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American Record Guide: (11/2019) 
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Reviewer: Charles Brewer
 

The title of this very varied collection of instrumental music is “La Morte della Ragione” (The Death of Reason), the perplexing title of an anonymous 16th Century Italian pavan, which also offers the loose rationale for connecting these selections with Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Praise of Folly. The contents range from 15th Century puzzle canons and chanson arrangements, through renaissance dances and fantasies to early baroque canzonas and sonatas by Carlo Gesualdo, Giovanni Gabrieli, and Dario Castello, among others. The order is loosely chronological, and the core of the renaissance selections is a set of pieces by Josquin des Prez and Alexander Agricola based on Hayne van Ghizeghem’s ‘De tous beisn plaine’. At the center of the recording is the contrast between an almost hypnotic strictly contrapuntal work attributed to Thomas Preston, ‘Upon la mi re’ (though with added free improvisations), and the ornamented mayhem of Giorgio Mainerio’s dances ‘Schiarazula Marazula’, ‘Ungerescha’, and ‘Saltarello’. The Baroque selections, such as an 8-voice Sonata by Gabrieli and Castello’s ‘Sonata Decimaquarta’ (rather over-orchestrated from its four-voice original) supply a more rational framework for the improvisations of the instrumentalists. In sum, this is a pleasant collection and

it might have been an interesting concert but is a rather light recording in such a hard-cover case, filled with short quotes and details from renaissance and baroque paintings.

 

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