After having released her debut album ‘Komm in mein Herzenshaus’, Klaartje decided to explore the music of William Byrd and Henry Purcell. She chose an unusual setting by asking the Amstel Saxophone Quartet to accompany her in the Byrd songs. In addition to that she performed songs by Purcell with a lovely basso continuo formed by harpsichord player Guillermo Brachetta and Robert Smith playing the Viola da Gamba. A special treat on the disc is a set of Purcell fantasias played by the Amstel Saxophone Quartet.

The program on the disc is a colorful selection, especially because you go from one world to the other. The order of the program is mixed, in other words man will hear a Byrd song, followed by a Purcell song and/or Fantasia and than returning to the world of Byrd again etc. At first side this sounds like very big jumps between styles but the result is a very coherent program with surprising connections between the pieces.

(Klaartje, Guillermo and Robert – photo Daan van Aalst)

The recording took place in Schiedam. The setup for the recording was more or less the same for the different ensembles. I made this choice to give all the pieces a certain ‘sound stamp’ to make sure that, although the sound world of Byrd with the saxophones is completely different from the world of Purcell with basso continuo, there would be a strong relation between the sound of the different songs.

(Ties Mellema and Bas Apswoude – Photo Daan van Aalst)

Project info

Recording venue: Westvest church Schiedam

Recording producer and editing: Daan van Aalst

Cover design: Ad van der Kouwe, Manifesta

Photo: Marco Borggreve

Daan van Aalst

Author Daan van Aalst

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