The first disc in this two-CD set contains Sardinian composer Cristiano Porqueddu’s first three sonatas for solo guitar, written between 2013 and 2019 and performed here by his compatriot Riccardo D’Alò. ‘Des couleurs sur la toile’, in three movements, pays homage to the painter Gesuino Curreli, the composer’s maternal uncle, who paints landscapes of contemporary Oliena, a town in northern Sardinia. ‘Sonata di Picerno’ – completed in 2015 and dedicated to Italian guitarist Christian Saggese – is a musical portrait of the distinctive town of Picerno in the beautiful Basilicata region of Italy. All three of its movements narrate an entirely fictional leyenda (legend). Sonata No.3, ‘Il rito del fuoco’, is based on an ancient Sardinian legend that tells of Saint Anthony and his pig stealing fire from hell to give to humanity. It is a cyclical composition, which remains anchored in the harmonic and thematic elements introduced in the first section throughout.

The recordings on disc two – performed by Lorenzo Micheli Pucci, a guitarist from Piedmont in northern Italy – were written by Porqueddu between 2011 and 2020. Díptico de la oscuridad is a homage to Pablo Neruda’s poetic atmospheres and is dedicated to Italo-Australian guitarist Ermanno Brignolo. Metamórfosis de la soledad, dedicated to Italian guitarist Alberto Mesirca, stems directly from observing the artistic solitude glimpsed by the composer in artwork by Gastone Cecconello on a personal visit to his studio. It takes the form of a series of short movements based on Angelo Gilardino’s study ‘Soledad’ from his collection Studi di Virtuosità e di Trascendenza. These movements offer a prismatic vision of the material from the introduction to the study, heavily abridged to allow it to be used as a theme for a cycle of variations. In 2019 and 2020, Porqueddu’s figurative art studies led him to discover the wonderful ancient Chinese artwork Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a set of eight parchments dating from the Song Dynasty, approximately 1150 AD. Porqueddu wrote the solo Studies from Eight Views from Xiaoxiang while studying Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s 21 Greeting Cards for guitar. They are built on clearly identifiable melodic sketches, and alternate between demanding technical skill and a capacity for introspection from the performer.

During the first decades of the last century, Paris took over from Vienna as the center of the art-music’s universe. Ideas and styles exploded like fireworks from the French capital, and among the first figures sending them into the wider world was Claude Debussy. His Première Rhapsodie began life as a competition piece for clarinet, first performed in 1911, and while the later orchestral version is now more commonly heard, it is instructive to revisit the composer’s original, more subtly allusive first thoughts. Seven years later, by now dying of cancer, Debussy completed the last of three works in which he returned to the traditional form of sonata which he had avoided through much of his career in favor of tone-pictures such as the Préludes and suites for piano. The Violin Sonata counts among his most concise and refined works in an output touched throughout by those qualities, demanding the greatest subtlety and passion from its interpreters. In the same year as the Première Rhapsodie, Stravinsky had scored his career-defining succès de scandale with the premiere of Le sacre du printemps, and by 1918 he was established as a darling of the Parisian avant-garde when he composed L’histoire du soldat for a septet of instruments and narrator. The following year he arranged five self-contained numbers from the score into a suite, further reduced for a spiky instrumental trio and featuring the marvelously sly tango as well as the Rite-like final Danse du soldat. Milhaud’s Suite and Bartók’s Contrasts date from two decades later, but they are still infused with the absinthe and lemon of 20s Parisian culture. Heard together, the five works paint a portrait of a world of dazzling colours and restless momentum, sometimes bewildered by its own precosity, taking what it wanted from old cultures and always breaking new paths.

