Varduhi Abrahamyan / Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco / Gianluca Capuano RHAPSODY

 

RHAPSODY

 

Cecilia Bartoli QUEEN OF BAROQUE

 

QUEEN OF BAROQUE

 

Cecilia Bartoli / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini FARINELLI

Renowned for portraying the music of the baroque like no one else, Cecilia Bartoli presents her new recording of arias famously performed by legendary castrato, Farinelli.

Exploring the complex gender roles of the world of baroque opera, and highlighting the phenomenon of the castrati, a horrifying practice which led to some of the most celebrated work of the period.

Featuring works by Farinelli’s brother, Riccardo Broschi, and his mentor, Nicola Porpora, as well as Hasse, Caldara and Giacomelli. Including two new world premiere recordings, from Porpora’s Polifemo and Broschi’s La Merope.

Cecilia Bartoli / Ensemble Matheus / Jean-Christophe Spinosi ANTONIO VIVALDI

Almost 20 years after her landmark Vivaldi album, Bartoli turns to the composer once again for her brand new solo recording. It is a glorious collection of Vivaldi arias, performed with French baroque orchestra Ensemble Matheus under Jean-Christophe Spinosi.

Bartoli’s 1999 recording The Vivaldi Album shone a spotlight on the Italian as a composer of vocal works, sparking a revival in the operas of Vivaldi, who had hitherto been primarily known for his concerti. The album sold 700,000 copies in five years and went Gold in six countries. It paved the way for similarly trailblazing releases, including the Italian arias of Christoph Willibald Gluck, the legendary castratos (on the album ‘Sacrificium’) and Bartoli’s personal 19th-century hero, the mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran.

Cecilia Bartoli / Sol Gabetta DOLCE DUELLO

Cecilia Bartoli and Sol Gabetta – two of the most captivating women in classical music – are joining together for a new album ‘Dolce Duello’ to be released on Decca Classics on 10th November. It is a collection of Baroque masterpieces which showcase the stunning combination of voice and cello in a series of dazzling duels and wondrous arias. To coincide with the release, Bartoli and Gabetta will be performing on a European tour with Cappella Gabetta and conductor and violinist Andrés Gabetta.

‘Dolce Duello’ covers almost a century of music. The new album features works by Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, Domenico Gabrielli, Tomaso Albinoni and Luigi Boccherini, as well as three world premiere recordings: Nicola Antonio Porpora’s ‘Giusto Amor, tu che m’accendi’ from the serenata Gli orti esperidi, and two compositions by Antonio Caldara – ‘Fortuna e speranza’ from his opera Nitocri and ‘Tanto, e con sì gran piena’ from Gianguir.

The composers of these works make a variety of requirements on their soloists, demanding equal commitment from both singer and instrumentalist – engaging them in a friendly duel. If the concerto is the most elaborate and extended of musical duels, the 18^th century’s obbligato aria, with its pugnacious instrumental solo part, is easily the most spectacular. From the dawn of the Baroque, the voice and cello were inseparable companions, whether they appeared together for practical reasons (the cello being part of the continuo) or for expressive purposes. The sound of the cello is often considered to be the closest to the human voice, one elegantly complimenting the other. But when they are pitted against each other something extraordinary happens – the cello pushes the voice to its physical limits, while the singer demands raw emotion from wood and strings as if it were nature’s own instrument.

Reflected in the music of ‘Dolce Duello’ is the great friendship between Bartoli and Gabetta. They have known each other for years and had long been looking for a project to collaborate on. Together with a musicologist, they unearthed some beautiful works for voice and cello – three of which had never been recorded before. There are touching laments, as in Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, as well as more energetic arias such as ‘Di verde ulivo’ by Vivaldi. Bartoli and Gabetta sparkle when they play together.

While it maybe an album of duels, the true winner is surely the listener – who can bask in the joyous music from two wondrous women. ‘Dolce Duello’ is full of sweet treats for every taste.

Sistine Chapel Choir / Massimo Palombella / Cecilia Bartoli VENI DOMINE

The music collections of the Vatican Library (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) are among the largest and most significant in the world, and have since the late 18th century been an essential resource for the study of music history and for musicolo- gical research. The finest polyphonic works of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, most of which are to be found in the Cappella Sistina and Cappella Giulia collections, have long been studied by scholars from around the world, but have become even more popular since they were transferred from the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s to the Vatican Library itself (the Cappella Giulia material was moved in the 1930s and 1940s, the Sistine Chapel material a few decades earlier), when new indices and catalogues made them more easily accessible. The director of the Sistine Chapel Choir is in the fortunate position of having access to all the music resources of the Vatican Library. With that good fortune, however, comes a two-fold responsibility: firstly, that of rescuing long-forgotten works from neglect; and secondly, that of trying out performance practices that translate the notes on the page into patterns of sound, by comparing manuscripts and early print editions, and using all the studies and other information available to us today. 

Given the immense quantity of material housed in the Library, any search of it has to be narrowed down. For this album, for which our primary source was the Vatican Library’s Sistine Chapel collection, we decided to focus on the liturgical period of Advent and Christmas, further refining our search by consulting the various sources that describe papal celebrations over the centuries and the use of music therein. As a final search criterion, we looked at the frequency with which different works were performed as part of these papal celebrations.

Cecilia Bartoli ST PETERSBURG

This latest disc from mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli is full of arias you have never heard from unknown operas by obscure composers, but that is nothing new. In her recent discs, Bartoli has showed a knack for discovering and re-animating forgotten repertoire. On this disc from Decca, recorded with Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti, investigates the music written for the opera in St Petersburg in the 18th century. During this period the Russian Court relied on foreign models for much of its high culture and for opera they looked to Italy. On this disc there are arias from operas by Francesco Araia, Hermann Friedrich Raupach, Vincenzo Manfredini, Domenico Dall'Oglio and Luigi Madonis, and Domenico Cimarosa. This latter being the best known of the group. The music is all taken from manuscripts houses in St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre Library, coming from the Italian Collection.