Meridian Arts Ensemble - Visions of the Renaissance (1994)

Visions of the Renaissance During the lengthy course of repertoire development for this disc, we began to realise that what appealed to us from the Renaissance and Baroque periods shared certain characteristics with the Twentieth Century music we enjoy. The music sounded good to us on our (modern) instruments. The musical phrases felt natural to us. Some of the music seemed downright bizarre, and therefore highly attractive. And much of it represented quite a technical challenge. As we began to think about the logic of a Baroque/Renaissance disc, it dawned on us that the musical vision represented by the composers we had selected was not at all alien to us, two hundred, three hundred, even four hundred years later. The structural complexities of a Bach Contrapunctus, the tortuous harmonies of a Gesualdo madrigal, the rigorous technical challenge of an Albinoni trio sonata – these all spoke to us in a direct fashion. We therefore present these pieces to our audience not according to any ideas currently in vogue concerning authentic period performance practice, but as an exploration of the sounds, the emotions, the visions of the past as seen from today…. Meridian Arts Ensemble