Ensemble Vedado

Ronald Martin Alonso, Ensemble Vedado – Le Grand Ballet (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:58 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Paraty

Marin Marais (1656–1728) besides being Louis XIV’s court musician, was a prolific composer. He composed both operas, certain of which were very successful, instrumental music and some (lost) religious vocal music. As a viol player he published five books which include some of the most interesting and beautiful music for the viol. These five books also are chock full of performance instructions both for the left hand as well as the bow hand. They are a gold mine for viol players and are as relevant to teaching a musician good technique on the viol nowadays as they were when originally printed in the late seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century.
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Ensemble Vedado, Ronald Martin Alonso – Folias Americanas (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:46 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Paraty

To complement the programme, the Cuban composer Calixto Álvarez proposed a richly augmented version of his Folias Americanas. Originally composed in 2012 for viola da gamba and harpsichord, it takes its inspiration from Marin Marais’ emblematic work, Folies d’Espagne and is dedicated to his daughter Calia Álvarez. In his Folias Americanas each of the variations takes the form of a different musical genre from around the Americas. Chacarera, tango, conga and blues line up to offer a rich panorama of the American musical tradition. Is this new, never before performed version, Calixto Álvarez orchestrates his Folias for three viols, baroque guitar and harpsichord obbligato in keeping with Marais’ suites for three viols. But he goes further by using the five instruments not in the form of two solo voices and an accompanying continuo (theorbo, harpsichord and viol) but as five separate, but interdependent parts in which the role of soloist switches from one variation to the next. Because this American music is, at heart, rhythmic we have taken the liberty of adding a percussion layer (claves, maracas, guijo…) to some of the variations in order to strengthen the character of the piece.

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