PRJCT Amsterdam and its artistic director Maarten Engeltjes present two of the greatest vocal works of the baroque era: Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus. While Vivaldi’s virtuosic piece contemplates the helplessness of people when God does not support their efforts, Pergolesi’s portrait of the weeping Mary at the Cross embodies what the “nameless” parents of a deceased child go through. In the Stabat Mater, Engeltjes’s counter-tenor blends together seamlessly and soothingly with Shira Patchornik’s soprano voice, resulting in an interpretation that is both profound and deeply relatable.

PRJCT Amsterdam is a young, innovative baroque ensemble centred around counter-tenor Maarten Engeltjes, and founded in 2017. Engeltjes is one of the most sought-after counter-tenors of today, working with several of the most esteemed early music groups and conductors. After having won multiple major baroque competitions, soprano Shira Patchornik is quickly establishing herself as an important singer on the opera and concert stage. All artists make their Pentatone debut.

Baroque world music – Four musicians (a Sicilian, a Catalan, a South Tyrolean of Italian origin with Slovenian roots and a Viennese) meet in Vienna to make music together out of love for Baroque and traditional music from southern Italy. Coming from all points of the compass, like the ROSA DEI VENTI – the wind rose, the sounds of violin, cello and harpsichord mingle in an intimate embrace with the intense songs of southern Italian music. With the album “ROSA DEI VENTI”, the ensemble, founded by Marinka Brecelj in 2012, draws on the rich musical tradition of southern Italy, which has its roots in various cultures. The focus is on serenades and love songs in Griko, a language that combines ancient Greek, Byzantine-Greek and Italian elements and is spoken in the Magna Graecia region of southern Italy’s Apulia (Salento) and occasionally in Sicily. The songs are part of the traditional music of the Greek colony in Italy. The songs from Sicily are touching with their rough tenderness and are reminiscent of the most diverse Oriental and Arabic influences from the Mediterranean region. The album combines music from the southern Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods with folk songs, with various versions of the tarantella adding a dance-like note to the program.

Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater has enjoyed enormous fame ever since the eighteenth century – Jean-Jacques Rousseau called its first movement ‘the most perfect and touching that has ever come from the pen of any composer’. There were many arrangements of the work, by Bach among others. It was performed more than eighty times at the Concert Spirituel in Paris between 1753 and 1790, in multiple versions, probably also with the participation of a choir.

After consulting several manuscripts and editions held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Julien Chauvin has chosen to record it with soprano and mezzo soloists (the equivalent of the French dessus and bas-dessus) and a two-part children’s choir: ‘The choir can play a real role in the narration of so powerful and poignant a text’, he says. This recording teams two emblematic singers of the Alpha label with the excellent Maîtrise de Radio France, of which Adèle was a member as a girl. To complement the Neapolitan masterpiece, we have a ‘sacred’ symphony by Haydn, "La Passione," probably written for Good Friday and in the same key as the Stabat.

Il Prigionier Superbo was first staged on August 28, 1733. The chronicles report that the intermezzos of La Serva Padrona were so successful they overshadowed Il Prigioniero, in spite of its obvious merits. Pergolesi’s adhesion to the stylistic standards and the formal customs of his time is total and his respect for the taste of the audience entirely focused on belcanto is never in discussion. (Bongiovanni)