“Bohemian Stories" encapsulates an intimate introspection of some "musical tales" from the Bohemian Romantic chamber music repertoire for violin and piano. In the 19th century we are spectators to an awakening of national consciousness that spreads to literary salons and theaters through the tendency of musicians to want to emancipate themselves from the ways of the hegemonic musical art, through a revaluation of popular heritage, highlighting characters of different historical-musical traditions. Freedom, independence, political autonomy, love of country and the security of one's own identity are the main driving forces of this era. The intent of the musicians of this era is to create a style that will elevate the country's musical language to a musical language of art, infusing it with new elements and an authentic national "character." In Bohemia, then included in the Habsburg Empire, this nationalist movement has a particular intensity, and by the late nineteenth century one can speak of a true "Czech style."

Among the earliest composers devoted to the exaltation of the particular pitch of the Czech melody we have Bedrich Smetana: a style of descriptive music writing in which he tells stories inspired by national legends, very remote historical events, natural landscapes, folk motifs, and rhythms of village dances. The other distinguished representative of Czech music of the second half of the 19th century is Antonín Dvorák, who enriched his vast musical output with elements drawn from the folk heritage not only of the Czech but also of other Slavic peoples (of Slovakia, Moravia, Ukraine, Russia). Leoš Janácek, that poor professor of music in the Moravian province, with a life without any great adventures or illustrious acquaintances, without too much travel and without recognition until the age of sixty where he totally identified with his inner self and his worldview. And the long story of this life of artistic struggles is told by him through his musical work. A hereditary prince of A. Dvorák, Josef Suk is a proponent of a particular nuance of late Bohemian Romanticism that is distinctly coloristic, stretching harmony to the utmost to create a more creative and personal style. Unlike his compatriots, he does not include too many references to traditional Czech music in his compositions.

From the discovery of roses laid on Claudio Monteverdi's tomb at the Frari in Venice by unknown admirers, comes this passionate story, which became a novel by Gabriella Bianco and records the inhibited passion between Ariadna and Levon, the failure of the union and in the painful denouement, Levon's renunciation of life and Ariadna's return to Berlin coinciding with the fall of the wall in 1989. In the background of this painful story, two constant presences shine, that of Monteverdi and that of Venice, in its languid evanescence and poignant beauty. The meeting with composers Monica Nasti and Daniela Nasti gave music to the words brilliantly underscoring each passage of the story, in absolute and loving homage to Monteverdi's music.

The fourth volume represents the "turnaround" of the six volumes planned for the creation of the box set containing all the Molfettese funeral marches performed during the rites of Holy Week. Recorded in November this volume marks the full post-pandemic restart. As always, our engravings are made with respect to what is traditionally performed during processions and in all the rites of Holy Week in our city.

Particularly in this volume we find two marches by Maestro Angelo Inglese "Doloroso Addio" and "Tragic Sunset"; the first march rarely performed in concerts and never played during Lenten processions represents for us a source of pride in popularizing these splendid works of rare beauty but little performed; the second work is certainly the most famous funeral march written by Maestro Angelo Inglese performed now also in neighboring towns and beyond. These parts donated to the Archconfraternity of Death - from the black sack, are made by the Maestro precisely to accompany the simulacra and the faithful during the processions, restrumenting and modifying scores and parts in order to make them easier and more easily performed by the band formations engaged during the rites of Holy Week. Completing the disc is a march of national caliber by Maestro Amedeo Vella, "Una lacrima sulla tomba di mia madre," and two other marches from the Molfettese folk tradition such as "U Conzasiegge" by Maestro Vincenzo Valente, certainly the best known of the marches by the people of Molfetta, and "Amleto" by Maestro Saverio Calò, a march that is performed as per tradition only during the Good Friday procession.

