Bolivian Baroque Vol 2

SACD/hybrid pcm, stereo, multichannel

Editor's Choice: Gramophone Magazine March 2007

BBC MUSIC AWARD FINALIST 2008 (Choral recording)

'This joyous collection from Florilegium and the newly-created Arakaendar Bolivia Choir provides a vibrant aural picture of the musical heritage from the 18th Century missions. Motets, instrumental sonatas, Villancicos and Bassani's Missa Encarnación are captured in gutsy, thoroughly enchanting performances.' (BBC)

"Another hoard of obscure South American treasures. The music of Catholic missions in Bolivia may sound an obscure subject with a small potential audience but the first Bolivian Baroque set (7/05) was a commercial triumph. Florilegium's follow-up is similarly terrific, comprising a wealth of discoveries, all given performances that show just how much the participants believe in the project. A gem."
(Gramophone)

The 3 choir pieces are real showcases for this new choir (Arakaendar Bolivia). Only recently the 2nd violin part for Bassani's Missa Encarnacion was discovered in a library in Italy, thus completing the manuscript set held in the archive in Concepcion.

The instrumental music repertory kept in the music archives of Chiquitos (Archivo Musical de Chiquitos) consist of two major collections: a) music for an instrumental ensemble; b) keyboard music. Each of these contains approximately 200 works of music (either fragmentary or complete works). It is difficult to maintain that such a large number of works was to be found in each of the Jesuit settlements. It is possible that the musical libraries of the guaraní settlements were even larger. Since these documents have disappeared altogether, we can neither confirm nor deny their existence. On the other hand, in the archives of the missionary post in Moxos, where 4000 sheets of music are kept, the instrumental works do not exceed 20 and are generally fragments of sonatas, concertos and dances. No instrumental music has been found, not even fragments. In among the quartets, dances, partitas, concertos, symphonies and sonatas belonging to the music collection of Chiquitos, the latter, numbering approximately 110 compositions, are the best known. In most cases, the copyist left no details regarding the composer. The ones of which the composer is mentioned or recognized by the musicologists that have studied the music collection of Chiquitos, were written by Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, Niccolò Jommelli, Ignazio Balbi, Pietro Locatelli, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, Nicola Calandro and Domingo Poretti. Ten sonatas that were attributed to Arcangelo Corelli make him the most popular and prolific composer of instrumental music in the ancient Jesuit missionary posts. On the other hand, no instrumental music has ever been found that could prove beyond any doubt that the composer