Richard Wagner began composing his Wesendonck Lieder during a stay in Zurich between November and December 1857. Originally conceived for female voice and piano alone, the five songs were later orchestrated, first by the Austrian conductor and composer Felix Mottl in 1893, and then later in 1976 by the German composer Hans Werner Henze, in a chamber setting. In fact Wagner had already orchestrated a version of "Träume” to be performed by chamber orchestra (with violin playing the voice part) on the occasion of his wife Minna’s birthday in 1857. Later, in 1870, for his second wife Cosima’s 33rd birthday, he enacted a similar gesture. Mixing new motifs with themes from his Ring cycle, he composed the Siegfried Idyll and had it performed by a small orchestra as a birthday surprise. Hanz Werner Henze’s orchestration of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder highlights the relationship between the words and the sounds. The agile yet intense scoring for ten wind instruments, harp and small string ensemble appears to be Henze’s way of finding an alternative to the original piano without taking the cycle outside the realm of chamber music or altering the lieder’s original image. Siegfried and Brünnhilde sing from the depths of their hearts returns here with the grace of a child’s nursery. Salvatore Sciarrino’s Languire a Palermo (Languishing in Palermo), composed in 2018, is predominantly built around the melody Tempo di Porazzi, a fragment composed by Wagner during a visit to Sicily in late 1881 and early 1882. Sciarrino describes the ‘allure of a distant unaccompanied melody, played by someone for their own benefit and entrusted to the wind’ and hypothesizes that it may correspond ‘to the sounds in Sicily that stimulate and amaze the ears...Mediterranean charm gushes from the throat of every street vendor.’

‘I play Bach every day,’ said Shostakovich in 1950, at an event to mark the bicentenary of Bach’s death. ‘For us, Bach's legacy is an embodiment of flaming emotion, soulful humanity and true humanism, which stands in contrast to the dark world of raw evil and contempt for humanity.’

Taking their inspiration from these words, and from the palpable influence of Bach on the solid forms and fluent counterpoint of Shostakovich’s own music, this quartet of musicians presents an entirely original pairing of the two composers, in which cantata arias and a major song-cycle are linked and interspersed by instrumental interludes.

The German soprano Dorothee Mields is renowned for her piercing musicianship and luminous tone in the music of Bach, working with such illustrious conductors as Rene Jacobs and Philippe Herreweghe. Her contributions to recent recordings in this field have been called ‘sensational’ and ‘ravishing’ by Gramophone.

Here she sings recitatives and arias from seven cantatas, including the meditative opening movement of ‘Ich bin in mir vergnügt BWV204’. The trio-sonata accompaniment brings her expressive handling of the text to the fore, and prefaces the arias with the G major Sonata BWV1021 for violin and continuo, while Luca Quintavalle contributes the sixth Prelude and Fugue from Book 2 of ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’. Switching to piano for Shostakovich, Quintavalle plays the D major Prelude and Fugue from the Russian composer’s counterpart to the WTC. The early Piano Trio No.1 makes a Romantically yearning preface to the late settings of Alexander Blok which Shostakovich composed alongside the song-cycle Fourteenth Symphony. These songs find the composer at his most introspective, unsparing and yet rewarding of the subtlety which Mields brings to them. The idioms of Bach and Shostakovich complement as much as they contrast, and they are drawn together here by performances of powerful eloquence.

Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750) was a German composer and arguably the master lutenist of the 18th century. In addition to being one of the greatest players of all time, he was one of the most important and most prolific composers of lute music in history. He wrote around 600 pieces for lute, most of them grouped into ‘sonatas’ (not to be confused with the later classical sonata, based on sonata form) or suites, consisting mostly of Baroque dance movements. This recital features some of Weiss’s sonatas (he called them ‘Suonate’) for solo lute. They have come down to us in a variety of tablature manuscripts, and many are missing their preludes, which were usually improvised. Weiss’s music is characterised by a unique understanding of the capabilities of his instrument, its strengths and its weaknesses. Like J.S. Bach’s, his music represents the culmination of a high Baroque style a little at odds with the more progressive aspirations of his younger contemporaries. The cantabile style of playing heard in these marvellous performances is directly inspired by the instrument, a lute-harpsichord built for Mr. Rübsam in 2015 by the acclaimed American instrument-maker Keith Hill. It consists of one manual with one set of gut strings at eight-foot pitch, and two sets of jacks which pluck the strings in two different places. One, positioned farther from the nut, produces a flutey sound, and the other, closer to the nut, produces a more nasal timbre. A second set of strings, made of brass at four-foot pitch, produces a halo-effect by resonating with the eight-foot register played by the performer. It gives the rather dry sound of the gut strings a much more singing quality of tone.

