Salsa Baroque album cover
Salsa Baroque

Ensemble Caprice , Matthias Maute

Composed by:  Domenico Zipoli

2010
Analekta

Forgive this album’s kitschy title and blindingly fluorescent cover for a handsome reward: a celebratory, often revelatory, journey into the fascinating crosscurrents of the Latin American Baroque. Convincing performances of this repertoire must negotiate its intrinsically light, sprightly sound with the heaviness of the colonizing forces that created it when (mainly Spanish and Portuguese) missionary composers were exposed and, quite evidently, intoxicated by the indigenous timbres of 16th and 17th century Latin America. German recorder virtuoso Matthias Maute and Ensemble Caprice, his Montreal-based group, navigate these harmonic and historical dissonances with deftness and sensitivity. If nothing else, listen their poignant interpretation of Xicochi conetzintle, a Nahuatl-language villancico written by Gaspar Fernandes while he was the court organist of Puebla Cathedral – it encapsulates everything there is to enjoy, and to question, in this complex fusion of flavors.

Zev Kane

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