One of the most famous English contraltos of the twentieth century sadly passed away at a young age. However, she left behind several memorable recordings, including those made with some of the greatest conductors of the period. These recordings are meticulously restored from the original sources.

Musica ricercata is a kind of journey through the fossils of European musical culture after the explosion of the two World Wars. Like all composers living in the shadow of nuclear threat, Ligeti sees time as the great enemy: he cages it, crystallizing it into an eternal present so material, that it prevents the flow of Chance within it.

Gregorio Zucchini, Floriano Canale, and Antonio Mortaro. What unites these three composers? At least three shared traits: they all lived at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, they are the shining stars of their respective compositional traditions (Benedictine, Augustinian, and Franciscan), and through their customary wanderings, these monk-composers worked in various Venetian mainland territories, including Brescia. This anthology offers the listener the chance to appreciate the stylistic nuances of the three composers while presenting a historically plausible context that showcases a diversity of composers as well as a variety of compositional and performance practices In this discovery journey, the listener is gonna be exploring also the celebrated Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli from Venice.

Vladimir Delman was undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary conductors to be appeared in Italy between 1970 and 1990. Unfortunately, the considerable number of his recordings (all of the highest quality) in the 1990s were partially released in mediocre editions by Fonit Cetra. Then, in the following years, his recording material disappeared after his death in the middle of the decade. Today, thanks to friends and the person entrusted with managing his estate, we can publish a good portion of those recordings, starting from the original master tapes, especially those of a group of composers much loved by the maestro, especially Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Shostakovich.

My God! What a child! No one has understood me as this boy does... this is not imitation, it is the same feeling, an instinct that makes him play without reasoning, as if he could not be otherwise. He plays almost all of my compositions without having heard them performed, without my having shown him the slightest thing - not exactly like me (having his own personality), but just as well. Chopin on Filtsch (The Humorist, 1843)

Among the few recordings of Don Carlo, this recording stands out with great authority. Despite being a live performance, it is of the highest quality. It's importance lies above all in the participation of two great performers, Franco Corelli and Gundula Janowitz, who have never recorded Don Carlo in the studio.

« With his ability, precision and sensitivity, this pupil of the celebrated Herr Mozart exceeds all expectations» (Berlinsche Nachrichten von Staats, 21 May 1789). In a letter to Eckermann in 1829, Goethe compares his playing to Napoleon's domination of the world «both feats appear amazing to us; they escape our comprehension, yet occur nonetheless - and these marvels unfold before our very eyes». And according to Mozart himself, the young man was destined to reach the same heights with the pianoforte as Raffaello had in the world of Art.

What's missing in Verdi's vast discography is a production dedicated to ballet music. This box set contains complete recordings of Philips sources from the 1970s. The high audio quality combined with a less explored repertoire, and in some cases less-known, are the ingredients of a product that can still stand in a Verdi discography without the aftertaste of dejà vu.

Franco Corelli, along with Mario Del Monaco and Carlo Bergonzi, is universally recognized as the greatest Italian tenor of the last century. This edition of his performances is based primarily on the early recordings he made for the Italian Cetra and includes a selection of great scenes from his repertoire, including a crucial, high-quality live version of Don Carlo, which Corelli never recorded in a studio.

With the exception of the Sonatina No. 25, long considered a minor work, this box set contains the last Piano Sonatas of the Titan of Bonn. In a recording landscape already rich in this repertoire, this release focuses entirely on the performances of Carlo Levi Minzi, who, in his artistic maturity, delivers his personal vision of these works: refined, meditative, exquisitely personal. In addition, the Klavierstück WoO 61a.

Among the few Brahmsian chamber pieces that also include wind instruments are the two Sonatas for clarinet and piano op. 120. In these works, however, there is an optionality between clarinet and viola, and in today's concert scene, it is almost more common to hear them in the viola than in the clarinet version. The 'Scherzo' from the F.A.E. Sonata was part of a Sonata for violin and piano composed as a collective homage to Joachim by Albert Dietrich (author of the first movement), Robert Schumann (Intermezzo and Finale) and Brahms (Scherzo). The abbreviation F. A. E. refers to Joachim's personal motto frei, aber einsam (free, but alone), but also corresponds to three musical notes and the motif thus derived is naturally used as a theme in various parts of the Sonata.

Rachmaninov, considered by academics to be a late romantic, often draws on Baroque models: an eclecticism of languages. He experiences music as a memory of affection, and in few places, as here, his insatiable Faustian aspiration to 'stop the moment' reaches a similar intensity. Op. 19 breathes a sense of a return to life and the otherworldly cello calls shatter according to a principle of hallucinatory suspension which is already the Rachmaninov of the Symphonic Dances op. 45. Piano Sonata No. 2 in E-flat minor, Op. 36 had a complex gestation, culminating in a 1931 revision in which the Maestro reduced a certain 'pleasant storytelling' in the style of Liszt, moving closer to the neoclassical matrix, but 'Russian-style', of his later works. As an ideal encore, the programme also features the Danse orientale Op. 2, No. 2, the adolescent Sergei's homage to that narrative of exotic landscapes, musical scales infused with chromatic enchantments.

Brother of the more known, Giovanni Battista, oboe and flute virtuoso, He was judged to be an ingenious composer on a par with Corelli and Geminiani. The success of these Sonatas, was largely due to their particular instrumental use, at a time when the 'flauto traversiere' was becoming increasingly fashionable; the flute performance of this CD fully adheres to the canons of articulatory practice (bisyllabic phonetics) of the first half of 18th century Europe.

