Gilbert Martinez – harpsichord, organ (USA / Denmark)
The Vasa Kings, notably Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, and Władysław IV of Poland, maintained luxurious court chapels with leading Italian musicians intermingled with talented Northerners, among them, composer and theorist Marco Scacchi. Even though much keyboard music from this period by Hanseatic composers active and known to Scacchi is irretrievably lost, yet there are a few principle sources which give a tantalising glimpse at how rich and diverse this repertoire would have been: the tablature of Gustav Düben (c.1628–1690), hosted by the University of Uppsala, and the tablature of Gabriel Voigtländer (c.1596–1634), hosted by the Royal Danish Library. This concert features music found in these manuscripts: works by Paul Siefert, Felice Anerio, Melchior Schildt, Heinrich Scheidemann, alongside works by Girolamo Frescobaldi and William Byrd, as well as anonymous works found in Swedish and Dutch sources.
The American harpsichordist Gilbert Martinez, currently based in Copenhagen, studied harpsichord with Laurette Goldberg at the San Francisco Conservatory. He is an active soloist in Northern Europe, USA and Canada, as well as an orchestra harpsichordist, assistant conductor and co-director of Baroque Opera projects. Gilbert Martinez is the artistic director of MusicSources, Center for Historically Informed Performance, which is based in Berkeley, California.
Text author: Alina Rotaru.
