Kate Lindsey / Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen TIRANNO

 

TIRANNO

 

La Serenissima / Adrian Chandler / Tabea Debus SETTECENTO

 

SETTECENTO

 

Cecilia Bartoli QUEEN OF BAROQUE

 

QUEEN OF BAROQUE

 

Les Abbagliati D'ASTORGA & LALLI

 

D'ASTORGA & LALLI

 

Enrico Baiano MUSICA AL TEMPO DI LUCA GIORDANO

MUSICA AL TEMPO DI LUCA GIORDANO

Les Accents / Thibault Noally ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI Il Martirio di Santa Teodosia

IL MARTIRIO DI SANTA TEODOSIA

Sabrina Frey & Ensemble ACCADEMIA DELL'ARCADIA - ROMA 1710

ACCADEMIA DELL'ARCADIA - ROMA 1710

Jakub Józef Orliński / Il Pomo D'Oro / Maxim Emelyanychev FACCE D'AMORE

                                                             FACCE D'AMORE

Kate Lindsey / Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen ARIANNA

                                                                      ARIANNA

{oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna / Martyna Pastuszka CONCERTO GROSSO

This CD sketches a portrait of the musical reality of the British Isles during the first half of the 18th century. The eight concerti grossi in this programme have been chosen for the features they possess in common, a primordial position being accorded to the work of Francesco Scarlatti. These are pieces of Italian origin in sonata form; the concerto grosso being the émigré of this programme.
The huge success of the Italian concerto grosso was a response to the necessity of freeing music from a secondary role to which it found itself confined, notably in France with ballet music. Unaffected by the rivalry between French and Italian music that was then raging, the British seemed to be attracted by purely instrumental music; the concerto grosso consequently afforded them a freshness, a boldness, and a hint of unique maestria that held an immediate appeal. Thus it was that the concerto grosso emigrated, as did a number of Italian composers who responded to the emotional needs and the demands of an English ‘market’ that encouraged artistic initiative, promised financial satisfaction, and offered the opportunity of achieving fame.
This was the case with Francesco Scarlatti; born in Palermo, the brother of the celebrated Alessandro, he made almost his whole career in London and Dublin, never, however, really achieving the expected fame. Few of his works have survived beyond the six concerti grossi featured on this CD; two concerto grosso arrangements of sonatas by Geminiani and Corelli complete this programme, the remodeling of one and the same material being very frequent at this time.
You are invited by the young Polish ensemble {oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna, conducted by its first violin Martyna Pastuszka, to journey from Italy to the United Kingdom. Warm, varied sonorities highlight the splendour and expressivity of music that is now lively or dancelike, now gentle, melancholic or meditative. To be discovered!

Guadalupe López-Íñiguez & Continuo Group DOMENICO GABRIELLI & ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI Complete Cello Works

Guadalupe López Íñiguez’s debut recording includes complete cello works from Gabrielli and Scarlatti, Recorded with the best baroque musicians in Finland. "I have included music that played an important role in my desired transformation from a “contemporary-trained” cellist to a “historically inspired” one. The reasons for such a desire are numerous and span several years and different experiences in my life,” (Guadalupe). Doctor of Psychology and Master of Music Guadalupe López Íñiguez is a Spanish academic– musician based at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. Guadalupe has performed as a soloist on period cellos in different festivals. She is especially grateful for the encouragement received from artists Rafael Ramos, Markku Luolajan- Mikkola, and Ciro Rodríguez Perelló. Her artistic and scientific research comprises all her areas of expertise—namely psychology, sociology, research methodology, education, and musicology—in understanding the holistic performance of classical music.

Concerto Italiano / Rinaldo Alessandrini UN VIAGGIO A ROMA

"The programme on this CD provides a snapshot of music over a few decades. An incomplete one, in that it focuses firstly on the contribution of Stradella, who lived in Rome between 1652 and 1678, with his S. Giovanni Battista, performed in the church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in 1675; then the visit of Georg Muffat, a Frenchman interested in Italian style, a pupil of Pasquini between 1681 and 1682, and a great admirer of Corelli; the young Handel, who was the object of admiration in the papal city between 1707 and 1709; Alessandro Scarlatti, prolifc, tireless composer and musical traveller, and lastly Corelli, the classic symbol of the splendour of Roman musical culture, who spent the whole of his life from 1675 ‘in urbe’." (Rinaldo Alessandrini)

