Freiburger Barockorchester, Vox Luminis & Lionel Meunier – Bach & Telemann: Himmelfahrt (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:59 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Vox Luminis has teamed up with the Freiburger Barockorchester again, and together they celebrate music for Ascension Day. This topic inspired great composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, four of whose Ascension cantatas have been preserved. The festive and colourful Cantata BWV 128 was composed towards the end of Bach’s second year in Leipzig. The Ascension Oratorio BWV 11 was written for larger forces and ends with a triumphant chorus. In the case of Georg Philipp Telemann, more than thirty cantatas for Ascension Day alone have survived. The cantata Ich fahre auf zu meinem Vater (I ascend unto my Father) was composed in 1721 and receives its world premiere recording here. Lionel Meunier’s ensemble and the FBO give a fervent rendering of this captivating music with its texts focusing on the afterlife.
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Vox Luminis, Freiburger BarockConsort & Lionel Meunier – Biber: Requiem (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:03 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
The winner of numerous prestigious prizes, including several Gramophone Awards, the vocal ensemble Vox Luminis, founded by Lionel Meunier in 2004, is now regarded as a benchmark in the interpretation of the great works of German Baroque music. Its unfailingly faithful and lively approach to such masters as Bach, Buxtehude and Scheidt has made the group’s reputation, but this new recording features a major work by Heinrich Biber, a composer hitherto absent from its discography: his Requiem in F minor for 14 voices, composed around 1692. The programme is completed by two sacred works by Christoph Bernhard (Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener in Friede fahren and Tribularer si nescirem misericordias tuas), two pieces by Johann Joseph Fux, and the Sonata a 6 in A minor of Johann Michael Nicolai. This recording marks the beginning of a collaboration between Vox Luminis and another internationally renowned ensemble, the Freiburger Barockorchester, heard here in its Consort formation.
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Vox Luminis & Lionel Meunier – Ein Deutsches Barockrequiem (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:18:52 minutes | 2,52 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar
Johannes Brahms drew texts from various Biblical sources for his Deutsches Requiem . As we hear in his choral music, he had a passion for polyphony and was inspired by models from the great Lutheran tradition of the late Renaissance and the Baroque. Ricercar and Vox Luminis have explored this early repertoire with the same passion for many years now, although with no less admiration for Brahms’s masterpiece. It is no surprise that some of the texts that Brahms chose had already been set by his illustrious predecessors; it simply remained for us to trace a path through these earlier scores, so many meditations on death, and to assemble a very different Deutsches Requiem : one animated by the emotions of the Lutheran Baroque.
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Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier – English Royal Funeral Music (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:02:26 minutes | 548 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar
We know now that Purcell’s three Funeral Sentences were not written for the funeral of Queen Mary in 1695. Following the tradition of the English court, it was pieces by Thomas Morley, originally written for the funeral of Elizabeth I, that were sung there. Purcell’s only contribution to the ceremony was the composition of two pieces for slide trumpets (March and Canzona), and the anthem in the archaic style Thou knowest, Lord. During the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey, a band of oboes played two marches written by John Paisible and Thomas Tollet. This recording assembles the music composed for the funeral of Queen Mary and that used at the funeral of Elizabeth I in 1603. The programme is completed by Purcell’s sublime a cappella anthems and a moving anthem by Weelkes on the death of Thomas Morley. After the success of the recording of Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien, voted Record of the Year by Gramophone magazine, this disc will be one of the major events of spring 2013.
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Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier, L’Achéron, Scorpio Collectief – Kerll & Fux: Requiems (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:15:17 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar
This recording presents two Austrian requiems of totally different character. Johann Joseph Fux wrote his Requiem in 1720 for the funeral of Eleonora von Neuburg, widow of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Composed by a musician reputed for his theoretical skill, it impresses with the quality of the polyphonic writing combined with a very rich instrumental fabric comprising cornets, trombones and bassoon in addition to violins, instruments also benefiting from concertante interventions.
This requiem was played on numerous occasions for official ceremonies, including again for the funeral of Karl VI in 1740. On the other hand, Johann Caspar Kerll’s version is presented in a much more intermits way. As he himself stated in the preface to the edition, this requiem was written“ for my soul’s peace“. It is scored for an ensemble of five voices backed up by a quartet of viols. In a more archaic style, its intense emotion is doubtless influenced by the music of his Roman master, Giacomo Carissimi.
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Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier and Bart Jacobs – Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott: Luther and the Music of the Reformation (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:30:08 minutes | 1,54 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar
A two-CD set devoted to the Lutheran liturgical repertory from Martin Luther himself to Heinrich Schütz. The first disc comprises compositions specific to the Lutheran liturgy: Deutsche Messe, Deutsches Magnificat, Deutsche Passion (the first German polyphonic Passion, by Joachim von Burck) and even a reconstruction of a Deutsches Requiem drawn from polyphonic works that set the same texts as those Brahms was later to use for his Deutsches Requiem. The second disc presents a selection of motets arranged according to the liturgical calendar, from Advent to Trinity. These polyphonic pieces were written by a wide range of composers including Martin Luther, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Michael raetorius, Joachim von Burck, Christoph Bernhardt, Heinrich Schütz, Thomas Selle, Melchior Franck, Caspar Othmayr, Michael Altenburg, Samuel Scheidt, Johann Hermann Schein and Johann Walter. The organist Bart Jacobs completes the programme with a few organ pieces by seventeenth-century composers.
