In the Baroque period, the duetto da camera, usually conceived for two equal voices and continuo, was an important form of vocal chamber music, of which innumerable examples are found in the works of composers associated with Venice, the leading protagonist in the history of this genre. Venetian Sara Mingardo is joined by a large group of young, talented solo female voices (Silva Frigato, Lea Desandre…) in this amazing project, where masterpieces by the leading composers of the time have been entrusted to the voices best suited to highlight the respective particular musical content. Included in this recording are several previously unpublished and unperformed works, which have been newly transcribed and edited by the harpsichordist Edward Smith. At the heart of the programme, Sara Mingardo leaves her colleagues for a moment to appear as soloist in Fuggi pur, o crudele by Francesco Lucio, a splendid and typical lamento recorded here for the first time and destined to become a big hit.

Rinaldo Alessandrini is one of today’s most eminent Monteverdi authorities, and his highly acclaimed recordings with Concerto Italiano are now widely recognised as a reference point for music lovers all over the world. Recent achievements include the completion of Monteverdi’s trilogy of operas (directed by Robert Wilson) at La Scala in Milan and at the Opéra National de Paris, and a triumphal concert tour in Australia and New Zealand with the Vespro della Beata Vergine. To mark the 450th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi’s birth, Arcana is proud to reissue the seminal recording of the Sixth Book of Madrigals performed by Concerto Italiano, which is also one of Arcana’s bestsellers. Rinaldo Alessandrini describes the Sixth Book as the book of separation: permanent in the case of death; temporary in the case of lovers at daybreak. It is the book of poignant expression which culminates in the cycles of lamenti, whose autobiographical character is well known: the successive deaths of Monteverdi’s wife (Claudia Cattaneo) and his favourite singer (Caterina Martinelli). Its density of expression, its ‘italianità’, not exempt from theatricality, by turns luminous and despairing, make it the place where interpretation is the fundamental element, capable of overwhelming our contemporaries.

Classical Music

Classical Music

In 1738 the acclaimed violinist and composer Michele Mascitti (1664-1760) published in Paris his ninth collection of sonatas. The seventy-four-year-old Neapolitan musician was at the end of his long and celebrated career, but not of his creative powers. Dedicated to the Crozat family, which was to be Mascitti’s patron until the end of his life, the twelve sonatas for violin and bass op.9 are fine examples of the graceful blend of Italian and French styles that made this composer so popular in France. With the world premiere of eight sonatas from Mascitti’s op. 9, the Quartetto Vanvitelli carries on the rediscovery of this music that Hubert Le Blanc likened ‘to the warbling of the nightingale’. After the success of their interpretation of Mascitti’s op.8, greeted as ‘a jewel of interpretation that exalts with grace, elegance and, more importantly, finesse of touch, the individual stylistic experimentation of Mascitti’ (A111), the ensemble Vanvitelli makes with this recording another decisive step towards the full appreciation of this remarkable and unjustly forgotten composer.

Violinist Giuliano Carmignola and cellist Mario Brunello: one of the greatest interpreters of Vivaldi and Bach, whose recent recording of the Sonatas and Partitas was described by the authoritative magazine Gramophone as ‘a definite first choice among period instrument recordings of these works’; and his long-time friend Mario Brunello, acclaimed for his personal reinterpretation of that same famous collection on the violoncello piccolo (A469). Accompanied by the Milanese ensemble Accademia dell’Annunciata, they offer a highly original, experimental programme. Inspired by the three existing double concertos for violin and cello by Vivaldi – an unusual coupling in eighteenth century concerto literature – they revisit double concertos by Vivaldi and Bach (the famous BWV 1043 for two violins and BWV 1060 for violin and oboe), transposing the second solo part an octave lower on the violoncello piccolo. Underpinned by persuasive historical and musicological evidence, the approach first and foremost reveals their pleasure in working together on an innovative project. The outcome is a delightful opportunity to enjoy famous pieces in a totally different light.