Silvia Márquez CHACONNERIE

Chaconnerie is a recording that deals with repetition. Chaconnerie illustrates that particular principle of Art that seeks to combine elements over and over again to achieve balance and unity. Chaconnerie encourages us to undertake a voyage in which sounds –through the centuries– build upon an insistently repeated, or imaginatively varied, scheme. Repetition has been a major element of humankind’s artistic manifestations and expressions ever since the time of the moais on Easter Island up to the drawings of Max C. Escher. Repetition is rhythm, pulse, and life, and life overflows in the chaconne, a dance whose origin Lope de Vega attributed to the American Indian (“from the Indies to Seville / it has come by post”) and whose character Miguel de Cervantes describes as lascivious and immoral. With its accent on the second beat and its variations on a harmonic scheme, this dancing base – together with sarabandes, folias, and passacaglias – was conducive to improvisation on chordal progressions, a novelty that had a crucial impact on Baroque music in Europe.

Alessandro Stradella Consort / Estévan Velardi A. SCARLATTI Sedecia Re di Gerusalemme

Alessandro Scarlatti wrote his oratorio “Sedecia, re di Gerusalemme” during a period in which there was a Papal ban on operas (in 1706 an edict was issued to prohibit “under severe penalty all comedies, revelry and all sort of carnival entertainments”). However the sacred texts of the oratorio were just a thin disguise for the drama, vocal brilliance and intrigue of the opera, qualities Alessandro Scarlatti excelled in, as we know from all his oratorios ánd operas.

The oratorio deals with the biblical story of Zedekiah (from the Book of Kings) in his wars against the Babylonian kings. The music expresses all the drama of the heroic acts, ending in triumph or tragedy.

Performed by one of the leading protagonists of the revival of Alessandro Scarlatti: Estévan Velardi, conductor and scholar, and his instrumental ensemble Alessandro Stradella Consort, playing period instruments.

Blandine Staskiewicz / Les Accents / Thibault Noally ORATORIO

Since its foundation in 2014, Thibault Noally’s ensemble Les Accents brings to life rare works from the Italian Baroque era: in particular the vocal repertoire of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Their new record features unpublished extracts of oratorios. Born at the same time and made of the same theatrical stuff as his opera brother, the oratorio, a lyric and dramatic work without staging, also moves the crowds! And its heroines Athalie and Judith have the same temper as their operatic counterparts.The virtuoso arias of Caldara, Scarlatti (father) or Porpora performed by the mezzo-soprano Blandine Staskiewicz, full of baroque ornaments and jubilant flights, also testify to the instrumental ardor of the genre: the dramatic effects of the orchestra, the alternation of allegros and adagios, and the various of playing modes marry the movements of the passions of these characters with great intensity.

Francesca Aspromonte / Il Pomo D'Oro / Enrico Onofri PROLOGUE

The prologue is a unique feature of early baroque opera: an opening scene where an allegorical figure enters the stage to prepare the audience for the musical drama to come. Thus Prologue is the musical introduction of Italian star soprano Francesca Aspromonte and her exclusive, long term engagement with Pentatone, promising great joy as well as drama in the years to come.

Prologue is a highly original album consisting of several prologues from early-baroque operas by Monteverdi, Caccini, Cavalli, Landi, Rossi, Cesti, Stradella and Scarlatti. Strung together, they form a representation in a single act, a theatre full of small, complete dramas: the opera before the opera.

Francesca Aspromonte is quickly establishing herself as a shining star in the Baroque firmament. She has curated this album together with musical director Enrico Onofri, who leads il pomo d’oro, one of the most important and successful period ensembles of today.

Filippo Mineccia / Nereydas / Javier Ulises Illán SIFACE

With Siface: l’amor castrato, countertenor Filippo Mineccia, together with Javier Ulises Illán and Nereydas, presents a short imaginary pasticcio opera reflecting the music-making and life of the contralto castrato known by that stage name. Born Giovanni Francesco Grossi in 1653 in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Siface was acclaimed for his exciting musical performances, yet who became famous also for the tragedy of his love life. He was called upon to sing in operas and oratorios by the likes of Stradella, Pasquini, Bassani, Pallavicino and Agostini. For a long time in the service of Francesco II d’Este in Modena, Siface was an active member of the musical “ducal circuit” in the Italian peninsula, even, on one occasion, additionally being sent to England, where he performed before monarchy, and met and impressed Henry Purcell.

Filippo Mineccia brilliantly captures the kaleidoscopic rush of emotions coursing through this selection of arias, which reflects the torrid and spectacular musical pace of life in late seventeenth-century Italy (as well as mirroring Siface’s own downfall on the road from Ferrara to Bologna).

