In 1985, the Ricercar Consort made its first concert tour with J. S. Bach’s Musical Offering. The group quickly acquired an international reputation, particularly in the field of German Baroque cantatas and instrumental music; it gave many concerts with such soloists as Henri Ledroit, Max van Egmond and James Bowman, and recorded around fifty discs, notable among which were the complete works of little-known composers like Nikolaus Bruhns and Matthias Weckmann. Today the ensemble is directed by Liège-born Philippe Pierlot, and alternates between large- scale productions – mainly in the fields of sacred music, with the Passions and cantatas of Bach and the Stabat Mater of Pergolesi and Vivaldi – and chamber music, centring to a large extent on the viol consort.
Its recordings of the works of Bach (Magnificat, Trauer-Ode, St John Passion, Christmas cantatas) are acknowledged as benchmarks and have received many awards from the international press. With the support of the Communauté Française de Belgique and Wallonie Bruxelles International, the ensemble performs throughout the world in prestigious festivals including Boston, Edinburgh, Utrecht, Leipzig and Weimar.
Its most recent recordings of Bach cantatas and of the programmatic music of Biber and his contemporaries won the Diapason d’Or.
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