A veritable tour de force: the arrangement of Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons and Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata for violin solo! Violinist and arranger Mauro Tortorelli about this unique project: “This recording is not only a challenge in terms of performance (playing both the solo part and the orchestral part at the same time), but also in terms of arrangement. Having to simulate all the orchestral timbres, the various voices in counterpoint, the sound contrasts on only four strings of the violin was not at all easy. Paganini's ingenious technique of double trills and left-handed pizzicati (used for the second movement of L’Inverno and the second movement of L’Estate), Bartok's pizzicato (for the rifle shots in the last movement of L’Autunno) and the formidable bow technique used by Henryk Szeryng, handed down to me by his pupil Georg Monch, have certainly suggested the best instrumental solutions to obtain the clearest possible clarity of execution between the various voices of a complex piece, enabling me to overcome the obstacles that the original scores presented me with. The decision to transcribe for solo violin these two famous works was also inspired by their great melodic power. In fact, every time I studied both pieces to perform them in public in the original formation, I had the feeling that they were already functional without accompaniment. As I am not a "Baroque" violinist, I preferred to perform the pieces with current technique and interpretation, respecting as much as possible the score revised by Gian Francesco Malipiero for Antonio Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and the manuscript score of Giuseppe Tartini's "Devil's Trill", adding my own Cadenza. “ Mauro Tortorelli already successfully recorded for Brilliant Classics violin sonatas by Saint-Saëns, Scalero, Milhaud, Ševcik/Auer and Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Previous Brilliant Classics albums by this Dutch string orchestra, based in The Hague, have focused on late-Romantic ‘American Pioneers’ (96086) and composers in early 20th-century Paris (95734). Under their founder-director Dick van Gasteren, they now turn to the rich history of Rhineland music from the high-point of its immortalisation in operatic culture as the bedrock of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Das Rheingold itself is present by implication in the cycle of Wesendonck-Lieder which Wagner composed on the shore of Lake Zurich, initially as sketches for Tristan und Isolde, which he had embarked upon as a venture to drum up interest and capital for the larger project of the Ring. Inspired by his intimate association with as well as the poetry of Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a wealthy silk merchant who was underwriting the composer’s sojourn in Zurich, Wagner then developed the songs into a self-contained cycle which throbs with transfigured desire much like the opera. The cycle is sung here by the mezzo-soprano Karin Strobos, whose career was launched by singing Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at the Netherlands Opera under Sir Simon Rattle. She also sings the album’s notable rarity: a setting of Heine’s Loreley text, which describes the mythical creatures who lure unsuspecting Rhenish sailors to their doom like Greek Sirens. Originally composed as a male-voice partsong by Friedrich Silcher (1798-1860), the song has been transcribed by Dick van Gasteren for Strobos and La Ciconia. Complementing the songs are two unfamiliar but attractive examples of late-Romantic German string music: the Serenade Op.242 by Carl Reinecke, and the Concerto for String Orchestra by Max Bruch. Neither work enjoys more than a toehold on the record catalogue, and this engagingly vivid new recording makes the most persuasive case for them.

REVIEW:

Somehow this quartet of pieces brought to my mind the old wedding saw of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” For “something old” there is this Serenade of Carl Reinecke (1824–1910). Although I certainly recognize his name, I cannot recollect ever having heard any of his music before now, but this thoroughly delightful six-movement work shows that his oeuvre warrants further investigation.

For “something new” we have a work by Max Bruch (1838–1920) — the string octet he wrote in 1920, only a few months before his death. In the score, Bruch indicated that the piece was also suitable for performance by a full string orchestra, and upon publication of that version his publisher Simrock attached the title “Concerto.” While the octet has enjoyed no less than six previous recordings in its original form, this is the first one for full orchestra, and thus makes a welcome addition to the Bruch discography.

