Scelsi Bach is a project by Isabella Fabbri (saxophone) and Rocco Parisi (clarinet), whose intention is to relate some masterpieces for solo instrument written by two emblematic characters of the music history: Bach and Scelsi. Although they came from different times, separated by about 200 years, there are many common aspects that unite them. First of all, they share a process of writing that oscillates between monody and polyphony, where a motivic cell is elaborated in a coherent and essential language, apparently simple. Then, the improvisation is often the starting point of their compositions and the nurturing force that generates structures in a finely tuned form. The obsessive interest in geometric shapes and numbers is visibly present all along their work and spirituality inspires them to create music that reflects the transcendental. Finally, the sound is for them the foundation of everything. This is the point of view of "Scelsi Bach", where the music of Bach and Scelsi talk at a distance in the present time through the voice of two very similar musical instruments. Lastly, the will of the interpreters is to let the composers meet in impromptu compositions, where their languages can blend and become something unexpectedly new.

Antonio Rugolo, after winning two Golden Guitars in 2014 and 2018 at the International Guitar Conference of Alessandria with his two latest releases dedicated to two Apulian composers, Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) and Guido Sant�rsola (1904-1994), he presents a new monographic work dedicated to solo guitar music by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). With his creativity and skill Villa-Lobos has revolutionized the way of conceiving and handling the guitar, reaching very high levels of poetry and technical development never before achieved. A reason of particular interest in this album is certainly the listening (for the first time) of how in '28 Villa-Lobos delivered the Suite Popularie Brasilienne to the publisher Max Eschig, which twenty years later was forced to be rewritten because it was lost; in the same year he wrote for Miguel Llobet and Regino Sanz de la Maza, a version enriched in various details, of Choros n. 1 that here you can listen to it together with the Cinq Preludes and the Douze Etudes.

With this first record, titled Profili, a collaboration (already consolidated) is born between the record label Digressione Music and the Festival and Competition "Wanda Landowska"; the latter, dedicated to the Harpsichord in all its stylistic and expressive variations, is directed by Margherita Porfido. The three young musicians we present here are the harpsichordists Davide Cicconi and Svitlana Rudd, and the violinist Juliane Oberegger, who were Absolute Winners of the "IX Edition of the 2022 Competition", the first two as W. Landowska Ex Equo Prize - Solo Harpsichord, while the two young musicians together for the Chamber Music section. The composers chosen for this recording are the great German musician Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), whose French Suite No. 2 in C minor BWV 813 and Toccata in D major BWV 912 are performed by harpsichordist Davide Cicconi, and the French composer Elisabeth Claude Jaquet de la Guerre (1666-1729) with the Second Suite for solo Harpsichord (1687), performed by Ukrainian Svitlana Rudd, and the First Suite for Violin and Harpsichord (1707) performed by Rudd and Austrian violinist Juliane Oberegger.

Paying homage to the past to dialogue with the present is the ambitious motive of the project. A metamorphosis that aims to transcend tradition towards contemporary perspectives and potential, projecting the notes into an eclectic universe where there is no lack of research, continuity and emulation of the past. The composer Daniele Sardone and the Re-Imagine Duo, formed by Dario Doronzo at the Flugelhorn and Pietro Gallo at the Piano, offer a wide-ranging repertoire that embraces new sound explorations in which classicism and modernity blend. A tribute to tradition expressed in the freshness of a current idiom, a continuous and consolidated dialogue between sounds, colors, stories, cultures, synergistically confluent in a new music that finds the cornerstone of its knowledge in its reinterpretation. The new compositions, like metaphors, are not simple rhetorical artifices but an unprecedented paraphrase of the classical world. The musical ideas of the famous baroque composers are reinterpreted but not betrayed, thanks to the ability to rethink the different musical structures by updating them, breaking them down and re-composing them as in a game of mirrors and references, in a completely new guise that enhances their profound meaning. The sacredness of the classical tradition and its mitigated magniloquence finds echoes of intimacy, illuminated by a courageous artistic experimentation. The linear amplitude of time moves between flash-backs and flash-forwards that transport the notes into a surreal dimension, in a Baudelairian doctrine of correspondences that creates a new and poetic artistic statute. The project is enhanced by the guest appearance of Gabriele Mirabassi on clarinet.

