Carlo Andrea Gambini (1819-1865) was passed over by the compilers of Grove’s dictionary, and almost none of his diverse output has been preserved on record. Here, then, is a marvellous chance to catch up with the thoroughly entertaining work of a musician, Genoese born and bred. He was no organ specialist but a musician of diverse talents who composed for the stage, with at least three operas to his name, the concert-hall, including symphonic tone-poems and concert-overtures. His extant output, however, centres on church music. L’organo moderno Op.106 is a collection of 24 versets for organ: brief pieces of hugely varied character, designed as inserts to cover or accompany variousstages of the Mass that would otherwise be silent. Gambini is an imaginative composer for the organ’s timbral possibilities: flutes, horns, bassoons, and Vox Humana stops are all given solo spots. These are then further exploited in the Concertone per molti stromenti, which features folk-like melodies. In his own booklet introduction to Gambini, Marco Ruggeri explains that he has chosen to arrange some of the composer’s piano music for organ, such as excerpts from the Capricci caratteristici Op.55 and the Scintille elettriche Op.90, whose work-titles (chorale, toccata and so on) suggest a compatibility with the organ. Le Quattro Stagioni Op.128 was composed at a time when Vivaldi’s now ubiquitous cycle of concertos was completely unknown. Made up of four parts, one for each season, the work expresses the composer’s perceptions of nature (evoking birdsong, storms and ice), and of seasonal rituals, both sacred and secular (hunting in autumn, a prayer following a summer storm, winter dances). The organ music of lesser-known, 19th-century Italian composers has been explored by Marco Ruggeri on several Brilliant Classics albums. Here he plays on the instrument built by Ernesto Lingiardi in 1854 for the Church of St. Vittore, Calcio, in the Lombardian province of Bergamo.

The cello was a beneficiary of the remarkable flowering of high culture sponsored by both ecclesiastical and aristocratic patrons in early 18th-century Naples. In 1717, Rocco Greco (1650-1718) became the last appointed player of the viola da gamba in the Royal Chapel dedicated to the treasure of St Januarius, the patron saint of Naples. Both Greco and his colleague Gaetano Francone (c.1650-1717) produced new music for the cello which was suitable for performance within the liturgy of the chapel. Rather as composers of alternatim organ masses wrote elaborations of chant for the organ to be played between the chanted verses of the liturgy, so Greco composed 11 virtuosic ‘diminutions’ which were elaborated from the bass part of vocal motets setting Vespers texts. In performing the diminutions, Malagoli prefaces them with a chanted version of the Gregorian antiphon on which the motets were based. The resulting sound is an Italian-accented equivalent to the viol ‘divisions’ which English composers such as Locke and Simpson were producing at this point. Both lively and melancholic in mood according to the key signature, these brief Diminutions and Passagagli both demand a virtuoso technique from the performer and a degree of imaginative flair in the interpretation of the manuscripts. Matteo Malagoli’s world-premiere recordings satisfy both criteria. As a gambist and cellist, Malagoli has explored the history of bass string instruments for several decades, both in solo recitals and as a chamber musician and a continuo accompanist to several renowned Italian early-music groups. He is ideally placed to bring unrivalled authenticity and style to these new discoveries, which place the cello in an unusual context of sacred music and brings two significant Neapolitan composers to light: an essential album for all early-music enthusiasts.

