• Music in a Cold Climate could suit any northern place in winter. This debut disc by the crack British viol-cornett-sackbut ensemble In Echo – financed in part by crowdfunding and subtitled “Sounds of Hansa Europe”– focuses on rarely heard 17th-century music from England, Denmark, Holland and northern Germany. Composers travelled the trade routes of the Hanseatic League seeking patronage. This fascinating disc, with full explanatory notes by director Gawain Glenton, introduces us to some dozen of them, new names all: Bertali, Albert, Sommer, Schildt among them.
The fashionable melancholy of the day, as heard in Schop’s beautiful Lachrimae Pavaen, is offset by cheerful folk themes and dances, as well as a sympathetic and lively new commission, Northern Soul, from British composer Andrew Keeling, inspired by four Lake District walks. Recording in Romsey Abbey, Hampshire, the group used the copy of an English Renaissance organ made by Goetze and Gwynn – so authentic in its mechanics that it requires manual “bellowers” to facilitate the sound. Enterprise fitting to the disc’s subject matter.
• Keeping repertoire alive is a priority for the Rautio Piano Trio, as their latest CD, Beethoven, Hiller & Schubert (Resonus), demonstrates. In between fresh, brisk Beethoven (Op 70, No 1 in D major “Ghost”) and eloquent, confident Schubert (Op posth 148, D897 “Notturno”, Adagio) they offer a substantial novelty: the premiere recording of the wonderfully buoyant Piano Trio No 6 in C minor, Op 186, Serenade No 2 (1879) by Ferdinand Hiller (1811-85). Said to be an affable character, this dance-like music smiles right through.
• “My music is like a garden, and I am the gardener,” Toru Takemitsu (1930-96) used to say of his compositions, which have poetic titles such as Rain Coming or Dreamtime. In Composer of the Week (12 noon daily, tomorrow to Friday, Radio 3, then iPlayer), Donald Macleod explores the sensuous, gleaming music, and the east-west influences, of this Japanese master, unduly neglected since his untimely death and well worth discovering.
