Beautiful Music

  It’s time for you to graduate from singing only in the shower, to singing with the famed King’s Singers! Their series of sing-alongs featured this setting by William Byrd of AVE VERUM, and the score is displayed on the screen. Turn up the volume, and have fun!            

Are you familiar with bandoneon? The musical instrument looks like a small accordion, and is often heard in tango performances. Today’s Beautiful Music features Daniele di Bonaventura playing bandoneon with cellist Federico Bracalente. It’s from their recording IN SPIRITUM, and rather than tango, it features polyphonic vocal music from the 15th and 16th centuries by

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine is charting a unique and delightful path as a musician. She has performed as a soloist with orchestras, and as a chamber musician. In recent years she has also been a vocal champion of music by Black composers and other underrepresented musicians. She also crafts charming videos of music and conversation

Today’s Beautiful Music is a live concert from Tallahassee in June 2021. The marvelous countertenor Reginald Mobley was featured with Bach Parley singing music by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, and some anonymous composers. One of the instrumentalists performing with Mr. Mobley is bassist Melanie Punter, and you can hear my

Jennifer Roig Francoli plays baroque violin and Vivian Montgomery plays harpsichord, and both are experts in period instruments and baroque era historical performance practices. Their group, Adastra, performed in Cincinnati, OH in October 2012. The concert included this performance of Sonata Terza by Giovanni Fontana, which is today’s Beautiful Music.  

I love this piece, and I love this performance of it by Apollo’s Fire! From the moment they step onto the stage at Tanglewood with their balletic entrance, they own this music and the audience. La Bergamasca by Marco Uccellini is snazzy and cheerful and likely to be your next earworm.

Leila Schayegh is a Swiss violinist who is Professor of Baroque violin at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and a passionate performer of music by Carlo Farina, the Italian composer, conductor and violinistfrom the early 1600s. Her recording of music by Carlo Farina is some of today’s Beautiful Music, along with a video introduction she created.

Antonia Padoani Bembo was a singer and composer who lived from approximately 1640 until 1720. The Venetian musician spent most of her career in France. Today’s Beautiful Music features one of Antonia Bembo’s Psalm Settings performed by members of La Donna Musicale: singers Camila Parias & Daniela Tošic, violinists Lisa Brooke & Guan-Ting Ku, organist

Flutist Issam Garfi and the Orchestre Symphonique Tunisien provide today’s Beautiful music. This is their performance of the Flute Concerto in D K.314 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The son of two professional musicians, Issam Garfi plays various genres of music in a number of ensembles. You can also read more about the fine Tunisian musician

Instruments, like many inventions, evolve over time. Some of the music you hear on Sunday Baroque is performed on “period” instruments — that is, instruments either crafted during the baroque era, or modern reproductions of instruments of that era. Those period instruments can also add an interesting and lovely twist to music composed much later,