Ilya Gringolts / Finnish Baroque Orchestra IL LABIRINTO ARMONICO

 

IL LABIRINTO ARMONICO

 

Concerto Copenhagen / Lars Ulrik Mortensen PER LA NOTTE DI NATALE

 

PER LA NOTTE DI NATALE

 

Ashley Solomon THE SPOHR COLLECTION

                                                     THE SPOHR COLLECTION

Dmitry Sinkovsky / Il Pomo D'Oro VIRTUOSISSIMO

                                                                   VIRTUOSISSIMO

Fabio Biondi THE 1690 "TUSCAN" STRADIVARI

In the course of his illustrious career, Fabio Biondi has nurtured a remarkable empathy with Italian music from across many centuries, but strikingly so with the early Baroque violin sonata repertory, the development of which was dramatically propelled into the future by Arcangelo Corelli with his Op 5 collection. It is this empathy possessed by Biondi which has inspired the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (from its bowed instrument collection) to make him a loan of the precious 1690 “Tuscan” violin made by Antonio Stradivari, for this Glossa recording.

Another skill possessed by Biondi is his deft assemblage of programmes, whether for concert or for CD, and this new release of early eighteenth-century violin works touches on the impact that Corelli’s music had on music-making in Dresden, Venice, Padua, London and Amsterdam, to name just a few of the destinations affected as the fame of “Arcangelo Bolognese” fanned out from Rome across Europe.

With a continuo team from his Europa Galante ensemble (Antonio Fantinuoli, cello, Giangiacomo Pinardi, theorbo and Paola Poncet, harpsichord), Biondi plays sonatas by Vivaldi, Corelli, Geminiani, Tartini and Locatelli, and a Ciaccona by Veracini. Recorded in Rome, on an instrument which was originally made for the Florentine court of Ferdinando de’ Medici (and which, over time, has survived all manner of vicissitudes on its journey to Rome!), Fabio Biondi expertly captures the flavour of the eighteenth-century violin sonata.

Lisa Jacobs / The String Soloists L'ARTE DEL VIOLINO

While recognizing the first set of compositions designed to truly extend and test the technical limits of the violin, the 24 Caprices of Niccolo Paganini spring almost immediately to mind. It is interesting then to realize that almost half a century before Paganini was even born, the Italian composer and virtuoso Pietro Antonio Locatelli could be found pushing the boundaries of violin playing to its limits with his concertos Opus 3: L’Arte del Violino.

In his music, Locatelli pushes the boundaries of the violin technique with an unprecedented virtuoso and at times romantic vision. The frequent use of exceptional high positions on the violin, many daredevil antics in the left hand including double stops and extended stretches, and the exploration of hitherto rarely used bow techniques, makes him a true pioneer for the violin and the development of violin technique in general.

Despite his obvious fascination for virtuosity, Locatelli ensures that one is captivated first and foremost by charming original melodies and bold characterization. His music never develops into a tour de force but remains sympathetic to both the listener and the performer.

With his L’Arte del Violino, consisting of 12 Concerti and including 24 virtuoso Capricci for unaccompanied violin, Locatelli simply stunned the musical world. These works were innovative in almost every conceivable way. Even the structure of the concertos is atypical; Locatelli abandoned the traditional three-movement form and included two caprices in every concerto. From a technical point of view, these concertos stretch the range of the violin to its absolute limit through the use of unusually high positions, finger dexterity and demanding bow techniques that were simply unheard of before this time.

Chouchane Siranossian / Jos Van Immerseel L'ANGE & LE DIABLE

Jos Van Immerseel returns to chamber music and the accompaniment of young talents, two absolute priorities for him. In Chouchane Siranossian he has found a worthy partner, as gifted on the modern violin as she is on the Baroque instrument, a pupil of Tibor Varga, then of Zakhar Bron, as well as a disciple of Reinhard Goebel, whose first recording, on the Oehms label, attracted great attention (winning a ‘Diapason Découverte’). Here it is the Baroque violinist who engages in dialogue with the harpsichord of Jos Van Immerseel in a Franco-Italian program juxtaposing the music of the ‘Angel’ Leclair and the ‘Devil’ Locatelli, not forgetting Tartini’s famous ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata . . . Indeed, all this music is ‘devilishly’ difficult to play, but the Franco-Armenian violinist shows perfect mastery of it, combined with great inventiveness.

Yehudi Menuhin THE ART OF MENUHIN

“Now I know there is a God in heaven!”, exclaimed Albert Einstein when he heard the young Yehudi Menuhin play the violin. Not only was Menuhin an extraordinary musician, he lived through – and helped to shape – a momentous period in history. The Warner Classics catalog contains 70 years’ worth of his recordings and this 3-CD collection, Yehudi: The Art of Menuhin, provides a fascinating perspective on his achievements: Menuhin was a man of ideals who changed the world through music. (Arkiv Music)

As a musician, as a man of ideals, and as a citizen of the world, Yehudi Menuhin made an extraordinary mark on his era. 22nd April 2016 will mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. YEHUDI explores Yehudi Menuhin’s genius and artistry through his legendary recordings – the best-loved violin masterpieces, famed duets and collaborations and exclusive unpublished material - in a specially priced 3-CD compilation for the great violinist’s centenary year. (Presto Classical)

Raquel Maldonado / Ensamble Moxos CHANTS ET DANSES DE L'AMAZONIE

With the order for the expulsion of the Society of Jesus issued by the King of Spain in 1767, the utopia of the Jesuit missionary villages of the Southern Cone of Latin America vanished forever. The breaking of the agreement governing the ‘reductions’ or missions – under the terms of which the indigenous peoples surrendered their souls to the God imported from Europe, and in exchange saved their lives, henceforth protected by express provision of the Spanish crown – opened the way to a long night of oppression for the converted peoples of the Moxos plains. First of all they fell under the yoke of the priests of unhappy memory who replaced the Jesuits in the administration of the missions; later they suffered from the greed of the republican period, which found among the native peoples slave labour to oil the wheels of the capitalist system that took possession of Bolivia.

But the Jesuits left an indelible mark, because the indigenous peoples, without any obligation to do so, continued to embrace the Catholic faith and grasped, of their own free will, the cultural expressions they had inherited from the missionaries, the most important of which was music.
The powerful cultural influence exercised in the music schools of the missions, whose members added to the splendour of religious celebrations, did not guarantee that European art music would sound as it did on its continent of origin. This was chiefly because the indigenous peoples of Moxos already had music and dance imprinted on their genes. A number of Jesuit sources of the time refer to their natural inclination towards festive celebration as an authentic form of communal expression, a practice predating the arrival of the missionaries, although the symbiosis that occurred between indigenous creativity and the elements imported from the Old World enriched their cultural patrimony. Their harmonious relationship with nature, their way of life and their worldview were always reflected in their artistic manifestations. If the native populations of Bolivian Amazonia accepted a foreign religion – voluntarily or under persuasion – and adapted with relative meekness to the structures set up by the Jesuits, perhaps it was because they already knew this God of whom the good fathers had come to speak to them, even though their cultural heritage had made them imagine differently. The adaptation was mutual and the Jesuits consented to it, perhaps to serve their strategic interests, or perhaps because the indigenous peoples were not passive subjects and thus left their stamp on the functioning of the reductions, subtly remodelling the European innovations to incorporate them into local traditions and realities.