At Christmas we dress up festively by entering everyone's homes with this record. A record that speaks of Apulia through the great authors who have contributed significantly to the growth of generations of Apulian musicians, starting with Raffaele Gervasio and Salvatore Pappagallo. Here, fine music goes hand in hand with Sanda Necole va pe mare, which ends the record as a tribute to the folk tradition of Bari and the worship of Saint Nicholas, who still today stands for hospitality and universal peace.

This recording, however, also looks towards the future: we hear the voice of Maurizio Pellegrini and the original compositions and arrangements by Vittorio Pasquale, young talents of our land, as well as the children choir and the guitarists who have taken part in an unforgettable project that will change their lives and musical careers forever. This work is enriched by the voice of the worldwide known solo tenor Cataldo Caputo and the contribution of the conductor and artistic director Vito Clemente. It also tells the story of the long-standing collaboration between two artistic gems of our land, the Traetta Opera Festival and the Symphony Orchestra of the Metropolitan City of Bari.

This album by the Apulian pianist and composer Pierluigi Orsini is a journey into music and through music, admirable art and sublime language whose uniqueness in transposing the views on the world into notes remains unchanged over time. Music, mate for life. Music: a path that unfolds the plots of life. Music to tell dreams, transcribe yearnings, guard thoughts, reveal a deep and ineffable meaning. If some tracks are like snapshots that, through the keys of a piano, let the artist’s lifeblood flow, others decline into sound the coordinates of an existence that everyone has in common, with its vibrations, its beats, its universal rhythms.

ATMOSPHERE Michel Legrand & Matilde Sabato is a recording which the WINDMILLS TRIO has achieved after a course of research in 2020 and developed by Matilde Sabato, on the person of the French composer, jazz player, arranger, pianist, conductor Michel Legrand. The musicians who are part of it are all Apulian of jazz studies: the very young singer Matilde Sabato on her first recording debut, the pianist Luca De Leonardis and the double bass player Luigi Catella. The prestige of one of the most famous French composers, who bonded his name mainly to the world of cinema, led Matilde Sabato to compose two pieces dedicated to him: Le lever du soleil and Atmosphere.

The leitmotif of this release is time, especially the inner time of emotions and feelings, which only art can express: the time of a story reverberating in the lights of a metropolis, the time of a cigarette extinguished on the asphalt, but also the time of dreams and love... In short, the time of a life lived, recounted in its most intimate and changing meanings, the time of Dasein. The result is a multiform necklace of small pearls, marked by a musical eclecticism that gives it unquestionable added value.

Alfredo De Giovanni, from Apulia, is a geologist, musician and successful writer He has numerous songs, short stories and novels to his credit that tell of his Apulia, the myths and history of southern Italy. With his first book 'Otto. L'abisso di Castel del Monte', which has been republished several times and translated into English, he won the Fortuna Literary Prize in 2019, while his latest novel 'Carafa. Il sigillo del Cristo Velato' won the Terre di Puglia Prize and the Fortuna Prize in 2021. A composer and multi-instrumentalist, he is the author and performer of song-theatre shows including 'Ho sete ancora', a show based on the first book of short stories about Pino Daniele's songs published by Iocistó in Naples. Floriana Ferrante, from Apulia, is a singer, actress and architect For over 15 years, she has been a soprano with Maestro Mario Petrosillo's group Jubilee Gospel Singers. She studied with singer and singing teacher Luciana Negroponte, delving into various musical genres including jazz singing. A versatile and technically gifted performer, she has to her credit productions with the Orchestra of Magna Graecia and the Metropolitan City of Bari as a chorister and performs, as usual, theatre- song performances ranging from Italian singer-songwriter songs, to swing, to the Latin-American tradition.

