Following the success of his solo recordings, Paolo Zanzu returns at the head of his ensemble Le Stagioni with ‘Officina Romana’, featuring the countertenor Carlo Vistoli. In the early eighteenth century, Rome was one of the great music capitals of Europe. In the space of a few years, Corelli, Handel, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Caldara, Cesarini and many others crossed paths there, surrounded by painters, sculptors, poets and philosophers who were among the great names of the age. The fruit of long reflection and research, ‘Officina Romana’ crystallizes this unique moment in the history of music by recreating an idealized musical evening, a conversazione, a sort of liberal meeting of lofty minds in the palace of a Roman cardinal, with a program mingling vocal and instrumental music in both orchestral and chamber formation. This program highlights the creative genius, the estro of the time, its musical and technical inventiveness, combining famous pieces with previously unrecorded ones. The Cristofori fortepiano also makes an appearance here: Cardinal Ottoboni owned one.

Girolamo Frescobaldi is one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of music for harpsichord and organ, and had an enormous influence on other composers up until Bach. His brilliant toccatas reveal an inner world that fascinates today's listener. Frescobaldi's inspiration was born at the court of Ferrara and reached maturity in Rome, where the composer found himself among the major artists of the time who were actively creating a new artistic language. This 7-album set includes the four collections by Frescobaldi which, due to their exceptional innovative strength, have left the greatest mark on the history of music for the keyboard. A pupil of Leonhardt and Tagliavini, Francesco Cera is today recognized as one of the leading specialists in Frescobaldi, whose music he has helped to disseminate through concerts and master classes in Europe and the United States. Part of the music was recorded in the excellent acoustics of the Sala della Vigna in the Delizia di Belriguardo, the summer residence of the Este dukes, where the very young Frescobaldi was often present. Cera has chosen nine priceless instruments, including the Guglielmi organ of 1615 in the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome, and a copy of the harpsichord by Nicolò Albana, Naples 1584. The art historian Denis Grenier has been entrusted with the task of illustrating seven works of art that testify to the link between the music of Frescobaldi and the art in Rome of his time.

The debut album of the young gambist André Lislevand is devoted to the great oeuvre for viol of Antoine Forqueray. Ambiguity: a word that can easily have a negative or derogatory meaning but which also accurately describes the various aspects of Forqueray’s music and the duality of style that distinguished music in the France of the Sun King: indubitably French, but also strongly influenced by the Italian idiom. That influence is as indisputable as it is intriguing, especially when one reflects on the differing nature of the two cultures: where the Italian style glitters with virtuosity, power and extraversion, the French cultivates the magic of sound, subtle colors, and the formal perfection of music. André Lislevand, the son of a French mother and a Norwegian father but born and raised in Italy, here in the company of Paola Erdas at the harpsichord and Jadran Duncumb on the theorbo (and with a cameo appearance from André’s Norwegian father, Rolf Lislevand), perfectly embodies the musical internationalism that is the focus of the album, in which Forqueray’s visionary music for viol is cross-pollinated by the presence of other composers from his time, in a continuous interplay of wonderful stylistic ambiguity.

In 2018, the Styriarte Festival in Graz launched, in collaboration with Zefiro, a project to rediscover the operatic output of the Styrian composer Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741), Kapellmeister at the imperial court in Vienna for forty years, with the aim of restaging six of his nineteen operas, one per year. With a cast of Baroque vocal specialists, led by Monica Piccinini and Arianna Venditelli, this set of Dafne in lauro marks the beginning of a new series in which Arcana will release the recordings made in the course of the six-year cycle. First performed on 1 October 1714 to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor Charles VI, Dafne in lauro is distinguished by the numerous references to hunting in the overture and in Diana’s arias, and by the numerous dance movements typical of the French style, such as minuets, gigues and bourrées. The highlight is Daphne’s poignant aria accompanied by the viola da gamba, which, along with the chalumeau and the transverse flute, enriches the range of tone colors in the score.

In this debut release, the ensemble Alta Bellezza traces the footsteps of 15th century composer Guillaume Dufay through Italy, Savoy and his Burgundian homeland. Considered the most illustrious composer of his generation, Dufay was employed by several popes, and by noble families including the Malatesta, the Este and the court of Savoy while maintaining close ties to the court of the Burgundian duke Philip the Good, renowned in its day as the finest court in Europe. Alta Bellezza brings Dufay’s music to vibrant life on wind instruments of his day such as shawms, slide trumpets and bagpipes - the standard instrumental ensemble of the 15th century. This formation, known today as the “Alta Capella”, projected elegance, pomp and splendor at courts and in cities throughout Europe. Alongside refined renditions of chansons by Dufay and his contemporaries Binchois and Vide, the trio graces the 21st century with music from the Brussels Basse Danse manuscript in their own distinctive arrangements, rooted in improvisatory practices of the era.