Since winning the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1986, Mario Brunello has established himself as one of the foremost living cellists. An eclectic musician, for some years Brunello has also taken an interest in the world of historically informed performance practice and the rediscovery of the four-string 'violoncello piccolo'. This instrument, slightly smaller than the cello, is known today for it's presence in some sacred cantatas of Bach, but it was surely used much more widely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than the currently known repertory would lead us to think. This recording of the Sonate & Partite per violino solo inaugurates the collaboration on the Arcana label with a 'Bach Brunello Series' of three albums, in which important compositions for the violin from his catalogue will be performed on the violoncello piccolo. The booklet includes texts by Bach scholar Peter Wollny and Italian writer Alessandro Baricco. 'I want to approach the Sonatas and Partitas "from the ground up", in every sense. Violinists "fly high", they are always on top of the melody, they see the music from above. I am therefore not proposing an imitation of the violin, but rather a specular reading, a conquest of the summit by another route. A mountain seen from the south or from the north changes the perspective, but not the substance. ' - Mario Brunello

After releasing all the Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites, Zefiro joins forces with authoritative singer Dominik Woerner to investigate the intriguing relationship between bass voice and reed instruments in Bach's sacred cantatas. "Johann Sebastian Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel tells us of his father's talent as a singer: 'He had a good penetrating voice of wide range and good singing style.' It is therefore not surprising that the three church cantatas for solo bass are among his most exquisite and personal vocal works. Singing voice and instruments enter into a special relationship in these pieces. The dense yet sensitive polyphony is filled with a warmth and tenderness that seems to bring us closer to Bach, who is otherwise so 'hermetically closed'. The 'I' voice in the poems of cantatas BWV 56 and 82 becomes the composer's voice. Bach's solo cantatas are precious gems whose subtle beauties go straight to the listener's heart." - Peter Wollny

A tireless explorer of territories off the beaten track, Gaetano Nasillo has already addressed Venetian music with a memorable album devoted to composer and 'musico di violoncello' Antonio Caldara (A356). This new album brings us back to Venice to discover cello virtuosos and sonatas between Vivaldi and Tartini. 'In the late seventeenth century the bass member of the violin family underwent an evolution to become the instrument we know as the violoncello. Within a few decades, Venice and it's republic became an important centre of composition for the new instrument, whose popularity steadily increased, reaching a peak in the 1730s and 1740s. In his recorded anthology of sonatas for the instrument the cellist Gaetano Nasillo has selected eight works by eight different composers with a connection to La Serenissima. One composer, Antonio Vivaldi, is extremely well known; two, Benedetto Marcello and Giovanni Benedetto Platti, are slightly known; the remaining five - Girolamo Bassani, Diogenio Bigaglia, Antonio Martinelli, Antonio Vandini and Michele Stratico - are hardly known at all, and this premiere recording of their sonatas reveals the high quality and simple enjoyability of their music.' - Michael Talbot

This album is a journey through seventeenth-century Rome, the rough and magnificent city where Caravaggio and Stradella lived. Strict counterpoint and learned polyphony in the lute and keyboard pieces by Kapsberger, Pasquini and Frescobaldi mingle with light dances and popular songs for guitar. Improvisation is the feature linking both sound-worlds: the high culture of church chapels and noble palaces, and the lore of streets and taverns. A careful study of the original sources guided our choices as to instruments and interpretation. According to historically informed practice, the celebrated Antidotum Tarantul� and further early specimens of tarantella, as written down by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher, are played on bagpipes, drums and guitars. While on their first album 'Alfabeto Falso' I Bassifondi refreshed the image of the Baroque guitar and it's harmonic extravaganzas, with 'Roma 600' the ensemble brings the music of seventeenth century Rome back to life with inspired and imaginative improvisation. Soprano Emoke Barath and violinist Enrico Onofri are the distinguished guest artists who join I Bassifondi in this new adventure.

Alessandro Grandi (born in Venice in 1590), regarded by scholars as "the greatest motet composer of his time," was a prominent figure of the new Venetian style in the first half of the seventeenth century. An extremely precocious talent, he was considered by his contemporaries equal to Claudio Monteverdi, to whom he was appointed deputy in 1627 in Saint Mark's Basilica. Yet our knowledge of his life and musical output is scanty, and thus he has remained mostly undiscovered. "Celesti fiori" (celestial flowers), a title taken from his Fifth Book of Motets, is the first complete monograph recording dedicated to this important composer. It consists of a selection of works, almost all recorded here for the first time, chosen from his books of motets, all published between 1610 and 1630, the year in which he was killed by the plague, along with his large family. Recorded in the extraordinary acoustics of the Basilica di Santa Barbara in Mantua, where Monteverdi worked during his long stay in the city, this project features the splendid voices of the Accademia d'Arcadia, an ensemble recently founded in 2018 for the purpose of performing Italian music of the seventeenth century.

