Handel’s flautist. The first port of call for every aristocrat who wished to master the German flute. A founding father of the Royal Society of Musicians. Charles Weidemann was everywhere in Georgian London — and almost nowhere in the history books. These twelve flute sonatas, composed at the height of a blooming career, reveal why he deserves better. Graceful, inventive, and reflecting his virtuosity, they are the rediscovery of the season.

Booklet: EN, FR, NL, DE

Track 1: Flute Sonata in G Major, Op. 1 No. 4: Vivace

Track 22: Flute Sonata in E Minor, Op. 1, No. 2: Adagio

Track 33: Flute Sonata in D Major, Op. 1 No. 5: Poco Allegro

‘Music from the City of the Spanish Viceroys 
This recording is dedicated to a center of Italian music that is often overlooked: the Milan of the Spanish Habsburgs. After the death of Francesco II in 1532, the Sforza had to cede the Duchy of Milan to the French and ultimately to the Holy Roman Empire. Charles V installed his son Philip II as head of the Spanish Habsburgs and thus the Duchy fell under the rule of a Spanish Viceroy. While the city lost the political importance it had enjoyed under the ruling Visconti and Sforza families, a relative calm between two terrible plagues in 1576 and 1630 promoted a flowering of cultural life under the patronage of archbishop Federico Borromeo.
We present a varied soundscape of Habsburg Milan, both sacred and secular. We explore the uniquely Milanese “canzon-motteto” which places a vocal ensemble in dialogue with instruments, double-choir motets, canzonas, and little-known hyper- expressive madrigals of Francesco Rognoni Taeggio, better known as a violin virtuoso and master of the art of improvised diminution. Music of Giovan Paolo and Andrea Cima, Agostino Soderini, Francesco and Giovanni Domenico Rognoni Taeggio, and Giuseppe Gallo

Booklet: EN, DE, FR

‘The Sound of Change: Music of the Flamboyant Era
Fire, movement, and transformation lie at the heart of this recording. Flamboyance immerses the listener in the vibrant musical world of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Europe’s culture—like its flamboyant Gothic architecture—embraced colour, intensity, and
exuberance. Spanning more than a century, from the early Italian Trecento to the dawn of the Burgundian age, this programme traces how polyphony spread “like wildfire” between north and south, sacred and secular, court and chapel. Motets, chansons, madrigals, dances,
and sacred works by Landini, Ciconia, Du Fay, Binchois, and their contemporaries illustrate an ever-evolving repertoire in which devotion and passion, intellect and pomp coexist.
Performed by the Sollazzo Ensemble, expanded to twenty singers and instrumentalists, this music is presented in a manner reminiscent of princely banquets and ceremonial contexts. Rather than treating the late Middle Ages as a distant historical epoch, the recording invites
listeners to experience these sounds as a living, vibrant musical world.

Booklet: NL,FR, EN, DE

New Passacaille release – April 2026

After more than forty years devoted to the study of Antonio Vivaldi’s sources and the reconstruction of his catalogue (RV), conductor and musicologist Federico Maria Sardelli presents a major rediscovery: La Costanza trionfante degl’amori, e de gl’odii (RV 706-A), a long-lost opera now partially restored and recorded with Modo Antiquo for Passacaille.

Through years of archival investigation and philological work, Sardelli has traced, identified and reconstructed eighteen arias from the score, representing approximately half of the original opera. This painstaking effort sheds new light on Vivaldi’s theatrical production at the height of his creative maturity and restores to the repertoire a work considered lost for more than three centuries.

A leading authority on Vivaldi, Sardelli has played a central role in redefining modern understanding of the composer’s operatic output. His long-term engagement with the sources—combining scholarship, performance practice and editorial work—forms the foundation of this project, which stands as both a musicological achievement and a living artistic reconstruction.

Recorded in July 2025 at the Oratorio di San Francesco in Florence, the album brings together the period ensemble Modo Antiquo and an international cast including Cecilia Molinari (mezzo-soprano), Valeria La Grotta (soprano), Valentino Buzza (tenor) and Biagio Pizzuti (bass), under Sardelli’s direction. The recording offers the first modern performance of this substantial fragment, built largely from unpublished arias, and opens a new perspective on Vivaldi’s dramatic language and expressive range.

Originally staged at the Teatro San Moisè in Venice as the final opera of the 1715–1716 Carnival season—most likely towards the end of January 1716—La Costanza trionfante degl’amori, e de gl’odii quickly established itself as one of the most successful works associated with Vivaldi’s early operatic career. The libretto by Antonio Marchi, resident poet at several Venetian theatres from 1692 onwards, became one of his most celebrated texts, its dissemination closely tied to the circulation of Vivaldi’s music.

The opera’s success led to numerous revivals and adaptations across Europe well into the 1730s, including productions in Munich, Venice, Vicenza, Hamburg, Mantua and Prague under various titles and reworkings. This widespread circulation attests to the work’s enduring theatrical appeal and cultural impact far beyond its Venetian origins.

This new release represents the culmination of Sardelli’s lifelong engagement with Vivaldi: a project that bridges scholarship and performance, and that allows modern audiences to encounter, for the first time, a substantial fragment of a once-celebrated opera now returned to the sound world for which it was conceived.

Booklet: EN, IT

In this recording, Stefano Albarello revives fourteen of those odes, reconstructed from ancient neumatic notation, together with a unique melody from Terence’s Eunuchus.

