Recorded at the end of 2021 at the Soares dos Reis National Museum in Porto, the Ludovice Ensemble’s album “Assembly of Foreign Nations” will be presented to the public on 19 October at 6pm at the Medeiros e Almeida Museum in Lisbon.
This is the Ludovice Ensemble’s third album, a double CD with chamber music by two of the most illustrious Portuguese musicians of the 18th century: Pedro Jorge and Pedro António Avondano. This new album is the 30th in the Melographia Portugueza collection, published by MPMP Património Musical Vivo.
The Ludovice Ensemble is a group specialising in the interpretation of early music. It was created in 2004 by Fernando Miguel Jalôto and Joana Amorim with the aim of publicising the vocal and instrumental chamber repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries through historically informed interpretations using antique instruments. Its name honours the German architect and goldsmith Johann Friedrich Ludwig (1673-1752), known in Portugal as Ludovice.
As well as being the stage for the recording of the album “Assembly of Foreign Nations” by the Ludovice Ensemble, the Soares dos Reis National Museum also provided the image of the painting Marinha (fishing harbour), chosen for the album cover, by the French painter Jean Pillement.
Jean Pillement (Lyon 1728 – 1808) was a French artist who trained in textile design at the Gobelins factory in Paris. He lived in Lisbon before the 1755 earthquake, where he worked as a draughtsman at the Royal Silk Factory. Having travelled around Europe, he returned to Portugal around 1782, where he excelled in pastel technique in the field of Landscape.
The painter treated idyllic countryside and marine scenes, idealising nature. He also captured aspects of Portugal linked to the fishing of the Tagus and Douro rivers. In Oporto, he laid the foundations for a current of Landscapes with Domingos Vieira and his son, Francisco Vieira, the Portuense.