![Ensemble Mare Balticum – Ice and Longboats: Ancient Music of Scandinavia (2016/2022) [FLAC 24bit, 48 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/05/08/jystbly1c9tuc_600.md.jpg)
Ensemble Mare Balticum – Ice and Longboats: Ancient Music of Scandinavia (2016/2022) [FLAC 24bit, 48 kHz]
Scandinavia’s archaeologically known prehistory encompasses around twelve thousand years, culminating in the Viking period (c.800–1050AD). The Middle Ages then followed, around six hundred years later than in continental Europe – a late development due to the long period in which ice still covered Europe’s northern parts.
![Calum Huggan – American Music for Marimba (2021) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/11/03/re4eep5iyhtjc_600.md.jpg)
Calum Huggan – American Music for Marimba (2021) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]
In the burgeoning contemporary repertoire for percussion, the work of a group of North American composer-performers has a special place. Classically trained but influenced as much by rock and jazz as by the Western canon, they have found a stellar exponent in the Scottish marimba player Calum Huggan. Already well known as leading exponent of new music, Calum’s natural instinct for collaboration has led to this landmark first solo album.
![Bojan Čičić, The Illyria Consort – La Notte: Concertos & Pastorales for Christmas Night (2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2023/01/05/fs4yihkd9n5ic_600.md.jpg)
Bojan Čičić, The Illyria Consort – La Notte: Concertos & Pastorales for Christmas Night (2022) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]
Bojan Čičić and the Illyria Consort’s latest Delphian recording revels in the great variety of musical styles and traditions that grew up around Christmas and its related feasts in Catholic Europe in the seventeenth century – a time when the introduction of ‘rustic’ effects into instrumental music changed the sound of Christmas forever.
The vivid theatricality of Baroque evocations of the shepherds and their milieu and the unusual combinations of instruments in much of this music, here given in performances brimming with energy and the joy of rediscovery, make this a Christmas album to reach for every year.
![Bojan Čičić – Pyrotechnia: Fire & Fury from 18th Century Italy (2021) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/18/rjiykzeg1gp0a_600.md.jpg)
Bojan Čičić – Pyrotechnia: Fire & Fury from 18th Century Italy (2021) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]
Contemporary accounts of the violin playing of Antonio Vivaldi, the “Red Priest”, show the extent to which he raised the instrument to hitherto unknown extremes of soloistic virtuosity – able, in its spontaneity and sonorous brilliance, to hold its own against an orchestra in fiery and unforgettably dramatic confrontations.