Viotti: Violin Concertos (Complete), Vol. 2

First performed in French at the Paris Opera in 1867, Don Carlo is in many ways an amazingly innovative work. The opera seems to underline Verdi's shift from the Manichean division between good and evil, which had been a clear, structural element of his dramaturgy up to that point in his career. In this opera, Verdi assembles all his mainstay music theatre themes: power, with its honors and burdens; the contrasts of impossible love; the conflict between father and son; and an oppressed people demanding freedom. Verdi radically revised the score in 1883, using an Italian libretto and reducing the opera from five acts to four. The popularity of Don Carlo has grown unremittingly ever since, with today's critics almost unanimously recognizing it as one of Verdi's greatest masterpieces, an opera that continues to reveal new gems. Daniel Oren is fully in control on the podium, ensuring unanimity between orchestra and singers. The Maestro softens teh dark tones of the score, which are well reflected in the visuals, choosing instead to emphasize the various changes of mood.

Vivaldi & Bach For Recorders / Quartetto Icarus, Release Date: 12/21/2010, Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Orchestra/Ensemble: Icarus Quartet, Number of Discs: 1, All the pieces on this program are arrangements and transcriptions for recorder quartet-and in three cases, transcriptions of transcriptions-of concertos and other music by Vivaldi and Bach. The usual raison d'�tre in the case of these two composers is that they themselves transcribed their own and others' works and are, thus, fair game themselves, and that is the operative rationale here. There is a body of work explicitly for recorder ensembles, most of it written to help foster the revival of interest in the instrument from the middle years of the last century. There is also the considerable body of recent music written for the Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet (still very much in business after 30 years). If the ensemble in question is a quartet of recorders, played by specialists in early music, however, the pickings are slim, indeed. The recording has good sound; it is recorded quite close up, however, so the listener is treated to occasional key-slaps and quick breaths. There are no musicological revelations here; the playing is fine and straightforward. There is little direct competition for this program, save for BWV 596 and the three contrapuncti, which the Loeki quartet has recorded for Channel Classics.

LE GRATIE D'AMORE

A LA GUERRE!

Karajan in Italy, Vol. 2

After the first two "Bellissimo" recordings dedicated to Handel, Vivaldi and Italian opera arias, the new CD features some of the rarest and beautiful French opera arias. As performed by Montserrat Caballe, Desire Rancatore, Jeon-Won Lee, Warren Mok, Luca Grassi, Guylaine Girard and more!

Francesco Cavalli (1602-76) is a central figure in the history of 17th c. Italian music. He showed his talent as an opera as well as a sacred music composer, though the number of his known, extant sacred works is relatively small for the times in which he lived. His 1675 collection of Vesperi a 8 voci, dedicated to the Doge Niccol� Sagredo, consisting of three different Vespers, is here offered in world premiere recordings by the "La Pifarescha" Instrumental Ensemble, the "Claudio Monteverdi" Choir of Crema, led by Bruno Gini, it's founder and conductor, and organist Alberto Dossena.

La secchia rapita (The Stolen Bucket), music by Jules Burgmein- alias Giulio Ricord- and libretto by Renato Simoni, was the second of three operettas composed by Ricordi, and has now been revived in a modern edition that faithfully follows the autograph manuscript. The libretto, which has truly hilarious situations, is taken from the famous mock-heroic poem by Tassoni. The opera hinges on historical facts which happened during the war between the cities of Bologna and Modena, at the time of Emperor Frederick II. During the battle of Zappolino, fought on November 15, 1325, the Bologna forces, though numerically superior to those of Modena, suffered a major defeat; before returning to Modena, as a gesture of scorn, the Modenese stole a wooden bucket from a well; the bucket still exists and is now kept at Modena's town hall. Performed by the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi and the Soloists and Chorus of the Civica Scuola di Musica along with several world-renowned soloists, this is a world premiere recording.

ROSSINI: Italiana in Algeri (L') (The Italian Girl in Algier

ERNANI

VIVALDI: Sonatas for Wind Instruments

Also available on Blu-ray

Florence, May 2nd, 1589: on occasion of the wedding of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christina of Lorraine an impressive celebration apparatus was put up to display the magnificence of the Medici household. Behind this official event lay an ambitious project which involved an incredible team of the most important poets and musicians of the time, such as Cristofano Malvezzi, Luca Marenzio, Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri, Emilio De’ Cavalieri as well as Count Giovanni De’ Bardi, who was engaged to compose the Intermedi for Girolamo Bargagli’s play La Pellegrina. Renaissance intermediums were sumptuous musical interludes inserted between the acts of a theatrical show on allegorical and moral themes with eclectic references to classical mythology. They are considered as the forerunners of musical opera. The spectacular show, which was performed using a complex stage machinery set up in Palazzo Pitti’s Boboli gardens, was an immediate success, so much that the intermediums were performed in the days to follow during another two plays. The Six intermediums in La Pellegrina provide for choral madrigals, double and triple choirs, solo accompanied numbers and instrumental pieces, inserted into the impressive and sumptuous staging by Bernando Buontalenti. 430 years later, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in collaboration with Galleria Degli Uffizi produces the first staging in modern times of the Intermedi della Pellegrina through an itinerant show in Palazzo Pitti’s Boboli Gardens. Stage director Valentino Villa’s approach was to “attempt at an ironic historical reconstruction, [where] imageries blur together, classical mythology is grafted onto contemporary iconography”. Conductor Federico Maria Sardelli leads Modo Antiquo and Chorus Master Alberto Allegrezza is at the head of Coro Ricercare Ensemble and Compagnia Dramatodìa.

TELEMANN: Double Concertos / (Overture) Suite in A minor

Elmira Veda, Annamaria Popescu, Sally Wilson, Carlo Barricelli, Luca Salsi, Emanuele Giannino, Manrico Signorini, and Giovanni Guagliardo star in this Puccini opera with Laurence Gilgore conducting the Orchestra e Coro del Festival Puccini.