Atrium Musicae de Madrid
published in OPtion (Los Angeles) A2 (Mar/Apr 1985)
Gregorio Paniagua's early music group, the Atrium Musicae de Madrid, is no ordinary bunch of tootlers on rusty whistles. Through their many records for Harmonia Mundi and other labels, they have fanned out from the Iberian peninsula in the spirit of adventurers. Faithfully and with great care, Paniagua with his three brothers and the rest of the group have revived such music as the troubadour songs of Thibaut de Navarre, 18th-century tarantellas, and medieval Catalan music, as well as the 16th-century recercadas (polyphonic variations) of Diego Ortiz. But they have had an ear for greater musical crosswinds too.
Their award-winning Musique de la Grèce Antique is startling in its spare and somber voicings, with a text by Euripides and a Delphic hymn to Apollo among the sung passages. The classics ain't what they used to be after this record, they're something more. Likewise, hearing the group's Musique Arabo-Andalouse, one is struck by how thoroughly Arabic sources laid the foundation for later Spanish music, as these pieces from 9th-century Córdoba demonstrate. Paniagua's fancy makes its furthest poetic leaps in La Folia, where the basis is the Portuguese and Spanish dances of that name. However, the Atrium Musicae, as ever employing an endless array of instruments, follows the spirit of the Folias (as composers in the rest of Europe had done) to include everything from Indian ragas to square dances to jazz improvisation to less musical sorts of folly. Paniagua's thinking, and playing, is to be highly commended.
published in OPtion (Los Angeles) A2 (Mar/Apr 1985)
Gregorio Paniagua's early music group, the Atrium Musicae de Madrid, is no ordinary bunch of tootlers on rusty whistles. Through their many records for Harmonia Mundi and other labels, they have fanned out from the Iberian peninsula in the spirit of adventurers. Faithfully and with great care, Paniagua with his three brothers and the rest of the group have revived such music as the troubadour songs of Thibaut de Navarre, 18th-century tarantellas, and medieval Catalan music, as well as the 16th-century recercadas (polyphonic variations) of Diego Ortiz. But they have had an ear for greater musical crosswinds too.
Their award-winning Musique de la Grèce Antique is startling in its spare and somber voicings, with a text by Euripides and a Delphic hymn to Apollo among the sung passages. The classics ain't what they used to be after this record, they're something more. Likewise, hearing the group's Musique Arabo-Andalouse, one is struck by how thoroughly Arabic sources laid the foundation for later Spanish music, as these pieces from 9th-century Córdoba demonstrate. Paniagua's fancy makes its furthest poetic leaps in La Folia, where the basis is the Portuguese and Spanish dances of that name. However, the Atrium Musicae, as ever employing an endless array of instruments, follows the spirit of the Folias (as composers in the rest of Europe had done) to include everything from Indian ragas to square dances to jazz improvisation to less musical sorts of folly. Paniagua's thinking, and playing, is to be highly commended.