2CELLOS; music’s most electric and dynamic instrumental duo, go to the movies for their new Portrait/ Sony Music Masterworks album Score.

The composers Arnold and Hugo de Lantins were natives of the diocese of Liège, but it was in Italy, principally in Pesaro and Venice that their presence is confirmed between the years of 1420 and 1430. As with the works of Johannes Ciconia, a fellow native of Liège whose time in Italy had preceded theirs, their secular and sacred compositions are preserved in manuscripts copied in Italy. Closely rubbing shoulders with their illustrious contemporary Guillaume Dufay, the Lantins brothers combined archaic traits with the earliest characteristics of the Renaissance.

Through the combination of sacred and profane that she embodies, the profoundly human personality of Mary Magdalene greatly inspired artists of the Baroque era, whether painters, poets or composers. It was in the sphere of influence of Italian oratorios, highly prized at the court of Vienna, that Antonio Bertali devoted a most moving sepolcro to her in 1663, a genre traditionally played during Holy Week. In 1617, in Mantua, it was in the form of theatrical interludes that she was honoured by court composers such as Salomone Rossi, Muzio Effrem and Claudio Monteverdi, who wrote the prologue for this other Maddalena.

Many mysteries surround the life of Jehan de Lescurel, beginning with his date of birth. Probably the son of middle-class Parisians, cleric, musician and poet, he was most likely trained at Notre-Dame. His oeuvre consists of some thirty songs written in the waning tradition of the art of the Parisian troubadours and even broaches polyphony. In them, he describes several amorous situations, sometimes depicting the emotions of the rejected suitor, sometimes those of the beautiful misunderstood lady, in a game of love and feelings that range from nostalgia to ecstasy, and not excluding humour. In this complete recording, the three voices of Céladon are backed up by richly coloured instruments.

After Carlo Farina and the Vitalis, Clematis continues its exploration of the Italian Baroque instrumental repertoire with Giovanni Legrenzi. The Sonatas taken from the collections he published in Venice between 1655 and 1673 feature highly diverse forms ranging from the trio sonata up to larger forms for 4, 5, or 6 parts and even double choir. His final collection of instrumental music, Balletti e Correnti, published in 1691, offers us a very different view of instrumental music in which certain French influences cannot be denied. Here, Clematis gives us the first complete anthology of his instrumental works.