Charming salon miniatures and a grand funeral march by the verismo composer of La Gioconda.

Most of the pieces issued here were published in the 1870s and 1880s, and some of them are far more substantial than mere album-leaves. Yet they are hardly known at all; Riccardo Muti recorded an orchestration of the sombre and touching Elegia funebre from 1881, but Ester Fusar Poli’s new recording is the only available version of the piano original. Even more imposing in scale is the 16-minute Funeral March which Ponchielli wrote late in 1872 to honor the passing of the publisher Francesco Lucca. However, no Ponchielli album would be complete without a version of the ‘Dance of the Hours’ immortalized by Walt Disney’s hippos in Fantasia.

Ester Fusar Poli presents a beguiling sequence of elegies, nocturnes, polkas and tone-poems, demonstrating the composer’s expressive range and deft piano writing. An extensive essay by Gabriele Galleggiante Crisafulli considers Ponchielli’s piano output in the context of his career as a whole, making this album an important contribution to our understanding of a figure who was much more than a ‘one-hit wonder’.

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.

Sinuously beautiful solo motets by a little-known contemporary of Cavalli, imaginatively programmed with instrumental interludes by their Italian contemporaries.

It has been said before now that Cazzati's instrumental music was more inspired than his sacred-vocal work, but this album demonstrates otherwise with a sequence of motets which evolves from the more liberal style of the 1640s to the more severe style of the late 17th century. He was among the pioneers of the instrumentally accompanied motet in which violin lines are skillfully woven around the sung text. On the other hand, the two solo motets show a stark contrast, with the intimate Salvum me fac against the virtuoso war-like Qui bella geritis.

Three organ sonatas are also included, two of which were written by Cazzati’s own organists in Bologna: Giovanni Paolo Colonn, and Cazzati’s great enemy Giulio Cesare Arresti. A sonata by Bernardo Pasquini affords further contrast with the mostly grave devotions of the motets. All four performers here have extensive experience in the revival of little-known composers from the Baroque, and their stylish performances demand a reappraisal of Cazzati in the round.

John W. Duarte was born in Sheffield, England on 2 October 1919. He started playing the ukulele, but soon moved to the guitar at the age of 15. The advent of guitar phenomenon John Williams, whom Duarte taught for 18 months before the young musician’s entry into the Royal College of Music, London, gave the composer an opportunity to expand his chamber music oeuvre.

The Concertante Quartet Op.22, a substantial work in four movements. In 2021 the composer’s son, Christopher Duarte, discovered some folk songs arranged for guitar and small orchestra among his father’s manuscripts. There is no mention of these arrangements in his list of works and no correspondence relating to their creation, but from the composer’s handwriting these probably date from the mid-late 1950s and may have been written for John Williams to play with fellow RCM students.

Next Market Day, scored for piccolo, snare drum and strings, is an energetic rendering of an Irish love song which Duarte revisited several times. The Coolin of Rùm (or, The Rùm Cuillin), scored for flute, oboe and strings, is a tune from the Isle of Rùm, one of the small islands near the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides. Cuillin is the name for a range of mountains in this area and Duarte may have been alluding to the name of a previous owner of Rùm, Maclean of Duart.

Duarte began work on what became A Tudor Fancy in early 1967. Following A Tudor Fancy, a concerto in all but name. The Concierto alegre Op.101 (1986) is deliberately light in woodwind (2 flutes, one each of the rest), a trumpet, strings, but with a battery of percussion, including two vibraphones. As with A Tudor Fancy, the music proceeds in a variety of ‘conversations’, with the orchestration kept deliberately light when the guitars are playing.

Showpiece variations, folksongs, little-known trios and an early masterpiece: an unrivalled survey of Beethoven’s flute writing in new recordings by experienced Italian chamber musicians.

