Kate Lindsey / Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen TIRANNO

 

TIRANNO

 

Sonya Yoncheva / Cappella Mediterranea REBIRTH

 

REBIRTH

 

Anna Lucia Richter IL DELIRIO DELLA PASSIONE

 

IL DELIRIO DELLA PASSIONE

 

Concerto Italiano / Rinaldo Alessandrini MONTEVERDI Il Terzo Libro de' Madrigali

 

IL TERZO LIBRO DE' MADRIGALI

 

Heidi Maria Taubert / Instrumenta Musica / Ercole Nisini PASSACAGLIE D'AMORE

 

PASSACAGLIE D'AMORE

Mathieu Salama / La Réjouissance / Stefano Intrieri FURIOSO BAROCCO

 

FURIOSO BAROCCO

Emiliano Gonzalez Toro / I Gemelli MONTEVERDI Orfeo

ORFEO

 

Quatuor Ardeo XIII

XIII

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

LA PORTA D'ORIENTE

La Capella Reial de Catalunya / Le Concert des Nations / Jordi Savall CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI L'Orfeo

L'ORFEO

voces8 AFTER SILENCE II. DEVOTION

AFTER SILENCE II. DEVOTION

Les Arts Florissants / William Christie MONTEVERDI L'incoronazione di Poppea

                                                   L'INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA

Silvia Frigato / Accademia d’Arcadia / Alessandra Rossi Lürig ET MANCHI PIETÀ

Inspired by the work of painter Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593Naples ca. 1656), this release aims to explore features of both paintings and music of the early Italian Baroque, highlighting their creative features and their emotional foundations. Daughter of Orazio Gentileschi (one of the rst Italian Caravaggesque painters) Artemisia was, until a few decades ago, remembered chiey for the scandal of the rape trial she brought against Agostino Tassi, one of her fathers artistic partners, who abused her when she was 17. She had to wait over 300 years to see her value as a painter fully recognised. The music is performed by Accademia d'Arcadia, an ensemble comprising 13 musicians playing period instruments and a singer. The CD contains a 28 page, full colour booklet featuring 3 of Artemisias most famous paintings, detailed infos and texts, together with detailed background information, resulting in a concept that is both interesting and affecting.

Gardiner MONTEVERDI Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria

Monteverdi’s great opera is a celebration of unwavering devotion, conveyed in some of the composer’s most poignant, heart-breaking music.

After two brutal decades of war, the weary Ulysses is washed up on the rocky shore of his home island of Ithaca. There, he discovers the hordes of depraved admirers who have beseiged his faithful wife Penelope in his 20-year absence – and launches into battle to win back her love. Monteverdi’s opera is a celebration of unwavering devotion, conveyed in some of the composer’s most poignant, heartbreaking music.

John Eliot Gardiner leads an exemplary cast of world-class singers alongside the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in this live recording from The National Forum of Music in Wrocław, Poland – part of their critically acclaimed Monteverdi 450 tour in 2017.

Ludus Modalis / Bruno Boterf CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI Vespro della Beata Vergine

The present recording constitutes more than just a new version of the Vespers. It is the first recording of the Vespers in the alternative version proposed by the composer, without concertato instruments. It reveals the underlying matrix of the work we all know, the ‘original version’ to which Monteverdi added concertato instruments for use in large-scale performances. Respecting the structure of the Office of Vespers, Ludus Modalis has chosen to frame the psalms with the antiphons corresponding to a Marian ceremony. The interpretation proposed here is one influenced by the Renaissance tradition. It places the work in perspective in a musical world at the point of equilibrium between prima and seconda prattica, between the achievements of tradition and the contributions of modernity.

Théophile Alexandre / Guillaume Vincent ADN BAROQUE

The countertenor Théophile Alexandre and the concert-pianist Guillaume Vincent dare baring baroque music in Piano-Voice. In 21 pieces, like the 21 grammes of human soul, the artists dive us into the heard of mankind emotional DNA, exposing unheard facets of baroque essence : an audacious contemporary réinvention exploring the strengths and vulnerabilities of mankind through the powerful intimacy of piano-voice. Included : 4 duets with the sopranos Chantal Santon & Marion Tassou.

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.

Mariana Flores / Cappella Mediterranea / Leonardo García Alarcón CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI Lettera Amorosa

After the success of their album of music by Francesco Cavalli, the same performers now return in a programme devoted entirely to works a voce sola by Claudio Monteverdi, from the famous Lamento d’Arianna to the sublime (and much less well-known) Voglio da vita uscir. Mariana Flores embodies here the most touching personalities of this section of Monteverdi’s output.

La Venexiana / Claudio Cavina CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI Selva Morale e Spirituale

Not for the first time in their illustrious career, Claudio Cavina and his Italian vocal and instrumental ensemble La Venexiana have just received a strong critical vote of approval for their artistry, with the announcement on Thursday September 25th that they have won a coveted Classic fM Gramophone Award. Claudio Cavina was on hand to collect the Baroque Vocal Award for 2008 (decided on by the specialist critics of the UK-based Gramophone magazine) at a ceremony held in London, UK for his and La Venexiana’s recording of the fabula in musica by Claudio Monteverdi, L’Orfeo.

In Gramophone’s original review of the recording (which merited L’Orfeo being marked out as an Editor’s Choice), Richard Lawrence commented that “Cavina’s wonderful account goes straight to the top of the list of recommended recordings. Do not miss it.”; a recommendation that was taken up by the also prestigious UK reviewing forum, the “Building a Library” feature on BBC Radio 3’s CD Review programme, which identified the Glossa recording as the Top Recommendation for the work.

Counter-tenor and conductor Cavina has assembled a strong cast of leading vocal specialists including Emanuela Galli, Mirko Guadagnini (in the title role), Marina De Liso, Cristina Calzolari, Matteo Bellotto and Josè Lo Monaco, accompanied by the period-instrument forces of La Venxiana for the recording released last year on the 400th anniversary of the first performance of L’Orfeo.

La Venexiana have long been fêted for their subtle mastery of their native Italian – musical as well as vocal – language: indeed, back in 2000 Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, again in Gramophone magazine, enthused about them in terms as, “This exquisitely modulated Italian ensemble is wonderfully discriminating, extracting the eloquence of the mercurial lines and unobtrusively seeking architectural sense behind the text.” – when commenting on La Venexiana’s recording of Gesualdo da Venosa’s Il quarto libro di madrigali. This Glossa recording was to win the Gramophone Award in 2001.

Although La Venexiana have recorded and performed madrigals by other leading early Italian composers – Luca Marenzio, Sigismondo d’India and Giaches de Wert among them – the secular music of Claudio Monteverdi has, to date, been the focal point of the group’s activities: madrigals from all nine books have been recorded in Glossa’s Monteverdi Edition. Now Cavina is preparing for imminent release on the label an extensive three CD collection of Monteverdi’s sacred music, drawn from the 1640 Selva morale e spirituale collection.

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)