This double album is the third and last volume of Easy Studies for Guitar. The aim of the series has been to collect original works for the guitar by 20th- and 21st-century composers that fulfill didactic functions as well as being entertaining to play and listen to. Many of the studies here are receiving their first recordings, and the pieces by Biberian, Cavallone and Franco are so far unpublished. Music by the Belgian organist and composer Jean Absil (1893–1974) shows the influence of Wagner in the same way as his better-known compatriot Franck, and he absorbed the music of Milhaud and Schoenberg during his time in Paris. However, the Pièces Caractéristiques of 1964 capture a piece of sunshine no less than the folk- inspired Sei Canzoni Ebraiche by Cavallone or the Sette Aphorismi of Franco, even while certain movements exploit the more mysterious, nocturnal character of the guitar. The idea for Brèves de Pupitre sprang from Olivier Chassain’s work as a teacher, arising from his students’ basic technical needs or flaws – as well as his own. Cristiano Porqueddu is a distinguished editor and composer as well as performer, and he has selected an especially attractive set of Ten Studies for Guitar from among the many unpublished works by Gilbert Biberian, a British composer/guitarist born in 1944. Perhaps the set’s most intriguing rarity comes from the gifted Viennese composer Ferdinand Rebay, active in the early decades of the last century, and featured on a couple of previous Brilliant Classics albums; though himself a pianist rather a guitarist, he was encouraged to turn to the guitar by a fellow-professor and also by his guitar-playing niece; he eventually composed around 600 pieces for the instrument, including these Ten Little Songs without Words.

Dating from Dussek’s years in London, where he fled from the aftermath of the French Revolution, the trio of Op.14 sonatas (1791) belongs to the same genre of ‘accompanied sonatas’ as Opp. 9 and 10. Designed for performance by accomplished, aristocratic amateurs, these works have ad libitum violin parts, to be played (or not) by a gentleman, while a lady could amuse herself with the technically stiffer demands of the keyboard part. Indeed the violin parts filled in by Dussek are often so insubstantial that the works can in truth be considered keyboard sonatas, full of pianistic, brilliant, soloistic writing. The separate G major sonata was composed in 1788, while Dussek was still in Paris: a technically challenging and musically forward-looking work which already bears some of the early 19th-century impressionism that would become a feature of early 19th-century piano music in England. There are always surprises around the corner in these sonatas – harmonic twists, flourishes, sudden pools of pathos – but Dussek places them in the context of taut and familiar sonata forms: he takes the ear on strange journeys, but keeps the listener company while doing so. Bart van Oort is one of the Netherlands’ most renowned exponents of ‘historically informed’ performance of Classical-era keyboard repertoire, with a catalogue on Brilliant Classics that encompasses the complete piano music of Mozart (94198), many of Haydn’s sonatas (95298) and early Romantic repertoire by Chopin and John Field (92202), among others. He is joined here by the Hungarian-born pianist Petra Somlai, professor of fortepiano studies at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag.

The second of three settings that can firmly be attributed to Durante, the G minor Requiem is dated 27 November 1738, by which time the composer was established as a senior figure in the vibrant and fast-moving culture of 18th-century Naples. Durante was a contemporary of Nicolo Porpora and Leonardo Leo, whose Salve Regina settings have been newly recorded on another recent Brilliant Classics album (96092) but they were better known as operatic composers; Durante’s fame and reputation rested then and now on his music for the church, which is noble without ponderousness, moving without sentimentality, elegant without triviality. Compared with other Neapolitans, Durante was not prolific; he strove instead, within the conventions of his age, to strike a popular tone with intimations of the sublime, and he did so by using startling dissonances, expressive use of dynamics, diminished chords and chromaticism. The G minor Requiem demonstrates all these features. It is scored for two four-part choirs, strings and two hunting horns used exclusively in the ‘Tuba mirum’. Even a casual glance at the score shows why Durante was greatly sought after as a counterpoint teacher and also why composers as different in as Pergolesi and Paisiello can be numbered among his pupils. Previous recordings have used large choirs, but performing the Requiem with small forces highlights the madrigalian qualities of Durante’s style, with an emphasis on solo rather than choral lines, as well as achieving much tighter ensemble and more precise intonation. Several of the soloists on this album also featured on the previous Brilliant Classics recording by the Astrarium Consort with their founder/director Carlo Centemeri, of motets by Giovanni Paolo Colonna (94647). ‘Soprano Francesca Cassinari has a particularly appealing sound (for me). Her clear, pure voice serves the music well… The Astrarium Consort has a good ensemble sound.’ (wtju.fm)

