Renaissance dance music

David Munrow´s charisma was very special. I had the luck to attend two of his recitals with his Early Music Consort London playing renaissance music, a few years before his untimely suicide. The virtuosity of and the interplay between the members of the band (among whom Christopher Hogwood and James Tyler) was perfect, they acted almost like a jazz-band, and the spirit was much similar, even if they almost never improvised. Everything was obviously planned in advance in detail. The prevailing mood was intense extasy.

Concerning renaissance dance music I would like to draw attention to at least two other interesting recordings, both available at present.

1) The old classical Archiv recording from 1960, which started the renaissance dance fad with Collegium Terpschichore led by Fritz Neumeyer playing selected music by Praetorius, Widmann and Schein:

http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/hnum/7320259

And the recording of selected items from Susato´s Dansereye (Het derde musyck boexken Antwerp 1551) made by the spiritual successor of Munrow, the recorder player Philip Pickett with his New London Consort. The recordings of Pickett are milder, less accentuated than Munrow´s, but not less rewarding.

http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/hnum/6850285/rk/classic/rsk/hitlist