Uncle (Andrea) and nephew (Giovanni) Gabrieli have had a great impact on Italian Renaissance music. Especially their works for cori spezzati (double-choir) - ‘inherited’ from Adrian Willaert – utilizing the two balconies opposite each other at St. Mark’s in Venice, have left an undisputed mark. Both composers, however, were also organists themselves. It must have been a challenge to compose music for two organs along the same cori spezzati lines. This selection of pieces allows the listener to join in the excitement of playing on historic instruments in a vast church.

Cavazzoni was born into a noble family in Bologna at an unknown date toward the end of the 15th century. His playing was called ‘divino’ while he was still a teenager, and his precocious talents, together with his good upbringing, must have smoothed his path into the service of the Duchess of Urbino, daughter of Isabella d’Este, before 1512; he most likely followed her into exile back at her hometown Mantua in 1516. Those early years earned him the sobriquet ‘d’Urbino’. Later he is documented as a private harpsichordist to Leo X in Rome, as colleague and eventual successor to Vincenzo da Modena, who had played a pedal harpsichord to the famous Duke of Ferrara, Ercole I (his patroness’s grandfather) on his deathbed.

In the 16th and 17th centuries the vast majority of images of cornetto players are depictions angel musicians, often in the company of angelic voices, viols, violins, trombones, organs and harps. Taking this image as a point of departure, Hana Blažíková and I, following the success of our project “Breathtaking”, have developed and recorded a new program around the pairing of the voice and the cornetto. Once again we explore the wonderful way the voice and cornetto can play off of each other in diverse repertoires from the 17th century to the present day.