This release marks the debut on record of Galàn, a spirited, UK-based young ensemble committed to rediscovering the exciting and neglected sound world of three soprano voices and continuo. Specialising in European Renaissance and Baroque music, the group is accompanied by theorbo and harpsichord, and takes its name from the old English term for 'enchantment' and 'to sing'. The group was originally inspired by the Concerto delle Donne, at female trio that performed in Ferrara at the end of acceptance in Europe for the female voice the 16th century. This ground-breaking ensemble led the way in gaining as a worthy instrument for respectable entertainment. The title track is a brief but ardent meditation on the madness of love by one of Monteverdi’s most accomplished contemporaries, the Roman priest Domenico Mazzochi. More expansive is the cantata Siam tre miseri by another Roman composer, Giacomo Carissimi. Luzzasco Luzzaschi, with O Dolcezze and Non sa che sia Dolore, ranks alongside Monteverdi and Sigismondo d’India as a pioneer in the seconda prattica style which privileged the declamation of text over the smooth polyphony cultivated by Palestrina and his school. Monteverdi’s mastery of sacred and secular idioms are both represented here, with O viva Fiamma and Cantate Dominum as well as the harmonically tortured Ohime, dov’e il mio ben. The most significant rarity here, probably receiving its first recording, is Lo Specchio: a 20-minute cantata by the Vienna-based Antonio Draghi (1634-1700), who gradually advanced through the ranks of the Hapsburg Court to become Kapellmeister in 1669. Plaintive, passionate and always dramatic. It is music that cannot fail to capture the imagination.

This recording, from friends and collaborators Federico Bracalente and Daniele di Bonaventura, stems from an idea they had almost 10 years ago: to merge the sounds of their respective instruments, the cello and the bandoneon, into a single sound. After a long period of research and experimentation the artists settled on the polyphonic vocal repertoire of the 15th and 16th centuries to realise their vision, reworking it through the inclusion of free and improvised parts. The practice of improvising pieces to alternate with other writings was commonplace during this musical period. Tinctoris in ‘Liber de arte contrapuncti’ describes the custom of Cantare super librum - the ability of the performers to elaborate a counterpoint to the mind. Taking advantage of the vocal characteristics of the two instruments – the extensive range and singing likeness of the cello and the two liturgical registers of the bandoneon (left hand and right hand) – the artists perform this music as if they are three singers, inserting it into a new tonal instrumental framework. In two pieces, Bracalente and di Bonaventura use an overdubbing technique to enable the cello to simultaneously perform the parts of Superius and Bassus (in Alexander Agricola’s De tous biens plaine II) and create a polyphonically more complex fabric in Jean Mouton's 8-voice motet Nesciens Mater.

Following Andrea Coen’s 2010 recording (94021) Brilliant Classics is the only label with two complete versions of Giustini’s sonatas on the market, showing its commitment to significant but under-recorded turning points in musical history. Lodovico Giustini (1685-1743) seldom left his native Pistoia, where he worked as organist of the Congregazione dello Spirito Santo. Published in nearby Florence in 1732, this set of 12 elegant sonatas is, in keeping with Scarlattian practice, dominated by movements in binary form, featuring dances and contrapuntal excursions, and displaying hints of the emerging galant style, which replaced busy Baroque continuo textures with a singing, more natural approach. Giustini enjoys high contrasts, soft and loud, and teases out of the new fortepiano technology everything it had to offer. However, the extant scores are not free of errors, and they leave a good deal up to the performer. Paolo Zentilin makes the most of Giustini’s writing. He has corrected the obvious errors, and he exhibits taste and technical mastery in his playing of a modern, beautifully conditioned Fazioli piano. Exploiting the instrument’s tonal resources while remaining respectful of a Baroque sensibility, his playing is consistently passionate but never overblown, with an attractive full-bodied tone, and an exquisite sense of dynamic control. Extremely soft passages are executed with no loss of rhythmic vitality. Ornaments are rendered with delicate crispness. The music’s character - whether a regal dance or a study in tenderness—is always projected with sincerity and authenticity. No matter how intricate the counterpoint, the result remains genuinely heartfelt, never mechanical.

- This recording illustrates the development of the Tuscan organ school of the 19th century. The collection ranges from Father Antonio Casini’s brilliant compositions, with their echoes of contemporary opera, to the classical refinement of Luigi Ferdinando Casamorata, whose work occasionally reveals a recourse to counterpoint, and to the heartfelt romanticism of Giovacchino Maglioni, where melodic élan and imposing sound require extraordinary virtuoso skills, including the extensive use of the Pedal.

