Paulin Bundgen

Ensemble Celadon & Paulin Bündgen – The Love Songs of Jehan de Lescurel (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:16:14 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar

Many mysteries surround the life of Jehan de Lescurel, beginning with his date of birth. Probably the son of middle-class Parisians, cleric, musician and poet, he was most likely trained at Notre-Dame. His oeuvre consists of some thirty songs written in the waning tradition of the art of the Parisian troubadours and even broaches polyphony. In them, he describes several amorous situations, sometimes depicting the emotions of the rejected suitor, sometimes those of the beautiful misunderstood lady, in a game of love and feelings that range from nostalgia to ecstasy, and not excluding humour. In this complete recording, the three voices of Céladon are backed up by richly coloured instruments.

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Ensemble Celadon, Paulin Bündgen – No. Time in Eternity (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:00:09 minutes | 988 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aeon

Through a repertoire of Consort Songs for five violas and countertenor, the Céladon Ensemble tries to underline the obvious artistic connections between the music of english Renaissance and contemporary music. This parentage, this harmonic, rhythmic and poetic logic, opens a whole field of exploration into sound identity and tradition. How have such seemingly different composers, belonging to remote eras, dealt with timbre fusion in a similar way, with the same desire to deeply affect, to create a full-bodied sound, both powerful and soothing ? The two eras are not placed in opposition for this concert, as Michael Nyman’s music arises naturally from that of his predecessors ; on the contrary, it is a clever mix of genres that points out to surprising similarities between these works : we could easily believe that Tye’s Sit Fast was composed very recently. From one century to the next, we face a testimony brought to song by the timbre of a countertenor, the intensity of a violas consort that carries a certain magic, the paradoxical expression of a voice which is solitary but also becomes a seventh instrument, one of the violas.

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Ensemble Céladon & Paulin Bündgen – Monferrato: Salve Regina (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:11 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar

Of those composers who held the highest positions at St Mark’s basilica in Venice, Natale Monferrato (1610-85) is manifestly one of the most thoroughly forgotten nowadays. After working with the leading musicians of this prestigious institution, he succeeded Francesco Cavalli as maestro di cappella in 1676. His output, consisting exclusively of sacred music, includes some twenty collections published between 1647 and 1681. Although he wrote a great deal of polyphonic music, he also produced three collections of Motetti a voce sola. Most unusually, these three books accord an important place to compositions for the often neglected alto voice. They are so voluminous that only the Libro Terzo of 1666 was used for this recording. The motets are divided into varied and contrasted sections that range from the spirit of recitative to that of the aria, using very diverse forms in a manner that is bound to remind us of the models of opera as it developed in Venice from 1637 onwards. This world premiere recording blazes the trail for discovery of an undeservedly neglected composer. 

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