CAPPELLA PRATENSIS - Netherlands

For almost forty years, the Gramophone Award-winning ensemble Cappella Pratensis has been renowned for its innovative approach to the performance of Renaissance polyphonic music, being one of only a handful of professional ensembles in the world who perform directly from historical notation, as opposed to transcriptions in the form of a modern choral score. In recent years, the ensemble has dived further into the musical traditionssurrounding this repertoire by exploring historical methods of improvisation and pedagogies, as well as working within the contexts of liturgical reconstruction. The result is an inherently immersive approach, in which theperformers draw on a truly embodied relationship with past musical cultures in order to provide convincing and engaging performances.

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In addition to regular appearances at concert venues in the Netherlands and Belgium, Cappella Pratensis has performed at leading international festivals and concert series throughout Europe, North America, South America, and Japan, including the Boston, Berkeley, Utrecht, and York Early Music Festivals. The ensemble’s recordings have met with critical acclaim and distinctions from the press, including the Diapason d’Or, the Prix Choc and, for the last three CDs, three consecutive Gramophone Editor’s Choice mentions. Gramophone magazine recognised the ensemble’s recording of the Ockeghem Requiem as the best out of more than twenty recordings made over the last forty years. In 2022, Cappella Pratensis won the prestigious REMA-EEMN Heritage Project of the Year Award with the CD recording Apostola apostolorum. The ensemble’s 2023 recording of Obrecht’s Missa Maria zart won the Premio Abbiati della critica musicale, was awarded with a Disco Excepcionalby the Spanish music magazineScherzo, and was rated five stars by the Spanish magazine Ritmo. In 2024, the recording won a Gramophone Classical Music Award, perhaps the most important award for Classical Music in the world.  [Photos: © Eduardus Lee, © Foppe Schuit]