Early Music

Heartbeat Opera and Opera Lafayette have devised a superb staged production of the baroque oratorio 'La Susana,' retelling a biblical story of sexual harassment with love, humor, seductive grace, and wonderful music.

The early music group illuminated the consonances between jazz and baroque music and had a good deal of fun doing it.

The concert featured a closetful of varied recorders, most copied from original instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

The latest album from the celebrated English early music vocal ensemble Stile Antico, 'In a Strange Land: Elizabethan Composers in Exile,' is a beautiful sequence with works by John Dowland, William Byrd, and their contemporaries – and a decidedly melancholy affair.

In France in the early 18th century, minuets, sarabandes, and gigues were written to be literally danced to, sometimes by popular professional dancers. Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations recall those days with music by Telemann and Jean-Fery Rebel.

The monks retreated behind stone walls to chant their devotions. Composer Lansing McLoskey stands in the agora with his choral music on writings by Wole Soyinka.

In the hands of a gifted group like Vox Luminis, Bach's motets exhibit the great composer's artistic genius as fully as anything else he wrote.

This continuing Rock HOF induction video series comes highly recommended set (3.5 stars out of four), as many musicians perform some rare and very memorable works. Enjoy 44 live performances from four induction ceremonies (2010-2013).

The music of the Fête Galante-era composers like Jean-Marie Leclair counteracted the grand style of their predecessors, just as Watteau's paintings of regular people enjoying simple pleasures in the outdoors contrasted with the heavy subject matter of the art he'd grown up with.

The contemporary folk music scene and the Early Music scene intersect more than you might think. The Early Music ensemble Tenet proved it decisively with this program, demonstrating such sublime musicianship that I hope they preserve it for future concerts and in a recording studio.