Dorothee Mields, Magdalene Harer, Hathor Consort & Boreas Quartett Bremen – On Byrd’s Wings (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Dorothee Mields, Magdalene Harer, Hathor Consort & Boreas Quartett Bremen – On Byrd’s Wings (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:34 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © audite Musikproduktion

The heyday of English consort music coincided with the exciting shift in musical style between 1580 and 1630 from the renaissance to the early baroque period. William Byrd and his successors made their mark with sacred and secu- lar songs, fantasies and dances. Honouring the 400th anni- versary of William Byrd’s death, this album displays the diversity and richness in colour of consort music. On the one hand, English composers employed a strikingly sophisticated writing style, whilst on the other hand taking up popular music of their time. The results were atmos- pheric musical pictures reflecting the deep melancholy, pious confidence and full-bodied joie de vivre of Shakespeare’s era.

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Hathor Consort – Aries Point (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Hathor Consort – Aries Point (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 51:18 minutes | 544 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Outnote Records

“Since my first encounter with the Hathor Consort, it has been obvious to me that the sound of the viola da gamba complements the harmonic and melodic style of my compositions wonderfully well and with utter naturalness. The pieces on Aries Point therefore not only combine two musical eras, but also give the sound color of the viola da gamba a central place as a key compositional element. It’s unique timbre influences the process of composition and improvisation and resonates in a completely new musical context. It’s subtle intensity brings out textures which, in their turn, inspire jazz musicians to adopt new forms of melodic and sonic expression in the course of their improvisations. In jazz, the process of improvisation could also be called ‘instant composing’. A central element is the variation of the themes and the interaction between the musicians. In composition too, the repeated variation of patterns – through changes in key, rhythm, note order – creates material that serves to weave the melodies and harmonies of the work. With the Aries Point project, I wish to introduce a wider public to the beauty and diversity of improvisation, that ancestral form which lies at the source of all musical expression.” (Bastian Stein)

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Hathor Consort – Animam gementem cano (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Hathor Consort – Animam gementem cano (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:34 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée

With the world premiere recording of a rediscovered Stabat Mater, a late work by the Bohemian master František Tůma, Pluto-Ensemble and Hathor Consort expand the Baroque discography with an emotionally gripping work. The version presented here, one of Tůma’s five settings of the text, long lay forgotten in the Abbey library in Ottobeuren, until Marnix De Cat (artistic director of the Pluto-Ensemble) rediscovered this gem. It is heard here with the Requiem in F minor by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and instrumental works by Biber, his teacher Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and his Salzburg colleague Andreas Christoph Clamer. Animam gementem cano (‘I hymn the grieving soul’ – the first two words quote the Stabat Mater text) takes us on a journey through many of life’s most significant moments: we are confronted with life and death, but also with our personal path towards consciousness. The programme is intended not only to provide comfort for the ‘captive grieving soul’ of every flesh-and-blood human being, but also to offer every curious music lover a voyage of discovery.

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Hathor Consort & Romina Lischka – Ferrabosco II: The Art Of Fantasy (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Hathor Consort & Romina Lischka – Ferrabosco II: The Art Of Fantasy (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:30 minutes | 1,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée

Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger, viol player at the court of Elizabeth I and Charles I, was the most innovative and influential composer of viol consort music of his generation. Following the steps of his father, composer Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder, he continued the specifically English « In Nomine » tradition for viol consort into the seventeenth century while adding his own special touch in the « In Nomine through all parts » in using the cantus firmus in all voices with various rhythms and transpositions. His greatest achievement was the development of an imitative counterpoint perfectly adapted to the viol. The particular character of Ferrabosco’s music was determined by his love for architecture and symmetrical forms which were integrated in all possible ways into his Fantasies: flexible motives, augmentations and diminutions of themes and a clear harmonic structure.

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Dorothee Mields, Hathor Consort & Romina Lischka – Heinrich Albert’s Pumpkin Hut (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Dorothee Mields, Hathor Consort & Romina Lischka – Heinrich Albert’s Pumpkin Hut (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:17 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée

Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) was a rare haven of peace during the Thirty Years’ War thanks to its geographical location. Many people, including artists and musicians, fled there from the horrors of plague and war. Heinrich Albert, a pupil of Heinrich Schütz (his cousin) and Johann Hermann Schein, the Thomaskantor in Leipzig, was appointed cathedral organist in the city in 1630. His garden hut, overgrown with pumpkin vines and suitably dubbed the ‘pumpkin hut’ (Kürbishütte), became the meeting place of the Königsberg Circle of Poets: a refuge and a space for cutting-edge creativity, spared from direct involvement in the war.

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Pluto-Ensemble, Marnix De Cat, Hathor Consort, Romina Lischka – John Coprario Parrot or Ingenious Parodist (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Pluto-Ensemble, Marnix De Cat, Hathor Consort, Romina Lischka – John Coprario Parrot or Ingenious Parodist (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:09 minutes | 952 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée

Was John Coprario taking credit for someone else’s work when, under his own name, he made transcriptions of more than fifty Italian madrigals for a consort of viols? Such an accusation would be based on false premises, as anything resembling copyright was unknown at the beginning of the seventeenth century and for long afterwards; the use of musical material by someone else was rather considered as a respectful examination of ideas that were so promising that one wanted to think them through further. When transcribing these Italian madrigals, Coprario was not only extending an established tradition but also transcending it. He did not simply omit the text in his madrigal fantasias as had been customary in the 16th century, but also took the polyphonic setting even further, enriching it with instrumental possibilities that voices alone could not match. He also rearranged certain parts so that the original vocal work is not always immediately recognisable. Coprario, besides being one of the first to give ensemble music an instrumental identity, was no musical parrot, but an ingenious parodist.

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Uday Bhawalkar, Hathor Consort, Romina Lischka – Dhrupad Fantasia (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Uday Bhawalkar, Hathor Consort, Romina Lischka - Dhrupad Fantasia (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Uday Bhawalkar, Hathor Consort, Romina Lischka – Dhrupad Fantasia (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:15 minutes | 1,47 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fuga Libera

Dhrupad is the oldest and purest genre within the North Indian classical music and can trace its origins to the recitation of Sanskrit texts in Hindu temples more than two thousand years ago. Dhrupad reached the Mughal courts in Rajasthan in the 16th century, where it developed into a classical art form. Dhrupad Fantasia is a meeting of the court music of Queen Elizabeth I of England with that of the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great; both monarchs reigned from about 1550 until 1600. Romina Lischka has created a wondrous fantasy in which the modality of Indian ragas is interwoven with the polyphony of Elizabeth I’s England. She, the Hathor Consort and dhrupad vocalist Uday Bhawalkar have created an imaginary world by combining improvisations based on modal ragas and polyphonic instrumental music, both of which originated in the art music of the aforementioned courts.
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