The Spanish ensemble Nereydas fully enter into the spirit of this, by turns, colourful, heartfelt, poignant and vivid celebration of vocal and instrumental music, which also features works by Alessandro Scarlatti (the emotive lullaby Dormi o fulmine), Francesco Cavalli and Purcell (My song shall be alway). Elena Bernardi puts flesh on still little understood aspects of the early stages of opera in the late Seicento. (Glossa)

Nathalie Stutzmann / Orfeo 55 QUELLA FIAMMA

The Arie Antiche compiled by Alessandro Parisotti are known to each and every student of classical singing. But with Quella fiamma, Nathalie Stutzmann and Orfeo 55 breathe new fire into this primer for the voice, performing these songs and arias with original orchestrations, as they would have been heard in their day. Before they were lessons, they were high art.

This album is a selection of pieces from Arie antiche, a 19th Century collection of songs edited by Alessandro Parisotti to be a vocal primer. Though now more famous as the editor of Arie antiche, Parisotti was also a composer, and he managed to slip one of his own works into the book by attributing to Giovanni Pergolesi his song "Se tu m'ami". The collection was very much a part of the trend to rediscover old and forgotten works, and the popularity of the three-volume set has endured to this day. 

For this album the musicians of Orfeo 55 have worked painstakingly to source original scores and to edit the parts as necessary. While the instrumental works are not part of Parisotti’s primer, they provide brief musical interludes between the songs to enhance the overall listening experience and bring these works together into a coherent programme.

La Ritirata / Josetxu Obregón NEAPOLITAN CONCERTOS FOR VARIOUS INSTRUMENTS

The Neapolitan Baroque, especially in the first half of the eighteenth century, was a vibrant and vital time for instrumental music, as Josetxu Obregón and La Ritirata now demonstrate with their new recording of six concertos from that era. The Neapolitan school – which owed so much in its formation to Francesco Provenzale – flourished in the hands of Francesco Mancini, Nicola Porpora, Nicola Fiorenza, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and Alessandro Scarlatti, all represented with concertos on this new Glossa recording. 

The four major conservatories in the city created an astonishingly productive and innovative environment for musicians – students and their teachers alike. The composers here all studied or worked in the conservatories or at the Cappella Real. The Neapolitan concerto had its own structure at this time, which was quite different to that found in the Venice of Vivaldi, and there was a constant competitive spirit for soloists to demonstrate their virtuosity. 

As they showed with their earlier Glossa recording of Il Spiritillo Brando , the members of La Ritirata are more than a match for their Neapolitan predecessors in both stylishness and technique. The soloists gathered by Josetxu Obregón represent some of the leading musical lights in Spain today: violinist Hiro Kurosaki (in a Fiorenza concerto), recorder-player Tamar Lalo (Scarlatti and Mancini) , harpsichordists Ignacio Prego and Daniel Oyarzabal (Pergolesi) and not least, Obregón himself who is the cello soloist in works by Fiorenza and Porpora. (GLOSSA)

Musica Fiorita / Daniela Dolci ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI Rosinda ed Emireno

"In 2009, I came across an interesting catalogue entry in the Austrian National Library. It was the opera 'Rosinda ed Emiremo' by Giacomo Perti with obbligato cornett arias. Since this instrument has always played a major role on many of our programmes, I was immediately electrified by this finding. The music turned out to be highly interesting – sweet, sonorous melodies with dialogues between the voice and cornett, a wonderful musical rarity. I soon put together a Bolognese concert programme on which the most beautiful arias from the opera were combined with instrumental sonatas from Giovanni Legrenzi’s Op. 8. The music went together very well and could be so readily combined because Legrenzi had dedicated his Op. 8 to Perti’s uncle, Lorenzo Perti. In addition, we played an aria from Giacomo Perti’s opera 'Penelope la Casta' in which the cornett has a highly virtuoso part. After the concert and the CD recording, I was contacted by the musicologist Rodolfo Zitellini, who specialises in Perti. He drew my attention to an opera by Alessandro Scarlatti entitled 'L’Emiremo ovvero il consiglio dell’ombra', based on the same libretto as Perti’s 'Rosinda ed Emiremo'. It was quite a surprise when we realised that not only were the libretti the same, but that the two operas – each aria, each recitative – were absolutely identical! I asked Rodolfo Zitellini to take on this task and, thanks to his painstaking research, we know today that Scarlatti composed the opera, not Perti. We are most delighted over the solution to this almost criminological puzzle and grateful for this new knowledge. One way or the other, it is clear that the music is magnificent, and it has been a worthwhile endeavour to wrest it from the darkness of the archive." (Daniela Dolci)