Classical Music

Saint Minias of Florence is respected as the first Christian martyr of Florence. According to Church legend, Minias was an Armenian noble serving in the Roman Army who decided to become a hermit near Florence. He was brought before Emperor Decius in 250 AD after being denounced as a Christian. When he would not sacrifice to Roman gods, he was tortured and then beheaded. This work is kept in the Florence Antiphonary archiepiscopal archive, and dates from the 12th century. A large work, it includes an antiphon for the first vespers, two invitatory antiphons, a matins of three complete morning prayers, five antiphons for lauds and six antiphons called in evangelium that were used as the canticles of praise and for vespers on holy days.

The cello as we know it today first appeared after 1650. It was based on various types of renaissance viol and reached a standard size around 1750. During the 1700s, Johann Sebastian Bach’s masterpieces for it and Boccherini’s cornucopia of quality compositions helped the cello achieve a greater sense of identity, yet it could not make a definitive transition to the gotha of instruments. The romantic cello was always heard accompanied by other instruments. No major composer of the era dared to follow the example of Bach’s Cello Suites and write a proper solo work for the instrument. After WWII, the creation of avant-garde movements and the demand for new forms of expression led to musical languages which broke with the past and placed the cello squarely center stage. The present recording demonstrates the cello’s extraordinary range of technique and expression, which ensured its fortune during the twentieth century. Works featured on this recording include pieces by twentieth century composers such as Giovanni Sollima, Salvatore Sciarrino, Guido Boselli, Benjamin Britten, and others.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Girolamo Rossi, an 18th century Neapolitan of whose life and work very little is known, was certainly a Neapolitan Chapelmaster at the Oratory of the SS. Crocefisso dei Cavalieri. With its Latin text, (St. Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 63), the Lectio IV is for Good Friday and has such late baroque, galant or preclassical features which are intended to facilitate both enjoyment of the music and communication of the religious message concerning the dual nature of Christ as son of God and of Man. The scoring of the Lectio IV for psaltery and harpsichord, (rather than organ as was common), is in keeping with the custom of performing sacred music for holy week in Latin in the homes of the Neapolitan aristocracy. In the Cantata in onore di S. Antonio the main characters are allegories - Merit (soprano) and Glory (contralto) – who sing the saint’s praises. The tone of the Cantata is in keeping with the relaxed sincerity of popular worship – the Child is called Jesus, never Christ as in oratorios or other more solemn genres. By an unknown author, the text exalts the virtues of St. Anthony and invites the faithful to honor him as a hero whose actions were marked by clarity and openness.

Musically active in his home region and subsequently in Munich, Rome, Paris, Turin Hanover and Düsseldorf, Steffani also enjoyed considerable success with opera in Hamburg and garnered academic esteem in London. At the court of the Elector of Mu-nich, he was a chamber musician and principal organist from his early youth until 1688. In Hanover at the court of Duke Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg he was then kapellmeister until 1710. Dubbed a “dramatic entertainment”, La lotta d’Ercole con Acheloo was about a third shorter as was the music, there was no subdivision into acts, the subject was mythologi-cal and the four characters were treated with almost equal importance. The precision-oriented recitatives and markedly confident arias – often in dance time- conform to the rhetoric and patterns governing the Italian style, although the instrumen-tal sections are also French in character – indeed, most of the Duke's orchestra were of French origin. This is readily apparent in the ouverture and especially in the three balli: in keeping with the structure of a divertissement, they are located between the drama sections which in turn recall the acts of the then-contemporary tragédie lyrique.

Classical Music

“The voice of the Narrator (Testo) shall be clear, steady and with good pronunciation, (…) in keeping with the passions of the oration”. Thus the recommendation by Claudio Monteverdi in the preface to his Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, published in Venice in 1638. Monteverdi's remarks on performance together with his actual music underline the tension between passions – here between love and death, (Amore e morte, as the present collection is entitled), a combination which most people associate with a romantic aesthetic or sensibility. Yet an awareness of this association is better served through Monteverdi's fusion of words and music, heightening the perception of each by the combination of the two. Thus Monteverdi laid the foundations of opera, a genre destined to be as popular as it would be widespread in centuries to come. And his influence would be felt throughout all its stylistic variations each time words were “clothed” in music.

Classical Music

This anthology, issued exactly 50 years after the great tenor's death, provides a powerfully involving complete portrait of Giovanni Martinelli, a great favorite for years at the Metropolitan where audiences saw him as the heir to the legend of Caruso, with his renowned breath control and sheen. The most striking features of his approach are his seemingly endless breath control and his slight emphasis upon consonants, increasing the clarity and precision of the words. Born in 1885, Giovanni Martinelli studied with Giuseppe Mandolini in Milan and made his professional debut at the Teatro dal Verne as Ernani in 1910. His debut at the Metropolitan Opera took place in 1913 as Rodolfo in La Boheme. He was a Met mainstay for 32 seasons, earning him the nickname ‘The Lion of the Met.’

Baldassarre Galuppi (1706-1785), a Venetian composer who, besides working in various Italian cities (but never in Naples, despite the great success his operas enjoyed in that city), went to London in 1741 (Haymarket Theatre) and to St. Petersburg in 1768, summoned by Catherine of Russia to be her court chapel-master. Once back in Venice, he ended his long and fruitful life bathed in honors, working mostly on sacred music. Although his production was extremely varied (for instance, his harpsichord compositions), Galuppi was known above all for his operas. Active and prolific in both types of Italian traditional musical theatre, this composer - known as Buranello from the island in the Venetian lagoon where he was born - gave his best work to comic opera, to which he was able to impose his very personal style. L’Amante di tutte (Every girl’s lover), a comic opera in three acts, was first performed in Venice in 1760, on a libretto by a certain A. Liteo, known to the world as Antonio Galuppi, son of the great composer. This opera includes all the main stylistic characteristics of Galuppi’s art, starting with his concentration on the action and rhythm of the staging. Galuppi was able to give his comic opera production different stylistic rules than those of traditional serious opera; he realized the need for a different approach, with the arias (the highest moment in serious opera) reduced in favor of a greater characterisation of the protagonists, concentrating more on the comic elements, constantly fed by irony and wit. The present release showcases L'Amante di tutte, performed by a star-studded cast alongside the Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana.

Between the 1920s and 1940s, Italian song was as much about memories, nostalgia and melancholy as it was about a longing for life and happiness. And although music in Italy at the time was still dominated by opera and the Neapolitan tradition, new tunes were making inroads into the country and Europe through the radio with the increasing number of broadcasts of American Jazz. The combination of Italian tradition and this modern music from the USA yielded miniature masterpieces delivered with carefree passion. A host of inspired Italian composers, including such names as Bixio and D'Anzi, rose to the occasion with the charming “Parlami d'Amore Mariù”, “Luna Malinconica”, (the Italian version of “Blue Moon”), and many more unforgettable melodies and lyrics that fired and inspired several generations. And today The Michele Andalò Quartet brings to this timeless repertoire a new approach that, for the first time ever, teams the velvet voice of a countertenor with an original instrumental lineup in a summit meeting of Jazz and Classical intended to delight listeners with these vintage songs that combine depth and delicacy in equal measure.