The Italian Ensemble Aurora will celebrate their thirtieth anniversary in September of 2016. Since their very first concert in 1986, the ensemble has been particularly interested in the music of Arcangelo Corelli. It is only fitting that this is the music chosen to commemorate a long and successful career. Previous recordings of Corelli’s music have garnered them critical acclaim as well as several international prizes. Particularly notable on this recording is the inclusion of Corelli’s Sonatas Op. V. The perfect synergy of the ensemble represents a milestone recording which will be a model for many performers and listeners.

The centenary of Debussy’s death provides an opportunity to (re)discover some hidden treasures from the Arcana catalogue, which have been unavailable for many years. Debussy’s piano works make up a vast corpus of such outstanding quality that it can rightly be considered to be the most important produced in the last century. He completely renewed the art of piano playing; at the same time, he gave a decisive new direction to the very idea of structure in music. Both these aspects are found in the works here played by Stany David Lasry on two restored Érard pianos, covering the period from the works of his youth to the two great sets of Préludes, which constitute a veritable compendium of twentieth-century piano writing. The French pianist also appears in the recording of mélodies featuring bass-baritone Thierry Félix, which includes Debussy’s last sixteen songs (all those composed after he completed Pelléas et Mélisande) preceded by Mandoline and four songs composed in his early maturity.

The Venetian-born Antonio Caldara was the son of Giuseppe Caldara, a violinist and, allegedly, a youthful pupil of Giovanni Legrenzi. For more than thirty-five of the forty years of his creative life, vocal music – whether in the shape of cantatas, operas, oratorios or liturgical settings- dominated his output. Yet Caldara began his career by the late 1860s as cellist at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, and returned to his instrument, if briefly, within eighteen months of his death. Composed five years before the publication of the famous cello sonatas of the most famous Venetian, Antonio Vivaldi, the collection of sixteen sonatas by Antonio Caldara represent a substantial contribution to the late Baroque repertoire of sonatas for solo cello. Those selected for this recording reveal that they come from a collection enriched by experience and maturity, warmed by a fluid and flexible melodic style, enlivened by chromatically enriched harmony, sophisticated in craftsmanship, and imbued with a spirit of confident independence.

Ludwig van Beethoven's devotion to wind musical instruments dates already from his young life in Bonn, as proved from the correspondence between his teacher Josef Haydn and the Elector of Bonn Maximilian Franz: here the composition of his Parthia dans un concert, or wind Octet op. 103 is mentioned as a work written before his arrival in Vienna and therefore as the earliest piece he wrote for winds. The remarkable Rondino for the same instruments, using the recently invented mutes for the horns, might have been part of the same Parthia in an earlier version. Once in Vienna, Beethoven was impressed by an ensemble consisting of just 2 oboes and cor anglais and wrote for them the extended and virtuosic Terzetto op. 87 in 1794 and the Variations on Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 1796. Also from 1796, a quintet with the unusual scoring of one oboe, three horns and bassoon survives incomplete. The picture of Beethoven’s output for winds wouldn’t be complete without his military music, commissioned around the year 1810. According to the Austrian tradition, with remote Turkish influence- the so-called janissary music- the scoring here includes also trumpets, contrabassoon and a rich variety of percussion instruments.

Recorded in the beautiful acoustics of the parish church of Hallstatt (Austria), where Gunar Letzbor was born, this personal and dramatic interpretation of Biber’s most popular work, usually referred to today as the ‘Mistery’ or ‘Rosary’ sonatas, comes back after years of absence. Gunar Letzbor makes his journey through the ‘mysteries’ or events in the life of the Virgin Mary using two different violins and accompanied by no fewer than six musicians playing kaleidoscopic combinations of harpsichord, organ, lute, archlute, two bass viols and double bass - a big continuo group which enhances and intensifies the changing moods of the cycle.

