Scotland past and present meet in a pair of excellent recordings of baroque music by the Ensemble Marsyas.
Edinburgh, Scotland is a destination for fans of art and music, especially these days for their Fringe Festival and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
The city is also home to one of my new favorite musical groups, the Ensemble Marsyas, a chamber orchestra specializing in performances of baroque music, especially featuring winds, led by bassoonist and conductor Peter Whelan.
Back in 2017, Ensemble Marsyas recorded a stand-out album exploring music from Edinburgh in 1742, by composers George Frederic Handel and Francesco Barsanti - an Italian composer who spent eight years (1735-1743) in Edinburgh.
That music found its way here to us at WXXI Classical thanks to a recommendation from Gramophone Magazine a few years ago. I only recently just learned that there is a SEQUEL, from 2020 - the parte seconda (part II) of Edinburgh 1742. Spoiler alert: it’s also amazing, with lively dance-infused concertos, spirited playing, and some more old Scots tunes in the mix. It's beautifully crafted and played, and makes every afternoon that I play it on the radio just a bit better.
Over the next couple weeks, you’ll hear more from ‘Edinburgh 1742, Barsanti & Handel, parte seconda’ is the WXXI Classical CD Spotlight. If it catches your ear too, I recommend checking both of these albums, and the rest of Ensemble Marsyas’s catalog.
Side note: If you’re a music history nerd who has a chance to visit Edinburgh, you can’t go wrong spending a part of a day at the University's music instrument museum - St. Cecelia's Hall - especially with the beautiful old keyboards they have in their collection.
