The Early Music Club (EMC)

[Mandryka]

[asin]B07J35QFR1[/asin]
I noticed as well! 
Anyone familiar with them care to comment?
My main issue would be if the perfomance styles are still relevant or outdated?
Since recordings range from 1985 - 2015 and several ensembles are involved, the picture might be mixed...

Q

The Augsburg people are jaunty and chirpy with a foot tapping clear pulse and they have at least one "characterful" voice, it's a bit like the sort of thing you might hear in a Hollywood depiction of a working class pub on music night circa. 1200; I Ciarlatini are a bit more refined -- a more upmarket bar/restaurant perhaps. Andrea van Ramm's voice is marmite, I like it, I haven't heard this recording but I have heard others in the same series -- we're in the pub again.

The Estampie recording of songs for ladies is nuanced, the singers are communicative, they don't pound the pulse in a naive way, I like it very much.

Per Sonat are soulful and sensual and sexy and absolutely wonderful, and ditto for the Ensemble Leones Wokelstein.  I would also recommend the Naxos Neidhardt CD over the one from the Augsburg ensemble.

[The new erato]

5/11, even 6 if you include von Ramm (which I love) isn't to bad for a cheap compilation like this (I can get it for <GBP 30 everything included t seems....)

Booklets avaialable as pdf's on one of the discs I notice.

[Vinbrulé]

5/11, even 6 if you include von Ramm (which I love) isn't to bad for a cheap compilation like this (I can get it for <GBP 30 everything included t seems....)

Booklets avaialable as pdf's on one of the discs I notice.

You convinced me    Already ordered on Ebay for € 24 all included    

[JBS]

Crosspost from the New Releases thread
Two reissues from Ensemble Organum on January 4
[asin]B07F4C15B2[/asin]
[asin]B07F4R27J4[/asin]
And a brand new Stile Antico on January 11
[asin]B07J3691SR[/asin]

[San Antone]

Two reissues from Ensemble Organum on January 4

And a brand new Stile Antico on January 11

Excellent news!  All three look very interesting and right up my alley.  Thanks for the heads up.

[North Star]

There's also this on Hyperion this month. Fair warning to fans of lower voices and all-male ensembles, the Portuguese group is 37.5% female, with two altos & a soprano.

[JBS]

Excellent news!  All three look very interesting and right up my alley.  Thanks for the heads up.

The previous incarnation of the Templar CD is still available on Amazon MP.

[San Antone]

There's also this on Hyperion this month. Fair warning to fans of lower voices and all-male ensembles, the Portuguese group is 37.5% female, with two altos & a soprano.

Yeah, I had seen this one but decided against it.

[Mandryka]

I think Manuel Cardoso's motets are attractive, I'm a bit curious to hear that Hyperion recording.

[Que]

Crosspost from the New Releases thread
Two reissues from Ensemble Organum on January 4
[asin]B07F4C15B2[/asin]
[asin]B07F4R27J4[/asin]

Exciting! Anf stuff I didn't have.

More issues in the same new series:

[asin]B07F4C15B4[/asin]
[asin]B07F4R27J2[/asin]
[asin]B07F4DFHSM[/asin]
Q

[Mandryka]

Hard to imagine anyone describing Peres's Hildegard as "exciting"

The packaging is attractive, I wonder if there are any new essays.

[Que]

Hard to imagine anyone describing Peres's Bingen as "exciting"

The packaging is attractive, I wonder if there are any new essays.

Noted...  But the Compostela and Templiers  JBS posted do seem enticing.
The two masses are also great recordings, but still readily available... The ways of the recording industry do not always make sense. Next thing you know, is that after all these pretty individual reissues, they throw in a giant budget Ensemble Organum box set...

Q

[Mandryka]

Noted...  But the Compostela and Templiers  JBS posted do seem enticing.
The two masses are also great recordings, but still readily available... The ways of the recording industry do not always make sense. Next thing you know, is that after all these pretty individual reissues, they throw in a giant budget Ensemble Organum box set...

Q

Actually I've started to play the Hildegard after making that comment and, well . . . it's gregorian chant, but it's energetically done. Maybe in a way it is exciting.

They are going to release it all as a box, or so I've heard from a friend of mine who knows Marcel Peres. And, as I mentioned once before, he's recorded a new disc of Moroccan chant scheduled for April I believe. It's such a shame he doesn't give more concerts, he's very active still, but mostly with courses. I don't fancy doing a course in chant, I mean, I sing like a casserole.

If you speak French it's worth hearing those interviews I posted, he comes across as a very amusing chap, a jovial raconteur.

[Que]

They are going to release it as a box, or so I've heard from a friend of mine who knows Marcel Peres.

