‘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

Franz Liszt was a composer who constantly revisited and reimagined his own works, leaving behind multiple versions that reveal his evolving artistry. His 12 Grandes Études (S. 137), later transformed into the Études d’exécution transcendante (S. 139), exemplify this creative process. Originating from his earlier Étude en douze exercices (1826), these studies chart Liszt’s growth from prodigy to visionary, pushing pianistic and harmonic boundaries. Far beyond displays of technique, these Études embody a fusion of profound musical thought and extreme technical demands—one reason they remain rarely recorded. This new recording, the first ever on a historical instrument, brings fresh insight into one of Liszt’s most daring achievements.

Booklet: EN, DE, FR

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

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

With their new album Generations, Aleksandra and Alexander Grychtolik present prominent ‘influencers’ of keyboard music who shaped the transition from the galant style to the classical period. This journey begins with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who composed works for two harpsichords in the footsteps of their father, Johann Sebastian Bach, and continues through their half-brother Johann Christian Bach to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, widely regarded as the inventor of four-handed playing and deeply inspired by the music of the Bach sons.

Booklet: EN, DE, FR

This recording of Mozart’s Requiem stands out even in the well-trodden landscape of classical repertoire. While the piece has been recorded many times, the combination of top-tier soloists, the brilliant voices of the Flemish Radio Choir, and the enchanting timbres of Il Gardellino Orchestra on period instruments, all under the energetic direction of Bart Van Reyn, infuses this live performance with an extra spark of magic. The result is a fresh, captivating interpretation that breathes new life into Mozart’s timeless masterpiece.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE, NL

‘Oxalys and the New World’: in its latest CD recording, Oxalys delves into American masterpieces for chamber music ensemble. From Pulitzer Prize laureate Aaron Copland with his nature fresco Appalachian Spring to Minimal Music icon John Adams’ mythical Shaker Loops and jazz idol Wynton Marsalis’ funky and groovin’ Meeelaan. Three unknown facets of a flourishing and inspiring musical culture, as always virtuosically captured by Oxalys, the jewel of our Belgian chamber music ensembles.

Booklet: EN, FR, NL, DE

The Leuven Chansonnier (1470–75) includes not only fifty compositions by such leading 15th century FrancoFlemish names as Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Busnoys and Firminus Caron but also twelve newly rediscovered works that exist in no other source. The Ensemble Sollazzo here brings a selection of this music to life in an interpretation that is both brilliant and refreshing. With the present Volumes 3 and 4, the final instalment of the complete recording of this fascinating manuscript is now available.

Booklet: EN, FR, NL

Lyrics: FR, EN

A once abandoned Passion project by J. S. Bach? Harpsichordist and conductor Alexander Grychtolik, together with the Il Gardellino Orchestra, embarks on a captivating artistic experiment with this presentation of the Passion Oratorio BWV Anh. 169. The starting point for the partial reconstruction attempt and the completion of the work is the surviving libretto by the poet Picander from 1725. This unique endeavor draws the audience into a profound exploration of human empathy with the poignant suffering of Jesus and sheds light on a passion aesthetic we had not seen previously in Bach’s repertoire.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

Lyrics: DE, EN