“Something borrowed” comes in the guise of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, in a 2006 reduction for string orchestra by Gerhard Heydt. Frankly, I’m not certain what the point of this exercise is; certainly Wagner is hardly in need of reorchestration, and a good degree of tonal color is lost in subtracting woodwinds and brass. Mezzo-soprano Karin Strobos has a reasonably attractive and well produced but not exceptional voice; she sings with sincerity, but not the degree of subtle inflection these texts and settings require. This was by no means unpleasant to listen to, but there is no strong incentive to return to it.

Finally, for “something blue,” Strobos sings a setting by Friedrich Silcher (1798–1860) of Heinrich Heine’s famous poem of the original Rhine Maiden, whose beautiful appearance and singing lure ships and sailors to destruction. Silcher’s Lied is a bit peculiar in that it’s a lilting, waltz-like ditty, devoid of any darker undertones. Here Strobos and the ensemble are in their proper element.

The Ciconia Consort is further identified as being a nom de guerre for The Hague String Orchestra. Dick van Gasteren directs the players with a sure hand. The recorded sound is warm, with a certain degree of plush resonance. The booklet provides brief notes and song texts in German without translations. Although I would have preferred a full disc of lesser-known German string serenades, this definitely makes for enjoyable listening; cordially recommended.

-- Fanfare (James A. Altena)

The 19th century salon was a major vehicle for the spread of culture and the transmission of new artistic and literary trends in Europe, as well as being a space overtly dominated by women. Aiming to recreate the musical atmosphere of a 19th-century salon, this recording revolves around two fundamental objectives. The first, to perform music by women who, as composers, performers and hostesses, were absolute cornerstones of these spaces. Second, to perform the songs, originally accompanied by piano, with newly made guitar arrangements.

The arrangements on this album have been made following a scrupulous transcription from the piano parts, retaining the harmonic essence whilst capturing the full polyphonic interplay. Several guitar effects have also been incorporated (tambora, harmonics, strumming, etc.), bringing a fresh twist to the original versions. All this contributes not only to expanding the guitar repertoire, but to the discovery of unfamiliar works.

Pauline Viardot (1821–1910) was born in Paris to a highly musical Spanish family and enjoyed an illustrious career as a singer. Returning to Paris in 1870, she established one of the most important musical salons of the time. Viardot’s songs have palpable Spanish roots, and her later pieces, like ‘Caña española’, were likely influenced by her father’s compositions. María Malibrán (1808–1836), Viardot’s elder sister, is most famous as an illustrious Spanish opera diva. Isabel Colbrán (1784/5–1845) was a Spanish opera singer and the first wife of composer Gioachino Rossini. In the early years of her career, she composed 24 short Italian arias which bear a certain Rossinian stamp. That said, as those arias were written before she met Rossini, it must be queried who influenced whom.

Pauline Duchambge (1778–1858) is perhaps the least known of these composers, and this album showcases a number of her songs that have never previously been recorded. A pianist, singer and guitarist, Duchambge studied composition with Cherubini and Auber, mainly composing romances on idealised romantic or historical themes (for example, ‘Celle qui voudrait m’aimer’).

Fanny Hensel (1805–1847) was the elder sister of Felix Mendelssohn. Although she received a thorough musical education, Fanny’s father barred her from publishing her compositions. Several of her songs were published under Felix’s name, including ‘Die Nonne’, but she later published the set containing ‘Schwanenlied’ under her married name. She hosted the so-called ‘Musical Sundays’, soirées attended by leading artists and intellectuals of the day, including Clara and Robert Schumann, Heine, Paganini, and Gounod.

The life of Clara Wieck (1819–1896) was demanding, given that she had to be the bread-winner for her eight children as a concert pianist, owing to her husband Robert Schumann’s mental illness. The two lieder on this album are from Clara and Robert’s jointly published Zwölf Lieder song cycle.