- To capture the original sound and spirit envisaged by the composers, for this recording organist Matteo Venturini has selected two period instruments. With its brilliant, direct voice, the monumental organ at Corsanico lends itself perfectly to the brilliant compositions of Father Antonio Casini. The organ in the Basilica di Santa Maria di Nazareth in Sestri Levante, with its intriguing solo register sound and magnificent tutti voices, was chosen for the works by Casamorata and Maglioni. The technical specifications of these instruments are included in the booklet.

- Matteo Venturini, one of the foremost organists of Italy, has already successfully recorded for Brilliant Classics, works by Gronau, Weckmann and Müthel.

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’.

From the moment of its founding in 1937 by the Dutch pianist and conductor Felix de Nobel, the Netherlands Chamber Choir showed itself to be an ensemble of exceptional quality. Poulenc and Frank Martin were among the many foreign composers who dedicated works to the 24-strong professional ensemble, and its repertoire extends with exceptional versatility back to the early Middle Ages up to the present day, having undertaken distinguished partnerships with the most prestigious Dutch instrumental ensembles including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestra of the 18th Century and the Schönberg Ensemble. Nevertheless, at the heart of the NCC’s repertoire is the under-rated library of sacred and secular music by Dutch composers, of which this 1993 album is a superlative example. While the sumptuous Romantic voices of Alphons Diepenbrock (1862-1921) and Julius Röntgen (1855-1932) were known quantities, at least to inquisitive listeners, the remarkable originality of the “Requiem” by Daniel de Lange (1841-1918) arrived like a bolt from the blue. Composed in 1868, the work was forgotten until its rediscovery late in the last century and belated publication in 1992. Plainchant-like sections alternate with polyphony which would not sound out of place in a Palestrina Mass and bare harmonies which, in isolation, could have strayed from an Ockeghem motet. Yet the overall effect is entirely coherent, and as poignant in its setting of the text as the long-buried a capella Requiem by Herbert Howells. This recording remains the most significant representation of de Lange’s music on record; long unavailable, its magical beauty can be encountered afresh.

John Ernst Galliard (Celle, 1687 - London, 1747) was a German composer, oboist, flutist and keyboardist active in England in the first half of the 18th century. The son of Jean Galliard, a French wigmaker, he learned to play the flute and oboe from Pierre Maréchal, a French member of Celle's court orchestra. He himself joined the orchestra in 1698 and, shortly afterwards, studied composition in nearby Hanover with Agostino Steffani and Jean Baptiste Farinelli. In 1706 Galliard went to London (like his compatriot Georg Friedrich Händel), where he became court musician to Prince George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne of Great Britain, and later also chapel master at Somerset House. Galliard enjoyed an excellent reputation as an oboist, and so joined the orchestra of the Queen's Theatre, playing in various performances of works by Handel, who wrote oboe parts especially for him. The Six Sonatas for Recorder and Harpsichord were published in London in 1711. In this collection there is an elegant and smooth fusion of styles: from the orderly counterpoint of the youth in Hannover to the virtuosity and brio of the Italian baroque, from the flavor of the English tradition that only occasionally transpires to the nuances of French taste that are evident in several movements. Played by Fabio Martignago, who learned his art with specialists like Dan Laurin, Kees Boeke, Han Tol, Stefano Bagliano, Lorenzo Cavasanti, Manuel Staropoli and Alfredo Bernardini. Angelica Selmo studied with Luca Guglielmo and followed master classes with Pierre Hantaï, Roberto Loreggian, Skip Sempé and Bart van Oort.

