Canadian-born Michael Unger is a multi-award winner, including First Prize in the 2008 Sixth International Organ Competition Musashino-Tokyo, Japan, and First and Audience Prize in the 2008 American Guild of Organists' National Young Artists Competition.

Sara Mingardo, Ruth Rosique and Atonio Abete lead the cast in this premiere recording of Handel's opera from Turin's Teatro Carignano in 2009. Davide Livermore, the director, makes this 2009 production both enjoyable and interesting to watch. It has been recorded in the newly restored and beautiful Teatro Carignano in Turin and features Sara Mingardo, Ruth Rosique and Atonio Abete in the leading roles. Based on the well-known mythological story narrated by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, this is a classical tale of jealousy and love. The giant Polyphemus tries to force his attention on the fair sea-nymph Galatea, who is in love with the shepherd Aci. When mad jealousy drives Polyphemus to kill his rival, Galatea asks her father Nereus to turn Aci’s blood into a river so that, flowing into the sea, he will join her forevermore. Directed by Davide Livermore, Matteo Ricchetti. Starring Ruth Rosique, Antonio Abete, Cristina Banchetti. Language: Italian Subtitles: English, Italian, German, French, Spanish

VIVALDI Violin Concertos: in F, RV 287; in g, RV 321; in d, RV 240 . Double Violin Concertos: in C, RV 508; in g, RV 517. String Concertos: in C, RV 113; in D, RV 123 • Giorgio Sasso (vn, cond); Paolo Perrone (vn); Insieme Strumentale di Roma (period instruments) • STRADIVARIUS 33944 (68:09)


Stradivarius’s notes somewhat vaguely mention world premiere recordings; three of these works, RV 240, 508, 517, have appeared in collections reviewed, or to be reviewed, in Fanfare (RV 240 and RV 508 appear in the recording by Il Pomo d’Oro, Naïve 30550, while Gli Incogniti included RV 517 in their collection on Zig-Zag 310, 36:4). Giorgio Sasso’s recording with Insieme Strumentale di Roma took place in the Church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna in October 2011.


The program opens with the Violin Concerto in F Major, RV 287, beginning with bumptious resonant strokes that the ensemble surrounds with reverberant silence. The engineers have miked Giorgio Sasso, who already proves to be an aggressive violin soloist, up close, revealing both the starch in his articulation and the considerable beauty of his tone. Violinist and ensemble eschew lightening tempos, achieving their effects timbrally rather than temporally. They bring out the contrast between the brilliant upper registers and the booming bass parts (all with only six instruments—but including organ in the concertos, RV 240 and RV 113). In the slow movement, too, they combine the warmth of I Musici’s old recordings (or those of the Virtuosi di Roma) and the elegance of Arthur Grumiaux’s Baroque recreations with the chunkiness characteristic of many now mainstream period-instrument ensembles. When the textures support the balance, the engineers focus on the harpsichord part, as they do in RV 287’s Largo . Sasso interlaces the Finale with pointed rhythmic interjections.


The Concerto in C Major, RV 508, for Two Violins, begins with a sweeping tutti, but the soloists engage in virtuosic dialogue through much of the movement, and Sasso and Paolo Perrone carom off each other like so many weightless and frictionless billiard balls. In the slow movement, Sasso and Perrone stretch engaging ruminations over a framework of steady notes in the upper strings, while in the Finale they cavort vivaciously if not virtuosically.


The program’s other Double Violin Concerto, RV 517, in G Minor, follows. Its first movement begins fugally (and this fugal writing returns later toward the movement’s end), and the ensemble prises apart the contrapuntal lines with a clarity of cleanly etched glass. The violin soloists provide relief in arch homophonic interplay. They generally play together, too, burnishing affecting emotional highlights on the slow movement’s stately melodic material. The Finale also begins contrapuntal, but features more homophonic solo sections, recalling those in the first movement. Sasso and Perrone bring enough crisp gusto even to these less prepossessing solos to keep the music perpetually fresh.


