An ensemble comprising oboe, bassoon and pianoforte is certainly the offspring of the violin-cello-pianoforte trio but produces a wonderful sound world all its own, combining the three instruments perfectly. Which is why the Linguaggi Sonori Ensemble commissioned a series of trios from a number of contemporary Italian composers in order to explore the range of sounds which this lineup is capable of producing and to enrich the repertoire for it. The result is instrumental timbres and compositional techniques owing something to the twentieth-century avantgarde or to Minimalism in their own right, yet more often than not is a fusion of these elements resulting in something new and exciting from the combination of oboe, bassoon and pianoforte.

A product of German, Slav and Italian influences, Antonio Smareglia (1854-1929) is a thoroughly Mitteleuropean composer yet very much his own man, a perfect example of the music of the Trieste-Istria area. Il Vassallo di Szigeth inaugurated the Vienna Hofoper (today Staatsoper) season on 4 October 1889 which was also the name-day of the Emperor Franz Josef who attended the performance and was as enthusiastic as the rest of the audience. The highly favorable reaction of the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick and Johannes Brahms (both were ferociously anti-Wagner), proves that Smareglia's opera was anything but Wagnerian, in spite of the musician admiration for Wagner. The Vienna Hofoper took their production of Il Vassallo di Szigeth on tour to New York, making it the most celebrated opera in the repertoire and enabling Smareglia to build on its success in 1893 with Cornill Schutt.

The selection of pieces on this album is a collection of original works for viola and guitar by Italian authors who lived between the early nineteenth and the second half of the twentieth century. Written in a galant style, characterized by a formal cleanness, the Duo op. 137 by Carulli is mostly focused on bel canto rather than on motivic development or elaboration. An emphasis on bel canto also characterizes the music of Niccolò Paganini (1782 - 1840). The Sonata for the Grand Viola by Paganini dates back to the Paris period. With the advent of the twentieth century Italian composers turned to instrumental composition even though many of them remained bound to an aesthetics of the past and tended to avoid much of the innovation coming from abroad (dodecaphony, jazz, impressionism, etc.). This generation of composers provided the teachers of Franco Margola (1908-1992) and Raffaele Gervasio (1910-1994). Bruno Battisti D’Amario (1937) is a guitar player, composer and teacher among the most important of his generation.

The project for this recording continues the Monteverdi work of the San Felice Ensemble, traced with L’Incoronazione di Poppea, but in a new experimental guise. In fact, the idea emerged in 2020 in full pandemic lockdown. Consequently, the recording was done entirely in multitrack, historically commonly used in pop music, but still not very widespread in classical music. Federico Bardazzi's musical direction masterfully combines the philological approach, which has always distinguished the interpretations of the San Felice Ensemble, with the development of innovative technological solutions capable of enhancing the sublime expressiveness of the Monteverdi masterpiece in an incredibly current key.

The Messa di Gloria belongs to the period before Cavalleria Rusticana: the lack of a choral or a fugue as well as the simple, almost ingenuous tonalities reveal the dominance of the operatic style over the religious one. Only a careful listening can disclose in the operatic melodies of the Messa di Gloria some kind of references to church music. Echoes of Guglielmo Ratcliff can be heard in the Gratias, and the Incarnatus clearly recalls Turiddu’s “resta abbandonata” from Cavalleria. Before a modern audience the Messa, made of “pray, all love and passion”, as the composer described it, still retains its character. The lyrical element, vehement in the Gloria or tender in the Elevazione, is soaked with Mediterranean feelings, like in a deep and touching popular songs.

The first performance of I Rantzau took place at the Pergola Theatre in Florence on 10th November 1892. It was a triumphal success right from the dress rehearsal; the ovations for the composer were so great that according to the reports of the time his wife Lina fainted with emotion. On the first evening, six pieces were encored. Born under such splending auspices, the opera continued its career almost into the new century, but inexplicably, in its complete version, it was no longer put forward for production. And we had to wait until the celebration of the centenary of the first performance for the first new production in modern times. What was the reason for its disappearance? Whatever answers might be given, today I Rantzau has to be considered an important and delicate stage in Mascagni’s creative work. Indeed, the opera marks the saturation of the so-called “realistic” phase of the composer’s work. It highlights the consolidation of the change from the idyllic naturalism tried out in the earlier Amico Fritz, to a true experimentalism which was to lead soon after that to the pessimistic tensions of the heavy Nordic romanticism of Guglielmo Ratcliff.