François Devienne (1759–1803) was a contemporary of Mozart and one of the few virtuosos who didn’t have to flee his own country to get noticed. Born in Joinville, France, the youngest of the 14 children of a saddle maker, Devienne received his formative musical instruction as a choirboy in his hometown and quickly developed into a flute player of formidable gifts, studying with Felix Rault. He was active in Paris as a flautist, bassoonist and composer and played bassoon at the Paris Opera. He was also a sergeant and member of the Military Band of the French Guard, where he was given the responsibility of teaching his military band colleagues’ children in its Free School of Music. After the Revolutionary period, when the Free School became the National Institute of Music, later chartered as the Paris Conservatory in 1795, Devienne was appointed as flute professor, where he taught from 1795 to 1803. He also wrote the Méthode de Flûte Théorique et Pratique (1793), which was reprinted several times and did much to improve the level of French wind music in the late 18th century.

His output includes opera, extensive educational work, and approximately 300 instrumental works that were mostly written for wind instruments. There are about 20 flute concertos, mainly written for his own use, and many of his works are still popular today in standard flute repertoire. His VII Concerto in E minor, for example, contains all the poetry and aesthetics of his music – it is quintessentially beautiful, charming, melodious and witty. Devienne's compositions for flute, revived by Jean-Pierre Rampal in the 1960s, became well-known among flutists. Unfortunately, Devienne’s fortunes declined suddenly in the new century and he died in 1803, four months after being committed to the Charenton insane asylum.

The Six duos Op.2 were written in 1786 for the captain of the guard of the Artois Count. They are a collection of six duos for two flutes, each of them divided into two movements. The general atmosphere exuded throughout the set is playful, fresh and bright, possibly because of the absence of the slow and thoughtful second movement that traditionally would have been placed between the first and last allegros. There is no shortage of singable and lyrical melodies, though: the Gracioso con Variatione, the second movement of the third duet, is a prime example. The movement markings chosen by Devienne are primarily Allegro, Rondeau, Gracioso and Menuetto. Every tempo mark is set between a moderate and a fast, lively tempo, in order to develop either the lyrical themes or display the shimmering virtuosity of the flutes. In fact, it seems that the composer’s aim was to make the listener feel like there is only one flute playing instead of two: the sound, the articulation and the phrasing of each must be as similar to one another as possible. Needless to say, these are the greatest difficulties to deal with for the musicians. Furthermore, the pieces were written to accompany the lives of the aristocracy, for example celebrations and tea parties, which is why this kind of music is also called ‘salon music’. The two flutists made their recording using the first edition sheet music published by Sieber in Paris, c.1786.

The trio sonata was one of the baroque period’s most popular instrumental forms. While in its ‘classic’ form it features two higher pitched instruments, a melodic bass instrument and basso continuo, there were several others, including a popular variant for one high-pitched instrument, one bass instrument and continuo, chosen by a substantial number of composers in the 17th century and beyond, and resulting in a significant number of compositions.

In this setup, the writing for the melody instrument is more virtuosic than in a ‘conventional’ trio sonata, and it performs more of a solo role, unlike in the trio sonata, where it is more a first among equals. At the same time, the bass instrument is used idiomatically instead of being relegated to a mere basso continuo. This contributed greatly to bolstering its role as a solo instrument, and it was given ever greater prominence as the second half of the 17th century progressed.

From the numerous Italian composers who wrote for this genre, for this album Mvsica Perdvta have selected the two who had the greatest influence on the establishment and development of chamber music: Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643) and Dario Castello (1602–31). The first edition of Frescobaldi’s Canzoni da sonare a uno, due, tre e quattro, published in Rome in 1628 (and later republished in a slightly different version in Venice in 1634) sits chronologically between the two books of Castello’s Sonate concertate in stil moderno, published in Venice in 1621 and 1629 respectively. While Frescobaldi’s canzoni can be considered the culmination of a genre that was already in decline, Castello ushered in a form that, evolving through countless different variants, would for centuries remain the leading chamber music genre. Castello’s style is faithful to the promise of its title: it still sounds very ‘modern’ for its time, especially when – as in this album – it is paired with the oeuvre of Frescobaldi, the epitome of the instrumental canzona.

