La Grande Chapelle is a vocal and instrumental early music ensemble with a European outlook whose main objective is to apply new readings to the great vocal works of the 16th to 18th centuries with special emphasis on the polychoral productions of the Baroque period. At the same time it aims to contribute to the urgent task of reviving forgotten works from the Spanish musical repertoire.
La Grande Chapelle has taken part in the most important Spanish music seasons and performed at the festivals of Haut-Jura, Musica Sacra in Maastricht, Laus Polyphoniae in Antwerp, Rencontres musicales in Noirlac, the OsterKlang-Festival (Theater an der Wien) in Vienna, the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, Radio France, Ribeauvillé, Saint-Michel en Thiérache, Saintes, Île de France, Van Vlaanderen, Lyon, Herne, Cremona, Stockholm as well as the Cité de la Musique season in Paris, UNAM in México (at the Nezahualcóyotl auditorium), deSingel (Antwerp), Teatro Mayor (Bogotá), Gran Teatro Nacional de Lima, amongst others.
Upon its foundation in 2005, fired by a desire to spread Spain’s musical heritage, La Grande Chapelle set up its own independent record label, Lauda, which specialises in recordings of great musical and musicological interest. It has focused on two principal areas: an exploration of the relationship between the music and literature of the Spanish Golden Age and the revival of works by the most outstanding Spanish renaissance and baroque composers through first-time recordings, particularly those that set a particular work or composer within a specific context.
In 2010 La Grande Chapelle received the inaugural FestClásica (the Spanish Classical Music Association Awards) Prize for its contribution to the performance and recovery of previously unrecorded Spanish music. Recordings by La Grande Chapelle on the Lauda label have received several prestigious national and international awards and prizes for their quality and artistic rigour, including two “Orphées d’Or” (Académie du Disque Lyrique, Paris, in 2007 and 2009), “Label of the Year” in the “Prelude Classical Music Awards 2007” (The Netherlands), “5 of Diapason“, “Excepcional” in the magazine Scherzo, “Choc de Classica“, “4 stars of the BBC Magazine“, “Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik” (PdSK) – and the “Editor’s Choice” and “Critic’s Choice” in the celebrated British magazine Gramophone.
Musicians:
Maud Gnidzaz, soprano
Axelle Bernage, soprano
Marie-Antoinette Stabentheiner, soprano
David Sagastume, contratenor
Benedict Hymas, contratenor-tenor
Andrés Miravete Fernández, contratenor-tenor
Tore Tom Denys, tenor
Achim Schulz, tenor
Raitis Grigalis tenor-baritone
Romain Bockler, bass-baritone
Javier Jiménez Cuevas, bass
Matthew Gouldstone, bass
Cornetts/trumpets
Adrien Mabire
Benoît Tainturier
Sackbuts
Emily White
Miguel Tantos Sevillano
Fabio de Cataldo
Lutes
Orí Harmelin
Ulrik Gaston Larsenç
Dulcian
José Gomes
Violone
Marta Vicente
Positive organ
Herman Stinders
Albert Recasens, director