Giovanni Maria Sabino was an Italian composer, organist and teacher that lived and worked in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. He was born into a family of composers, and at the age of 14 he went to Naples to study under Prospero Testa. In 1627 he became maestro de capella at Castel Nuovo, and later was organist at Oratorio di San Filippo and maestro di cappella at the Santa Casa dell’Annunziata. This recording of his Vespers for Five Voices, featuring Ensemble Barocco, has never before been released. Also included are two motets by Antonio and Francesco Sabino, his brother and nephew, respectively. The ensemble is directed here by Paolo Valerio.

CONZASIEGGE is an expression in the dialect of Molfetta (a town in Apulia), indicating an ancient craftsman: the man who repaired chairs. Vincenzo Valente (1830-1908) was inspired by the “chant” of those trying to draw the attention of this craftsman, when he created his funeral march that he therefore called “Conzasiegge”. This record collects five of the most beautiful marches that animate the Holy Week processions in Molfetta, introduced by the typical sound of the “Ti te” that opens every procession. The original feature of this repertoire in the album is its version for mandolins that in the 1940s saw the barbers, especially Sabino Andriani, as refined and cultured amateurial players.

Salvatore Sica is a world-renowned composer and orchestra conductor. He gained four degrees in musical subjects, graduating with full marks in Composition and Music Teaching. He also brilliantly gained the degrees in Orchestra Conducting and Piano. He has written symphonic music, chamber music, music for choir, theatre, cinema and documentaries. His music has been performed both in Italy and abroad; he has also written didactic texts and articles about music. He has worked for several Authorities, such as Rai, Fondazione Petruzzelli (Bari), Vicariato di Roma, Collegium Musicum. He attended the post-graduate courses in Composition at the 'Accademia Chigiana' in Siena with Azio Corghi, Luciano Berio and with Ennio Morricone for film music. Morricone said about him '...his music is elegant and poetic...'. This release features the compositions that he wrote for the film Peace Love Freedom, as well as the film Chiara.

This album is not about merely travel - it is about storytelling, it is about the power of suggestion in music and it is about the evocative power of the word. An intineray perhaps, but an imaginary one; a fascinating journey into twelve tracks, twelve pages of a travel book that describes very distant places, and yet told. ''Invisible Cities'', Italo Calvino's masterpiece, along with ''The Book of Travels'' by Benjamin of Tudela are pre/texts which freely inspired a concept album that focuses and revolves around many crucial issues: the role of art in life, the profession of the artist both as a creator and unreal realities and as an inventor of place; the viewer's task when he has to choose consciously and deliberately to be carried away by illusion.

The Gershwin Quintet has followed a quite original path. They are a group made, not by chance, by four saxophones and a piano (sometimes you can hear the sound of a flute) which, thanks to the help of two solo voices, realizes a detailed single-subject analysis. From the famous songs to the Fa Concert, the ensemble leads the audience to the discovery of the two faces of the great musician, on the one hand the pianist who loved to improvise jazz melodies and on the other the ambitious composer to make his way into the world of music. A blueprint for American music, rhythmic and malicious at the same time, reinterpreted with freshness and elegance from an unreleased ensemble to the feminine.

My Garage is the second album from Daniele Di Maglie, songwriter-poet and writer. My Garage tells socially uncomfortable stories that aim to mirror the ins and outs of everyday life. Those who, like him, feel the need to transfigure their own experience and to tell themselves, almost always come from a conflicting relationship with life. The present recording project has a different sound from the previous one, a little darker; Gianni Gelao's flute interventions, as well as Pipino's accordion, are useful to open glimmers of light and give back to the songs the fresh and sincere musical atmosphere. These 13 melodies with experiments of pure fun and seriousness are all covered by a light blanket of retro dust, the true marker of Daniele Di Maglie’s musical flair.

