Paolo Pandolfo BACH The Six Suites

Originally released in 2001 but unavailable for almost two years, Glossa has designed gorgeous new packaging for this most important of Paolo Pandolfo’s projects, possibly a milestone in the recording history of Bach’s music. Everybody seems to know these discs – despite almost no marketing effort, they are perceived with such benchmarks as Glenn Gould’s or Gustav Leonhardt’s renderings of the Goldberg Variations or Anner Bylsma’s performances of the original cello suites.

The fact that these suites sound so well on the viola da gamba is of course to a great extent due to Pandolfo’s magic touch. The rich sonority of the viola da gamba truly seems to enrich these pieces and Pandolfo’s remarkable transcription gives weight to his theory that Bach originally composed them with this instrument in mind. (GLOSSA)

Robert Smith / Paolo Pandolfo THE EXCELLENCY OF HAND

Following on from his critically acclaimed recording of solo English viola da gamba works (Tickle the Minikin), founder member of Fantasticus, Robert Smith, returns with this album of English works for viola da gamba duo. Smith is joined in this collaboration by the prolific and celebrated gambist Paolo Pandolfo.

Featuring a selection of seventeenth-century repertoire from Christopher Simpson, John Jenkins & Simon Ives, this album is packed with divisions for duo, which are often intensely virtuosic. Also featured are a selection of preludes from Christopher Simpson’s The Division Viol and an additional Prelude in A minor by gambist Robert Smith.

'[...] gamba demons Paolo Pandolfo and Robert Smith (early music's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) have concoted an intoxicating brew of pieces that would surely convert the most hardened sceptic [...] Smith and Pandolfo enjoy a terrific rapport sharing an acute sensitivity to balance, ensemble, phrasing and nuance' (BBC Music Magazine)

Ensemble La Romanesca AL ALVA VENID

One of the great attractions of Spanish court music of the 15th and 16th centuries is its unashamed use of themes from the popular tradition. It is music where joy is completely extroverted, where sorrow is pensive, and where expression of the passions is simple and direct. It reflects the self-conscious assertiveness of a new Spanish era, a pride in national values, and a disposition towards the enjoyment of local popular art. It was a period in which the poetic traditions of the romance and the villancico with their traditional melodies achieved the height of popularity among the highborn and, in turn, spawned new musical forms that were developed by musicians during the sixteenth century, particularly in the instrumental domain. Not all Spanish music of the period, however, is devoted to the celebration of the popular, and the secular music of the period should be seen in balance with the magnificent contribution to polyphonic music in the international style made by Spanish composers including Peñalosa, Morales, Guerrero and Victoria who worked under Church patronage to provide music for worship. 

The elevation of popular music to the status of art was not an isolated phenomenon, but an element of a broader panorama. The earliest manuscript relics of this tradition, the Cancionero Musical de Palacio, the Cancionero de la Colombina, and the Segovia and Barcelona manuscripts represent the period immediately following the marriage of the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabel, in 1469. The union of Castile and Aragon brought about by their marriage set the stage for further strengthening of Spain as a political unit. The nation was elevated, through unanimity of faith that was both a tool and a creed that fired the expulsion of the Moors and expansion through discovery. It is in this context that Ferdinand and Isabel decided to employ only Spanish musicians in their chapels. They encouraged music with simple structure and a strong national identity to reflect cultural self-confidence at a time when sophisticated contrapuntal artifice was becoming the vogue in elsewhere in Europe, particularly in the musical fashion centres of the Low Countries and in the Hapsburg dynasty into which they married their children Juan and Juana.