Lodoletta was once part of the usual repertoire; nowadays we can consider this work one of the most interesting creations of Mascagni last style: a Mascagni who partly recycles the atmosphere of the youthful Fritz, but seems to approach also a type of musical dramaturgy reserved to an exploration of the female soul, similar to that of the colleague-friend-rival Puccini. Mascagni's source is the pathetic tale of the novel Two Little Wooden Shoes by the British writer Ouida: the naive protagonist, the Brabant flower girl Bebée hurt in love by the cynical painter Victor Flammen, let's herself be drowned in the placid waters of the lake near her father's house. She is the prototype of the woman victim of the egoism and emptiness of the male, dear to Puccini. Mascagni's approach is quite different: being an authentic realist and an outspoken "popular musician", he focuses on the passion of lacerating love, making Lodoletta a true tragic character, who, instead of killing herself like a "floral" doll, leaves on foot from Holland - the librettist new setting -for the painter's Parisian home, then she dies of starvation in the snow on his doorstep, invoking his name and his love. It is a highly dramatic and mercilessly realistic finale, eloquent embodiment of that "erotic sadness" that a shrewd critic like Giannotto Bastianelli had rightly recognized as the essential poetic core of Mascagni's theater, which through the dry modernity of the musical writing redeems the excessive sentimentalism of the previous acts.

The College of Music of Sant’Onofrio, one of the wonders of baroque Naples, was founded in the late 1500s as a foundling institution to train orphans and abandoned children to work as artisans. Within a few years, its educational policy had shifted to musical training and singing and during the 1600s it was home to the finest composers in the city. They transformed the rigidly austere musical geometry of northern Europe into something wholly new, as though infusing the darkness of the north with the immense, intensely bright light of the south. Nicola Porpora was just such a composer. In 1710 the 24 year-old Porpora presented his opera Berenice in Rome with great success. While in the city, Haendel himself saw it and went to congratulate its composer. Porpora wrote a great deal of music for religious purposes and opened a singing school which Farinelli also attended. Leonardo Leo is the other great composer from Sant’Onofrio. Almost a decade younger than Porpora, a combination of overwork and delicate health killed Leo at the relatively young age of fifty. He had already produced a number of new operas by 1738 when his reputation for music earned him the commission of a lifetime to write an opera to celebrate the wedding of Charles III and Maria Amalia of Saxony. Leo put everything else to one side and took as his subject the wedding of Psyche and Cupid. Yet despite the success of his opera for the imperial wedding, Leo continued to write music – both sacred and opera, whether serious or comic. Unsurprisingly, his name was a household word throughout Europe.

This outstanding work was composed by Niccolo Jommelli in 1750, and features violin, viola, cello, oboe, French horn, trumpet, basso continuo, and voice. This work highlights Jommelli’s talent as a dramatic composer. The recording features sopranos Valentina Bilancione and Marialucia Caruso, and tenor Manuel Reid.

The libretto for La Romanziera e l’Uomo Nero was inspired by two plays performed in Paris in the 1820s: L’Homme Noir by Eugène Scribe and Jean-Henry Dupin in 1820 and Le Coiffeur et le Perruquier, also written by Scribe in collaboration with Mazères and Saint Laurent, in 1824. By basing the opera on these plays the composer created a divertissement of the Italian querelle genre, both classical and romantic.The libretto is a satyr of the sentimental-romantic daydreams which were so fashionable at that time and takes places in the poetic world of the young Antonina, who dreams of an ideal life with an non-existent “uomo nero”, the mystery man. La Romanziera e l’Uomo Nero is an “ambiguous” and complex work: it is ambiguous because it lacks a clear and decisive characterization in a comedic sense; that is to say, a clearly defined plot, complete with all the typical ingredients of a traditional opera buffa, and a precise outline and structure in this direction, from both a dramaturgical and musical point of view. It is complex because it is full of recollections and inventions, which are introduced and developed predominantly through a contrapuntal approach (all scenes invariably call for more than one soloist).