Completing the CD is a short work by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (Venice, c.1580 – Rome, 1651), the only sonata that the composer known as the ‘Tedesco della tiorba’, or ‘German of the theorbo’, wrote for this ensemble, taken from Il primo libro di Sinfonie a quattro con il basso continuo (Rome 1615).The sonata à tre was one of the most typical instrumental forms of the Baroque era. While in its 'classical' form it calls for two treble instruments combined with a melodic bass instrument and basso continuo, it had several 'variants' in the ensemble, including the one for treble instrument, bass instrument and continuo, which was very popular. In this formation, to which a substantial number of composers (not only of the 17th century) dedicated an important number of compositions, the part of the treble instrument presents a more virtuosic and soloistic writing than that of the 'conventional' trio sonata. At the same time, the bass instrument, not reduced to the sole function of basso continuo, is treated as an equal melodic counterpart.

This new recording presents the two composers who most influenced the birth and development of instrumental 'chamber' music, namely Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) and Dario Castello (1602-1631). Whereas Frescobaldi represents the pinnacle of an older style, the works of Castello look forward and form the basis of the chamber music style of centuries to come. The soloist of this recording is David Brutti, playing the Cornetto, a hybrid instrument with the fingerholes of a woodwind and a brass-type mouthpiece. Renato Criscuolo plays the bass violin, and the organ or harpsichord is played by Nicola Lamon.

Hans Sitt (1850–1928) was an extremely important personality in the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, and also a remarkably prolific composer. Among all this activity, he found the time to transcribe all (!) of Beethoven's nine Symphonies, among others. 

His decision to transcribe them for violin and piano instead of for two piano so common in hus era, allows him to make the violin a part among parts, to immerse it in the (very rich) piano fabric, sometimes giving it a thematic role and sometimes not. 

His transcription of the Ninth ends up revealing many aspects of the original score of which one had never been aware. In addition to being splendid to listen to, if only in that obvious sense of the formidable challenge it poses to the performers, it becomes an important and unexpected tool for delving deeper into the structure of the Beethovenian masterpiece. And for this we shall forever have to thank him.

REVIEW:

Sitt has succeeded magnificently in distilling the original material, but it also presents a great technical challenge for the two performers, which Loguercio and Piemonti meet with bravura. But it is not only the virtuoso that they rise to, for their playing is musically satisfying as well, especially in the slow movement, where they make the music effective with subtle moods.

-- Pizzicato

Highpoints of virtuosity in Bach’s output and the Baroque organ repertoire, in new recordings by an organist with a rich catalogue of success on Brilliant Classics to his credit. As well as a host of obscure composers, Manuel Tomadin has recorded many central figures in the organ repertoire, from Buxtehude to Rheinberger. His Bach discography includes the Leipziger Choräle, BWV 651-667 (94556) and an original ‘Harmonic Seasons’ album (95786) pairing preludes and fugues with chorales that tell a story of rebirth and quiescence through the four seasons. For his latest album, he turns to undisputed highlights of the repertoire: the collection of six sonatas in three parts which Bach compiled in the late 1720s. By then he had settled into his post as Capellmeister in Leipzig, and with this set of works was evidently aiming to leave his contribution to the already rich literature of trio sonatas which had originated some decades earlier in Italy and subsequently spread across Europe, as a means of crossing sacred and secular divides with music conceived for performance by either a single keyboard player or a chamber group of musicians Being Bach, however, he determined to produce not merely another volume in the library. While he drew the material for the trio sonatas from earlier pieces, he refined and adapted them with all the ingenuity and harmonic invention at his disposal, making the finished set among the most demanding pieces ever written for the organ, then or now. The trio sonatas are accordingly often performed by a trio of chamber musicians, but there is a special freshness and virtuosity to be savoured when they are played, as here and as originally intended, by a single organist. As Manuel Tomadin notes in his valuable booklet introduction, the six sonatas run the gamut of expressive feeling, from a gravity of pathos in the central Largo of the C minor Sonata No.2 to the irrepressible joy of the finale to the C major No.5. He has made these new recordings on an instrument with an excellent Bachian pedigree: the Bosch/Schnitger organ (1686/1720) of the Hervormde church in the Dutch town of Vollenhove, and the booklet includes a full specification for the instrument.

