Marina Rebeka / Sinfonietta Rīga / Latvian Radio Choir / Modestas Pitrėnas CREDO

 

CREDO

 

Marco Beasley / Constantinople / Kiya Tabassian LA PORTA D'ORIENTE

LA PORTA D'ORIENTE

Taracea AKOÉ

                                                                          AKOÉ

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.

Roberta Mameli / Luca Pianca ANIME AMANTI

A voice, a lute, a sigh. Nothing could be simpler and more immemorial. This expression of sentiments and emotions, of the intermittencies of the heart and the shadows of the soul, is of course as old as the world. Yet it was truly a reconquest of the Renaissance. With Caccini, the ‘new music’ at once found a miraculous melodist. He composed a Euridice, performed in 1602, two years after Jacopo Peri’s setting and five years before Monteverdi’s Orfeo. The Renaissance did not know opera, but long secreted that genre soon to be born. And it is brand-new opera that opens and closes this recording, through the voice of its first visionary, Claudio Monteverdi. His Lamento d’Arianna, the centrepiece of a lost work, expresses sorrow, regrets, revolt through the very music of the Italian language, here brought to white heat. The ‘new music’ spread throughout Italy: Merula in Cremona, Falconieri in Naples, and Barbara Strozzi, the most famous woman composer of the age, in Venice.

The Italian soprano Roberta Mameli is a great lover of this music, which she performs with an outstanding feeling for words and drama. Luca Pianca offers her his artistry and his great experience. Roberta Mameli is joining Alpha for several recordings, which will guide us towards other rarities and other periods. (LQM)

Elina Garanča MEDITATION

On September 16, Elina Garanca will be releasing "Meditation," her most beautiful selection of spiritual music dedicated to the eternal search and longing for inner peace. It's perhaps one of her most personal albums ever which connects the listener with Elina's Latvian roots.

Elina's parents were involved with choral music, she grew up listening to this music and sang herself in choirs as a young musician, so it is a very important album to her personally, celebrating the origins of her own singing career  She studied at the Latvian Academy of Music with her mother. She won the Mirjam Helin Singing Competition in 1999 and was a finalist in the 2001 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition.

She began her professional career as a resident artist with the Südthüringischer Staatstheater in Meiningen where she appeared in a number of leading roles and she appeared as a resident artist with the Frankfurt Opera. In September 2005 Ms Garanča became an exclusive recording artist with Deutsche Grammophon. Her first solo recording 'Aria Cantilena' was released in March 2007 to great popular and critical acclaim and she was awarded the prestigious ECHO KLASSIK award for 'Singer of the Year 2007.' Her second solo record, 'Bel Canto' was received with similar enthusiasm.

Ms Garanča has since, quickly established herself as one of the music world's major stars through her performances with leading opera theaters and symphony orchestras around the world. She has captured critical and popular acclaim for her beautiful voice, intelligent musicianship, and compelling stage portrayals.

The album includes a couple of real discoveries like Praulinš' Dievaines, but also some hit repertoire like the Cantique de Noel d'Adam. This is probably her most commercial album to date, the careful selected variety of the repertoire will attract a lot of new fans. Latvian choirs are extremely famous worldwide, so it was natural for her to want a Latvian choir with her for this recording. Two Latvian composers have been involved in the music for this recording - Ugis Praulinš for his work Dievaines, and Eriks Esenvalds who has written an a cappella arrangement (Allegri Miserere) especially for this recording.

Elina is joined on this recording by her husband, the well-known Gibraltan conductor Karel Mark Chichon OBE. This is their second collaboration on disc for DG following the success of Habanera.

(Timothy Yap / Sep 01, 2014)