Under the artistic direction of Matthias Maute, Ensemble Caprice is renowned for its innovative interpretations of baroque music. Their previous CDs Vivaldi & Baroque Gypsies (AN 29912) and Telemann & Baroque Gypsies (AN 29919) have been extremely successful. Here they turn their attention to the fiery and passionate music of South America, music with a unique character.

No musician has done more for this music than the Argentine director of Ensemble Elyma, Gabriel Garrido. Garrido has an impressive discography on the French label K617. K617 recordings can sometimes be frustrating because they rarely provide English translations to the obscure texts of much of this music. No matter, you can’t go wrong with any of the recordings Garrido has made with his excellent Ensemble Elyma.

Fire Burning in Snow, the third volume in Ex Cathedra's series of Baroque music from Latin America, is strong testimony to the vitality of the musical scene in South America in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The bulk of this album is devoted to the sacred and secular choral music of Juan de Araujo (1648-1712), who was born in Spain, but whose family moved to South America when he was a child. He lived in Peru and Panama, but spent most of his adult life in La Plata, Bolivia, where he was the organist at the cathedral. The music recorded here is notable for its almost Monteverdian range of styles and expressiveness. This selection of Araujo's strongly rhythmic work includes a rigorously polyphonic motet for triple choir; a simple, lovely lullaby for women's voices; and many stylistically diverse choral villancicos.

Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore unearth more fascinating treasures with this latest anthology of Latin American music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first volume—‘New World Symphonies’, released in 2003 on CDA67380—has been hugely popular, getting regular airplay on Classic FM.
The works on this disc were chosen from the vast amount of extraordinary repertoire Jeffrey Skidmore discovered on research visits to the USA, Mexico and Bolivia.

Francisco Lopez Capillas was born in 1608 in Mexico City, and studied plainchant and polyphonic composition at the Royal and Pontifical University before assuming the post of chorister and second organist at Puebla Cathedral in 1641. Although most of his significant works were composed toward the end of his life–and thus well into what is generally regarded as the baroque period–the Messe de la Bataille is, like many of his other works, ambiguous in its relationship to the musical innovations that were taking place in the old world at the time.