Accentus, the French a cappella ensemble, specializes in early and new music, but the scarcity of quality unaccompanied choral music from the Baroque through the early modern period inspired conductor Laurence Equilbey to seek out and commission arrangements of music from those eras. The results are evident on this, the group's second CD of transcriptions. The performances are wonderfully satisfying, due largely to the skill of arrangers who made it possible to believe that each of these pieces was originally conceived for ...
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Accentus, the French a cappella ensemble, specializes in early and new music, but the scarcity of quality unaccompanied choral music from the Baroque through the early modern period inspired conductor Laurence Equilbey to seek out and commission arrangements of music from those eras. The results are evident on this, the group's second CD of transcriptions. The performances are wonderfully satisfying, due largely to the skill of arrangers who made it possible to believe that each of these pieces was originally conceived for mixed voices. The writing is fully idiomatic for voices and all the important elements of the originals are intact -- there is never a sense of straining for effect or of cutting corners because of the limits of the human voice. Some are transcriptions of solo vocal music with piano or orchestral accompaniment, and those pieces retain the original texts; the transcriptions of instrumental music have tasteful and fitting texts added. The works range from "Winter" from Vivaldi's Four...
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