This album features the World Premiere Recording of six unpublished duets for flute and violin, that flutist Mario Carbotta and violinist Mario Hossen drew from a manuscript kept in Mantua. Alessandro Rolla composed this music around 1795, while he was at the Court of Parma, where he was in charge of the music programming for Ferdinand I Bourbon’ s public events as well as private entertainments. For this reason Rolla conforms to the duet form of his day but infuses it with a gracefulness that makes his music, composed for pure and simple entertainment, very attractive. These works possess a pleasant, joyful yet delicate and entertaining mood. Flutist Mario Carbotta ranks among Dynamic’s “historical” artists. A solo performer who collaborated with over 70 symphony and chamber orchestras worldwide, a conductor, a musicologist and a teacher, his repertoire ranges from the 1700s to contemporary works. Violinist Mario Hossen was an enfant-prodige. Today, he is internationally hailed for his incredible virtuosity and charismatic stage presence. His repertoire spans from Renaissance to Classical music, contemporary works and Jazz. Hossen's musicological and artistic endeavors are especially devoted to source research on Nicolò Paganini.

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This production is new staging of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Il Tabarro is one of the three one-act operas that compose Giacomo Puccini’s Il Trittico. Michele is married to young Giorgetta and shares with her a life full of hardships on a barge over the river Seine. She is in love with Luigi, a young longshoreman hired by her husband during the loading of the barge. When Michele overhears his wife giving a rendezvous to Luigi by night, he waits for the man and attacks him, forces him to admit he is his wife's lover and finally strangles him. Then he hides the body under his cloak, (il tabarro) and when Giorgetta, in mortal fear, comes on deck and asks Michele if he does not wish her to come and rest near him under his cloak, her wronged husband throws it open and Giorgetta discovers in horror her dead lover’s body rolling at her feet. The element of Didier Gold’s Houppelande that most attracted Puccini was the opportunity to represent, in music, a river, which is what acts as a backdrop in this plot and determines its pace. The importance of this atmosphere is enormous, because it is linked to the mise en scene more tightly than usual. The action entirely takes place on a barge over the Seine in Paris, which is placed in the centre of the scene. The music describing the river uses a cyclic repetition of ostinato patterns, representing the monotonous flowing of the water, as inexorable as destiny and as regular as the flow of time. The pulse of the river cyclically marks, in the first part of Tabarro, the life of this world of vanquished: longshoremen and boatmen. But even when it disappears, the musical identity between drama and location does not cease to exist.

A native of England, Elias Parish Alvars became established as a fully-fledged European artist. He travelled extensively, working alongside Carl Czerny and gained the esteem of Mendelssohn and Berlioz, who declared that ‘this man is a magician’, with a ‘passionate impulse to express the music of another world’. Composed in a Romantic style, Parish Alvars’ fantasias and refined elaborations on themes by Bellini explore every aspect of the harp’s technical and expressive qualities, from spectacular virtuosity to evocative and transparent effects that were revolutionary in their time. These works are performed here by Paola Perrucci, who currently teaches at the Conservatory of Bologna.

This just might be one of the most important releases in the entire Dynamic catalog. Maybe even in all of recording history. For the first time ever, all of Paganini’s works have been collected in one single release, featuring all the best interpreters of the composer’s music: Salvatore Accardo, Massimo Quarta, Leonidas Kavacos, Luigi Alberto Bianchi, Stefan Milenkovic, Franco Mezzena, the Quartetto Paganini, Bin Huang, Luca Fanfoni, and many others. The release also includes historical documents featuring milestone Paganini interpretations by Ruggiero Ricci, Arthur Grumiaux, Yehudi Menhuin, Franco Gulli, Vasa Prihoda, and others. The six concertos, as well as several other works, are performed on Paganini’s 1742 Guarneri del Gesu violin. There is also a section of the release that features rare and newly re-discovered works in their world premiere recordings.

