Music for These Troubled Times (cd)

Music for These Troubled Times explores the melancholy of the past through the keyboard repertoire of the English virginalists of the late 16th and 17th centuries, and links this still familiar state of mind with the present — an age of social and political turbulence, uncertainty, and wars — through Maxim Shalygin’s KHORA. Inspired by Robert Burton’s 1621 treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy, which praises music as a remedy for the troubled mind, the programme moves between contemplative pavanes, witty variations, and complex polyphonic works. It includes rarely performed pieces and a first recording of the anonymous A Ground. Recorded on three unique harpsichords, it features a rare copy after 1579 L. Theewes’ earliest surviving English instrument, a reconstruction of the original state of the 1612 I. Ruckers transposing double-manual harpsichord, and a copy of the marvellous 1751 H. Hemsch.