Mike Fentross

Mike Fentross – Van Wassenaer: VI Concerti Armonici (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 57:18 minutes | 600 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Classics

Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692-1766) is one of the most remarkable personalities in Dutch music history. Until 1980, his music – the six ‘Concerti armonici’ – was well known to every lover of early music, but not his name. These works were universally understood to be by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi or by Carlo Ricciotti, who published them in 1740 but did not compose them. Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer was well known to Dutch historians as a descendant of the renowned noble Van Wassenaer family, but nobody knew that he was also a composer. Thanks to a lucky find by the Dutch musicologist Albert Dunning in 1980, man and music could be connected with one another. In 1740, a collection of six concertos for strings and basso continuo, was published in The Hague under the title VI Concerti armonici. The Concerti armonici can be associated with musical performances that took place in the 1720s in The Hague.

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Mike Fentross – To Dowland or Not to Dowland (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:50 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Zefir Records

The pieces, recorded here, form merely the tip of a fascinating iceberg. When medievist/archivist André Nieuwlaat initially shared his discoveries (much more Dowland lute music) with lutenist Mike Fentross two years ago, he realized immediately their importance. Every composer has his own musical signature. Trusting the experience that Mike Fentross has gained throughout his thirty-year career as a professional lute player, and as Professor of Lute at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague for the last 15 years, he started to make a selection from all the pieces in the pertinent manuscripts. He let himself be guided by musical intuition, by the essence of the pieces, and by constantly asking himself the question: do I recognize Dowland’s hand in this? The overall quality of the pieces to choose from was very impressive, and the answer to this question was: Yes, I recognize Dowland in these works, without a shadow of a doubt. His work pays off with this fascinating release.

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Mike Fentross – Semper Dowland (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:54 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Zefir Records

In Dowland’s words: “ingenuous profession of Musicke, which from my childhoode I have ever aymed at,… the better to attain so excellent a science”. Mike Fentross achieves this “divine science of musicke” by wooing his audience by “speaking harmony” on his sweet lute. His art entwines harmony and poetry, albeit often a melancholic art, which is then framed by the proportions of rhythm. His art teaches, stirs and delights the heart and soul of his honorable listeners in profound ways. Mike Fentross first studied with Toyohiko Satoh at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, then with Nigel North and José Miguel Moreno. He has built a solid reputation as a “continuist”, playing in renowned orchestras like Les Arts Florissants, and is much in demand in his country as well as abroad. He plays and records regularly with great European ensembles such as Capriccio Stravagante, Les Arts Florissants, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Harp Consort, the New London Consort and Al Ayre Espanol. In 1991 he founded La Sfera Armoniosa, a group devoted to the performance of 17th-century music. Since 1996 Mike Fentross is guest professor at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

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