HR Recordings is proud to present the complete recording of his keyboard music in several volumes performed by Javier Jiménez at some of the most beautiful Spanish historical organs. Cabezón: Complete Keyboard Works, Vol. 1 is the first volume in this series.

Javier Jiménez, Organ

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The program chosen for this album shows a selection of works of Iberian music from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Españoleta addresses the most outstanding musical forms and composers in Renaissance and Baroque Spain, also exploiting the sound resources offered by the Iberian organ in its most original version: a short octave keyboard, split register and battle trumpeting.

The program opens with the entrance of clarinets before playing songs, an anonymous work collected by Martín i Coll that serves as an exordium for the rest of the works. This production is also the professional recording debut of one of the most promising young Spanish organ players: Javier Jiménez. We will introduce more recordings by him during this year starting with a Bach full album in the 2024 spring.

Javier Jiménez, Organ

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With Libero primo di ricercate, this album uses the cutting edge innovations of today to open a door into those of the past, as they have never been heard before. This seminal collection of ricercars and fantasias by Rocco Rodio was one of the earliest of the Neapolitan school, which gave rise to the wild toccatas of Giovanni Maria Trabaci and the famous harpist Ascanio Mayone. Rodio’s world was culturally vibrant and scintillating with new ideas, from his colleagues at the Spanish court of Naples such as Diego Ortiz, the Burgundian influence of Bartolomeo Le Roy, together with the new research and inventions from Rome and Ferrara. Each piece in this collection is distinguished with a unique harmonic language. This is emblematic of Rodio, who while being an accomplished and learned theorist, believed that “…our obligation is to a more pleasing and sweet effect than to simply follow rules…”

With the gift of unparalleled audio fidelity granted by cutting edge technology and a masterpiece of historical harp building by Rainer Thurau, it would be criminal to not embrace the true chromatic edge of this instrument with Fabritio Fillimarino’s Canzon Cromatica. In addition, the two surviving works of one of Rodio’s colleagues was Rinaldo dall’Arpa, a renowned harpist and singer, are recorded here on the harp for the first time. While they too were published as keyboard repertoire, it is hard to deny the influence of dall’Arpa’s chosen and namesake instrument in the joy of his Canzon, or in invoking a spirit of the air in Partite sopra Zefiro.

This album brings to life another time and another world with new clarity, intimacy and vibrance. Though four and a half centuries have passed, Rodio’s groundbreaking work remains as touching, enigmatic and inspiring as when it was first conceived, ready for new ears looking to sweetly, pleasingly, break the rules.

Featured in blog post Notes on Recent Finds, No. 9 – Endless Bounty from NativeDSD by music reviewer Rushton Paul.

Kit Samara, Harp

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Música Temprana, one of today’s most exciting Hispanic early music ensembles, presents its first Pentatone album Melancolía. It follows 5 earlier releases in Stereo, 5 Channel and Binaural DSD from Musica Temprana on the Cobra Records label that are also available from NativeDSD.

Many of the villancicos, canciones, romances and estrambotes performed here have been documented in songbooks such as the famous Cancionero Musical de Palacio. They show the transition from troubadour lyricism to the flourishing Siglo de Oro (Golden Age), and the shift from a medieval to a Renaissance aesthetic in Spanish music. El Canto de la Sibila is a religious tradition that can be traced back as far as St Augustine, who put his contemplation on the end of times into the mouth of a pagan prophetess from Graeco-Roman mythology.

Música Temprana’s interpretation revives religious practices in 15th-century Cuenca. Altogether, the works performed on this album underline the strong melancholic connections between worldly and religious Spanish musical traditions around 1500, a period full of change and conflict, during which Christian Europe feared the hypothetical end of the world. The extraordinary beauty of these austere works offers solace for our troubled times as well.

Música Temprana
Adrián Rodríguez Van der Spoel, Artistic Direction

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There are hundreds of references to music in the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s music can be placed into three general categories: Incidental Music- The individual titles of incidental music in Shakespeare’s works are never named but the directions “music here,” “music begins,” “music for dancing,” etc. are provided. Literary References- Shakespeare refers to the music, music theory, and instruments of the time within the text of his works.

A humorous example is found in the names of the musicians Peter confronts in Romeo and Juliet: Hugh Rebec, Simon Catling and James Soundpost. Songs- Specific songs are included for performance in the text of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare authored the lyrics to some of these songs but also incorporated popular songs known to his contemporary audiences. The plays did not include notation of the tunes of these songs. However, we are certain that Robert Johnson’s settings for “Full Fathom Five” and “Where the Bee Sucks” are the same as when originally performed in The Tempest.

Johnson is well documented as Shakespeare’s composer. For the other songs on the recording we are using the earliest surviving versions – both published and from manuscript – which are contemporary with Shakespeare’s productions. These include, “It Was a Lover and his Lasse,” “Farewell, Dear Love,” “When Griping Grief,” “Gravedigger’s Song,” and “Willow Song.”

The Baltimore Consort
Mary Anne Ballard – Treble and Bass Viols
Mark Cudek – Cittern, Bass Viol
Larry Lipkis – Bass Viol, Recorders, Crumhorn, Gemshorn
Ronn McFarlane – Lute
Mindy Rosenfeld – Flutes, Fifes, Bagpipes, Crumhorn
Danielle Svonavec – Soprano

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Our title “Ciaramella: Dances on Moveable Ground” plays on the fact that we live in Southern California, where the ground might roll or shake below our feet at any time. But dancing on shifting grounds is also a musical concept that serves as a unifying element in this recording. Grounds are the repeated chord progressions and melodies that lie at the heart of Renaissance and Baroque dance. Some, like the passacaglia, contain ostinato patterns which repeat only four descending notes and their harmonies. Others, like the passamezzo antico, moderno, and romanesca, consist of four-chord progressions with open (unresolved) and closed (resolved) endings, a musical question and answer.

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Those who may already know some of the songs will nonetheless enjoy these creative new Currentes arrangements and instrumentations. And for those who thought that the piano was an eighteenth-century invention, we offer a curiosity: there was a late medieval clavichord with metal tangents, and the ensemble’s keyboardist, David Catalunya, has had such a piano reinvented, based on drawings and descriptions from the 1400s. This is the first album to use such an instrument.

In addition to the lovely songs from the past, we are especially proud of the totally new songs that Eivind Buene has written for Currentes. His imaginative miniatures for the medieval ensemble are recorded here for the first time.

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Yarlung Records was born in 2005, with an auspicious release for Australian pianist David Fung. Thanks to David’s talent and the success of the musicians with whom we have collaborated over the past 10 years, Yarlung Records has thrived. Thanks also to important guidance from leaders in the music industry, generous board members and visionary executive producers, Yarlung has survived and grown. We were told we couldn’t do it, that record labels were dead, that few people paid for music anymore and that MP3s and earbuds had deafened people to recorded music’s subtle details. While it is true that young people spend more of their discretionary money on interactive computer games today rather than on 78s, LPs, CDs and downloads, as prior generations have done, connoisseurs remain steadfast in their support of the recording arts. When they learn about Yarlung’s mission, more people responded enthusiastically than with discouragement. Executive producer Ann Mulally supported our first nonprofit album, a debut recording with the young American pianist Orion Weiss, and it is through her generous support, friendship and engagement that we bring you this 10th Anniversary album. Many thanks, Ann. Please join our musicians as we blow out the ten candles on this birthday cake. We will make ardent wishes for the next decade.

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