MUSIC FROM THE TIME OF TILMAN RIEMENSCHNEIDER

Finck, Heinrich, Hofhaimer, Paul, Isaac, Heinrich, Lapicida, Erasmus, Obrecht, Jacob, różni kompozytorzy, Stoltzer, Thomas, Walther, Johann Gottfried

Bohm, Bernhard, Hedos Ensemble, Il Curioso

8.557138

Based on the pictures in the booklet, both Il Curioso and Hedos look just ensembles you'd like to join if you had the musical ability and a hairdresser lost in the 1960s. In addition, Hedos made one of my all-time favorite CDs, called Renaissance Love Songs (still available on CPO 999294-2). So it stands to reason that the new CD they and Curios have made for Naxos, comprising music from the late Gothic Period when the great sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider was sculpting, is going to be fun. And it is, in a typically dour, late Gothic sort of way, for not only do you get the usual assortment of dances, tavern songs, a song about going off to war, religious songs of suffering and songs of love, including the inevitable Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen by Heinrich Isaac (lucky for the record industry he doesn't collect royalties anymore), you get original instruments, a few of which sound delightfully like tin pennywhistles, enthusiastic performers and excellent recorded sound. Riemenschneider would have been pleased.

If you're not sure who Tilman Riemenschneider (c.1460-1531) was, he is regarded as one of the leading Germany sculptors of the Late Gothic period. The music on this recording, played on copies of original instruments of the period, is largely taken from German song book collections of works current in the late 15th century.•Laurence Vittes, Audiophile Audition, August 2007

CD x 1

Naxos

20/12/2004

747313213825