The programme chosen for this CD by the eminent early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini and performed by members of his hand-picked ensemble Concerto Italiano illustrate most of the forms that instrumental music adopted in the course of the seventeenth century. Amongst the composers featured are Giovanni Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Zanetti, and Torelli, as well as lesser known figures of the period including Giovanni de Macque, Evaristo dall’Abaco, and Giovanni Bononcini.

The fifth release in the Rediscoveries series from Virgin Classics is the celebrated 1990 recording A Venetian Coronation 1595 by Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort & Players. The album presents a musical reconstruction of the coronation mass for Venetian Doge Marino Grimani. Gramophone wrote of the recording: "Without doubt, this is one of the finest records of Italian Renaissance polyphony to appear for a long time; imaginative in conception, varied in content, and both exciting and thought-provoking in execution."

It is well known that in Venice a "Golden Age" of compositional, vocal, and instrumental musical creativity and virtuosity emerged, and then flourished during the mid-1500s to the mid-1700s. The 16th century experienced a substantial development in the cappella ducale of Saint Mark's, which, until the end of the 17th century, remained the leading center of musical activity in the city. Evidence of this comes from the profusion of significant musicians that it received in that "Golden Age": either as maestri di cappella, or as organists (Claudio Merulo, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli), or as virtuoso instrumentalists (the cornet player Giovanni Bassano). Claudio Merulo and Andrea Gabrieli played a decisive role in the simultaneous emergence of Venetian keyboard and stile concertato music.

As with Bach’s The Art of Fugue performed by the Berlin Saxophone Quartet (9990582), this is an alternate interpretation of some early music, this time it’s the music of the Renaissance. Music by composers such as Palestrina, Dowland, Gabrielli, Frescobaldi, Desprez and many more have been arranged for four saxophones.

The senses reign, and Reason now is dead (Petrarch). Giovanni Antonini, flautist and founder of the legendary Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, enjoys musical voyages, the discursiveness of music. He begins with an anonymous 16th century pavane, La Morte della Ragione (The Death of Reason), which he believes refers to In Praise of Folly, in which its author Erasmus distinguishes between two forms of madness: a sweet illusion of the spirit, and a negative form, one that the vengeful Furies conjure up from hell…

There is some grand and characteristically sumptuous music on this record of motets and instrumental pieces that might have been heard during the feast of Christmas in St Mark's or one of the other great churches of Venice round about 1600 or a little later. A strong point in its favour, too, is the unhackneyed choice of programme: the instrumental Sonata pian' e forte, of course, is an old favourite, and the two earlier double-choir motets of Gabrieli, Angelus ad pastores and 0 magnum mysterium, are also relatively familiar; but the three remaining Gabrieli motets, all taken from posthumous publications and among his most elaborate polychoral pieces, are much less often tackled—not surprisingly, since they call for exceptional resources.

To visit the great Venetian cathedrals in the 17th century was to bow deeply to the polychoral or “cori spezzati” style that reigned there, pioneered by Giovanni Gabrieli. The young Heinrich Schutz was no exception. Unable to resist the sparkling sounds arising from polychoral writing and antiphonal placement, Schutz carried the style back to his native Germany. Capella Murensis and Les Cornets Noirs here present with absolute fidelity works by Schutz and Gabrieli that epitomize the high Ventian style.

Canzon in echo duodecimi toni à 10 in Volume 3 is obviously the most spectacular piece, but the paired Sonatas XX and XXI (with organ) thrillingly combine rich sonorities with complex decoration, and in Volume 2 there are several very striking pieces, notably La Spiritata and Canzon XVI à 12, which closes the disc.

Starting with the Canzon XVII of 1615 in 12 parts, involving three choirs of instruments, Eric Crees and his brilliant players from the brass section of the LSO demonstrate at once what variety of tone they can produce, with the finest shading of timbre and texture. In the great Sonata pian’ e forte of 1597 in eight parts and the even more striking Double Echo Canzon in 12 Parts, the playing is remarkable as much for its restraint and point as for its dramatic impact. Beautiful sound, both clear and atmospheric, not aggressive.

Gabrieli's music, written for a comparatively large ensemble of cornetts, sackbuts (= trombones), dulcian, violins, viola and organ (and in one instance for theorbo), is some of the earliest that can be considered "orchestral", although the use of cornetts and trombones makes it sound, in the main, a bit like music for brass band! The pieces appear to be instrumental developments from earlier vocal compositions (thus the title "Canzone", derived from the word for song) and reflect the situation at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, where groups of singers or instrumentalists were placed at various points within the church building to create what we might today call a "surround" effect.

There is no shortage of discs around featuring transcriptions of Renaissance music for brass. Whilst played on modern instruments the main difference here however is that London Brass, several of whom play period instruments in other ensembles, have enlisted the specialist knowledge of Philip Pickett to direct them.

Giovanni Gabrieli is arguably the earliest composer to write a significant body of instrumental music to a formula which can be said to be truly idiomatic and timelessly palatable. The Sacraesymphoniae publication of 1597 is a mixed set of vocal and instrumental pieces and, in its grand design, preserves a glorious heyday of textural opulence, intimate and playful dialogue between galleries and unashamedly ostentatious virtuosity.

Musicalische Compagney gets it as close to the music's original design as the current state of knowledge about the 17th century allows us. The program of Gabrieli's works from German sources collected on this CD is excellent.

Following the international success of their first album on Resonus, Venice 1629, Jamie Savan with his acclaimed period group The Gonzaga Band continue their exploration of lesser-known music in the Baroque Venetian orbit. Here they uncover the Vespers (1616), a forgotten masterpiece by Amadio Freddi, maestro di cappella of Treviso Cathedral during Monteverdi’s tenure at St Mark’s in Venice.

By combining the highly skilled Royal Academy of Music Brass and the Juilliard School Brass, trumpeter and director Reinhold Friedrich has created a virtuoso super group that is perfectly suited to the glorious antiphonal music of Giovanni Gabrieli. Not only is such a large contingent of exceptional brass players capable of producing the rich and resonant sound that is characteristic of Gabrieli's music, it also produces a credible impression of the performance space, which is usually quite difficult to convey on a standard recording. This album was made in St. Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, whose barrel-vaulted ceiling and brick-and-marble floor produce fantastic acoustics with a depth and breadth reminiscent of the spacious Byzantine interior of San Marco Cathedral, where Gabrieli served as maestro di cappella.