The sumptuous music of Giovanni Paolo Colonna is brought to life in this concert to honour Bologna's patron saint at the Chapel of St Petronio Basilica - the very place in which this great musician was organist and chapel master in the mid-17th century. The works in this programme are rarely heard due to their grandiose proportions and virtuoso demands in performance. They include the colossal Dixit Dominus for two choirs, trumpet fanfare and strings, as well as the dazzling Beatus vir, possibly the earliest ever example of a concerto grosso.

The solo violin concerto spread rapidly throughout Europe from it's cradle in Venice where Vivaldi established the genre's formal aesthetic. Giuseppe Tartini, however, in nearby Padua, remained fully independent of Vivaldi's model and established a school of pupils who reflected his own virtuosity and lyricism. The works of the three Italian and one German pupils in this programme contain noble and expressive slow movements in concertos that had absorbed the galant style and the influence of the Lombardy symphonists such as Sammartini. Three are heard in world premiere recordings.

Winner of the 2016 Abbiati Prize, baritone Nicola Alaimo is one of the leading singers of his generation, with a supreme versatility that is explored in full in this Donizetti recital. Honorable, heroic and romantic characters are all vividly brought to life in Alaimo's interpretations, such as the tragic figure of Enrico, Duke of Chevreuse from Maria di Rohan, whose discovery that his wife is in love with his friend brings out the most intense feelings of any solo passage in European opera of the day.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Romancero gitano for mixed choir and guitar sets some of Federico Garcia Lorca's most evocative and intimate Andalusian poetry. Marked by dramatic contrasts the music fuses colouristic ideas with rich polyphonic writing - performed here in an accurate critical edition. Corrado Margutti's Rivers, designed to accompany Romancero gitano, is a kaleidoscope of forms, styles and images that pays homage to Castelnuovo-Tedesco as well as encoding hidden references to other musical luminaries, forming a musical journey through time and space.

There was a remarkable outpouring of Italian instrumental music from the 17th century onwards yet many composers who contributed to this flourishing body of work remain relatively unknown. One such composer is Pietro Marchitelli who was born around 1643 and was active in Naples as an outstanding violinist. Some 30 sonatas survive in a small number of collections. The seven lively and tuneful sonatas on this album conform to the precedent established by Corelli and are played by Labirinto Armonico, an ensemble that has collaborated with some of the very best early music performers.

Nicolo Paganini's 24 Caprices are considered to be his masterpiece, with a perfect blend of stunning virtuosity and inexhaustible creativeness. As with all of Paganini's works these Caprices follow on from traditional models, but they are unique in transcending technical virtuosity with a freedom of creative expression that achieved huge popularity, whether in it's original form for solo violin or in transcriptions and arrangements. In this unique performance, mandolin virtuoso Dor Amran plays the Caprices with breathtaking technical skill, superb musicality and a vibrant sense of instrumental colour.

Italian instrumental music was at its zenith when the works of these ten composers were written and each of those selected was a significant figure in the expansion of music for the harpsichord. Frescobaldi, represented by two athletic Toccatas, was influential across Germany while Merula’s beautiful Capriccio and Zipoli’s gracefully austere Sonata in C major reveal the breadth and variety to be found in Italian keyboard music of the period. The Venetian-born Pescetti draws the music from the Baroque onward to the new galant style.

Max Reger is best known for vast, abstract keyboard works in fugue and variation form. But alongside these masterful constructions his creativity also turned to more introspective album pages that reveal an entirely different side to his character. The influence of Schumann can be found in the first of his Improvisationen alongside echoes of Brahms and Chopin in the Six Morceaux. We also encounter rhapsodic miniatures from Aus meinem Tagebuch and the popular Maria-Wiegenlied, with the late collection Tr�ume am Kamin appearing as a self-confessional summary of Reger's career and style.

Giovanni Sollima is an internationally renowned cellist and one of the most frequently performed Italian composers in the world today. His original BaRock Cello project gave new readings to Rock pieces in the intimate setting of a solo performance, matching these to little-known 17th- and 18th-century Italian composers. These improbable contrasts and surprising connections are now extended further back to their musical roots in Folk & BaRock Cello. In this Sollima takes up the tonal colours and rhythmic grooves of archaic songs from a diversity of countries and blends the common features shared by all music, whether it is globally iconic, nationally popular, or long lost amidst the dusty manuscripts of time.

