Very few contemporary composers are capable of creating music, or more precisely, 'philisophical sound works', in the manner of Carlo Alessandro Landini. The sensations evoked by his music in the listener are a continuous and incessant reminder of the concept of space-thought, of heart becoming mind.The Arditti Quartet enjoys a world-wide reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier 20th century music. Many hundreds of string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by first violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974. Many of these works have left a permanent mark on 20th century repertoire and have given the Arditti Quartet a firm place in music history. World premieres of quartets by composers such as Abrahamsen, Ades, Andriessen, Aperghis, Birtwistle, Britten, Cage, Rihm, Scelsi, Sciarrino, Stockhausen and Xenakis and hundreds more show the wide range of music in the Arditti Quartet’s repertoire. The ensemble believes that close collaboration with composers is vital to the process of interpreting modern music and therefore attempts to work with every composer it plays. The players’ commitment to educational work is indicated by their masterclasses and workshops for young performers and composers all over the world.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Francesco Landini was the most famous Florentine Trecento composer, known for being a multi-instrumentalist, most notably a virtuoso on the organ. As known, he lost his sight at the age of 7 but, despite his disability, he excelled in the study of music and all liberal arts. Might the condition of blindness have affected the poetic production of Landini? LaReverdie together with Christophe Deslignes, investigates this hypothesis, with a new project that presents both well known masterpieces and pieces never recorded before, searching signs that might be eventually impressed in the verses and the music of Magister Coecus by the loss of his sight. The reference to the eyes from literary topos becomes in many Landini’s texts a melancholic poetic expedient to express the distance, the absence or the loss of the beloved woman, that only “the heart’s eye” (L’Occhio del Cor) is able to imagine. A project which fills the recent recording void on a fundamental author at the sunset of the Middle Ages, reread through a perspective never explored until now. A passionate work on the strict bond between poetry and music, well explained by Davide Daolmi, is associated to a necessary musicological research about sources.

The Codex of Guardiagrele includes several compositions by artists (from Abruzzo and other regions) that worked in Guardiagrele at the Santa Maria Maggiore church. These compositions expose the then-richness of polyphonic music in this region. The Codex includes several early 15th c. manuscripts of liturgic missals conserved until 1979 in Guardiagrele. Directing the De Bon Parole ensemble in this world premiere recording is Marco Giacintucci, who also realized the reconstructions.

The CD is dedicated to the figure of Florentine Francesco Landini, composer, organist, poet, cantor and organ-maker. He was teh greatest representative of the musical style known as Ars nova, born in France in the first half of the XIV century and thence propagated throughout central and northern Italy, especially Milan, Verona and Florence. All the pieces in the program are contrafacta, that is they have a sacred text different from the original secular one. Such a technique of substitution is very old and was used from the XII century on. While listening to the varied pieces of the CD we may immerse our fantasy into the atmosphere of medieval Florence, where ideally a minstrel begins to pal in the street, almost improvising, while inside an oratorio some learned musicians are singing an abstract and quite sophisticated song.