“Vocem cum cithara dedit” reveals a forgotten world where Latin verse, rhythm, and melody merged — the living echo of antiquity resonating through the Middle Ages.

Booklet: EN, IT

Zanasi and Díaz-Latorre reveal how innovative Caccini’s nobile sprezzatura di canto truly was: a free, speech-like, rhetorically shaped way of singing in which the emotional power of the text directly guides the musical gesture. In their hands, poetry and melody intertwine as a single expressive line, exactly as Caccini and the Florentine Camerata envisioned.

Each track draws the listener into a vivid sonic world where the timeless beauty and bold innovation of the early Baroque come alive, offering a fresh and deeply felt perspective on a pivotal moment in music history—an compelling listening experience for all lovers of early music.

Booklet: EN

Presenting the first complete recording of the Leuven Chansonnier!

In 2015 the Alamire Foundation, the International Centre for the Study of Music in the Low Countries, was approached by an art historian working on behalf of an art dealer, seeking musicological advice about a small music manuscript. Subsequent research quickly unveiled its significance: the manuscript was identified as a previously unknown fifteenth-century chansonnier. Since the original owner could not yet be ascertained, it was named the “Leuven Chansonnier”, reflecting its new location in the Library of Voices, one of the buildings that the Alamire Foundation occupies on the historic Park Abbey site in Leuven (BE). The songbook is of exceptional value. It transmits 50 compositions, consisting of one religious work and 49 French chansons, 12 of which survive in no other source. Although no composers’ names are mentioned, other sources identify the composers of 26 of its works; these include such leading fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish polyphonists such as Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Busnoys, and Firminus Caron. The creators of the other 24 chansons remain anonymous for the time being.

Sollazzo Ensemble is a critically acclaimed group dedicated to the performance of Medieval and Renaissance music. Founded in 2014 by Anna Danilevskaia, the ensemble is known for its highly expressive delivery and its distinctive sound and approach, shaped by the diverse musical backgrounds and personalities of its members. Drawing on historical repertoires and informed performance criteria, the group aims to convey emotions they have personally experienced or to express ideas that hold meaning for them. This process of appropriating historical artifacts through layers of rigorous creative work forms the basis of their communication with the public, as they seek to give each piece a voice that reflects the historical roots of the material as well as the ensemble’s unique vision

Booklet: EN, FR, NL

In 1729, nobleman and poet Annibale Marchese (1686–1753) published Tragedie Cristiane, a remarkable collection of ten Italian-language plays. Drawing on the influences of Racine, Corneille, Voltaire, and classical tradition, these innovative dramas are deeply rooted in Jesuit theatrical practices. To realise his vision, Marchese enlisted ten of the most accomplished composers of his time — masters of the so-called Neapolitan School. Their strophic arias, often featuring obbligato harpsichord, vividly reflect each composer’s unique style. This recording includes also previously unknown instrumental dances from contemporary Jesuit stage productions.

Stile Galante, directed by Stefano Aresi, is a Dutch-Italian cultural project devoted to Italian music of the 18th century, started in 2010. The project aims to merge academic research and performance, and focuses on vocal music. By devoting their attention to usually ignored or misunderstood repertoire the ensemble brings back pages of rare beauty and inspires musicians and audience alike to get in touch with musical languages and tastes today often forcibly adapted to unhistorical expectations.

Booklet: EN

Johannes Pullois was probably born in Pulle, a village in the Kempen region near Antwerp. From 1443 to 1447, Pullois was a singer and then the singing master at the Church of Our Lady, where his colleagues included Johannes Ockeghem. He applied in vain for a job at the Burgundian court chapel, but he had more success at the papal music chapel in the Vatican: from December 1447 until August 1468, he served under no fewer than four popes (Nicholas V, Callixtus II, Pius II and Paul II). During his stay in Rome, he received several benefices from the dioceses of Cambrai and Utrecht. Pullois returned to Antwerp in 1468 and worked at the Church of Our Lady for another ten years.

Like Ockeghem, Pullois experimented in the 1440s with the new principle of the cyclic mass, in which the same thematic material recurs in the different parts of the mass. The principle was already established in English music. Did Pullois have access to the same English sources that inspired Ockeghem to compose his Missa Caput? Motets and chansons by Pullois have also been preserved, along with the oldest known polyphonic songs in Dutch. His work was also distributed in Italy, and much of Pullois’ work is now found in Italian manuscripts. Incidentally, the Christmas motet Flos de spina is also included in a Czech source. Instrumental adaptations of two chansons (Pour toutes fleurs / Sutoutes and De ma dame / De ma dame) are included in the German Buxheimer Orgelbuch. The ballad La bonté du Saint-Esperit was written in honour of one of the popes under whom Pullois served.

Booklet: EN, DE, FR, NL

On the occasion of Maurice Ravel’s 150th anniversary in 2025, Un Tombeau pour Ravel presents a musical journey interweaving the styles of Ravel and the French Baroque, especially the works of François Couperin. The program of this CD revolves around Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, composed during World War I as both a tribute to Baroque composers and a memorial for his comrades lost in the war. This recording includes original works and carefully crafted arrangements for harpsichord, tracing influences from 18th-century French music, illustrating Ravel’s inspirations at the time of the piano cycle’s creation, and exploring the tombeau as an homage genre.

Booklet: EN, FR, ES