Keyboardist and director
Simon-Pierre Bestion
and his group
La Tempête
intentionally use the first name of composer
Orlando di Lasso
in the title of this 2025 release; as
Bestion
explains, he is inspired not only by
Lasso
's music but also by the composer's gender-switching namesake in the novel by
Virginia Woolf
. That is not the only switcheroo with modern times that appears here;
plays piano, organ, synthesizer, and a Fender Rhodes keyboard, and jazz and rock drumming are applied to
's music. A bit of sampling will determine a listener's probable reaction to the whole, and there have been enough positive reactions to put the album on the Gramophone Awards shortlist for 2025. However, even those on the negative side might try an experiment. The music was made for a documentary of sorts about
by director
Joachim Thôme
, and one might be reminded of the controversies surrounding
Baz Luhrmann
's film of
The Great Gatsby
and his use of hip-hop music in a 1920s context.
Luhrmann
's idea was not to shock, but to suggest that to hear how an audience of the '20s might have reacted to jazz, modern viewers needed hip-hop. Similarly,
, however far he may depart from
's music, is not simply creating a modern fantasy on Renaissance music; he is exploring ideas that he sees as contained implicitly within
's music itself. Make no mistake: although there are a few pieces that are played relatively straight,
is indulging in understatement when he says, "I made a deliberate choice here to interpret this music with a great freedom of instrumentation and of timbre." The music here does not sound like
, and those wanting such a release should look elsewhere. Those interested in innovative modern treatments based on Renaissance music, however, will find a good deal of interest here. ~ James Manheim