This recording features a very special newly built organ, showcasing it in the roles in which its predecessors were used in their heyday at the turn of the 16th century. This particular type of organ, small in scale and with open pipes all made of Italian cypress wood, was one of which perhaps the most important composer of his time, Claudio Monteverdi, was particularly fond, and yet it’s practically nonexistent today. It was during Le Nuove Musiche’s great undertaking to record the complete cycle of Monteverdi’s Books of Madrigals that director Krijn Koetsveld began to feel the need for an organ capable of recreating the sound typical of that era. He explored possibilities for realizing such a project, and gradually the idea to reconstruct an organ befitting the Italian musical practice from around 1600 took shape. He approached the Netherlands’ Nationaal Muziekinstrumenten Fonds, and they embraced the idea, consulted organist Pieter van Dijk and awarded the organ building contract to Klop Orgelbouwers. No original organs from Monteverdi’s time have survived, and very few illustrations exist. But it was possible to reconstruct his beloved organo di legno (wood organ) on the basis of contemporary accounts, which describe, in addition to the open, wooden pipes, hand-operated bellows, creating a much lower wind pressure than that of modern organs. From Monteverdi’s instructions in the organo di legno part of his Vespers, such instruments are also known to have had several stops.

In his 80s, Jean Françaix (1912-1997) supervised this 1996 Dutch album of four pieces for varied forces, writing the engaging booklet notes and performing with undimmed skill in the Divertimento which he wrote back in 1953 for the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. As he notes, the title is somewhat ironic for those who play it: ‘if it is “diverting” to listen to, it is not at all so to play it and requires great virtuosity.’ Le Colloque des deux Perruches (The Dialogue of Two Parakeets) is a modern classic of the repertoire for two flutes: a six-movement dialogue opening with a fluttering, swooping Allegrissimo, followed by a melancholy little Larghetto. Smiles and laughter are never far away in Françaix’s music and the mood brightens with a darting Scherzando. The fifth movement is another plaintive Larghetto, with the parakeets in earnest conversation. As a 22-year-old composer of already remarkable fluency, Françaix composed the String Trio for the Trio Pasquier, who went on to play it in over a thousand concerts: an inimitably bustling, weightless piece in four movements enclosing a wistful Andante and rounding off with one of those Françaix tunes that turns round in the listener’s head for days afterwards. The ten-minute Cantate de Méphisto sets a text by Paul Valéry: according to the composer, ‘This 'Méphisto' is terribly authentic, cunning, subversive and perverse.’ The devil wheedles and beguiles in a lyric parlando, accompanied by a string ensemble, spiced by the irony and satire of his operas and comedies such as Le diable boiteux, his first work for the stage. Valéry’s text is printed in the booklet. Françaix’s music features in countless compilations: here is an authoritatively performed opportunity to immerse yourself in his world for ‘une heure exquise’.

“I could not have written it better myself!”, remarked an astonished Brahms on hearing the 18-year-old Erno Dohnányi’s Opus 1 (the First Piano Quintet) in the summer of 1895. Often hypercritical and disparaging of other composers, Brahms was so impressed by Dohnányi that he promoted his music in Vienna. Just two years later the elder composer passed away, but he might have remarked similarly about Dohnaìny’s Cello Sonata in B flat of 1899. This magnificent composition sounds undeniably like an affectionate homage to him. In 1902, Dohnányi performed the Cello Sonata in Frankfurt with Hugo Becker, one of the most famous cellists and pedagogues of his time, and a few years later Becker would be the dedicatee of Dohnányi’s Konzertstück in D Op. 12 for cello and orchestra, which the composer also arranged for cello and piano. Dohnányi and his friend Béla Bartók, three years his junior, always admired each other, though they could not have differed more in terms of style and character, their diametrically opposed approaches particularly apparent in their use of Hungarian folksongs. By contrast to Bartók’s innovative ethnomusicological perspective, Dohnányi continued presenting gypsy melodies in the Romantic fashion of Liszt and Brahms, as evidenced in his Ruralia Hungarica Op. 32, a cycle of seven pieces scored for various forces, one of them (Op.32d) being for cello and piano.

REVIEW:

Ernst von Dohnanyi (1877-1960) was a fine Hungarian composer, beloved by Brahms and Bartok and cellist Hugo Becker, to whom he dedicated the 25-minute Konzertstück, Op. 12. That was originally for cello and orchestra, which explains why the piano takes off on its own so much. It is effective. Ruralia Hungarica consists of pieces for everything except the kitchen sink, but only this 6-minute piece is actually for cello and piano. Both artists work together well and are recorded with warmth. This is the only place to find the Konzertstück played with piano.

