Lautten Compagney

Lautten Compagney – Winter Journeys (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:00 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Those who travel in winter often long for home, for warmth and security during the dark season. The lautten compagney Berlin undertakes special musical “winter journeys” under its founder and director Wolfgang Katschner. The music is largely from the 17th century with works by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Michael Praetorius, Heinrich Schütz and Johann Hermann Schein. They are joined by tunes or folk songs such as “Ach bittrer Winter, wie bist Du kalt” and the longing for spring the song “So treiben wir den Winter aus”, which the lautten compagney has arranged for its instrumentation.

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Lautten Compagney – Weihnachten aus dem Berliner Dom (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:01:05 minutes | 645 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Christmas is a colorful feast – the boys of the Staats- und Domchors Berlin and the compagney colored and fresh on this CD with German Christmas songs of the Reformation period.
The compagney, through its historical instruments, revive the traditional sounds of that time, and, together with the boys of the State and Domchors, draw a musical picture of how the Christmas festival was celebrated magnificently in the early 17th century.

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Lautten Compagney – War & Peace – 1618:1918 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:20 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Immer wieder begeistert das Berliner Originalklang-Ensemble lautten compagney mit einzigartigen Programmen für ihre beeindruckenden und vielfach ausgezeichneten Aufnahmen. Nachdem sie bei “Timeless” Musik von Tarquinio Merula und Philip Glass und bei “Misterio” Werke von Biber und Piazzolla genial miteinander verbunden haben, ist auch ihr neues Album mit der herausragenden Sopranistin Dorothee Mields ein genialer Wurf. Thema von “War & Peace” ist die musikalische Verarbeitung von Krieg und Frieden. Dabei wird entdeckenswerte Musik zweier unterschiedlicher Epochen genial kombiniert und ein spannungsvoller Bogen vom Dreißigjährigen Krieg bis in die Zeit nach dem Ende des 1. Weltkriegs geschlagen. Vier Kapitel umfasst “War & Peace”, die musikalisch vom Lebensgefühl der jeweiligen, von Krieg und Zerstörung gebeutelten Epochen erzählen. Dabei spiegeln sich diese, mit “Angst”, “Katastrophe”, “Vergänglichkeit” und “Sehnsucht” überschriebenen Abschnitte, in den ausgewählten Liedern und Songs aus dem frühen 17. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert wider. Es wechseln sich Klagegesänge, aber auch Instrumentalstücke etwa der großen Barockkomponisten Heinrich Schütz, Andreas Hammerschmidt und Samuel Scheidt mit eher leichteren, dennoch melancholischen Liedern von Friedrich Hollaender und Hanns Eisler ab, die im Berlin der 1920er Jahre wirkten. Von der Zerrissenheit in nachkriegsbewegten Zeiten sprühen ihre Lieder. Zugleich sind sie aufmüpfig und scharfzüngig. Als nachdenklicher Klangfaden durch das Programm erweisen sich außerdem die eingestreuten, bittersüßen Klavierstücke des Franzosen Erik Satie.

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Lautten Compagney – Time Zones (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:32 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Satie meets Scheidt: time and again the lautten compagney Berlin attracts attention with unusually conceived albums. With the globally highly praised “Timeless” the skilful connection of the early Baroque music of Tarquinio Merula with the Minimal Music of Philipp Glass succeeded. with the Album “War & Peace” an exciting arc was struck from the Thirty Years ‘ War to the time after the end of the first World War and the Album “Circle Line” combines Renaissance music by Guillaume Dufay with works by Cage, Monk and Glass – a fascinating sound journey with baroque instruments.

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Lautten Compagney – On the Trail of Marco Polo (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:05:03 minutes | 681 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Marco Polo (1254–1324) is remembered for his adventurous visits to China and Mongolia, visits that he recorded for posterity in a series of colourful and expansive travelogues. Together with Wu Wei, who is the best-known virtuoso on the Chinese sheng, Lautten Compagney set out on the trail of the famous Venetian explorer, resulting in a fascinating combination of traditional Chinese sounds and European Baroque music.