The available information concerning Colombo, ossia La scoperta dell'America is dubious. Various hypotheses have been put forth in the last years, including the suggestion that the work is a fragment of an unfinished opera composed on a text by Felice Romani. The most recent research, however, seems to support the theory that the composition was originally conceived as a scenic cantata, that is, a cantata which was destined for the stage. This genre, quite in vogue in the first half of the century, usually served to celebrate a particular event (royal birthdays and weddings, state visits, illustrious funerals, various commemorations). For these occasions, the composer on hand would be called upon to provide his patron with an undemanding work designed to highlight the vocal prowess of one or more soloists, but without particular aesthetic aspirations, in light of its "disposable" nature. Colombo, cantata for baritone, chorus and orchestra, was first staged at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples on 25 April 1838. It was part of a larger spectacle including dances and operas scenes by various authors and starred the singer Paul Barroilhet, who had successfully impersonated many of Donizetti's roles. The poetry - perhaps attributable to Donizetti himself, who had been his own librettist on more than one occasion - are not unlike those typical of an opera libretto. They establish a veritable dialogue between the soloist (Christopher Columbus)and the chorus (the sailors of his ship), and are complete with stage directions aimed at an actual theatrical performance in costume (see, for example, the opening: "The sailors are lying on the ground and others are standing in great distress"; and toward the end: "Colombus runs to see the land, then kneels down and remains in this position, thanking the heavens, until the cabaletta"). The version reproduced in this release is based on the autograph manuscript of the cantata preserved today in the San Pietro a Maiella Conservatory Library in Naples.

A one-act opera, Elvida is a short “dramatic action” which in effect “has nothing historical”, as is stated in the libretto’s “topic”, it didn’t take inspiration from any drama, short novel, or previous texts by others, inventing everything and almost preferring probabilities to the truth. Closely following the instructions received, Donizetti didn’t even compose a symphony or prelude and accepted the frugality of recitative; in the manuscript, he left no sign of the tenor’s aria, the one intended for Rubini, with which he counted on pleasing the public, because he hadn’t time to write it and therefore missed the opportunity, or maybe because (as was the practice with parody, of composers borrowing from their other works, and use of “trunk” or “suitcase” arias) he didn’t write anything new, leaving the famous Rubini to insert an aria he liked (which the composer obviously liked too). Nonetheless, the 29 year-old musician committed himself body and soul to the manner, the “Rossini-ism” and the style of his maestro Mayr; and in fact sketched a small, clear and accurate score, perfectly suited to the singers’ personalities and never forgot the art of writing, the proper arrangement of the parts, classical singing and melodic invention.

In creating the basso continuo of the Six Sonatas op. 24, it was essential to consider the innovative spirit of Devienne: in its short existence it crossed the Ancien Régime, the French Revolution and finally the First Republic; born in the Enlightenment period, its art later knew the cultural movement of the Sturm und Drang, and reached the threshold of Romanticism. The freshness of his melodies spontaneously suggested the continuous dialogue between Bassoon and Piano, the latter not relegated to a pure accompanying instrument but an integral part of the Sonatas: in the “Allegro” his virtuosity, sometimes almost acrobatic, never appears intrusive but complementary to the solo part; as also in the “Adagio”, pervaded by melancholy, delicate and sometimes poignant lyricism, his phrasing moves discreetly, caressing the main voice by sharing its emotions.

The Counter-Reformation was intended to elevate the spiritual feelings of the Catholic faithful and the oratorio was influenced by monodic song and the transformation of the lauda spirituale into a more dramatic, performance-oriented form. Indeed, the term “oratorio” initially meant somewhere that a lay congregation met to pray and sing hymns like the Lauda. Carissimi’s are the first real oratorios in the history of music and although he did not invent the genre, he certainly put it on the map. Most of his 16 surviving oratorios are in Latin and among the finest are not only his renowned Jephte, but Iudicium extremum itself with its majestic three-choir structure. Carissimi had a huge influence on the development of the oratorio in Italy and throughout Europe in the work of his many pupils who achieved greatness, such as Charpentier in France and Kerll in Germany. And that influence continued upon later composers such as Haendel and all the major exponents of the mature Baroque.

Learning the untimely death of his young colleague, Verdi wrote to Masheroni: “Poor Catalani! A good man and an excellent musician! What a pity! Congratulate Giulio (Ricordi) on the few and touching words he said for that poor man. What a shame! And what a rebuke for the others!” Indeed, Catalani’s short existence was troubled by a restless struggle against the inexorable disease that undermined him and that carried him off untimely, and by the difficulties sometimes insurmountable in becoming popular as a successful composer. It was a great affliction that lasted some twelve years and that was made more doleful by the urgent need of creating and by the incomprehension that took the place of the first Milanese enthusiasm. Loreley is a vital opera, thanks to the authenticity Catalani was able to infuse in it with his fantasy and day-dreaming, with his relish for harmonic and instrumental delicacy. The unforgettable and touching funeral march with the intermittent and sorrowful participation of the chorus and of the solo voice, or the famous Danza delle Ondine immersed in a voluptuous sonorous atmosphere are pages that remain on the top of the canon of melodramatic literature.