-- American Record Guide (David W. Moore)

From Arturo Toscanini and Sir John Barbirolli to Riccardo Muti and Antonio Pappano in our own time, Italian-heritage performers have often brought special qualities of sympathy and understanding to Edward Elgar’s (1857-1934) music. Now comes a new recording made in the ‘boot’ of southern Italy, lending Mediterranean warmth and passion to a trio of Elgarian masterpieces. The Sicilian-born cellist Giovanni Sollima has made well-received albums for Brilliant Classics of music by Offenbach (94475) and by his father Eliodoro Sollima (96287). His latest recording, made at the Teatro Politeama in the one-time ‘lace capital’ of Europe, Catanzaro, illuminates one of the core works of the cello literature with an affecting sense of line and sensitivity to the melancholy introversion which colors every bar of the Concerto composed by Elgar in the wake of the First World War. Twenty years earlier, Elgar’s reputation was secured with audiences across Europe and America through the whirlwind success of his “Enigma” Variations. The stoic beauty of ‘Nimrod’, the gentle wit of ‘Dorabella’ and the nervous excitement and pride of the autobiographical finale spoke directly to listeners who would never know the composer or his ‘friends pictured within’. The agitated, impassioned voice of Elgar in the Variations belonged to its end-of-Empire time and place, orchestrated with a mastery which would soon draw the admiration of Richard Strauss and many more musicians on the other side of the English Channel. Even that quintessential expression of Englishness, the first of five marches which Elgar collected under the Shakesperean banner of “Pomp and Circumstance” and later repurposed to set ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ for the finale of his Coronation Ode, won the composer standing ovations when he conducted it in concerts across mainland Europe. Under the affectionate baton of their music director Filippo Arlia, the Orchestra Filarmonica della Calabria interpret Elgar’s music with a sensitivity and extroversion worthy of the composer.

Beethoven’s Triple Concerto Op.56 for piano, violin, cello, and orchestra was unique in the musical literature at the time, and he knew it: he proudly wrote to his publisher that the combination of a piano trio with an orchestra was entirely new. But the innovations go beyond the combination of concertante instruments, extending as well to the importance accorded the orchestra, elevated to the status of an equal, symphonic protagonist alongside the three solo parts alone, in all possible pairings and as a threesome. This was new, and the audience was indeed perplexed when the work was first performed in Vienna in May 1804. There is no indication that the concerto was performed a second time during Beethoven’s lifetime.

The Piano Concerto in E-flat “Number Zero” (WoO 4) is a work rarely performed and therefore practically unknown to the wider public. Written by Beethoven in 1784, at the tender age of 14, it comes down to us as an unsigned 32-page manuscript with the author’s corrections: the solo piano part and the piano reduction of the orchestra parts are completely preserved, but the orchestral score itself has been lost. This manuscript was discovered in 1890 in the archives of the Artaria Foundation and was transferred to the Berlin State Library. It was published that same year. Beethoven researcher Willy Hess later restored the orchestral parts on the basis of the preserved material. The first outing of this careful, accurate work was given in 1934 by the pianist Walter Frey in Oslo (first part only), and the complete reconstruction was performed in 1968 at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

J.C.F. Fischer was likely Bohemian, and a very influential musician and composer in his day. Little is known of his career until the 1690s, when he was named capellmeister to Ludwig Wihelm of Baden, where he remained until his death at Rastatt. His largest and perhaps most significant work is the Musicalischer Parnassus of 1738, a collection of keyboard pieces organized into nine suites. In it, Fischer combines the French orchestral style with the German style. Each of the suites is named for one of the nine Muses. This recording features movements from the Urania and Euterpe suites, along with a Prelude and Chaconne from his remaining oeuvre. This repertoire is usually associated with the harpsichord and rarely performed on the organ, yet there are similarities with the “variations” style so often employed by Buxtehude and Bach in organ works.

Kerll, the Saxon son of an organist and organ maker, showed musical promise from a very early age. He travelled to Vienna to study under Valentini, then capellmeister at the Viennese Imperial Court, and he converted to Catholicism, which later led him to Rome where he likely had contact with Carissimi and Frescobaldi. He was named principal musical director to the Elector of Bavaria in 1656, and became one of the most acclaimed composers of his day. His influence on Handel and J.S. Bach is notable. His works display a mastery of the Italian concertante style and highly developed contrapuntal technique.

