Lasso (Lassus): Orlando, A Melancholic Portrait

Orlando di Lasso (b. 1532 in Mons) was one of the most important and prolific composers in the whole of sixteenth-century Europe. Famed as a singer from boyhood, he escaped several kidnapping attempts ordered by princes who coveted his talent for their courts. Di Lasso is a fascinating character: an extravagant and provocative musical figure, an adventurous artist and cultivated polyglot. On being asked to provide the soundtrack for a documentary on di Lasso by Joachim Thôme, Simon-Pierre Bestion became immersed in the composer's multiverse. This album, an extension of the music for that film, projects the iconoclast di Lasso into our 21st century world. As Bestion explains: 'I made a deliberate choice here to interpret this music with a great freedom of instrumentation and of timbre. What is more, even though there were no drums or saxophones in di Lasso’s day, the performer was free to choose whichever or the ornamentation he wanted.' Join La Tempête for this unpredictable, fantasy-enriched exploration of the timeless realm of Orlando.