In writing his sets of folksong variations, the result always falls easily upon the ear while putting amateur musicians through their paces, technically speaking, and demanding far more of their expressive imagination. The other pieces here date from Beethoven’s earliest years as a composer in Bonn. The Trio for flute, bassoon and piano shows a strong Mozartian influence; the B flat Sonata for flute and piano is a striking example of the apprentice musician learning his craft and refining his voice, which emerges in the unexpected context of a modest Duo for two flutes. However, it is the seven-movement Serenade Op. 25, scored for flute, violin and viola, where we find Beethoven most elegantly adapted to the role of ‘occasional’ composer.

These new recordings are led by the flautist Ginevra Petrucci, who is now based in New York as a performer, editor and author of several volumes on the flute, and a specialist in new music. ‘A a very talented and well-educated musician,’ according to the Fanfare magazine review of her Brilliant Classics album of flute concertos by Briccialdi (95767).

Madame Hélène de Montgeroult (1764–1836) lived in a time when significant historical events were shaping France and Europe. Montgeroult's musical oeuvre is distinguished by its interpretive versatility. The collection of nine sonatas presented here spans from 1795 to 1811. The three sonatas that make up her Op. 1 are three distinct pieces, each with its own mood. The Op. 2 set was engraved in Paris in 1800, with reprints issued in the ensuing years testament to its success at the time. It can be seen as an expansion of Op. 1's stylistic language, sharing the same compositional features, but greater in length. With the last three sonatas, Op. 5, published by Érard in 1811, Montgeroult rose to mastery. These sonatas are considerably longer and more complex in their formal structure than their predecessors. Overall, the three sonatas in the Op. 5 set expand the form while retaining a Classical-like structure, comparable to later Clementi sonatas or those of other composers of the time, and forecasting the later experimentations of the Romantic generation.

Austrian composer Ferdinand Rebay (1880–1953) gave the guitar a fresh identity in the world of chamber music, transforming it from a mere accompanying instrument to a soloist in its own right. His vast oeuvre for guitar, which was overlooked by leading performers like Andres Segovia and Julian Bream, has enjoyed an enthusiastic and well-deserved revival in recent years. Rebay’s refined and dignified voice has made itself heard, thanks to the music’s
solid craftsmanship but above all its sincerity. Its rediscovery dispels many clichés and reassures us that humble yet beautiful music is not necessarily destined to be unjustly forgotten.

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.

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.

When we think of a concerto for solo instrument and orchestra, the organ is certainly not the first instrument that comes to mind. And yet, the symphonic organ is perfectly adapted to the role of soloist, being capable of duelling as well as duetting with the orchestra. The Concerto for organ, strings, horns and timpani Op. 100 by Marco Enrico Bossi, for example, is one of the most important and successful pieces in the entire repertoire, and yet it does not enjoy the recognition it deserves among the wider public. Structured in three movements of genuine expressive power, this is music that is both majestic and intimate, able to touch the hearts of listeners and performers alike – a work on which this great composer really lavished his extraordinary creativity.

Hymne by Joseph Jongen is a real rarity. The organ has less of a ‘solo’ role than in the Bossi and Poulenc works; rather, it blends into the warm textures of the orchestra as an integral part of the sonic conversational flow so typical of Jongen’s impressionist idiom. Here too, the composition of the Gland organ and its eminently full, warm and poetic sound are an ideal showcase for the mysterious atmosphere of this work.

Unlike the Bossi and Jongen works, the Concerto for organ, strings and timpani by Francis Poulenc is very well known indeed. Uncharacteristically written in a single movement divided into seven sections, this concerto is surely one of the best-known organ works of the 20th century. In certain sections the sonorous, weighty and deliberately strident organ writing is juxtaposed alongside orchestral textures that are extremely graceful and poetic, almost like a rough country giant trying to attract the attentions of a refined princess. At other moments, the organ imposes itself upon the orchestra, only to come together with it at other times, before proceeding to turn everything upside down once again.