The world premiere recording of Maurice Vieux's Études for solo viola is presented in a double album, masterfully interpreted and performed by Marco Misciagna, who for the first time in history records and performs in a highly evocative recital performing the 20 Études for solo viola (1927), the 10 Études sur des traits d'orchestre for solo viola (1928), the 10 Études sur les intervalles for solo viola (1931) and the 10 Études Nouvelles for solo viola (1956). This is the first world recording of these Études (50 in total) composed by Maurice Vieux, which aims to highlight a hitherto little or not at all known aspect of what can be called, without any doubt, a "pillar" of modern violist art. A titanic undertaking, which adds a great piece to the history of this instrument, hitherto unexplored. With dedication and passion, Misciagna has put himself at the service to create a work of great musical depth, demonstrating great artistic sensitivity and exceptional technique.

This boxed set collects the jewels of the Music of the Great Neapolitan School for harpsichord, starting from its founder Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, up to Niccolò Piccinni, great opera composer and reformer of the Italian Opera. A path that weaves the history of Southern musicians, who saw in Naples their great cultural capital, a spring-board to take flight and cross the Italian borders and bring their music throughout Europe. Often forgotten, the musicians contained in this double album show a great artistic vein and a strong and very personal musicality, which still enchants the attentive listener; they are: Gesualdo da Venosa, Rocco Rodio, Antonio Valente, Giovanni Maria Trabaci, Giovanni Salvatore, Bernardo Storace and Niccolò Piccinni.

A precious disc for the compositional art and the artistic inspiration of the authors, for the originality and the variety of the pieces, all authentic starting from the most ancient forms such as the Salve Regina by Rodio, the fantasies by Rodio and Valente, the French Songs by Gesualdo da Venosa, Giovanni Salvatore, Giovanni Maria Trabaci , the dances of Antonio Valente and Bernardo Storace, up to the splendid "Three Sonatas and a Toccata" of Niccolo' Piccinni (the only work of the author for harpsichord) published in Paris in 1775 and which preceded his arrival in the French capital by one year. Margherita Porfido's research, precise analysis, and exemplary performance are the compendium of a discographic product that is fundamental for the understanding of music between the 16th and 18th centuries in southern Italy.

The so-called Neapolitan School was one of the most prolific seasons in the entire history of European music. Its artistic legacy constitutes a very enduring legacy of style and "science of music" on which many of the subsequent artistic experiments in Western music have drawn. From Naples, a full-scale musical conquest of Europe and its colonies set off: a relentless journey of men and works, most of which have not yet been restored to systematic knowledge. However, the Neapolitan School was largely made up of authors from the peripheries of the kingdom, Apulia in the lead, following a well-known process of attracting artists to the center of power, which is also usually the center of art production.

Alexander Scriabin is popular among modern pianists, as is seen in the numerous recordings made since the 1970s. With a revolutionary compositional style, Scriabin remains one of the most original musicians in the history of music. His earliest works show a romantic language. Soon, however, he began pushing dissonance and tension to the point of completely disintegrating tonality, achieving effects similar to that of Schoenberg, but with a style all his own. “A pianist with remarkable insight, maturity and artistic imagination… his keep intelligence, impeccable musical taste and refined technique allow him to realize interpretations of great beauty and emotional strength…” (Lev Natochenny)

The sounds of the band are undoubtedly an integral and essential part of those rites, sacred and profane, which characterized the patronal feasts of the south and of Puglia in particular because they offer the most spontaneous and immediate musical commentary. They perform a double task: they translate what is being done into musical affections and reinterpret the ancient lesson of the Neapolitan school of music with a fluid and only apparently obvious melodic vein; that musical teaching, exemplary ferried in the nineteenth century by Fedele Fenaroli (1730-1818), Niccolò Zingarelli (1752-1837) and by the Altamuran Saverio Mercadante (1795- 1870), which expresses itself in the marches in an immediate and effective way through ideas music by composers from Fasano and not, who formed the repertoire of marches between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, integrating it with loans and reductions from melodramas. This last aspect of the reduction from the opera also shows how much the melodrama was widespread, felt, appreciated, reinterpreted and performed in many forms (often far from the original) in a time when it was difficult to enjoy it (if not in the theater) due to the absence of record diffusion.

The publication of this record testifies on the one hand the passionate attachment to tradition and on the other the intelligent and timely initiative to promote the area and its extraordinary history and culture.

