...exuberance, irreverence and dazzling virtuosity...Beneath all the fun and games there is a bedrock of terrific skill and timing...If you allow yourself to be carried along on the wave of all this inventive artistry, the disc will reveal hidden treasure.
CLASSICAL CD OF THE WEEK The Daily Telegraph
The cheeky early music group has started its own label and compiled this ferociously enjoyable dish of baroque pieces....all tossed off with impish élan.
The Times
...unique and exhilarating...These people are really hot because at their root, they are outstanding, serious musicians. If you think baroque music is boring, look out for Red Priest.
David Mellor, The Mail on Sunday
All are played with spectacular virtuosity and mischievous wit. Red Priest go outrageously over-the-top but return from the other side with previously unimagined fun and delight.
BBC Music Magazine
Baroque specialists Red Priest have developed a unique approach to delivering the pearls and jewels of the music of that era....beautifully evocative.... they are a tour de force.....this is pirate treasure indeed!
Musical Opinion
Catch them in concert and on disc too; there’s no one quite like them.
Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International
‘Pirates of the Baroque’ is full of clever in-jokes for honest Baroque lovers.
International Record Review
The whole recording is in some ways more 'authentic' than the lumpen versions of baroque music which used to be the norm. With forward recording to match the vitality of the performances, being boarded by these pirates is a Jolly Roger of an experience. Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, used to board ships with burning fuses woven into his beard; this is the musical equivalent.
Brian Wilson, MusicWeb International
...an irresistible collection of stylishly performed Baroque music.
New Classics
The popular Hollywood image of pirates as likeable, swashbuckling rogues is undoubtedly at odds with the gory reality of their trade, and to equate such scoundrels to our most learned baroque composers may seem fanciful in the extreme. But on closer inspection there are parallels which, if nothing else, ignite the imagination and allow us to take an alternative look at one of the most colourful periods in musical history.
The leading musicians from the baroque era were pioneers and adventurers, riding the seas of change with wild abandon, ever searching for new musical treasures to titillate the ears and move the souls of the public If they could witness our attempts today to reproduce slavishly their precise notes and nuances they would in all probability be dumfounded. Only in retrospect has the mythology of highbrow, rule-bound men of quill and parchment been created – the reality was much more down to earth, the majority of composers living boozy, philandering, extravagantly bohemian lives, intent on maximising their profits through, if necessary, dubious means. Yet ironically it is from this very atmosphere of skulduggery that some of the greatest works of art were produced.
The life of Antonio Vivaldi – the original Red Priest of Venice – is a case study in baroque extravagance. He was described by the English composer William Hayes as a man with ‘too much mercury in his constitution’, a characteristic in plentiful display in the two extrovert concertos presented here: the swashbuckling Concerto in D minor from ‘L’Estro Armonico’, and the pounding seas of the famous ‘La Tempesta di Mare’. As with most of the works on this album, these concertos have been subjected to our own form of musical piracy, stolen and freely adapted from the orchestral originals. This was a common enough practise in the baroque era, when arrangements of the works of others were rife, but we confess that our imagined arrival of a pirate ship onto Vivaldi’s stormy seascape may stretch the point a bit… Elsewhere on the album our transcriptions are inspired by the work of early 20th century violinists, who would frequently ‘borrow’ and re-arrange repertoire from the baroque era to fit into romantic recital programs – the sparkling Tambourin by Jean-Marie Leclair and Tomasso Vitali’s epic Chaconne are amongst the works made famous in this way.
In Howard Beach’s assemblage of works from the Ordres of François Couperin, under the title Pirates of the Baroque, the art of arrangement is taken a stage further as innocent solo harpsichord character-pieces are kidnapped, dissected, augmented and re-presented as a suite depicting the life of a baroque pirate, encapsulated within a single day – from the opening wake up call and morning toil on the ship, to a bloody sea-battle, a raunchy celebration and finally, sleep.
Musical piracy was not restricted to the poaching of compositions and ideas, but extended also to the false attribution of famous composers’ names to works by lesser-known authors - a common practise amongst the unscrupulous music publishers of the 17th and 18th centuries. The famous Albinoni Adagio may be a recent example of such identity theft. It is no secret that this best known of all baroque adagios was actually composed in the 1940s, by the Italian musicologist Remo Giazzoto, based on a re-discovered fragment of Albinoni’s music – but Giazzoto’s later admission, following enquiries from musicologists, that he had ‘lost’ the fragment makes us a little suspicious... Whatever the truth of its origins, there is little doubt that attributing the work to an Italian baroque master greatly increased its publishable worth – and equally, there is no doubt that our own arrangement removes it yet further from any genuine baroque association!
