Lithuania Splendour presents the best examples of Lithuanian baroque music production and practice. Giovanni Battista Cocciola was an Italian composer, working in Vilnius as a Kapellmeister at Leonas Sapiega’s court in the beginning of the XVII century. Although most of Cocciola’s work is lost, the collection of surviving sacred pieces shows he was an exquisite composer. Works from the Braunsberg Tablature are also present in the programme, since it was an organ book written in the beginning of the XVII century at Braunsberg Jesuit Collegium, which belonged to Lithuanian Jesuit Province and had tight connections with Vilnius University. Pieces by Orlando di Lasso and Giovanni Gabrieli are performed with the original divisions from this organ tablature. Finally, programme presents composers who worked for the king of the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth Sigismund III Vasa, such as Tarquinio Merula, Diomedes Cato and Bartlomiej Pekiel. The court used to travel regularly from Warsaw to Vilnius with its musicians, who were a part of the Lithuanian music scene. This program recreates the musical atmosphere of Lithuania in the beginning of the XVII century, performed with its most important surviving historical organ.