Gli uccellatori ('The Bird Catchers') was first staged in Venice in 1759 and proved so successful that the opera was performed during the next decade throughout Italy, Spain, Poland and Germany before being performed in Vienna in 1768. It's composer was the distinguished Bohemian, Florian Leopold Gassmann, teacher of Salieri and nominated as Gluck's successor in Vienna. The plot, based on a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, concerns amorous intrigues and the buffo antics of three bird catchers and two knowing maids. Gli uccellatori is an opera with a wealth of motifs and a vibrant atmosphere, full of spirited wit and theatrical charm.

Béla Bartók’s friendship with violinists Joseph Szigeti and Zoltán Székely allowed him to acquire an in-depth knowledge of the violin that informed his writing. Both Rhapsodies for violin and piano are structured in two parts, a Lassú and a Friss – a Moderato followed by an Allegro. The First Rhapsody draws on Bartok’s ethnological studies in its use of Romanian folk dances, while the Second is a more enigmatic work. The Violin Sonata No. 1 is an earlier piece full of atmospheric drama and grandiose gestures, impressionistic in places and concluding with rich Hungarian folk motifs.

Misattributed in the past to composers such as Pergolesi, the enduring success of Pietro Auletta's L'Orazio saw it staged and adapted so many times over the centuries that it's original 1737 structure is now lost. This is the opera's first revival in modern times. The style of L'Orazio reflects the end of the Baroque period at a time in which refined galant and pre-Classical inflections were taking hold. The work's comic narrative of romantic complications and rivalries take place amidst scenarios in which the music lessons of maestro Lamberto alternate with dubious theatrical engagements and carnival masquerades.

The Accademia Arcadia was flourishing in Rome at the time Andrea Stefano Fiore, one of Italy's true child prodigies, was there. The wide variety of stylistic influences and superlative quality of his cantatas, from lyrical simplicity to daring harmonic experiment, are confirmation of Fiore's uniquely poetic talent. Giovanni Antonio Giay succeeded Fiore in service at the royal court in Turin, and these world premiere recordings together reveal musical treasure of great value, sublimely documenting the extraordinary musical sensitivity of these rarely heard composers.

The three Italian choral works on this album cast new light on pre-existing musical material. Corrado Margutti's Missa Lorca fuses the words of Federico Garcia Lorca with an evocation of Monteverdi's polyphonic textures to create fascinating sounds, as the two movements from the Mass reveal. Pizzetti's Messa di Requiem, the first of his great choral compositions, offers a wealth of expressive detail notably the use of Gregorian chant in music of huge range and richness. Lorenzo Donati's Sicut Cervus fittingly concludes this selection as it threads music from Palestrina into his piece illuminating the past with vivid new colours.

In the early 1670s, soon after Venetian opera became established in Naples, a series of comic figures began to inhabit secular but also sacred operas. These stock characters included the Neapolitan, the Calabrian and the Boy, and all three plus a fourth, 'The Spaniard', appear in a comic intermezzo inserted in the 1673 opera Il disperato innocente by the little-known Francesco Antonio Boero. This is the oldest surviving Neapolitan comic intermezzo, and, along with it's Prologue, seems to have been written by other authors. This video preserves a historically informed performance given by Antonio Florio with Pino de Vittorio that explores the tradition of the intermezzo in 17th century plots.

Bringing together works both well known and entirely new, this remarkable Paganini program is packed with world premiere recordings made from painstakingly reconstructed manuscripts and unpublished discoveries.

The most important of these is the Sonata a preghiera, performed here for the first time with its original orchestral accompaniment. Other fascinating compositions include the Sonata a Violino Scordato that requires re-tuning the violin, the miniatures Capriccio and Agitato casually handed out by Paganini as gifts, and the stunning Introduzione e variazioni sul tema ‘In cor più non mi sento’ which incorporates all of the most spectacular effects of the composer’s legendary violin technique.

Giacomo Orefice is best known as a late Romantic opera composer. His piano output mainly consists of evocative short pieces that draw inspiration from poetry and paintings, as well as landscapes, nature, and scenes from daily life. The childlike atmosphere of Ninnoli is followed by the delightful Valse des amoureuses, Orefice’s only piano piece published outside Italy. The Preludi del mare describe a day at the seaside from the first lights of dawn to the rising of the moon. These impressionist worlds are enhanced in the Quadri di Böcklin by a sound palette that expresses the symbolist painter’s moods of sorrow and solitude. The melancholy Cipressi, a piece of unknown origin, is now seen as Orefice’s musical epitaph.