Born in 1949, Fabio Vacchi stands among the pre-eminent Italian composers of his generation. Working primarily in the operatic field, he has had pieces staged at the Teatro alla Scala and by the Opéra Comique in Paris, the Opera de Lyon, the Maggio Musicale in Florence and the Teato Comunale in his home city of Bologna. Vacchi’s instrumental pieces have attracted similar high-profile performances. His chamber cycle Luoghi Immaginari (1987-1992), has been given across the world, including at the Salzburg Mozarteum conducted by Daniel Harding. Other pieces were commissioned by Claudio Abbado and by the Tokyo Quartet.

The most substantial piece on this new collection of his chamber pieces was commissioned by the Swedish guitarist Magnus Andersson and first performed by him in 1997 as a guitar concerto; this Quintetto Notturno Concertante dates from 2012 and is a masterful condensation of the complexities of the original, rich instrumental texture, while preserving its fleeing moods and subtly shifting changes of harmony. At the other end of this collection, Livia Rado sings Flow my Dowland, a rapturous transformation of five songs by the Elizabethan lutenist, in which the original vocal part is richly embroidered by Vacchi’s own modern reimagination of the accompanying part, scored for a small ensemble of winds, strings, vibraphone and harp, to melting and magical effect. In between come a pair of solo works, though in fact Plynn quotes Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland as a study of harmonics on the guitar, evoking its most dreamlike and insubstantial timbres. The earliest piece here is a Suite for flute and guitar, dating from 1971. Here, the 22-year-old Vacchi is at his most experimental in terms of both form and harmony, employing extraneous elements such as pen and paper and sending both instruments to the extremes of their register, though always with an intrinsically idiomatic sympathy. Any listener with an ear for the Italian postwar avant-garde will find this newly recorded album full of delight and discovery.

Recent scholarship on Luis Misón (Mataró, 1727–Madrid, 1766) demonstrates the growing interest among the musicological community in studying the life and work of one who is an essential composer in the history of Spanish music. Musical historiography has extolled Misón's contribution to the genre of the tonadilla escénica, a genre widely appreciated in his time and which must have had a notable influence on his instrumental music, about which less is known. His talent as a flautist was appreciated within the noble circle of the House of Alba, where musical academies were held in which Misón actively participated and for which he composed 12 sonatas for transverse flute and bass dedicated to the Duke of Alba. These pieces were located in the archives of the House of Alba and described in 1927 by José Subirá (1882–1980), but unfortunately they disappeared during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The discovery of the five hitherto unknown Sonatas for Flute and Bass by Misón represents a substantial contribution to the Spanish chamber music repertoire of the second third of the 18th century for this instrument, given the scarcity of pieces written by Hispanic composers contemporary to Misón in which the flute is definitely the real protagonist. Moreover, they are sonatas which, from a technical point of view, pose interesting challenges to the flautist, something that highlights Misón's mastery of the flute, in accordance with surviving documentation of the period.

Ortega explains that José Teixidor (c.1751–c.1811), vice-master of the Royal Chapel from 1778, considered his works to be no lesser than those of the best-known foreign composers and said of him that he was an unequalled performer on the transverse flute. The sonatas are found in five musical manuscripts preserved in the Lebrija Palace in Seville, a stately home dating from the 16th century, which in 1901 became the property of Regla Manjón y Mergelina (1851–1938), Countess of Lebrija. With regard to the sources, it seems unlikely that any of the five are autograph. (Although up to five different copyists have been identified, there is nothing to suggest that any of them could be Misón, himself.) Generally speaking, the sonatas are characterised by the importance of melody, regular phrases and steady rhythms, as can be seen in the elaborate seisillos of the Allegro moderato of the Sonata [No.3] in G major. Overall, the basso continuo line is simple – excepting the B section of the Allegro of the Sonata [No.4] in G major (undated) – allowing the role of the flute to stand out prominently. This recording is the culmination of a long process of recovery of Spanish 18th-century musical heritage that deserves to be disseminated, studied and enhanced. After more than two centuries of silence, Misón's music is heard again.