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Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier – Schütz : Musicalische Exequien, Vox Luminis (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 55:08 minutes | 533 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar
With the Thirty Years War raging around them, Lutherans considered death to be the true fulfillment of their earthly life. Prince Heinrich von Reuss organised all the details of his funeral in advance, from the music that would be sung – to be composed and then performed by Heinrich Schütz during the funeral ceremony – to the coffin itself. Our programme includes not only the renowned Musicalische Exequien but also other funeral motets by Schütz, one of which was composed on the death of his friend Johann Hermann Schein. After the success of their CD of works by Samuel Scheidt (RIC 301), Vox Luminis now take up the challenge of one of Schützs greatest sacred works. It should be noted that the CD cover art is a photograph of a section of the coffin that Reuss himself had ordered; Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss has most generously allowed its use by Ricercar for this recording. The coffin is made of solid copper; its richly decorated exterior is studded with cartouches that contain liturgical texts selected by the deceased prince.
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Vox Luminis & Lionel Meunier – Purcell: King Arthur (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:37:56 minutes | 1,81 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Vox Luminis already boasts an impressive discography, orientated mainly towards sacred music and German repertoire (its CD devoted to music by Heinrich Schütz won the Gramophone ‘Best Recording of the Year’ Award in 2013). Now this ensemble, founded nearly fifteen years ago by Lionel Meunier, has scaled one of the summits of English music: the legend of King Arthur and his mentor the wizard Merlin inspired one of Henry Purcell’s most popular successes, King Arthur, a semi-opera on which Purcell lavished all his exuberant musical and theatrical inventiveness.
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Vox Luminis & Lionel Meunier – Kantaten (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:14 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar
After having explored the remaining cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ancestors, Vox Luminis and Lionel Meunier have undertaken here a recording, accompanied by instrumentals, of these sacred vocal compositions. They are pieces that connect us to the principles of the “spiritual concert” (Geistliches Konzert) and that, through their multi-parted structure, belong to the origins of the sacred genre of the cantata. It was through Johann Sebastian himself that we owe the knowledge of his musical ancestors. Around the age of fifty, he felt the need to collate and retrace his family tree, most likely originating from Hungary where the miller Vitus Bach always brought a cittern with him on his way to grinding wheat.
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Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier – Bach: Magnificat – Handel: Dixit Dominus (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:18 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
After several recordings on Ricercar and a first disc on Alpha, “Actus Tragicus”, containing early Bach cantatas, ‘of staggering profundity, purity and beauty’ (ffff Télérama), Lionel Meunier and his ensemble Vox Luminis devote this new project to two showpieces by Handel and Bach. Of these two composers born in 1685, the first travelled to Italy in 1707 and made a powerful impression in Rome with the creation of his Dixit Dominus, while the second produced one of his finest compositional tours de force in theMagnificat of 1723/32-35. Two works from the core repertoire of the Belgian ensemble, here fielding combined vocal and instrumental forces, which is perfectly versed in the style and expression of Baroque rhetoric.
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Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier – Bach: Actus Tragicus (Cantatas, BWV 106, 150, 131, 12) (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:53 minutes | 1,54 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
The year ends in fine style with a programme of cantatas by J.S. Bach performed by Vox Luminis. The Belgian group directed by the bass Lionel Meunier is now acknowledged as belonging among the world’s elite vocal ensembles, especially for its interpretations of German Baroque sacred music.
Its recording of works by the ancestors of J. S. Bach on Ricercar (RIC 347) won many awards. Vox Luminis now tackles Johann Sebastian himself, in a programme of cantatas composed in 1707/1708, which are thus among the composer’s earliest. Notable among them is the poignant cantata ‘Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit’ (“God’s time is the best of all times”) BWV 106, also known as the ‘Actus tragicus’, which was composed for a funeral ceremony.
Bach was therefore just twenty-two years old when he wrote this cantata, which opens with a deeply moving dialogue for recorders and continues with the equally fervent chorus ‘Gottes Zeit . . .’
Read more![Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier, Ensemble Masques, Olivier Fortin - Buxtehude: Abendmusiken (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/09/16/hrn490k6gffnb_600.jpg)
Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier, Ensemble Masques, Olivier Fortin – Buxtehude: Abendmusiken (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:25:12 minutes | 1,54 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
The Abendmusiken were a legendary concert series organised by Buxtehude in Lübeck. Even Johann Sebastian Bach travelled a long way to attend these concerts of sacred and instrumental music and met the master Dietrich Buxtehude, the most famous organist in Europe. To mark the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, Vox Luminis and the Ensemble Masques have come together to perform a programme of cantatas (Gott hilf mir, denn das Wasser geht mir bis an die Seele, BuxWV 34 | Befiehl dem Engel, dass er komm, BuxWV 10 | Jesu, meine Freude, BuxWV 60 | Herzlich lieb hab ich dich, o Herr, BuxWV 41) and instrumental pieces (Sonatas BuxWV 255 and 261). The recording assembles leading specialists of this repertory, with the expert voices of Vox Luminis combining with the vitality of the instrumentalists of Ensemble Masques.
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A Nocte Temporis, Reinoud Van Mechelen, Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier – Charpentier: Orphée aux enfers (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:20 minutes | 1,52 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
The Orpheus myth was as important for the birth of opera in France as it had been in Italy. In 1684, Charpentier composed a work for three voices, Orphée descendant aux Enfers. With this piece, remarkable for its style and concision, he showed how well he had assimilated Carissimi’s art. It is a dramatic scene, similar to the ‘sacred histories’ of the Roman master. The text, by an unknown author, narrates Orpheus’ quest for his beloved in the Underworld. The hero’s haute-contre gives him an elegiac timbre – this was the vocal register in which Charpentier, himself a singer, excelled.
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