La Grande Chapelle

La Grande Chapelle is a vocal and instrumental early music ensemble with an European outlook. It takes its name from the celebrated musical chapelle of the House of Burgundy and, subsequently, of the House of Habsburg, which served the Spanish royal line until the 17th century. It was also known as the capilla flamenca and was presided over by such maestros as N. Gombert, F. Rogier and M. Romero.
La Grande Chapelle is made up of seasoned performers from different European countries. The heterogeneity of the ensemble is what helps to give it its distinctive trademark sound, characterised by an avoidance of timbric uniformity and an emphasis on rich musical textures.
La Grande Chapelle, founded by maestro Ángel Recasens and presently under the direction of Albert Recasens, began in 2005, building on the success of the former Capilla Príncipe de Viana. This transformation was motivated by the need to employ larger ensembles in the light of the in-house musicological research undertaken in recent years.
La Grande Chapelle’s interests are principally focused on the field of sacred music. Its main objective is to apply new readings to the great vocal works of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, with special emphasis on the polychoral productions of the Baroque. At the same time it aims to contribute to the urgent task of reviving forgotten works from the Spanish musical repertoire. That is why it is passionately involved in stimulating research (the gathering of material, inventory, study, and transcription), premiering previously unknown repertoires, recording CDs, and even publishing music following proven scientific methodology.
Outstanding among the commissions for musical reconstructions La Grande Chapelle has received are the Office of Dead in the Cathedral of Mexico (c1700) (Festival of Úbeda and Baeza, 2005), the Liturgical music of Domenico Scarlatti (Festival of Sacred Art of Madrid, 2007), Antonio Rodríguez de Hita’s zarzuela Briseida (Via Stellae in Santiago de Compostela, 2007), the auto sacramental La Paz Universal ó El Lirio y la Azucena (Universal Peace or the Iris and the Lily) by Calderón de la Barca / Peyró (the Cuenca Religious Music
Week, 2008), Compendio sucinto de la revolución espa?ola (Concise compendium of the Spanish Revolution) (1815) by Ramón Garay (SECC, 2009), sacred works by José Lidón and Manuel J. Doyagüe (Arte Sacro Festival, Madrid, 2009), In Dominica Palmarum by Juan García de Salazar (the Pórtico de Zamora Festival, 2010), Nicolás Zabala’s Te Deum (the Consortium for the Commemoration of the 1812 Constitution), a monograph on Alonso
Juárez (the Cuenca Religious Music Week, 2013), the “Scala Aretina” Mass and other religious works by Francesc Valls (Early Music Festival of the Pyrenees 2013), etc.
La Grande Chapelle has taken part in the most important Spanish music cycles and has performed at the festivals of Picardie, Haut-Jura, Musica Sacra in Maastricht, Laus Polyphoniae in Antwerp, Rencontres musicales in Noirlac, the OsterKlang-Festival (Theater an der Wien) in Vienna, the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, Radio France et Montpellier, Ribeauvillé, as well as the Cité de la Musique season in Paris and at UNAM in México (the Nezahualcóyotl auditorium), amongst others. It has been invited to tour Germany, Great Britain, the USA, Canada, Japan and China.
In 2005, the ensemble began an ambitious recording project by setting up its own label, Lauda, which has released thirteen recordings to date. These have focused on two principal areas: an exploration of the relationship between the music and literature of the Spanish Golden Age (Entre aventuras y encantamientos [Between adventures and enchantments: Music for Don Quixote], LAU001; El vuelo de Ícaro [The Flight of Icarus], LAU003 and El gran Burlador [The Great Seducer: Music for the myth of Don Juan], LAU006) and the revival of sacred works by the great Spanish composers, largely through musical reconstructions that set these liturgical works in their appropriate context: Missa pro Defunctis by Mateo Romero, LAU002; Vespers of Confessors by José de Nebra, LAU004; Instrumental canciones by Antonio Rodríguez de Hita, LAU005; Music for Corpus Christi by Joan Pau Pujol, LAU007; the Office of the Dead by Francisco García Fajer, LAU008; Missa O Gloriosa Virginum, by Rodríguez de Hita, LAU009; In Dominica Palmarum by Juan García de Salazar, LAU011 and Easter celebrations in the Piazza Navona. T. L. de Victoria, LAU012). For this second series the ensemble has generally worked alongside Juan Carlos Asensio’s Schola Antiqua. At the end of 2010 La Grande Chapelle released a double CD of some of the works of Cristóbal Galán (LAU010), which constituted the first monograph dedicated to one of the major Spanish composers of the 17th century. Their latest release
(2013) is a recuperation of two masses by Alonso Lobo, chapel master at the cathedrals of Sevilla and Toledo in the time of El Greco.
Recordings by La Grande Chapelle on Lauda have received several prestigious national and international awards and prizes for their quality and artistic rigour, including two “Orphées d’Or” (Académie du Disque Lyrique, Paris, in 2007 and 2009), “Label of the Year” in the “Prelude Classical Music Awards 2007” (The Netherlands), “5 of Diapason”, “CD Excepcional” in the magazine Scherzo,”Choc of Classica”, “4 stars of the BBC Magazine”, etc. The ensemble was awarded the inaugural FestClasica prize (the Spanish Classical Music
Association Awards) for its contribution to the performance and recovery of unreleased Spanish music in the year 2010. Recently their CD of the Easter Celebrations in the Piazza Navona was awarded the “Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik” – the prestigious German Record Critics’ Award – in the category of Historic Music (Bestenliste 4-2012) and the “Critic’s Choice” in the celebrated British magazine Gramophone (December 2012).