Where next after Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet? Try these duos and trios by Georg Friedrich Fuchs (1752-1821) in newly recorded period-instrument performances. Born in the German city of Mainz in 1752, Fuchs was a pupil of Haydn’s before becoming a wind-band leader and composer. Aged 32, however, he moved to Paris, and established his name there, teaching at the conservatoire and composing for many French publishers with an eye to the fast-developing market for attractive music for winds, especially the clarinet, accessible to amateurs. His experience as a working musician in the French National Guard prompted him to produce Harmoniemusik – wind-band music – for various combinations of such instruments, without string accompaniment, as the duos and trios found on this album. There is also a brief Pot Pourri on arias of Paisiello conceived for the unusual combination four clarinets, two horns and two bassoons. Between 1803 and 1805 he produced six trios for three clarinets, and Luigi Magistrelli has chosen to record three of them, along with Fuchs’s ingenious arrangements of six arias from Mozart’s Magic Flute, which weave melody and accompaniment between the two instruments, producing pieces satisfying to both play and listen to on their own terms. As a clarinetist and ensemble leader, Luigi Magistrelli has built up a considerable Brilliant Classics discography of lesser-known repertoire from the Classical and early Romantic eras. Most of his albums feature first recordings, and he is joined by Italian colleagues who have equally extensive experience in historically informed performances (using instruments of the time, often returning to the original manuscripts) of 18th- and 19th-century music.

Stefania Scapin’s performance on YouTube of Debussy’s Clair de lune eloquently demonstrates how sympathetically the impressionist writing of French composers translates to the harp in the right hands. Here in partnership with the flautist Andrea Manco, who joined the Orchestra of La Scala Milan in 2014, she presents some of the best-loved masterpieces by three giants of turn-of-the-century French music. An opening trio of Debussy numbers includes the evergreen Rêverie, ideally suited to the dreamy colours of flute and harp. The Arabesque which would usually form an ‘instrumental interlude’ precedes the two brief but voluptuously harmonized Romances. The Cinq Mèlodies Populaires Grecques and Deux Mèlodies Hèbraïques by Ravel make a piquant contrast with their much more melismatic writing for the melody instrument, exotically soaring above the accompaniment. The album ends in a mood of refined melancholy with seven songs by Fauré, including another Clair de lune as well as Chanson d’amour and the unavoidable Après un rêve, subject before now of countless arrangements which have rarely captured the rapturous ecstasy of the original like this transcription. As Stefania Scapin observes in her booklet notes, the flute becomes the voice of the poetic text without expressly 'speaking'. It nevertheless communicates the poetic meaning through those melodious qualities which distinguish it as an extension of the human voice. The harp becomes a secure but suspended base between the here and now of the plucked string and an unpredictable and mysterious continuation of sound. This delicate balance of sound and memory belongs to the language of the French impressionists, and these performances will afford delight as well as insight into the original songs.

Born in Rome around 1610, Francesca Campana evidently benefitted from an education accorded to very few women of her time. Little of her background is known, but her talent and opportunity combined to cultivate gifts as a singer, keyboard-player and composer. The collection of arias recorded here was published in 1629. It enjoys the notable status of the very first published collection of music solely dedicated to a female composer. Francesca dedicated it to the Mantovan nobleman Luigi Gonzaga, and it was followed the following year by a book of madrigals; after which time she almost falls from the historical record save in her marriage to Giovan Carlo Rossi, brother of the opera composer Luigi Rossi. However, the collection’s 15 arias are well worth investigation on account of their musical as well as their historical significance. Francesca’s style is inclined to dissonance in drawing out the expressive potential of her texts, though not to the extreme degree of Gesualdo or Marenzio. Her imaginative command of form lends great variety to the collection, as it seems to conduct an artfully constructed debate between the values of prima prattica polyphony and seconda prattica motet style; between vertical and horizontal musics, and the age-debate between the primacy of text and music. This first complete recording of Francesca’s collection is undertaken by the Rome-based early music group Ricercare Antico under the direction of its founder-leader and lutenist, Francesco Tomasi. Their previous Brilliant Classics album of arias by Caccini (95794) attracted widespread praise. ‘Riccardo Pisani has an ideal voice for this music and he’s very well supported by the members of Ricercare Antico’ (MusicWeb International). ‘The grace and elegance of these arias is highlighted by Riccardo Pisani and the excellent accompaniment of Ricercare Antico’ (RSI Swiss Radio).