Between Spheres focuses on the sound poetry of the recorder consort. Music of the 17th century is interwoven with a contemporary work cycle dedicated to the quartet. Both musical spheres have a beauty of sound that captures the ear and makes the listener wonder where one era ends and the other begin. The Boreas Quartett Bremen presents a magical sound of the flute ensemble that switches between worlds of expression with virtuosity: it sounds like birdsong in Poglietti’s Rossignolo and Schönewolf’s Unter Kranichen, hypnotically set with low flutes in the polyphonic Ricercari of the Late Renaissance, agile and highly virtuosic in fugue compositions of both eras. The pieces are closely interwoven, hovering “between spheres”. The recording is the second release of the Boreas Quartett Bremen after the ICMA award-winning album Basevi Codex from 2022.

The Boreas Quartett Bremen and soprano Dorothee Mields bring a little-known musical manuscript of the renaissance to life and present a series of premiere recordings. The Basevi Codex, a collection of Franco-Flemish chansons, motets and mass settings, was produced during the early sixteenth century in the famous music scribing workshop of Pierre Alamire. Faithfully following renaissance performance practice, which allowed great freedom in its musical realisations, the recorder consort and Dorothee Mields interpret selected pieces from the codex, with voice or purely instrumental, and, depending on the character of the piece, also with improvised virtuoso ornamentation. This creates a colourful picture of the music as it was sung and played at the Burgundian-Dutch court of Princess Margaret of Austria in Mechelen.