Various Composers
On a Ground
Michala Petri; Marie Nishiyama
OUR Recordings (dist. Naxos)
8.226927

In musical composition, a “ground” is a repeated bass pattern above which melodies and variations are elaborated. Although today we tend to associate “music upon a ground” with the Renaissance and baroque periods, the technique has never really gone away, as the magnificent recorder player Michala Petri and harpist Marie Nishiyama demonstrate on this sweet and lovely recording. The program covers musical examples across several hundred years of musical history, from 16th and 17th century composers like Diego Ortiz, Michel Farinel, and Johann Sebastian Bach to 19th and 20th century figures including Erik Satie (whose Gymnopedies offer very clear contemporary examples of composition on a ground), Charles Gounod, and the living composer Lars Hannibal. Recorder and harp is, of course, a combination of instruments perfectly suited to playing light and lyrical music, and everything on this album is deeply lovely — it’s both an instructive program, well suited to pedagogical support, and a highly enjoyable one.