Possibili Percorsi is an album of refined melodic pop that borders on jazz and southern rhythms- the true roots of the Italian singer-songwriter Rita Zingariello. Phil Mer has added a high dose of realism with his production. On the album there are moments to close your eyes and float in midair, as if to breathe a sigh of relief, between minimal touches of guitar or piano, as in "Risalire," in "Gray, black, white," "Sometimes the case," "Existence," "Beyond the stars," "Love is not hungry," as well as to get to discover the warm and earthly soul of the singer-songwriter from which comes a deep Mediterranean feel (see "Escape," "Hero," "Unconditionally," "Between a second"). Rita presents her songs in simple and true terms; her vocal timbre, delicate and crystalline, then acts as a natural amplifier for these concepts. In the ten tracks of this album, the protagonists are dreams, love songs and small personal revolutions, songs that tell stories and expose common pains, those that every person faces, revenge and admissions to oneself with a common thread that is called hope.

Pomponio Nenna performed his musical activity mainly between Naples and Rome. The first printed edition of the Christmas Responsory dates back to 1607 and gives a precise idea of Nenna's stylistic elevation, highlighting the wise and sophisticated skill he had achieved in the counterpoint technique; this is evident in the fluid and casual way the single melodic lines relate to each other and, at the same time, vertically overlap in sometimes daring harmony, fully accepting the characteristic of an era that was passing from the modal world to the tonal one. The source for performing and recording the present album is the original print of the work stored in the Library of the Conservatory of S.Pietro a Majella in Naples.

From great torment to immense serenity. Carlo gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was the creator of the most extreme version of musical Mannerism, a formal-technical experience deeply linked to the biographical experience, where the dissonance and chromaticism, the violent dynamic contrasts and the melodic lines seem to dry up the sound instead of enriching it, communicating a tormented state of mind. In 1603, Gesualdo became more interested in religion, when his uncle Alfonso Archbishop of Naples, died on February 14th. This loss deeply affected Carlo, so much that he fell into a ''serious indisposition'' as he wrote to Cesare d'Este, on February 22nd. His health deteriorated rapidly and he even experienced mental disorders - at the same time he developed a morbid veneration of St. Charles and his relics. In 1603 he published in Napoli, for the publishing house of Constantine Vitale, 39 polyphonic pieces in two books entitled Sacrae Cantiones, on penitential texts. In the following years, Carlo was increasingly overwhelmed, enshouded in a dark obsession over his offenses, a prostration that was expressed well in Responsoria in 1609, and published in 1611.

Kabalevsky was born in Saint Petersburg in 1904 and soon moved with his family to Moscow where he studied piano at the Scriabin Musical Institute. During his adolescence he already began teaching piano lessons, composing simple pieces for his students and for silent films. In 1925 he entered the Moscow Conservatory as a student of Ab Gol'denvejzera for piano and of N.Y. Mjaskoskij for composition. He graduated in 1930. By the 1930's Kabalevsky was appointed as an assistant instructor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory, and by 1939 he was a full professor. This period until 1942 is considered to be Kabalevsky's strongest. During this time he wrote much incidental music for radio and stage. On this new release, Italian pianist Maria Gabriella Bassi performs his 24 Preludes for Piano Op. 38.

Raoul Stéphane Pugno was born in Montrouge (nowadays a Parisian suburb) in 1852 by a French mother and an Italian father, a piano seller in the Parisian Quartier Latin. As a child, he attended the Paris Conservatory, revealing himself a very brilliant piano and composition student, but too young, he paid his democratic engagement in favour of the Commune with a twenty year exile from the official Parisian musical life: to earn his living he served as a church organist, composer of salon piano pieces and opérettes. Finally, in 1893, aged 41, he debuted in Grieg’s Piano Concerto substituting Louis Diémer, and shortly he toured Europe and the Usa as an ambassador of the piano French music in the world.At the piano, Pugno was a refined performer of the romantic repertoire. As a man, he was a generous person, loving poetry, art objects, fond of women and good food. His music is a vivid testimony of his romantic sensitivity, a faithful portrait of his epoch. For the first time, this cd presents two Pugno’s albums of melodies for voice and piano, Choches du souvenir (1908) and Amours brèves (1899), based on the poems of the Belgian symbolist poet, Maurice Vaucaire. Les Heures claires (1910, poems by Emile Verhaeren) marks the collaboration with 23 year old Nadia Boulanger, Pugno’s collaborator and lover. They were together in Moscow, when he died in 1914.