Baroque&Before

May 15, 2019

Founded by the Irish harpsichordist and organist Malcolm Proud and the Swiss violinist Maya Homburger, Camerata Kilkenny is a period instrument group specializing in the performance of Baroque music. The great Uilleann piper David Power joins Camerata Kilkenny for a program of Baroque classics and traditional Irish favorites. Recorded live in concert August 10, 2018 in St Lawrence’s Church, a ...

May 1, 2019

The Pan-European Sollazzo Ensemble, winners of the 2015 York Early Music Competition, brings its vivid style of performance to intimate and profound music that still speaks to us through the centuries. The program presents a fascinating example of a 15th century English cultural export: the so-called contenance angloise or English manner. This distinctive style of polyphony, developed in fifteenth-century England, ...

April 10, 2019

Founded in 1971, the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble presents late 17th- and early 18th-century music from Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden, including three works from the composer known as “The Swedish Handel.” Recorded live in concert January 21, 2017, in the Auditorium of Radio France Broadcasting House, Paris. Thanks to Classical WFMT’s association with the European Broadcasting Union, we’re able to ...

March 20, 2019

In celebration of the 334th anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach on March 21 (Old Style,) we present the English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir in a program of Bach’s infrequently performed cantatas. John Eliot Gardner, who founded both performance groups, conducts. Recorded live in concert May 17, 2018 in Prague, in the Rudolfinum’s Dvořák Hall, as part ...

February 20, 2019

In this recital from La Folia Early Music Festival, young French mezzo-soprano Juliette De Banes Gardonne is featured in a program of cantatas by Caresana, Porpora and Alessandro Scarlatti, little known, and in one case, unpublished, Joined by a chamber ensemble composed of harpsichord, theorbo, cello, flute, and violin. Recorded live in concert in Rougemont, Switzerland’s Church of Saint Nicholas.

February 6, 2019

Angelo Ragazzi’s Mass for his Holy Roman benefactor Charles VI is the centerpiece of tonight program. Lost for some 300 years, it’s presented tonight along with a Serenade by Ragazzi’s predecessor at the Habsburg Court, Johann Joseph Fux. Recorded live in concert August 18, 2018, in the French Church in Bern, Switzerland by the early music orchestra Les Passions de ...

January 16, 2019

Orchestra La Scintilla was formed in 1998 by members of the Zürich Opera Orchestra. Early music was the spark (la scintilla) for the creation of the music ensemble. Contralto Wiebke Lehmkul and soprano Ana Quintans join the orchestra, led by Ottavio Dantone, for a program workwork by Alessandro Scarlatti, Gregori, Caldara, and Porpora. Recorded live in concert July 2, 2018, ...

December 26, 2018

As 2018 draws to a close, we remember the life and work of three classical artists who died this past year, each, in various degrees, dedicating himself or herself to the performance and diffusion of early music: Italian conductor and founder of I Solisti Veneti Claudio Scimone, French oboist, conductor, and founder of La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du ...

December 12, 2018

Ensemble le Moment Baroque, performing on period instruments, presents Praetorius & Monteverdi en dialogue, a program comparing two of the most important composers of the 17th century. We’ll hear instrumental selections from Claudio Monteverdi’s operas, as well as from Terpsichore of 1612 by Michael Praetorius. Recorded live in concert January 25, 2018, in the Église Saint Germain, a 13th-century church ...