After mastering the Sonatas and Partitas, Mario Brunello continues his trilogy devoted to reinterpreting Bach’s violin masterpieces on the violoncello piccolo. In this second volume he tackles the other great collection, the Sei Suonate a cembalo certato e violino solo (Six sonatas for concertato harpsichord and solo violin). Conceived in three parts, like sonatas for two treble instruments and continuo, these famous pieces appear transfigured here in a kaleidoscope of colors in which the violoncello piccolo intertwines with the keyboard, alternately harpsichord and organ, and with the bass doubled in turn by viola da gamba and cello – an accompaniment specifically suggested by one of the surviving copies of the sonatas.

Following its highly acclaimed album featuring the three most richly scored Overtures (Gramophone Editor’s Choice – shortlisted for the 2017 Gramophone Awards and included among the Top 10 recent Bach recordings), Zefiro comes full circle with the famous collection of Concerts avec plusieurs instruments, that kaleidoscope of colors that seems almost tailor-made to highlight the salient qualities of the ensemble founded by the three historical wind specialists Alfredo Bernardini and Paolo and Alberto Grazzi. Thanks to experience gained in countless performances and recordings with the leading conductors and ensembles, but also to thorough research into the most appropriate instruments and pitch (398 Hz, i.e. the ‘authentic' French pitch), this brand new recording exudes liveliness, flair and knowledge, and features some of the greatest names on the Baroque music scene, among them Cecilia Bernardini, Gabriele Cassone, Francesco Corti, Lorenz Duftschmid, Marcello Gatti, Gaetano Nasillo and Dorothee Oberlinger. Also included is the more intimate B minor Suite with flute (BWV 1067), thus filling the gap left by the earlier recording.

With its debut recording, the Bernardini Quartet takes us on a journey into the golden age of its formation, consisting of oboe, violin, viola and cello. The programme consists of a selection of exemplary pieces written between 1780 and 1818 by composers of different nationalities who are united by their diversity. Alongside Alfredo and Cecilia Bernardini, father and daughter, respectively oboist/director and first violin of the Ensemble Zefiro, the members are the German violist Simone Jandl and the Dutch cellist Marcus van den Munckhof. The programme begins with one of the earliest quartets for these forces, by Johann Christian Bach; continues with Mozart’s quartet KV370/360b, a milestone of the genre, followed by a romance with variations by the French composer Charles Bochsa, a substantial four-movement quartet by the cellist Dotzauer and a delightful little quartet by Alessandro Rolla, violinist and conductor of La Scala, Milan; and ends with a meditative perpetual canon by the Bohemian Georg Druschetzky, based on a famous Lutheran chorale. For the occasion, Alfredo Bernardini used five different period oboes.

After the success of Duel (Opera Choice in BBC Music Magazine, Disc of the Month in Opera magazine, etc.), Giuseppina Bridelli presents a new solo project alongside the Quartetto Vanvitelli (recently awarded ‘5 Diapasons’ in the magazine Diapason for its second recording, devoted to the violin sonatas of Michele Mascitti), in which she tackles the fascinating world of the Italian chamber cantata for voice, continuo and solo violin.

Appena chiudo gli occhi ("As soon as I close my eyes") is the title of a musical voyage across the vast ocean of cantatas composed by two giants of early eighteenth-century music, Alessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Caldara, interspersed with an instrumental premiere by Giuseppe Valentini. The careers of the two composers intersected in 1708 in Rome, the heart of musical production and patronage, and continued in two of the principal European capitals: Scarlatti in Naples and Caldara in Vienna. The unusual scoring of these cantatas displays intimacy of sound and variety of timbre, as well as great attention to the individual melodic lines, aspects that more rarely emerge in pieces composed for more substantial forces.

Period instruments such as the traverso, the Baroque violin, the viola da gamba and the harpsichord offer an incredibly wide palette of new sound possibilities suited to contemporary ears. From the early 1960s an increasing number of postmodernist composers began looking at these instruments as perfect tools to reconnect with both their audience and the music traditions from the past. Contemporary experimental “effects”, through the use of extended techniques and electronics, are proven able to create a fruitful dialogue with the perennial “affects” that baroque instruments are capable of arousing. Affect is no Crime explores the heterogeneity of this new path, presenting 5 world premiere recordings of 5 works written for these 4 instruments from 5 celebrated living composers, from 5 different countries: from Anspielungen by H.M. Linde, an atonal patchwork enriched with baroque quotations, to the ironic and microtonal Tiet/Lots by J. Tiensuu; from the neo-impressionistic La Fenêtre Ouverte by J. Fontyn to Revenant by J. Morlock, a modal and minimalist homage to Bach, passing through the experimental Sun Bleached with electronics, freshly commissioned from T. Polymeneas Liontiris.