The Cantus label was founded in 1997 by José Carlos Cabello, once he had left his post as artistic director of the Glossa label, which he also founded, together with the Moreno brothers, José Miguel and Emilio. Cantus was born after a dream of José Carlos Cabello: to develop a CD label with which he could be able to communicate his passion for early music, releasing CDs that could be considered as complete cultural objects, beautiful and unique. To achieve this it would be necessary to create a CD label that should be quite different to most of the existing ones. On the one side, there was the need to have the best world-wide performers to record beautiful and unfrequent repertoires for Cantus. But for José Carlos Cabello there was something absolutely essential, that was commonly forgotten by other labels: to secure a particularly handsome external presentation and that the inner booklets were as lavish, complete and informative as possible, even if the production costs were high. And of course, that additional production costs should not be passed onto the potential buyers, always allowing affordable prices for the Cantus CDs. Putting together all these elements, extraordinary artists, beautiful music, very attractive designs and lay-outs and modelic booklet essays could make that dream come true. Now, almost seven years after the first steps, results have arrived and the musical press hails our label as one of the most beautiful ones. Cantus releases a handful CDs per year because all and every of our CDs takes form after a long and complicated process in which we try to recover the taste for the well-done things, without having on mind how long they take. For us it would be easier and more profitable to release at least 8 or 10 CDs per year, but to get this we would have to sacrifice one of the most essential aspects of our CDs, the quality and quantity of the information contained in each booklet. During the last few months we have reprinted some of the first Cantus CDs, which had sold out in the original versions. In all cases we have tried to improve both the design and presentation: we have added lots of new illustrations to the booklets of our refs. C 9601 Bestiarium or C 9607 Vous ou la mort. Also, we have included full colour serigraphies to most of the CD labels (many of the old ones were 1 color labels, and now they are 4 colours ones) and we have printed new external boxes for a number of references. Some of these improvements are commented in the “Articles” section soon. We have also redesigned some of this web site sections, adding contents and news. We shall try to update all the contents and information as soon as possible. Anyway, the most important aspect of the Cantus work is the chance to offer interesting new releases to our buyers. We still have a handful recordings to be released from some time ago, and we hope to have them ready in the next few months because much of the preliminar work (print, translations, etc) is already done. We shall indicate approximate release dates of each CD in the news few weeks.
One of our coming releases will be, again, a world-wide premiere: our CD C 9632 Tabulatures de guiterne, entirely devoted to the Renaissance guitar, with works published by Morlaye, Le Roy and Brayssing between 1551 and 1553. This will be the first CD entirely devoted to the 4-course Renaissance guitar, an instrument of possible Spanish origin that achieved an anonymous popularity in France during mid-16th century, even more than the lute. The performer of our CD is the American lutenist, Michael Craddock, considered by his compatriots Hopkinson Smith, Crawford Young and Paul O’Dette as one of the most brilliant performers of the moment. Also shortly will be published the long-awaited CD, C 9622 Rodríguez: fortepiano works, devoted to Felipe Rodríguez, an 18th century composer born in Madrid but musically trained in Montserrat, Barcelona. The performer will be the fortepianist Josep Maria Roger, who already recorded for us another world premiere, the C 9618 Fernando Sor: the fortepiano works.
As a complement to the new recordings released by Cantus, from its very date of foundation our label has tried to recover from oblivion a number of extraordinary, almost legendary early music CDs that, for diverse reasons, and even being relatively recent CDs, had almost disappeared from market. For this, we have reached to licence agreements with a number of recording labels. These agreements allow us to prepare new, lavish editions of a few particularly cherished early music recordings. New and complete notes, illustrations, new designs and packaging have been added, and the results are truly magnificent. This is precisely the case with the latest agreement with American label Albion Records, for whom between 1987 and 1994 the renown medieval Ensemble P.A.N. (Project Ars Nova) did 4 wonderful recordings. Ensemble PAN was formed by some of the best interpreters of the early music field, such us lutenist Crawford Young, who is today director of the Ferrara Ensemble, Basel. Also Shira Kammen, one of the world’s best known medieval fiddle player, who also performs with the most prestigious ensembles. Or the late John Fleagle, a tenor with unforgettable, magic and moving voice who passed away a few years ago. Also very well known is countertenor Michael Collver, a unique singer, who also plays medieval cornetto muto. And of course medieval fiddle player, Randall Cook, who can also be heard on the Cantus label in several recordings performed by Ensemble Gilles Binchois, to whom he contributes. Ensemble PAN was dissolved some 8 years ago, but their
performances have an unsurpassed depth, poetry and technical quality.
For us, avid collectors of the finest CDs, it was just a shame that
their recordings were mostly unknown for music lovers arrived to the
world of early music recently. Thus, we have decided to group their
four marvellous CDs in two 2 CD sets at a very special price: each set
will be Cantus, March 2004 |
priced. They include lavish editions with extended and informative notes
by José Carlos Cabello and Alejandro Planchart, many illustrations,
newly designed packaging... You can find more information on this in
our News section, in the article “