Huelgas Ensemble – The Magic of Polyphony (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:39:16 minutes | 2,60 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

The Belgian Huelgas Ensemble under the direction of its founder Paul Van Nevel has been setting standards with its recordings of vocal music. Their new album “The Magic of Polyphony” is a 3 album set celebrating the magical vocal polyphony that flourished in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance featuring many unknown pieces by anonymous and unjustly forgotten composers, but also those by the great masters of polyphony – among others, Orlandus Lassus, Nicolas Gombert, Cipriano de Rore, Pierre de Manchicourt and Pierre de la Rue. The recordings were made during the concerts given by Paul Van Nevel and his ensemble at their own Festival de Pentecôte 2019 in a small village called Talant in France. The highlights of the six concerts are featured on this album.

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Huelgas Ensemble – The Ear of Christopher Columbus (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:24 minutes | 977 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Without the help of blaring drums or castanets, culture-filled aesthete Paul van Nevel gives the opportunity to hear the music that Christopher Columbus heard during his travels and adventurous life. This has resulted in a rigorous selection of (many unknown) a capella works, by Italian and Spanish composers from the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Beginning with childhood memories of Christopher Columbus (a carnival song evoking an erotic joke about chimney sweeps), the album ends with pieces by Agricola most likely heard by the navigator at the end of his final voyage in 1506. This virtual musical journey begins in 15th century Venice and reaches the court of Ferdinand and Isabella in Madrid, Seville, Cordoba and Valladolid. This offers an exciting programme benefitting from the exceptional quality of singers of the Huelgas Ensemble, specialised in medieval and Renaissance polyphony and founded in 1971 by Paul van Nevel. – François Hudry

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Huelgas Ensemble – Simone de Bonefont: Missa pro Mortuis (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:19 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Cypres

Each new album of the Huelgas Ensemble directed by Paul van Nevel is expected as a rare and precious delicacy thanks to extremely neat performances, in an almost perfect choral intonation. The discovery of a repertoire often unpublished is also the source of a happiness as intellectual as moving. Paul van Nevel continues to surprise us with this mass of the dead in five parts, composed by Simone De Bonefont, quite delectable.

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Huelgas Ensemble – Mirabile Mysterium – A European Christmas Tale (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:11 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Seit über 40 Jahren gehört das Huelgas Ensemble zu den weltweit besten Vokalensembles und befasst sich besonders mit der Mehrstimmigkeit des Mittelalters und der Renaissance. Die originellen und musikwissenschaftlich fundierten Programmideen des Leiters Paul van Nevel sowie die herausragende Musikalität begeistern Publikum und Presse gleichermaßen: “Mit lupenreiner Intonation, funkelnder Musizierfreude und strahlend transparentem acapella-Klang” (Crescendo 06/2014).

Nun widmet sich das Alte-Musik Ensemble der bekanntesten Bibelgeschichte. In vier Abschnitten beschreibt “Mirabile Mysterium” die Weihnachtsgeschichte um die Geburt Jesu mit Kompositionen aus dem Mittelalter bis ins 19. Jahrhundert. Neben Weihnachtsmotetten der Renaissance von Lassus, Sweelinck, Manchicourt und Gallus, welche die Ankuft der drei Weisen aus dem Morgenland beschreiben, umfasst das Programm auch unbekannte englische Carols und volkstümliche spanische Gesänge des Mittelalters. Ein französisches Weihnachtslied aus dem 18. Jahrhundert, ein romantisches Lied von Peter Cornelius über einen Weihnachts-Choral von Johann Sebastian Bach sowie eine Motette aus dem 14. Jahrhundert runden die musikalische Reise durch Weihnachtsmusik aus fünf Jahrhunderten ab.

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Huelgas Ensemble – Le mystère de “Malheur me bat” (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:48 minutes | 980 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

The chanson “Malheur me bat” (Misfortune strikes me) exerted a tremendous appeal on composers of the High Renaissance, inspiring them to write a large number of works that take this fascinating material as their starting point. Paul Van Nevel and his Huelgas Ensemble attempt to shed light on this mystery and offer listeners a gripping insight into the compositional technique of polyphony and the world of Renaissance counterpoint.

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Huelgas Ensemble – Francesca Caccini: La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (Live) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:28:30 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Francesca Caccini was one of the leading musical figures at the Medici court in the first half of the 17th century. Even today it is still unusual for a woman to be equally successful as a professional singer, a published composer and a singing teacher. La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina was commissioned by Maria Maddalena of Austria, who married Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici in 1608, and was written to be performed on the occasion of a visit by Crown Prince of Poland. A single extravagantly staged performance took place on 3 February 1625, ending with an equestrian ballet performed by no fewer than twenty-four horsemen.

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Huelgas Ensemble – Firminus Caron – Twilight of the Middle Ages (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:38 minutes | 958 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

“There are two things on which listeners can invariably rely with Paul Van Nevel: whatever he unearths, it is without exception wonderful music; and what he offers with his Huelgas Ensemble is always on the very highest level” (BR Klassik). For more than forty years the Huelgas Ensemble has been one of the world’s finest vocal ensembles.

Paul Van Nevel’s original and well researched programmes revolve in particular around the fascinating polyphonic tradition of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The life of the Franco-Flemish polyphonist Firminus Caron is shrouded in mystery, and we know little about him except that he was probably born in Amiens in around 1440. And yet his works were already famous during his own lifetime and have survived in some of the most important music manuscripts of the second half of the 15th century, including a number of the Vatican’s principal choirbooks. The Huelgas Ensemble compares and contrasts five movements from the composer’s four-part cantus firmus Masses with four secular chansons and in that way provides an impressive demonstration of his exceptional individuality, to say nothing of the imagination and variety that make Caron one of the most exciting composers of the late Middle Ages.

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