Die sogenannte ,,Alte Musik-Szene" ist in einer noch vor ein paar Jahren für undenkbar gehaltenen Expansion begriffen. Fast jeden Tag werden neue Ensembles gegründet und neue ,,alte" Werke zum ersten Mal der stummen Vergangenheit entrissen. Wir leben - wie wohl nie zuvor - auf Du und Du mit unserer jahrhundertealten Musikgeschichte.

Fantastic singing by the Finnish ensemble, who display a remarkable ability to convey the 'polyphony' - the sounding together of 'many tunes'. For their focus is very much on ensuring each voice is phrasing & singing their 'tune', with the lovely harmonies a result rather than their main target. It's good to hear an ensemble singing this way, all too often we hear the same 'vertical' (harmonic) approach that is the basis of the last 200+ years of concentration on tune+harmony, rather than a truly 'horizontal' focus on the lines of the music.

The Naples of Antonio Valente (c1520-1600) was the principal city of the Spanish Empire of the day, second only to Istanbul of Mediterranean cities in population, a cultural and intellectual hub where ideas were traded as readily as goods at the port. This is the context for ready wit and vivid characters dancing before us in the harpsichord manuscript left to us as the principal work of an instrumental virtuoso who was blind from birth.

I really doubt that anyone but an expert could tell the difference between the French music in this collection and the music in Piffaro's Italian collection. Both discs are equally charming; both feature the same variety of well-played, tasty-sounding period instruments. Both have moments of reflective beauty, but most of the music makes you feel like getting up and dancing. If you don't know this period, start out with this disc or with Canzone e Danze. Both will cheer you up.

Flemish composer Adrian Willaert – who served as maestro di capella at the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice from 1527 until his death in 1562 – contributed so much to the Italian renaissance; while he wasn't the first to develop the Venetian polychoral style, its propagation in the mid-sixteenth century may well be laid at his feet. Willaert helped introduce the forms of canzona and ricercare, which greatly aided the growth of instrumental music in the years to come. The nearly overarching interest in chromaticism among Italian composers in the late renaissance can be traced to Willaert's door. Nevertheless, toss a dart into a crowd of music scholars and chances are you won't manage to hit one that has much of an opinion about Willaert's work or his music – it is seldom recorded and CDs devoted to Willaert alone are rare. On their own, these aspects make Oehms Classics' Adrian Willaert: Musica Nova – featuring the talents of expert vocal ensemble Singer Pur – special, valuable, and significant for purposes of study and filling a major hole in the renaissance repertoire. But beyond that, it is a fine listening experience as well.

Over the first half of the sixteenth century this Flemish composer was one of the key figures in Western music, instrumental in the development both of the madrigal and of church music fro double chorus. From 1527 until his death he was maestro di capella at St Mark’s in Venice, but this music dates mainly from his earlier years, when he achieved nine setting of the Mass. This splendid offering from Summerly and his Oxford Camerata is the only one available, a magnificent ‘parody mass’, using as its base a motet by Jean Richafort, a piece included here as a prelude. Willaert’s setting rises to a sublime conclusion in the extended Agnus Dei, in flowing polyphony. The Magnificat and Ave Maria offers inspired music too, performed with equal freshness and dedication. Vividly atmospheric sound.

The Gesualdo Six and director Owain Park (also the group's bass) have expanded their mission quite a bit beyond performances of music by their namesake, recording Renaissance polyphony from various countries. Their precise, close-up sound is instantly appealing and arguably more emotionally involving than the classic cathedral choir recordings of repertory like that on this 2021 release. A specific aspect of Josquin's legacy is explored here: music of the composers who worked after Josquin at the court of the Este family in Ferrara. The program begins with a motet by Ockeghem, possibly Josquin's teacher, and the inspiration for Josquin's magnificent ode Nymphes des bois, memorializing Ockeghem.

Resonating across more than five centuries, expressions of personal piety and prayer fill these works by a quartet of Franco-Flemish composers, all born in the 15th century, and their modern-day colleagues, Estonian Cyrillus Kreek (1889-1962) and British-Norwegian Andrew Smith (b. 1970).

Jérôme Lejeune continues his History of Music series with this boxed set devoted to the Renaissance. The next volume in the series after Flemish Polyphony (RIC 102), this set explores the music of the 16th century from Josquin Desprez to Roland de Lassus. After all of the various turnings that music took during the Middle Ages, the music of the Renaissance seems to be a first step towards a common European musical style. Josquin Desprez’s example was followed by every composer in every part of Europe and in every musical genre, including the Mass setting, the motet and all of the various new types of solo song. Instrumental music was also to develop considerably from the beginning of the 16th century onwards.

Around 1600, when opera was invented in Italy, venice was resplendent with the works of Giovanni Gabrieli in the Basilica of San Marco. A daring amalgamation of Flemish and Italian styles, this is a corpus of virtuoso pieces in which voices compete with cornetts and trombones for polyphony of rare beauty. In an Italy ravaged by wars, where the Condottieri were the modern Heroes, the souls of these captains rise again thanks to the music of the brilliant Gabrieli, the ultimate representative of a Renaissance that put the fighting Princes into the last cherished armours… Adrien Mabire and his Mercenaries have been recruited to serve under Maestro Gabrieli, to enable his works to resound loud and clear, where we hear the triumphant flapping banners of the Victory at Lepanto, Glory be to the Serenissima!