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Lautten Compagney – Misterio: Biber & Piazzolla (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:49 minutes | 1,48 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

What a singular blend, you will say, and you will probably be right. Heinrich Biber’s serious, baroque and spiritual music—and yet, its deepest work: the Rosary Sonatas!—interspersed by pieces that are rather grounded (even rooted in Buenos Aires) from Piazzola, it took some nerve. The Lautten Compagney did it… and not just a little, since Piazzola is played here on the Baroque harpsichord, lute, violin and violoncello, in reinterpretations that don’t lack any bite or persuasion. Biber, like Piazzola, knew that their interpreters wouldn’t lack imagination, making way for a good dose of possible (but never obligatory) improvisation in the area of ornamentation, tempos, sonorities, etc. But let yourself be thrown off and let your hand be taken between the Rosary and Rosario, between the “normally”-tuned instruments and those whose sound is hurt by Biber’s “scordatura”, which consists in getting the string instruments out of tune in order to get open notes—and thus harmonic colors—that are quite unusual, or even shocking, but so beautiful

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Lautten Compagney – Händel, Vinci: Didone abbandonata (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:37:10 minutes | 1,55 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

It will come as no surprise to see the names of two composers at the head of this Didone abbandonata, Leonardo Vinci and Georg Friedrich Handel. The reason for the juxtaposition is simple: this is indeed an opera that Vinci wrote for Naples in 1726, but in a version which was completely revised by Handel for the London stage in 1737. The “Caro Sassone” has changed the tonalities, the orders of the arias, the sequences, and added something here (arias in particular… from Hasse, which he had already recycled in some other works of “his”!), cutting a little there, so the final product owes as much to one composer as to the other. And here, the Lautten Compagney presents the world’s first recording of this work as re-written: a reading based directly on Handel’s personal score, even though he was too badly-afflicted by rheumatism to personally direct the performance of 13 April 1737. This is one of many works he re-wrote to the point of pastiche, which was a great speciality of the 18th century, a time when authors’ rights were a rather woollier concept than they are today.

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Lautten Compagney – Circle Line (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:48 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

With their new album, the ensemble combines early Renaissance music with minimal music – and that sounds simply fascinating in combination and with old instruments. Between the Franco-Flemish composer Guillaume Dufay (c. 1400-1474) and the American minimal music icon Philip Glass (*1937) lie about 600 years of music history. Nevertheless, their respective musical languages possess an astonishing kinship, not least in their refined handling of rhythm and melody. And it is exactly this amazing closeness that the Lautten Compagney under the direction of Wolfgang Katschner dedicates itself to on “Circle Line”. Thus, pieces by Guillaume Dufay alternate with compositions by Philip Glass, but also by Steve Reich, John Cage, Meredith Monk, Wim Mertens and Peter A. Bauer. Right at the beginning, the tense music of “Train To São Paulo” from Philip Glass’ film music for “Powaqqatsi” is confronted with the signal-like “Gloria ad modum tubae” by Dufay. This was followed by the composition “In a Landscape”, with which John Cage anticipated the principles of minimal music as early as 1948. Among the sacred works of Guillaume Dufay, some three-part motets are particularly impressive, including the Marian chants “Flos florum”, “Ave regina coelorum” and “Ave maris stella”. Meredith Monk achieves a very similar sound effect with the piece “Dawn” and Peter A. Bauer with the composition “Segreto intimo”. In between there is a direct fusion of renaissance and minimal music. The musicians have interlocked chansons by Guillaume Dufay (Par droit je puis bien and Se la face ay pale) with Steve Reich’s legendary “Clapping Music” and then again with the “Dance V” by Philip Glass. Early music instruments such as viola da gamba and lute also meet saxophone and striking percussion. “The title of the programme is a symbol for the constantly pulsating metropolis,” says Wolfgang Katschner. “In Berlin, ‘Circle Line’ is the name given to the circular railway, and Berlin is also represented by the noisy compagney. Both circle through the city districts and through the centuries of music.”

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Lautten Compagney – New Vivaldi (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:11 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

The fact that the Berliner Lautten Compagney Berlin and their director Wolfgang Katschner “repeatedly produce ingenious crossover albums” has already become a “hallmark of the ensemble”. (BR-Klassik) For example, the music of the most famous English Baroque composer Henry Purcell met selected music of the Beatles on the last album “Time Travel”.

The press enthusiastically commented: “…you can hardly combine old and new more skillfully and cleverly, everything here is organic and logical, nothing seems intentional or set up.”

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