Stockholm Chamber Brass - Then - Renaissance Airs and Dances - Stockholm Chamber Brass (2012)

The Stockholm Chamber Brass here presents a well-played program of Renaissance music arranged for modern brass, with the pluses and caveats that implies. The music’s fantastic and very well-selected: Susato, Dowland, Monteverdi, Gesualdo. The program itself smartly combines these, moving from lively dances and martial airs to arias and slow works of great beauty. Many tracks add percussion to the mix. The Monteverdi ‘moresca’ (track 25) is irresistible. The brass ensemble plays marvelously throughout, especially in slower, more introspective selections. Only the very first track, ‘La Spagna’, features a trombone solo that I think sounds hurried. Thoughtfully, one trumpet is on the far left and the other on the far right, and even more thoughtfully, the booklet tells you who’s who.
My reservation simply comes from the fact that in music like this, I prefer a more authentic instrumentation. It’s frequently apparent that these composers were not writing for these instruments, and that they had no idea what a trombone or tuba would even be. Arrangements are done by one of the players, a sibling, and the composer-conductor-trombonist Christian Lindberg. They’re good as far as they go, but whether that’s far enough depends largely on your own taste. This is a highly polished modern brass quintet playing Renaissance arrangements with solemn precision and occasional dancing exuberance. The recorded sound’s terrific and the project is well-documented. I suppose it’s just not my cup of tea.