专辑简介

Audiences love ARTEK concerts for their compelling musical settings of beautiful poetry and in- fectious dance rhythms that infuse the performances with vitality and spirit. Founded by director Gwendolyn Toth in 1986, ARTEK’s singers and instrumentalists are all recognized virtuosos with a love for music of the early baroque that is ARTEK’s signature repertoire. ARTEK has toured exten- sively to American and European festivals and worldwide with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and has mounted staged performances of early baroque operas and its own musical theater show, I’ll Never See the Starts Again (set to music of Monteverdi) in New York City and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005. In 2010, ARTEK celebrated its 25th anniversary season with gala performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 in New York City and the National Gallery in Washington, DC; and made its Lincoln Center debut. ARTEK’s previous recordings include Monteverdi’s opera, Orfeo; Monteverdi madrigals as heard with the Mark Morris Dance Group, I Don’t Want to Love; and early Italian songs and arias with countertenor Drew Minter in Loveletters from Italy.

Director Gwendolyn Toth is recognized as one of America’s leading early music artists, perform- ing with equal ease on the harpsichord, organ, and fortepiano. She has recorded Renaissance and baroque organ music on historical organs in Holland, and Bach’s Goldberg Variations on the lautenwerk. Opera News honored Ms. Toth as an “Outstanding Young Conductor” in 1989, and in 2001, she received the “Newell Jenkins Prize” for excellence in early music performance.