Ensemble La Romanesca’s Al alva venid covers some essential Spanish Renaissance repertoire with an all-stars line-up, in a set of interpretations which have set deep marks and are absolute references: here is Marta Almajano in her best singing moment, here is Paolo Pandolfo confirming his superior artistry, here are Juan Carlos de Mulder and Pedro Estevan in “de luxe” supporting roles, and of course here is José Miguel Moreno, the man who has probably been the finest translator of Renaissance secular Spanish music onto record. (GLOSSA)

Andrea Pandolfo / Paolo Pandolfo / Michelangelo Rinaldi KIND OF SATIE

Every once in a while Paolo Pandolfo likes to slip away from the world of Baroque-era manuscripts brimming with virtuoso compositions for the viola da gamba in order to create a free-form improvisatory programme surrounded by like-minded musical spirits: and so, away from stylistic rules and regulations, Kind of Satie has come into being for Glossa.

Subtitled “new music around Erik Satie”, Pandolfo embarks on a journey around the eccentricity-laden life of that “transcendent idealist”, in the company of his brother Andrea, and with Michelangelo Rinaldi. Andrea Pandolfo, who has worked with Paolo on the Travel notes programme, is a trumpet and flugelhorn player as well as a composer (in world music, contemporary, folk, jazz and early music), whilst the multi-instrumentalist Rinaldi acquits himself admirably on this new recording in playing piano, accordion and toy piano. Paolo Pandolfo is to be heard on both his usual and on an electroacoustic viola da gamba.

Satie’s musical scores frequently bore marking designed solely for performers, but in some of the pieces included in Kind of Satie these are openly presented for listeners by the Pandolfo brothers. The music for the Trois Sonneries de la Rose+Croix and Sports et Divertissements provide the trio with starting points for their own modern-day musical compositions, as does Baroque music also (Marin Marais). The draughtswoman Tinka Volaric provides a series of illustrations created specifically in the context of this innovative project. (GLOSSA)

Paolo Pandolfo IMPROVISANDO

Paolo Pandolfo is one of those rare artists who does not give into the temptation of establishing a regular and frequent rhythm of making new recordings – except, in his case, when he feels that he has something really relevant and new to say. If, in some way, this sets him apart and places him on the fringes of the record market, it does guarantee on the other hand a sense of timelessness and durability for his artistic work. His dazzling virtuosity and a musicality that knows no bounds transforms him into a true reference marker in an early music world that grows more predictable by theday.

And now, after nearly two years of silence, Pandolfo gathers round him a group of friends in order to create something which has practically been lost among the performers of “classical” music, victims of a wasting process that has become almost ingrained: improvisation. Turning back to a tradition which in the 16th and 17th centuries counted upon practitioners as famous as Diego Ortiz, Christopher Simpson and Girolamo Della Casa and that continued with significant names such as Frescobaldi, Corelli, Mozart and Brahms, these musicians unleash their imagination to regale us with eighty minutes of touching beauty and an unusual freedom. What we have here is a journey across musical structures which are mainly late- Renaissance ones, from dance ostinato basses (Pass’e mezzi, Folías, Canarios, Vacas) to the Fantasies for a solo instrument, from improvisations on a cantus firmus (La Spagna) to the alla bastarda style, based on polyphonic compositions (Anchor che col partire, Doulce Memoire)… Truly delightful.

Paolo Pandolfo TRAVEL NOTES

Pandolfo is a musician committed to his instrument and his time. His is an alert mind, at times even tormented, always grappling with the idea of his role as a viola da gamba soloist three centuries after the instrument’s virtual disappearance. In 2003 things fell into place and the realization ofan idea with a vague and uncertain outline became possible…

At first conceived as a solo recording project, a few days before the sessions were to begin, and almost by coincidence, the singer Laura Polimeno and Paolo’s brother, the trumpet player Andrea Pandolfo, joined the adventure. The stage was set for two real surprises: on the one hand, a viola da gamba CD comprised entirely of new, modern works, and on the other, the creation of a new and fascinating sonority, produced by combining the viola da gamba with trumpet and voice.

The result is profoundly and unusually beautiful. Recorded in Spain (Robledo de Chavela) and Belgium (Namur), this is a truly important CD. It is one of those discs which defines our label’s commitments, not only to the painstaking reconstruction of the sounds of the past, but also and above all to the projection of this immense treasure into the future, so in need of intelligent aesthetic statements. (GLOSSA)