The three compositions on this album were all created at turning points in Dvořák’s life, when radical changes in his situation impacted his creative career. His Serenade for Strings was composed in 1875, the year the impoverished musician became a successful composer almost overnight. Each of its five movements is a variation on ternary (A–B–A) form. The resourcefulness with which Dvořák invents novel ways of returning from the middle section to the opening motive and key is astounding.

Silent Woods has much to do with Dvorak’s relocation to America. He was engaged to establish and direct a new National Conservatory in New York. Based on his now established ability to blend Czech folk music with large-scale classical forms, it was hoped he would do the same in his new post with American folk music. In 1892, before leaving his home for the US, Dvorak gave something of a farewell tour of Czech cities, writing the cello version of Silent Woods for performance on these recitals. Ten years later, Dvorak created the version for cello and orchestra recorded here. At the conclusion of his time in New York and on his return to Bohemia, Dvorak was focused particularly on writing his Cello Concerto. At first believing the cello an unsuitable instrument for concertante music, his mind changed on hearing a concerto by American composer Victor Herbert; Dvořák’s masterpiece took on definitive form in 1895.

Though Frederick II of Prussia, better known as “the Great” (1712–1786), was one of the greatest strategists of history; he found a way of reconciling his army life, his battles, and his political determination with his passion for the flute and for music in general. He played every day, even when he was at war, and in the course of his life he composed, among other things, 121 sonatas and 4 concertos for flute, annotating some of these works with the phrase ‘Frederick composed [it] amidst torments’.

In Potsdam Frederick had teachers of extraordinary skill, ranging from Johann Joachim Quantz to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and while he was certainly influenced by their style, he also proposed a style of his own that was not only closely associated with forms of ‘recitative’ influenced by vocal music, but also inspired – in certain respects – by his masonic faith. In fact, in his music one finds interesting esoteric symbolisms associated with numerology, masonic keys and the concept of the initiatory journey. Almost all the sonatas for flute and continuo are in three movements in an ascending progression of tempos: Adagio, Allegro, Presto. Of particular interest is the Sonata in C minor (King’s Catalogue No.190) in which an introductory Recitativo and an Andante cantabile lead to the closing movement, which is a Fugue (the only example of this genre of composition in all his works). Moreover, the subject of the fugue includes an evident reference to the ‘Thema Regium’, the famous theme that the King gave to Johann Sebastian Bach during their meeting in Potsdam in 1747, which formed the basis of the Musical Offering BWV1079.

This new recording presents two composers who stood at the cradle of the Golden Age of Spanish Renaissance, Bernardino de Ribera (c.1520- c.1580) and Juan Navarro (c.1530-1580). Both were connected to the Cathedral of Avila and in their musical capacity they were the teachers of several masters-to be, among them the great Tomas Luis de Victoria. During his early musical years, Victoria sang the music of Ribera and Navarro on a daily basis, and they taught him everything he needed to know about polyphony, singing, counterpoint and organ playing. This disc presents also works by de Victoria and Sebastian de Vivanco.

These are superb performances by the Spanish vocal ensemble Amystis, specialized in presenting hidden gems from the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque. Their previous recordings for Brilliant Classics with works by Cabanilles and Comes gained excellent critical acclaim in the international press. Early Music Review: ‘Amystis are worthy exponents of this glorious music, negotiating its considerable complexity with aplomb.

Attilio Malachia Ariosti (1666-1730) was born in Bologna, Italy and became a well-regarded violinist, organist, composer and librettist. He took vows at the order of the Serviti as Frate Ottavio in 1688 and was appointed organist in the church of S. Maria dei Servi in Bologna in 1693. He travelled to Mantua and Venice, the most enlightened musical and artistic centers of northern Italy and then moved to Berlin and lately to Vienna in 1703. Expelled from the Papal State for moral reasons, in 1716 he lived in London where, together with Bononcini and Handel, he became a permanent composer of the Royal Academy. At the King's Theater he played viola d'amore in the intervals between the acts, "...a new symphony composed by the famous Mr. Attilio Ariosti in which he will play a new instrument called viola d'amore".

The Six Lessons for Viola d'Amore, published in London in 1724 and dedicated to King George, are harmonically and melodically appealing and were composed expressly to teach violinists to play viola d'amore. The viola d’amore has six or seven strings and the same number of resonating "sympathetic" strings placed under the bridge, which produce its warm, ringing timbre. On the final track, soprano Elena Bertuzzi joins violist Mauro Righini and continuo players for the chamber cantata Pur alfin gentil viola.

