Nino Rota achieve international recognition primarily as a composer of film music. His most admired and enduring work in this field sprang from his collaboration with Federico Fellini. However, his orchestral music has recently undergone a reappraisal. Much of this music is rare on CD and this programme is unique. Recorded in: Teatro Massimo, Palermo, Italy 19-21 July 2002 Producer(s) Gian Andrea Lodovici Sound Engineer(s) Matteo Costa

Leone Sinigaglia is a musician who deserves to be rediscovered. He was a Jewish composer who was born in Turin on 14 August 1868 and died there on 16 May 1944 in front of the military force that had come to arrest him in the Ospedale Mauriziano, where he had sought shelter from the Nazi-Fascist persecution. During the period of his education in his native town, Sinigaglia often stayed in Milan, where he struck up important friendships with Antonio Bazzini (a violinist and composer who was professor of composition from 1873 and became director of the Conservatory of Milan from 1881 onwards), and with his pupils Alfredo Catalani and Giacomo Puccini. Bazzini urged him to travel to Europe to complete his training with the great names of the era, first of all Brahms, who, however, not accepting pupils but recognizing their value, diverted him to Eusebius Mandyczewski, a teacher of great fame and professor of composition at the Vienna Conservatory. From these years in Vienna came the great masterpiece by Sinigaglia: the concert for violin and orchestra included in this prestigious live performance by the young world star Laura Marzadori, first violin of La Scala in Milan. The album includes two pieces for cello and orchestra performed by the refined soloist Fernando Caida Greco, and the delicate orchestral piece "Regenlied." Marco Zuccarini leads with great confidence the Citta di Ferrara Orchestra in this live concert organized by the "Comitato dei grandi Maestri".

Under the banner of a renewed interest in comic opera - at least as far as the opening titles were concerned - the 2013 edition of Martina Franca's Festival staged the first modern performance of a late work by Leonardo Leo (1694-1744), the "commedia pastorale" in three acts, L'ambizione Delusa, on a libretto by Domenico Canic�. This delightful rural comedy plot has as a counterpart truly wonderful music, rich in beautiful and original melodies which, rather than being harmonized, are set by Leo to contrapuntal accompaniments, showing Leo's great compositional mastery.

Serge Gainsbourg remains one of the most influential artists of the 20th century to this day. In this second volume, Olivier Julien and Frederic Regent have gathered all of Gainsbourg’s works from the period 1960-1962, a little-known period when French song was in transition, in a context where rock ’n’ roll was emerging at the same time as the beginnings of the tidal wave in French pop they called “Ye-Ye”. This 3CD set contains titles sung by not only Gainsbourg himself, but great stars of the early Sixties, including Juliette Greco, Philippe Clay, Catherine Sauvage and Petula Clark. Patrick FReMEAUX

Fernando Suarez Paz joined the Quinteto Nuevo Tango at the request of Astor Piazzolla in 1978, and he toured with the ensemble until their disbandment in 1988. In his decade of performing alongside Piazzolla, Paz recorded 18 albums all over the world. The first track on this album, Escualo by Piazzolla, is dedicated to Fernando Suarez Paz. The New York Times gave Paz a 7-star rating after his performances alongside vibraphonist Gary Burton at various jazz festivals across Europe, Japan, and the United States. Fernando’s son, Leonardo Suarez Paz is featured on this release. Leonardo grew up alongside Astor Piazzolla and was mentored by both Piazzolla and his father. He directs tango projects all over the globe, and his productions have appeared in such venues as the Lincoln Center in New York, and the Teatro Colon Opera House in Buenos Aires.

Agostino Steffani was a musician, as well as an important state and church figure. Active in Munich, Hannover and Düsseldorf, he was highly appreciated also in London, where in 1727 the Academy of Vocal Music would make him honorary president. Baccanali, dating from 1695, is a series of reflections on the sentiments, joys and sorrows of man's life, made by eight characters set in a pastoral context. The Titan Atlas is entrusted with the prologue, which has the purpose of introducing to the events and summarizing their purpose: men should be granted a pause from their sufferings and labors at least during the days consecrated to Bacchus, the soother of all ills. Over witty verses, Steffani weaves a rich score, characterizsed by great writing variety. The young interpreters stand out not only for their beautiful voices but also for their reciting skills. The success of Baccanali must also be ascribed to the baton of Antonio Greco, who expertly leads the Cremona Antiqua Ensemble.

Having studied with the great Bach bass Peter Kooy - who has made his own distinguished recordings of these solo albums - David Greco has established himself as a fine interpreter of oratorio and opera throughout Australia and Europe. He has sung with Ton Koopman's Amsterdam Baroque Soloists as well as Monteverdi with Le Nuove Musiche - acclaimed for their Brilliant Classics recordings of the madrigals - and taken the role of Aeneas in Purcell's opera at the Brisbane Baroque Festival. David Greco's partnership with Luthers Bach Ensemble stretches back to his time as a student in The Netherlands in 2009, and this album marks the culmination of over a decade of performing the works of J.S Bach together. These solo bass cantatas are often reserved for singers of more mature years due to their weighty themes of worldly fatigue, death and redemption, but the interpretations here are infused with youth and cosmopolitan openness, with the aim of finding a united expression and interpretation in order to pay tribute to the universal nature of J.S Bach's music, and to the personal, touching expression at the heart of each musical phrase. 'I've always had a deep affinity for this music,' says David Greco, who enjoyed a breakthrough moment in appearances with Dame Emma Kirkby, doyenne of early-music sopranos. 'I think it's an aesthetic thing because I find it to be super passionate and Romantic in the truest sense of the word. The boundless possibilities of expression interest me very much and I just feel so at home with it.' These three cantatas all date from the full flower of Bach's maturity as Capellmeister to the Church of St Thomas in Leipzig. All three explore the very Lutheran longing for death as a state in which the soul is reunited with God in peace, finally relieved from earthly torments. Lamentation and consolation are thus united in arias of sublime beauty.