Sollazzo Ensemble - Parle qui veut - BBC Radio 3 'Record Review'

Now here's a debut recording that made quite an impact when I first got around to hearing it just before Christmas. It's from Sollazzo Ensemble, formed in Basle just three years ago to explore late medieval and renaissance repertoire. And their album of what they call 'Moralizing Songs of the Middle Ages' had me asking myself, is this perhaps the new Gothic Voices?, because I’m beginning to think it deserves to have the kind of impact that Gothic Voices had with their first recordings back in the 1980s. Try these two numbers and see what you think. The anonymous title track, Parle qui veut, 'say what you will I would live loyally as long as I live to her to whom I am dedicated', and before it music from one of the most famous Italian musicians of the fourteenth century, Francesco Landini, beginning with a Troubadour song dealing with the serious issue of slander.

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The anonymous courtly love song Parle qui veut and before it a fourteenth century condemnation of slander and then praise for music by Francesco Landini brought to life in these superbly imaginative performances from the Sollazzo Ensemble on their debut album, 'Moralizing Songs of the Middle Ages'. These ancient works come off the page with a freshness and immediacy that’s compelling. It's easy to hear why they were prize winners at the York Early Music Festival and I hope it’s the first of a series of explorations of the medieval and early renaissance repertoire in which they specialize. You'll find Sollazzo Ensemble on Linn Records. Quite a debut!