Born in Rome in 1678 into a family of German origins, Nicola Francesco Haym (1678-1729) was employed as a violone and cello player by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in the orchestra led by Arcangelo Corelli. Later he moved to London where he took a leading role in establishing Italian opera which was beginning to flourish, while serving as a continuo cellist in the Drury Lane theatre and the Queen’s Theatre. In 1713, Haym started to work as librettist for Handel and the collaboration continued until 1728. During this period Haym acquired the role of secretary at the Royal Academy of Music. Haym’s sonatas with flute are the first flute sonatas by an Italian composer to be published. The Sonate a Tre (Op.2) and the Sonate da camera a flauto traversa, haubois o violino solo, are strongly influenced by Corelli in the profound knowledge of counterpoint and the wide spectrum of expression of feelings and affects. From his familiarity with Corelli’s music, Haym was able to assimilate the gravity of style and nobility of expression while retaining his own musical personality.

Played by the Cappella Musicale Enrico Stuart, consisting of Chiara Strabioli (transverse flute and recorder), Romeo Ciuffa (recorder and transverse flute), Rebeca Ferri and Marco Vitale (harpsichord). Founded in 1998 the Capella Musicale Enrico Stuart specializes in 17th- and 18th- century repertoire in which wind instruments play a central role. They previously made for Brilliant Classics highly praised recordings of Boismortier and Valentini.

Renowned in his day as a virtuoso keyboard player, Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) was the most important Italian composer of keyboard music between Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti. In that capacity his output has output has been surveyed by Brilliant Classics with authoritative collections of his sonatas for harpsichord (94286) and for two organs (94347). However, Pasquini also composed more than 70 cantatas of the concise and dramatic kind written by the young Handel after he arrived in Rome in 1706. By that late stage of his life, Pasquini had held one distinguished post after another in Roman musical life and become known as one of its celebrities, as celebrated for his abilities at the harpsichord as his contemporary Corelli was on the violin. Most of his vocal music remains unpublished, which makes the pioneering efforts of Capella Tiberina in this field especially welcome.

This new recording forms a sequel to their 2013 album of two Passion Cantatas (94225) and makes a powerful case for Pasquini as Rome’s leading dramatic composer of his day. Among Pasquini’s surviving cantatas, the six scored for solo bass stand out, for their keen sense of theatre and expressive rhetoric. They take Biblical history, tales of Roman history and pastoral-erotic tropes for their subjects, and they are imaginatively presented here as a cycle, interleaved with pieces for harpsichord, as though recreating a refined evening of music-making at a Roman palazzo around the turn of the 18th century.

Capella Tiberina is led in these stylish accounts by the harpsichordist Alessandra Nigito, who has made a particular study of Pasquini’s vocal music and edited several of his cantatas for modern publication. There is no more authoritative current exponent of this music, and she is joined here by other experienced performers on Italy’s rich early-music scene.

Born in the northern port city of Trieste in 1912, the Italian composer Giulio Viozzi worked and lived in the region throughout his life before his death in Verona in 1984. He composed in a modal, melodic, diatonic language inflected by Bartok but essentially shaped by native traditions of cantabile writing whether for instruments or voices. Viozzi’s music for the theatre won success and performances throughout his lifetime, notably the opera Il sasso pagano (1964), which makes the modern neglect of his output all the more surprising: this is the only modern album available which is dedicated to his music, and it should introduce many listeners to a distinctive voice in the musical landscape of 20th-century Italy.

As he explains in his booklet introduction, Andrea Gallo was astonished when he first encountered Viozzi’s music for guitar, through the Fantasia (1964), which itself reworks two shorter earlier works, a Gavotte and Brasileira both indebted to the folk tradition. He finds a magical, surreal quality to Viozzi’s repetitions and his evocation of mood in a piece such as the Chromatic Study of 1982. While Viozzi wrote several fantasias for three guitars, his solo output for the instrument centers around the more Classical forms of the Suite variata (1978) and the Sonata (1984), also in three movements. Two works of the mid-70s, the Itinerario and Racconto, are more experimental in technique and impressionistic in mood. This album introduces the names of both Viozzi and Andrea Gallo to the ever-growing library of guitar music on Brilliant Classics. Born in 1990, Gallo studied at the conservatoire in Milan and is based there while giving recitals and appearances across Italy and farther afield.