From the standpoint of the Salish Sea Early Music Festival and as Tobias Hume asserted in 1605, "Now to use a modest shortness, and a brief expression of my self to all noble spirits": Les Voix Humaines is simply phenomenal!

LISTEN: Les Voix Humaines plays Sieur de Sainte-Colombe's Les Pleurs - Chaconne Le rapporté

In 1676, Thomas Mace accurately expressed their sentiments: "I have been more Sensibly, Fervently, and Zealously Captivated, and drawn into Divine Raptures, and Contemplations, by Those Unexpressible Rhetorical, Uncontroulable Perswasions, and Instructions of Musicks Divine Language."

A perfect description of their vision of music making, Sloane wrote c.1794: "There must be an Order and just Proportion, Intricacy with Simplicity in the Component parts, Variety in the Mass, and Light and Shadow in the whole, so as to produce the varied sensations of gaiety and melancholy, of wildness and even surprise and wonder…"

And as Thomas Mace says in 1676: "…When we come to be Masters… we can command all manner of Time, at our own Pleasures; we Then take Liberty for Humour and good Adornment-sake, to Break Time; sometimes Faster, sometimes Slower, as we perceive, the Nature of the Thing Requires, which…adds much Grace and Luster to the Performance."

---

Sunday, March 9, 2025 at 7:30 PM: 

— FRENCH BAROQUE TRIO SONATAS

     with MUSICA ALTA RIPA
   · Anne Röhrig, violin
   · Bernward Lohr, harpsichord
   · Susie Napper, viola da gamba
   · Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute

French trio sonatas and quartets spanning more than 60 years through the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis V, alongside a "Paris Quartet" written by Georg Philipp Telemann for his visit to Paris in 1738.

Marin Marais (1656 – 1728) 

 — Trio C major (1682)
Jean-Baptiste Quentin, the young (before 1690 – ca. 1742)

 — Trio in G minor Opus 8 No. 1 (after 1729)
Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (1705 – 1770) 

 — Trio Sonata No. 3 in D Minor (1743)
Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné (1697 – 1764)

 — Violin Sonata in A Minor
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689 – 1755)

 — Trio Sonata Opus 37 No. 2 in e minor (1732)

MUSICA ALTA RIPA
Harpsichordist BERNWARD LOHR is director of Hanover's Musica Alta Ripa, one of Germany's most active and extensively recorded period instrument ensembles. Baroque violinist ANNE RÖHRIG, leads the Hannoversche Hofkapelle (the "Hanover Court Orchestra"), another of the premier baroque orchestras that contributes to the vibrant early music scene in Hannover and Northern Germany. “Hannover” originally evolved from "Hohes Ufer", meaning "high riverbank" or "Alta Ripa" in Latin. Bernward Lohr and Anne Röhrig are professors at music conservatories in both Hannover and Nuremburg, Germany. Their more than 30 recordings have garnered many of the most important awards in Europe for recordings including the Diapason Dòr, the Cannes Classical Award, the German Recording Critics' Prize, and several times the coveted Echo Klassik Award. Both were awarded the 2002 Music Award of Lower Saxony.