Three brothers named Zapico -- Aarón, Pablo, and Daniel -- are part of the early music group Forma Antiqua (or, Antiqva); they appear here by themselves in a program of "Iberian-Italian" Baroque dance music, a genre whose influence stretched as far north as mid-Germany. The listener who samples this disc and wonders whether Baroque keyboard pieces ever actually had this much oomph can be assured that the recording falls purely into the not-even-speculative realm of using musical scores purely as a stimulus for further ...
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Three brothers named Zapico -- Aarón, Pablo, and Daniel -- are part of the early music group Forma Antiqua (or, Antiqva); they appear here by themselves in a program of "Iberian-Italian" Baroque dance music, a genre whose influence stretched as far north as mid-Germany. The listener who samples this disc and wonders whether Baroque keyboard pieces ever actually had this much oomph can be assured that the recording falls purely into the not-even-speculative realm of using musical scores purely as a stimulus for further creative activity; keyboard music was something of a realm unto itself in the 17th century, and the booming guitar-and-theorbo arrangements heard here are purely the invention of the players. Indeed, they offer no justification other than that of wanting to play the music together. This said, the disc has the considerable virtue of reminding the listener that all of the patterns -- the fandangos, ciaccona, giga, folía, and so on heard here -- that made their way into Baroque music as...
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