Music for These Troubled Times

Description

Music for These Troubled Times explores the melancholy of the past through the keyboard repertoire of the English virginalists of the late 16th and 17th centuries, and connects this still-familiar state of mind to the present, an era of social and political turmoil, uncertainty, and wars, through KHORA by Maxim Shalygin. Inspired by Robert Burton's 1621 treatise, The Anatomy of Melancholy, which celebrates music as a remedy for the troubled mind, the program oscillates between contemplative pavanes, witty variations, and complex polyphonic works. It includes rarely performed pieces as well as a first recording of the anonymous A Ground. Recorded on three unique harpsichords, the album features a rare copy after the oldest surviving English instrument by L. Theewes (1579), a reconstruction of the original state of the two-manual transposing harpsichord by I. Ruckers (1612), as well as a copy of the remarkable harpsichord by H. Hemsch (1751).