See?  But very good yo know - thanks for the info! 
I hope it is going to be a big box set, with lots of goodies I've missed sofar...

Q

[Vinbrulé]

  You convinced me    Already ordered on Ebay for € 24 all included

In the meantime...... I wanted to hear some Landini and have tried this CD from Mala Punica :  disappointed  !
I find the voice of Jill Feldman annoying , too strident ..... and the nasty reverberant acoustic of the Eremo dei Frati Gaudenti in Ronzano (on the hills surrounding Bologna ) doesn't help.
The beautiful melodic line of "Che cosa è questo amore" seems to come from a world of ghosts, and the sequel is not better.
From Arcana I would have expected another care for the choice of recording location.
Nonetheless track 4 is an absolute jewel : "Serà quel zorno may" by Matteo da Perugia is a dreamy otherworldly mantra that lasts 18' (perhaps a bit too much) : after a ten minutes of peroration led by the flute, the voice joins the instruments and the marvel goes on till the end.
This piece redeems the limits of the remaining repertoire.
I still prefer soprano voices like that of Catherine Bott  ( or the italian girls of La Reverdie )

[Mandryka]

In the meantime...... I wanted to hear some Landini and have tried this CD from Mala Punica :  disappointed  !
I find the voice of Jill Feldman annoying , too strident ..... and the nasty reverberant acoustic of the Eremo dei Frati Gaudenti in Ronzano (on the hills surrounding Bologna ) doesn't help.
The beautiful melodic line of "Che cosa è questo amore" seems to come from a world of ghosts, and the sequel is not better.
From Arcana I would have expected another care for the choice of recording location.
Nonetheless track 4 is an absolute jewel : "Serà quel zorno may" by Matteo da Perugia is a dreamy otherworldly mantra that lasts 18' (perhaps a bit too much) : after a ten minutes of peroration led by the flute, the voice joins the instruments and the marvel goes on till the end.
This piece redeems the limits of the remaining repertoire.
I still prefer soprano voices like that of Catherine Bott  ( or the italian girls of La Reverdie )

The thing that I like about Mala Punica is that they were pioneers, pioneers of a smooth and fluid style, much more sensual than the a cappella singers (Orlando,  and the previous generation of performers with instruments (e.g. the stuff Catherine Bott did with Philip Pickett or indeed La Reverdie) This style has become an element of the mainstream, I think for the good but I can't argue for that, examples include Graindelavoix and Tetraktys.

I agree with your point about sound though for me it's certainly not a deal breaker. No point in arguing about singers, you either like Jill Feldman or you don't, end of.

Re Landini, try Binkley, I think it's rather good,

[Mandryka]

Someone has kindly given me a transfer of Rene Clemencic's performance of Dufay's Missa Ave Regina Coelorum. The style in the ordinaries is very similar to his commercially released recording of Dufay's Missa Ecce Ancilla Domini, though here I'll note that there's a rather beautiful incantation (solo) of  Ave Regina Coelorum before the first Kyrie.

I was very interested by his essay on the sleeve, where Clemencic makes this comment

According to numerous contemporary reports on interpretation, at the celebration of the great ecclesiastical feast days, "during the customary parts of the singing the kettle drums and wind instruments sounded" -- in fact a type of solemn fanfare was improvised. Passages of particular moment in the mass could be emphasised by the addition of wind instruments and kettle drums

Has anyone here researched this? I wonder what the "numerous contemporary reports" are. And I wonder where his quotation  "during the customary parts of the singing the kettle drums and wind instruments sounded" comes from.

[Mandryka]

This seems to be quite a substantial annotated discography of early music, the work of a librarian by the looks of it,  I'm not quite sure what it is for, it seems to be connected to Gonville and Caius College Cambridge. Anyway I thought I'd use the thread as my way of bookmarking it,

https://www.cai.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/medmusic.pdf

[JCBuckley]

Just wondering - has anyone here seen a copy of this? - http://www.graindelavoix.org/paginas/timeregained.html

Looks very interesting, but I doubt if any UK bookshop has it.

[Mandryka]

Just wondering - has anyone here seen a copy of this? - http://www.graindelavoix.org/paginas/timeregained.html

Looks very interesting, but I doubt if any UK bookshop has it.

if you get hold of the booklet essay that Schmelzer wrote on Machaut, you'll see that Warburg is a serious inspiration for him. I may ask one of the London bookshops if they can get a copy for me to look at before deciding whether to buy, Foyles may do it in fact, they've done that sort of thing for me before. The publisher's website here has more images, but hardly helpful really

https://www.merpaperkunsthalle.org/projects/view/1306