but he nonetheless sojourned on -- to one of the largest and most varied outputs in this style. In fact, only Byrd's output is comparable in size, and he was the primary initiator of the style. Therefore, this music (in spite of its artistic weaknesses) provides a fine endmark to an artistic endeavor that was all too brief. medieval.org
THOMAS TOMKINS (1572-1656)
Tracklist :
Cover - Jan Miense Molenaer (Dameam Virginal)
Harpsichord & Virginal – Bernhard Klapprott

2.11.25

THOMAS TOMKINS : Keyboard Music Vol. 2 (Bernhard Klapprott) (1996) MDG Scene Series | Two Version | FLAC (image+.tracks+.cue), lossless

THOMAS TOMKINS (1572-1656)
Tracklist :
Cover - Jan Steen (Musical Scene)
Harpsichord & Virginal – Bernhard Klapprott

THOMAS TOMKINS : Keyboard Music Vol. 3 (Bernhard Klapprott) (1997) MDG Scene Series | Two Version | FLAC (image+.tracks+.cue), lossless

THOMAS TOMKINS (1572-1656)
Tracklist :
Cover - Jan Vermeer (The Music Lesson)
Mabuela Backeshoff - Harpsichord (13 Thea bass parts)
Harpsichord & Virginal – Bernhard Klapprott

THOMAS TOMKINS : Keyboard Music Vol. 4 (Bernhard Klapprott) (1997) MDG Scene Series | Two Version | FLAC (image+.tracks+.cue), lossless

THOMAS TOMKINS (1572-1656)
Tracklist :
Cover - Jan van Eyck (Musizierende Engel, Genter Altar)
Uttum (Germany), Reformierte Kirche
Orgel : SKN Druck & Verlag GmbH & Co./ Martin Stromann
Organ – Bernhard Klapprott

31.10.25

V.A. — FEMALE COMPOSERS (2025) 25xCD BOX-SET | FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

What would it mean to ‘compose like a woman’? The present collection answers the question, in a literal sense, while undoing the premise on which the question was asked in the first place. In social and historical terms, it means enjoying privileges of upbringing, education and/or wealth that were historically denied to the vast majority of women. It means, on the part of the women represented here, a single-minded determination in pursuit of their vocation, helping them to overcome prejudice and sexism in a cultural, social and political milieu that has consistently denied women the opportunity to find and express their own voice in music. Only with movements of emancipation in the last century, and much more rapidly in the last 50 years, has this situation begun to be addressed and corrected.

What composing like a woman does not mean – as the music in this collection makes clear – is a definable set of qualities or characteristics to the music itself which would distinguish the work of female composers from the music composed by men.

This remarkable set gathers many individual recordings of music by women composers, which Brilliant Classics has quietly yet actively championed in their catalogue for decades, uniting it with exciting new outings, so that a comprehensive historical picture of the highly varied struggles and successes of women composers through the ages to our present time are chronicled and celebrated.

Recordings date from 1994–2024.
Booklet in English contains liner notes by Peter Quantrill.

The revival of interest in female classical composers reflects a growing recognition of their overlooked contributions to music history. For centuries, women composers were marginalized, their works overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, recent efforts by musicians, scholars, and institutions have brought these composers into the spotlight, highlighting the richness and diversity of their compositions.
This renewed focus stems from a broader movement toward inclusivity in the arts, challenging traditional narratives that have historically excluded women. The rise of feminist musicology has also played a key role, offering fresh perspectives on these composers' lives and works.
This comprehensive box set offers a wide spectrum of works by female composers, from the Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179) , through the Renaissance Isabella Leonarda (baptized 1620-1704), Francesca Caccini (1587-1640) und Barbara Strozzi (baptized 1619-1677), traversing the Baroque and Classical eras, and arriving in the contemporary field, with composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) and Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969).
A long due homage to the art and voice of female composers, spanning nearly a thousand years! brilliant
Tracklist & Credits :