Operatic, early-Romantic fantasias for solo flute by one of the great names of Italian opera. Laura Trapani’s previous album for Brilliant Classics brought wider renown for the sparkling flute-writing of Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries (96132). Now the Ferrara-based flautist turns her attention south to another overlooked figure of the early 19th century, Saverio Mercadante.

Mercadante learnt the flute as a child and became a virtuoso on the instrument during his training in Naples while learning the craft of an opera composer which would bring him fame across Europe. One of his earliest successes for the stage was a ballet based on the legend of a magic flute - unrelated to Mozart’s masonic tale - and from the 1820s onwards, audiences flocked to Mercadante’s lyric dramas for their pacy drama, memorable tunes and arias that displayed the great singers of the age to best advantage. His Capricci also date from this early stage of his career. Comparable to the more celebrated caprices for violin by his elder contemporary Paganini, they are technical studies which stretch the technique of the most accomplished flautists, and they dazzle the ear with their lightning runs, filigree figurations and flourishes. The Capricci have received recordings from celebrated flautists, whereas the later Arie Variate have been relatively overlooked, and this release marks only their second recording, and the first to be made for CD. They are fantasies on popular operatic arias in the style of the piano potpourris and paraphrases which would be raised to an art-form by Franz Liszt a generation later. The chosen themes are mostly drawn from operas of the late 1810s such as Rossini’s Armida and Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, but they range from Mozart’s Don Giovanni to Mercadante’s own Gabriella di Vergy of 1828. Laura Trapani thus restores to the catalogue a shining example of early Romantic instrumental virtuosity.

Federigo Fiorillo (1755-1823) is principally remembered now as a composer, and in particular the author of a set of solo Caprices which formed a method of which formed a method of instruction for every advanced violinist. Until now, however, they have never been recorded on Fiorillo’s ‘second’ instrument of the viola; and indeed complete recordings of the set, even on violin, are very few.

With this new recording, Marco Misciagna demonstrates that these 36 pieces have much more than pedagogic interest to them. While they systematically address technical issues in the bow arm and fingering, testing the player’s technique for playing octaves, multiple stopping, passagework, chromatic scales and so on, Fiorillo was a Italianate melodist who naturally wrote and thought in long, cantabile lines which are as grateful to hear as they are to play.

Born in 1984, Marco Misciagna studied in Bari and Rome and then with Salvatore Accardo; he now lives and works in Spain. Among his previous recordings is a Brilliant Classics album of a similar undertaking, the 41 Capricci for viola by Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751–1827).

Ferdinand Ries may still be known almost exclusively to the musical world as Beethoven’s friend, pupil, secretary and first biographer, but Brilliant Classics have done much to broaden our understanding of this significant figure in the Vienna of the early 19th century with albums of his own compositions, notably his sonatas for violin, cello and flute and his Piano Quintet.

The Op. 28 Clarinet Trio is one of Ries’s best-known pieces, as well it might be for the mellifluous appeal of its writing for all three instruments. The two sonatas for clarinet and piano are much more Romantic-sounding, atmospherically evocative and forward-looking pieces. The Op. 29 work begins with a passionately pleading slow introduction, which segues masterfully into a main Allegro of positively Schubertian vitality. After a brief but deeply felt slow movement, the finale mirrors the first movement’s form and intensifies the tempestuous, troubled expression of the sonata as a whole. The E flat major Sonata Op. 129 is all sunshine compared to Op. 29’s storm and thunder: a delight from start to finish, inflected by the kind of Italianate drama and cantabile that began to make its mark on German and Austrian composers in the 1810s and 20s,

As one of Belgium’s foremost clarinettists, Vlad Weverbergh has his own big band and klezmer group, but he is also a member of I Solisti del Vento, the wind ensemble uniting the finest Belgian wind players. He has made a specialty of reviving, performing, and recording lesser-known treasures of the clarinet repertoire, as well as collecting and playing instruments from the rich history of the clarinet, such as the unusual clarinetto d’amore which he uses on this recording.