Three composers outline the steps of an evocative musical journey. Apulia was a real second home for the “candid” Nino Rota (Milan, 1911 - Rome, 1979), by virtue of the teaching experience at the Liceo musicale in Taranto and then in Bari, who he directed from 1949 to 1977. “[Rota] is the most “musical” of the musicians. I mean that he lives “only” in music and he is happy there alone” (Alberto Savinio). Snug in this happiness as a nut in its shell, he wrote the Sonata in D major for clarinet and piano in 1945 and the Trio for clarinet, cello and piano in 1973, two works that gladly indulge in the cheerful light of a melodic freshening sluice and in a seductive melodiousness, where fits of sprightly ironic malice coexist with moments of languid melancholy. Our journey continues with Raffaele Gervasio (Bari, 1910 - Rome, 1994). One of the most interesting Apulian composers of the last century, Gervasio has worked closely for radio, theatre, cinema and television. Capitoli op. 132 (1994) is the result of seven movements where the clarinet, piano and cello trigger a game of tensions and distensions, shaping a fascinating dialogue dappled by intermittent imaginative oneiricism. Tied to tradition but projected towards the future, Teresa Procaccini (1934) builds her musical idiom on the fidelity to formal classical values and, at the same time, new sounds possibilities. The youthful Sonata rapsodica for cello and piano op. 8 (1957) is characterized by dramatic atmosphere and vibrant restlessness, emphasized with extraordinary poetry. The Trio for clarinet, cello and piano op. 36 (1968) doesn’t get far away the “tradition of the new”, woven from a melodic lyricism that opens out in ample lines.

Father and son united by the bond of blood and music. This is the fil rouge of the disc dedicated to Tommaso and Filippo Traetta, composed of music performed by the Orchestra Sinfonica Metropolitana di Bari, presented in Bitonto, as part of the Traetta Opera Festival. The festival of the city of oil, realized with the support of the Regione Puglia, boasts important collaborations at local and international level with entities such as the Metropolitan City of Bari, the Japan Apulia Festival of Tokyo, Idea Press Usa Musical Edition, the University of Rhode Island, the conservatories of Monopoli and Bari ("Rota" and "Piccinni"), as well as Epos Teatro and Musica Insieme. This recording, published by Digressione Music and introduced in the libretto by Dinko Fabris, seals the multi-year synergy between the Bitonto festival and the Metropolitan Orchestra that will give to the whole metropolitan territory and the world a work of great artistic value. The disc pays tribute to the two composers, travelers and great interpreters of music between '700 and '800. On the one hand the genius of Tommaso Traetta, born in Bitonto but known throughout Italy (Rome, Venice, Parma), Europe (with the experiences made in London and Vienna) and in the world (thanks to the experience in Russia at the court of Tsarina Catherine II), on the other hand the rediscovery of the repertoire of his son Philip, known because he founded three conservatories in the United States (in Boston, Philadelphia and New York). Inside the disc the most significant overtures of the operas of Tommaso Traetta and some pieces by Filippo Traetta (two overtures and non-operatic pieces).

Margherita Porfido writes of her new release: "The title I wanted to give to my recording work of contemporary music for harpsichord speaks of miniatures, but I would not want to mislead the listener into thinking that it is small music. Of course, if it will be great music, I leave it to posterity to decree it! I just have to say that this compact disc contains several compositions for the new harpsichord, as if they were small paintings, miniatures, and so, as the painter would use all the colors of his palette, from the softest to the darkest, from the warmest to the coldest, much the same way I wanted to build the path of the music that is contained inside, thinking of colored sound images. Bringing the harpsichord forward, into the contemporary world, entrusting it to the pen of great current composers, of various musical backgrounds, from classical music, contemporary to jazz, such as those who are in this CD was the goal that I set myself, because I believe that the harpsichord is still very up-to-date and that it's sound is even now to be explored."