Francesco Cavalli, a central figure in the development of 17th-century Italian music, was as popular in his time as Verdi was in his. Though Cavalli was immensely successful as an operatic composer he wrote important sacred works in the grandiose tradition of the chapel of St Mark’s in Venice as well as shorter, more intense or spiritual pieces. These proved to be revolutionary in their individualism and Cavalli’s stylistic and expressive creativity can be heard in this selection which includes the world premiere recording of Confitebor. All come from a single collection published in 1656.

The works on this album take us on a journey exploring Mozart's diverse musical horizons. It opens with the dramatic Adagio and Fugue, K. 546, a work with an almost primeval expressive power that can still shock today. The Sinfonia Concertante is one of Mozart's greatest masterpieces, it's luminous world of elegance and clarity delivering a message of hope amidst the most profound melancholy. The programme ends with Mozart's youthful Symphony No. 27 in which an intensity of expression and air of enigmatic mystery hides behind a gloss of graceful playfulness.

This album presents the complete works Ligeti composed for string quartet between 1950 and 1968. The two numbered string quartets are predated by a lyrical early Andante and Allegretto, the folk-music inflections of which pre-echo the hints of Bartók in the first quartet, Métamorphoses nocturnes. The calculated anarchy, dynamic extremes and sublime atmospheres of the Second Quartet present Ligeti at his most distinctive. These spectacular works are performed here by the Verona Quartet, firmly established as one of the most distinguished ensembles on the chamber music scene today.

REVIEW:

This album, celebrating Ligeti’s 2023 centennial, presents his complete works for string quartet composed between 1950-1968. The two numbered string quartets are predated by a lyrical early Andante and Allegretto, the folk-music inflections of which foreshadow the hints of Bartók in the first quartet, Métamorphoses nocturnes. The calculated anarchy, dynamic extremes and sublime atmospheres of the Second Quartet present Ligeti at his most distinctive. These spectacular works are performed here by the Verona Quartet, winner of the Cleveland Quartet Award and currently serving as Quartet-in-Residence at Oberlin College and Conservatory.

-- TheViolinist.com

During his student years in Naples, Saverio Mercadante wrote a sequence of flute quartets at a time when Italy’s musical landscape was dominated by opera. The first two quartets reflect his command of lyricism, thematic invention and use of embellishments. These examples of the quatuor brillant style are augmented by the concertante virtuosity of the Quartet in E minor in which all instruments have more decisive roles to play in music of gravity and excitement that even reflects the influence of Rossini. These are world premiere recordings.

Dvořák’s chamber music is amongst the most extensive and significant of the 19th century, and the four surviving piano trios embody his command of the form. The first two were written in rapid succession, with No. 1 in B flat major marrying Schubertian lyricism with Slavic inflexions, serenity with joy. No. 2 in G minor is rather more classically conceived, though it shares the same formal structure as No. 1 and exudes a similar quotient of lyric beauty.

Learn more about this recording on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

Held in high esteem by his contemporaries, Orfeo Vecchi stands out as a remarkable figure with regard to the sacred repertoire he produced from the late 1500s. Respectful of the written texts while elegantly expressing pictorial content through subtle dialogue, antiphony and counterpoint, the 20 pieces of the Motectorum sex vocibus liber tertius form a rich and eclectic collection that fully reveals Vecchi’s mastery and religious inspiration. This world premiere recording has been made by musicians involved in recovering the wealth of unpublished materials held in Vercelli Cathedral, where Vecchi studied and worked for much of his career.

Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier was written at a time when composers had begun to expand the limited tonal compass of keyboard instruments through far wider use of keys and; ultimately; equal temperament. The 48 preludes and fugues that constitute The Well-Tempered Claver are composed in a wide range of styles; and the work remains one of the most important and influential in Western classical music. Francesco Cera is a prominent Italian early music specialists and he plays on a copy of a Hemsch harpsichord of 1736; using his own personal tuning. For Book II he employs the Altnickol edition of the score which includes numerous variants.

Solo – Harmonica on Harmonica charts a journey from the Middle Ages to our own time and showcases the harmonica in all its versatility and variety. From jazz legends Chick Corea, Charlie Parker and Lester Young to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and from the sinful tango of Mato Rodriguez’s famous La Cumparcita to the sacred monody of O Virgo splendens – the repertoire and the performances display striking juxtapositions. Luca Littera is an acclaimed chromatic harmonica virtuoso. He performs here on a selection of instruments, multi-tracking each part to create the unique sound of an ensemble of harmonicas.