"When I wanted to exist, I couldn’t”. Mystical inscriptions on ancient Bosnian tombstones inspired this programme.

Medieval Bosnia fascinates us with its coexistence of religions: Catholics, Orthodox, heretical Bosnian Christians, Jews and Muslims… Their texts and traditions survive in the oral tradition, in mysterious manuscripts in Latin, Cyrillic and Glagolitic script, and on inscriptions from tombstones: monuments through which the dead speak to the living.

As an exploration into ancient pagan and Christian rites from the heart of the Balkans, Heretical Angels bears witness to the traditions of Bosnian Christians, who were persecuted by the medieval Catholic and Orthodox churches alike. Intertwining the tombstone inscriptions with exorcisms and meditations, Katarina Livljanic, Dialogos and Kantaduri have created a story of poignant canticles that comes close to musical theatre and invite us to follow pagan and Christian rites surrounding birth and death. In this programme, after the success of the CD Dalmatica (Diapason d’or in 2016), Dialogos meets traditional cantors – among them one of today’s youngest epic singers in Herzegovina – to seek peace and meaning in a land devastated by wars, at the gateway to the East.

“What I have that is most precious I will preserve in my own name.” This belief likely guided a series of harpists – ranging from Leonardo Mollica, the most renowned virtuoso of the late Renaissance, to Orazio Michi, Marco Marazzoli, and Giovan Carlo Rossi (brother of the better-known Luigi) – to change their names to Leonardo, Orazio, Marco, and Carlo “dall’Arpa” respectively. Although none of the above were actually born in Rome, this was the place where their careers played out. Restoring an identity to these musicians is the express aim of this recording project. The resulting portraits of these virtuosos of the “queen of instruments” are the outcome of lengthy research, study, transcription, and arrangement carried out by Riccardo Pisani and Chiara Granata.

The ensemble La Smisuranza, with its unique formation of three double harps, accompanies the tenor Riccardo Pisani in this exhilarating musical journey. It is characterized by vibrant and ever-changing instrumental textures that alternate moments of intimacy and exuberance in accordance with the poetic text set to music. Pisani, a singer “gifted with a warm, seductive voice” (Diapason), presents the music of his home city after the recent success of "La Cetra di Sette Corde," a recording dedicated exclusively to the 17th-century tenor Francesco Rasi.

Polish-born Mieczyslaw Weinberg twice escaped from Nazi invasions, finally settling in Moscow, where for more than 30 years he was Shostakovich’s closest musical friend. Composer of 26 symphonies, seventeen string quartets and seven operas, he was also a master of the solo string sonata, a genre not touched by Shostakovich and little cultivated in the Soviet Union. His four sonatas for cello solo were composed between 1960 and 1985 and enshrine some of his most concentrated and poetic inspirations.

As an eclectic and innovative cellist, Mario Brunello has one of the broadest of repertoires, one that ranges from the Baroque to contemporary music. After five albums dedicated to revisiting the 18th-century masters, and particularly Bach, using the violoncello piccolo, Brunello returns to his precious “Maggini” in order to showcase these milestones of the cello literature from the second half of the 20th century: “A music that spoke to me instantly, an overwhelming force that immediately – on reading it, studying it and then little by little performing it – captivates you, with the result that you can then almost hardly do without it”.

"Vulnerasti cor meum" literally translates as "You have wounded my heart" – which is not only the most classic of amorous metaphors, but also one of the most celebrated to be featured in the Song of Songs. In this, perhaps the greatest love poem in the history of literature, the two central characters of the story exchange promises of love that are pervaded by sensual metaphors and passionate similes verging on the erotic, in a style that lies on the border between the sacred and the secular.
Accordingly, a similar blend marks the compositional style of the pieces proposed in this anthology, all based on texts drawn from the famous canticle. In these works, the boundary between motet and madrigal is blurred and impalpable, inviting and inspiring audacious readings that are more characteristic of secular music.

After the excellent reviews of their debut recording dedicated to Rigatti ("…the music making of I Disinvolti’s three male voices and continuo players is exceptional", David Vickers, Gramophone), this is the second disc of the ensemble i Disinvolti. Included are twelve unfamiliar works, here given world premiere recordings.