The music that celebrates the agony of Romanticism, lives on a mysticism whose traces our materialism has rendered legendary. Around the artists of Art Nouveau (Liberty), is a proliferation of esoteric movements, in search of that link between soul and cosmic forces, which, in music, becomes sound.

Now that more than 40 years have passed since Mario del Monaco's death, and the venomous criticism of recent decades has dissipated, given his extensive and detailed discography, it can be established that the Italian tenor's voice was undoubtedly the most beautiful, powerful, and important of the last century, surpassing even that of Caruso or Pavarotti. These two CDs, which collect his most spectacular performances from his golden years, and meticulously recorded by Decca of London, are presented here in their entirety and in chronological order.

Despite being a work of great importance for the history of Italian opera, Nerone has almost no discography, except for the late Hungaroton edition (with Hungarian interpreters). Fortunately, in 1975, the Italian Rai of Torino produced this precious live edition under the Gavazzeni conduction, without any noise from the audience and with a perfect stereophonic recording. This is the best available performance of an opera that deserves the utmost attention, and which for years has not been available until today, thanks to the restoration by Urania Records.

The name of Father Vallotti, a Conventual Franciscan, esteemed musician and valuable teacher, is still known nowadays particularly for his speculative works. He was considered by Bonifazio Asioli, "the greatest of the Italian harmonists", and his appointment at the Berlin court confirms he was appreciated not only in his homeland. His harmonic knowledge and uncommon compositional virtue have given us pages of rare elegance where the liturgical and sacred aspect is distilled in every chord.

The manuscript Ms XIV 8751 H.1 came to the Library of the Civico Istituto Musicale Gaetano Donizetti in 1916. It consists of 92 pages entirely in the hand of William Babell, who was Handel's principal copyist from c.1711 until his death in 1723. While none of the movements in this volume is attributed to any composer, internal evidence indicates that most, if not all of the music, was composed by or adapted from George Frideric Handel. If so, this volume represents the most important addition to the corpus of Handel's keyboard works since the publication of the Aylesford manuscripts in 1928.

Giordani's activity was indeed fashionable, having success both with operas and with instrumental music. The composition of these flute concertos dates back to an unspecified period of the 18th century, but their structure is unquestionably within the golden classical principles of the sonata form, allowing us to place them temporally between 1765 and 1775. The concertos offer the listener a realistic glimpse of the flute technique of the time that would soon see the Romantic Era blossom. In this recording, the instrument used is a copy of a mid-eighteenth-century C. Palanca, with a diapason of about 420 hz.

La Battaglia di Legnano is among the least recorded operas of the Verdi repertoire. Currently the only studio edition available is the Philips' conducted by Lamberto Gardelli in the Seventies. However, prior to that famous edition is this recording made at La Scala in 1961 which enjoyed great fame and diffusion especially in the Eighties and Nineties. Currently this famous live version has been unavailable for a long time. For this reason, and for the excellent quality of the sound recording, we have decided to make this important document available again. Naturally, a new equalization of the sound source has been carried out, making the original recording as natural as possible. The vocal cast remains one of the greatest possible in the entire history of recording.

Mjaskovsky and Shostakovich: two giants of the music of the XX Century, two survivors from the stalinism. In their own works they both use technique to triumph over the heaviness of evil: the art of continuous modification, to annihilate the eternal present of violence. These two superb Sonatas are songs of captivity and, together, anthems of resurgence.

Karel Ancerl was one of the most tragic Conductors of the Twentieth century: he survived the Extermination Camps, in which he lost his wife and children. After the war, with Vaclav Talich, he was certainly the greatest Bohemian Conductor. Known above all for his recordings of Smetana and Dvorak, he stood out for his interpretations (early 1960s) of the great European repertoire of the 19th century. This double CD testifies to his approach to three very different, and significant, composers such as Mahler, Sibelius and Janacek. High quality Studio recordings.

Those who have been following the discography of the Milan Symphony Archive for years will know that Atalanta Fugiens has already released three discs dedicated to the music of Brioschi. That will be the subject of a future re-release by Urania; this album, on the other hand, contains previously unrecorded pieces and is the natural continuation of a work of rediscovery undertaken years ago.

Old Russian folk melodies; the traits of human life (joy, love, illness, poverty, death, religion); a high aesthetic-musical realism as a compositional commitment. These are the ingredients in Musorgsky's Lieder, already appreciated by Liszt and Debussy, and now available in this box set.

Georg Philipp Telemann belongs to the auroral phases of the Enlightenment, a musician with an inexhaustible and perhaps unparalleled creative vein in terms of the breadth of his catalogue. Johann Michael Bohm was skilled in the violin as well as the flute and oboe; Johann Friedrich Fasch was a very industrious music craftsman, although reluctant to publish his own work, which appeared posthumously. The embarrassment that seizes some commentators is due primarily to little familiarity with the music included in this album, informed by a sound "individualism" and a systematic spirit, yes, but still little inclined to the rigid regularities that perhaps only the late-Romantic school imposed on the view of music.

Among the various recordings of H.v. Karajan of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Mozart's Requiem (no less than 4 for each of them), the 1958 and 1961 recordings stand out among critics as perhaps his most important interpretations of this repertoire. The Missa, never released by EMI, was made available by Testament more than 20 years ago. It has not been available on the market for some time. It is actually one of the most extraordinary interpretations of Beethoven's religious masterpiece, also due to the extraordinary sound quality achieved by the Columbia technicians of the time. Mozart's Requiem was Karajan's first recording of this work. Even this production, which has always been available in the DG catalogue, is currently very difficult to find.

I always considered Karl Weigl as one of the best composers of the old school; one of those who continued the glittering Viennese tradition. He truly preserves this old culture of musical spirit which represents the best of Viennese culture.