The ensemble pieces the first movement of the String Concerto, RV 113 in C Major, out of insistent, infectious rhythmic motives, but provides a moment of respite by making the figuration of the slow movement flow gently before the brisk repartee of the Finale. The soloists and ensemble alternate portentous statements and playful figurations in the first movement of the Violin Concerto in G Minor, RV 321. After their lyricism in the slow movement, they return to stronger punctuation in the Finale. The Violin Concerto in D Minor, RV 240, joined by continuo organ in the ensemble’s recording, appears the longest of the works in their program. Pablo Queipo de Llano’s notes suggest that Vivaldi wrote it between 1710 and 1715; and while he notes the incisiveness of its melodic elements, listeners may fasten instead upon the flowing lyricism that Sasso brings to its first movement, the ensemble’s dramatic interjections in the slow movement surrounding the melting lyricism of the solo part, and the leaping figuration that Sasso negotiates with such violinistic agility in the Finale. The program concludes with another of the string concertos, RV 123 in D Major, shortest of the works on the program. The ensemble’s jubilant playing of the first movement, its steady figuration alternating in dynamic level, the at times hushed solemnity it brings to the brief slow movement, and the fugal splendor of the Finale’s opening (reminiscent of Bach’s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto), make the work a memorable conclusion to the program.


If Bach learned a great deal about Italian concertos by transcribing Vivaldi’s works in the genre, he missed one of the central pillars that support them: their soloistic drama. That’s in evidence in Stradivarius’s recording, one of the most balanced and exhilarating of Vivaldi’s concertos that’s come my way in the last several years. Urgently recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

The Canzoni et sonate date to 1615, three years after his Giovanni Gabrieli's death. +There are 17 canzonas for 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 or 12 voices, and 4 sonate for 14, 15 or 22 voices, and the last for three violins. +In their magnificence, these works celebrate the glory of the Venetian state and blend the old compositional style with the new - polyphonically, harmonically, rhythmically and melodically. +This historic recording features the Consort Fontegara directed by René Clemencic.

Although Couperin is best known today as a composer of harpsichord music, he remained deeply involved in chamber music throughout his career. Les Nations is a vast project in which the virtues of both the French and Italian styles are set next to each other. Each of the four ordres celebrates a Catholic power of Europe – France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont – and each is a combination of an Italianate trio sonata, with its free-form virtuosity, and a large-scale and elaborate French dance suite. Juilliard Baroque brings together some of the world’s most respected and accomplished early music instrumentalists for this invigorating program.

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Review:

All eight players are totally absorbed in the style. Their often dense ornamentation never sounds calculated or contrived; their rhythmic flow in slower movements has a captivating insouciance, relaxed, gently fluid. This is French playing that would be hard to better.

– BBC Music Magazine

Opus 2 & 4: Chamber Sonatas is the third in The Avison Ensemble’s celebration of Corelli’s chamber music and the fifth album in their critically acclaimed series of recordings with Linn. Released to mark the 300th anniversary of the death of the composer, the ensemble’s greatly anticipated series explores the six opera of the eminent Italian’s chamber music: the concerti grossi, violin sonatas, chamber sonatas and church sonatas. Popular since their publication, Corelli’s two sets of chamber sonatas are a pinnacle of Baroque Italian instrumental music. They demonstrate a superior level of craftsmanship; they are of the highest quality, exquisitely refined and a good example of perfection in music. Corelli’s contribution to the history of violin performance was immense: all six of his published collections of instrumental music demonstrate his exceptional skill as a violinist and composer, but it was in his chamber sonatas that he first used what was to be known as the ‘Corelli clash’.

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REVIEWS:

These performances occupy fresh ground. Beznosiuk and the Avison Ensemble have clearly given much thought and attention to their performances: beautifully understated, and allowing the music to speak for itself.

– Gramophone

The Avison Ensemble captures their essence in graceful, finely controlled performances - by turns lyrical, fleet, playful, imbued with an effortless style that eschews mannerisms and fireworks but rather lets the music speak for itself. The string sound is silky and clean; the ensemble neat and subtly articulated.

– BBC Music Magazine