The work of Giovanni Paolo Simonetti raises further puzzling questions of identity, which were, bizarrely, answered for me one day in the 1980s in a bar in the north of Germany. Having played and been intrigued by the music of this shadowy figure, whose style ingeniously combines the high baroque with the Sturm und Drang of the early classical masters, I was rather surprised to be asked by my companion that day if I would like to meet the composer in person. Fully expecting to encounter a 350-year-old man in a frock coat and wig, I was instead introduced to Winfried Michel, an unassuming musician in T-shirt and jeans, and, it was revealed, composer of the entire Simonetti opus! Although a charge of identity theft cannot be levelled at Herr Michel, as he invented the character of Simonetti himself, the inclusion on our Pirates album of his trio sonata La Burrusca has an irresistible logic to it.
Finally, the search for music of the past can often have the sense of a pirate treasure hunt, as one follows up numerous leads in dusty museum collections, occasionally chancing across a true gem along the way. One such is the barely known sonata evocatively entitled Senti lo Mare by the celebrated violinist Giuseppe Tartini, from which we have adapted the opening movement – a luminous melody which represents the tip of an iceberg of forgotten musical jewels, frozen in time.
RED PRIEST is the only early music group in the world to have been compared in the press to the Rolling Stones, Jackson Pollock, the Marx Brothers, Spike Jones and the Cirque du Soleil. This extraordinary acoustic foursome has been described by music critics as ‘visionary and heretical’, ‘outrageous yet compulsive’, ‘wholly irreverent and highly enlightened’, ‘completely wild and deeply imaginative’, with a ‘red-hot wicked sense of humour’ and a ‘break-all-rules, rock-chamber concert approach to early music.’
Founded in 1997, and named after the flame-haired priest, Antonio Vivaldi, Red Priest has given several hundred concerts in many of the world’s most prestigious festivals, including the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Moscow December Nights Festival, Schwetzingen Festival, Prague Spring Festival, Bermuda Festival, and in most European countries, Japan, Australia, and throughout North and Central America. The group has been the subject of hour-long TV profiles for NHK (Japan) and ITV (UK) - the latter for the prestigious South Bank Show in 2005, which documented the launch of the Red Hot Baroque Show, an electrifying marriage of old music with the latest light and video technology.
Red Priest’s latest venture is the launch of its own record label, Red Priest Recordings, distributed globally by Nimbus. Alongside the re-release of the group’s highly acclaimed back-catalogue – Priest on the Run, Nightmare in Venice and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – is the brand new recording, Pirates of the Baroque. Many exciting projects are planned for the coming months, including solo recordings from group members, an all-Bach CD, a DVD of the Four Seasons and downloadable sheet music. For further details please visit www.redpriest.com.
Piers Adams was recently heralded in the Washington Post as ‘the reigning recorder virtuoso in the world today’. He has performed in numerous festivals and at premiere concert halls throughout the world, including London’s Royal Festival, Wigmore and Queen Elizabeth Halls, and as concerto soloist with the Philharmonia, the English Sinfonia, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Singapore Symphony and the BBC Symphony. Piers has made several solo CDs reflecting an eclectic taste, ranging from his award-winning Vivaldi début disc (Cala) to David Bedford’s Recorder Concerto (NMC) - one of many major works written for and premiered by him. He has also researched, arranged and recorded many classical, romantic, impressionist and folk-influenced showpieces, which are a mainstay of his recital programs.
Julia Bishop is one of the outstanding baroque violin specialists of her generation, with a virtuoso style described in the BBC Music Magazine as ‘psychedelic’. She has toured the world with most of the UK's leading period instrument orchestras, including the English Concert, of which she was a member for six years. Julia has worked extensively as an orchestral leader and soloist, in particular with the celebrated Gabrieli Consort, with whom she has performed internationally and appeared on numerous discs for Deutsche Grammophon. She has also appeared as concerto soloist with Florilegium, the Brandenburg Consort and the Hanover Band.
Angela East is widely respected as one of the most brilliant and dynamic performers in the period instrument world, praised in The Times, London, for the ‘elemental power’ of her cello playing. She has given numerous concerto performances in London's Queen Elizabeth and Wigmore Halls, and has performed as soloist and continuo cellist with many of Europe's leading baroque orchestras. Among her impressive list of concert credits are La Scala, Milan, Sydney Opera House, Versailles and Glyndebourne. In 1991 Angela formed ‘The Revolutionary Drawing Room’ which performs chamber works from the revolutionary period in Europe on original instruments, and whose first eight CDs have received glowing reviews world-wide. Her long awaited disc of Bach’s Cello Suites is due for release on Red Priest Recordings in 2009, together with a recital disc of popular baroque cello sonatas.
Howard Beach’s uniquely wide-ranging style of keyboard playing has been developed through years of partnering fine musicians in many different fields of music, as well as his own experience as an accomplished singer and violinist. Since 1989 he has worked regularly with Piers Adams in concert and in the recording studio as both harpsichordist and pianist - including several performances in London's Wigmore Hall and tours throughout Europe, Canada and the Far East. He has also performed and recorded as a concerto soloist and continuo player with Les Arts Florissants, the Apollo Chamber Orchestra and the London Mozart Players. Howard broadcasts frequently on radio and has been consultant and performer for Channel 4 TV.
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