Elegant Baroque sonatas for violin and basso continuo by a pair of little-known brothers, Pietro and Prospero, who belonged to Handel’s circle of talents in 18th-century London. Pietro (1679-1752) and Prospero (1690-1760) Castrucci belong to the generation of virtuosos who connected the development of violin playing from Corelli to Tartini, and took the Italian style abroad, combining it with the latest musical fashions of the time. Born in Rome, they studied with Corelli, but moved to London in 1715, which had become a European capital for music primarily thanks to the patronage of the English aristocracy and the celebrity figure of Handel. The Castrucci brothers played in Handel’s orchestra at the Royal Academy for the next 20 years, and Handel wrote obbligato parts for them in his operas. Prospero published only one collection, of six sonatas, in 1739; he seems to have been the more conservative of the two brothers, writing in a style reminiscent of his teacher Corelli, albeit decorated with bold flourishes characteristic of Veracini and Locatelli. The more innovative of the two was Pietro, who became more famous, wrote more prolifically and was published well beyond London. His violin writing is a crucible of invention, featuring bold strokes such as multi-tempo movements, arpeggiated chords on three strings, unisons with basso continuo, inverted mordents, and the kind of ‘arco battuto’ writing that Beethoven would later emulate. A pupil of Giuliano Carmignola, Marco Pedrona founded Ensemble Guidantus in 1995, specialising in music of the Italian Baroque. With them he has performed across Italy and further afield, giving highly praised performances of the canonic repertoire from Corelli to Pergolesi but also reviving many figures such as the Castrucci brothers.

As a pupil of Mozart and contemporary of Beethoven, Hummel was esteemed for the elegance of both his playing and his music. The opus numbers of these appealing quintets are misleading. The Op. 87 belongs to his early period, much more Classical and Mozartian in manner than the powerful Op. 74 which opens with a powerful D minor statement and continues in turbulent fashion as a work belonging to 1815, by which time the composer had achieved both fame and security.

A quartet of Dutch string players, experienced in the early-music scene, forms the core of the Nepomuk quintet, named after the composer on this album; they are joined by the pianist Riko Fukuda, who contributes an authoritative essay on Hummel and his piano quintets to the booklet.

REVIEW:

This is a very valuable release… The manner in which all five musicians construct musical phrases throughout is quite impressive. And their sound blends superbly … The refinement with which these musicians rediscover this relatively unknown music is simply astonishing … The sound of this recording is quite impressive too; the level of detail is amazing, and the spatial depth is compelling.

-- Fanfare

Performers and listeners alike have long gravitated to Louis Couperin's music more than to that of any other member of the French keyboard school of the time, probably because of its fascinating and surprising harmonic language. There are 129 pieces catalogued as authentic.

In making this new recording of all 129 pieces, Massimo Berghella has chosen to take the Preludes as starting points for ‘suites’ – 17 in all – which gather up the remaining dance movements into coherent sequences cast in the same key as the relevant Prelude.

Among the most distinguished active Italian harpsichordists, Massimo Bergella studied with Kenneth Gilbert at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He has a 30-year-long career as a teacher himself, as well as a performance diary and discography that has taken him across Europe for recitals, broadcasts and recordings. Of a previous album of d’Anglebert, La Nazione remarked that Berghella ‘grasps the reconstructive necessity of the scores, performing them in all their poetic complexity.’

The only complete available recording of a landmark in Elizabethan keyboard music. With a huge catalogue of Brilliant Classics recordings to his credit, Pieter-Jan Belder has won particular praise for his ambitious project to record the complete Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), a treasury of English keyboard music from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean era. Now he focuses his attention on the greatest English composer of that age, with a volume dedicated to William Byrd, and to his largest single collection of music for the keyboard.

My Ladye Nevells Booke embraces the most popular genres of its day. Its contents are typical fare for English Renaissance composers: dances, variation sets, marches, contrapuntal fantasies and programmatic pieces, and the repertory comes from a period beginning in the mid 1560s. Byrd makes each of these genres his own with consummate ingenuity; the variety and the beauty of the collection as a whole rewards players and listeners alike. The CD booklet contains an extensive essay on My Ladye Nevells Booke by Jon Baxendale, who is co-editor of the latest edition of the score.