In the bicentenary of Paisiello’s death, Catania’s Bellini Theatre staged Fedra, a world premiere performance in modern times of this opera by the composer from Taranto. It was a musical and cultural operation of great interest, which saw the revival – based on the original manuscript and on various transcriptions – of a rich, complex score, and attracted the attention of the Italian and international critics. The French conductor Jérôme Correas, an authority in this repertoire, was on the podium. Fedra had only been performed once in the 20th century for a radio recording and had never been staged in our century before. That single radio recording, however valuable, is however incomplete and, unlike this edition, unfaithful, in many ways, to the original score.

Parma native Ferdinando Paer, who wrote more than 50 operas, composed Agnese in 1809 for a private entertainment and a company of amateur singers. In 1824, with a few changes to the score, this opera semiseria in two acts reached the Theathre- Italien in Paris where it gained international success; among its early admirers were Berlioz, Chopin and Victor Hugo who mentioned it in his Les Misérables but a few decades after its première it fell into oblivion. In modern times it was first revived in concert form by Conductor Diego Fasolis and finally, in 2019 with the addition of a critical revision, it was performed at the Teatro Regio di Torino. The plot presents several fairy-tale elements, which are very well realized through the stage setting. When Agnese elopes with her beloved Ernesto, her father Uberto loses his mind and believes her dead. He is therefore hospitalized into a mental institution, where most of the action takes place. In the Ospedale dei pazzi sympathetic doctors, security guards and administrators try to help Uberto regain his sanity, to no avail. In the meanwhile, Agnese, betrayed and abandoned by Ernesto, to whom she bore a daughter, goes back to her father to ask for forgiveness, unaware of his troubles. Ernesto is repentant of his philandering ways and follows Agnese to win her back. The opera ends with Uberto regaining his mental clarity when he hears Agnese sing an old song, and a general reconciliation occurs. In director Leo Muscato’s words “the most interesting aspect of this opera…is the irony that is present from the beginning to the end of the story” which imbues even the most dramatic circumstances. The set design for this wonderful, world premiere on video opera, is made of a series of movable boxes which are similar to carillons and which open-up displaying different environments.

Beethoven’s lesser known output includes a series of conventional, tranquil works which followed the standards of the day. Written basically to make ends meet, such works throw light on the everyday activities in the career of revolutionary man, and help us better understand hidden aspects of his genius. The Serenade in D major for flute, violin and viola was completed around 1797, but it was published as Op. 25 only in 1802. It is, therefore, an early work and one of the lightest and sunniest compositions of Beethoven’s chamber output. The work must have immediately met with success, for about a year later, in 1803, a Leipzig publisher printed a version of it for flute and piano, as Op. 41. In this version, the Serenade is a pleasant entertainment piece, far from the daring language of the composer’s contemporary piano music. The programme on this release is completed by the arrangement for flute and piano of the slow movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15, a work Beethoven composed in 1798 and first published in 1800. The transcription is by Theobald Böhm (Munich, 1794–1881), a famous flute virtuoso and instrument maker, who developed a new type of metal flute which revolutionised the fingering system in use up to then and has remained virtually identical to this day. The programme on this release offers a comparison between two Serenades that Beethoven wrote for two different groups of instruments: the Serenade Op. 25 for flute, violin and viola and the Serenade Op. 41, which is a later version for flute and piano. Formally these two works are almost identical, but they differ in color, phrasing and the role that was ascribed to each instrument.

This new release is the penultimate album of the Paganini Complete Edition in 40 releases. Included on this album is the première world recording of the original version of three very famous works by Paganini- Le Streghe M.S. 19, Non più mesta M.S. 22 and I Palpiti M.S. 77. In the Genoese violinist’s intention, the violin was to be tuned a semitone higher. The violin part, in D major, therefore sounds as if it were written in E flat major, which is the key of the orchestral accompaniment. During the 19th century, the practice of tuning the instrument higher was abandoned. Bulgarian violinist Mario Hossen courageously tackles it, allowing us to hear, for the first time since Paganini’s time, these works as they were written. The album includes another première recording, that of the Religiosa introduzione al rondò del campanello M.S. 67/1, first version of the Couvent du Mont St. Bernard M.S. 67. Dr. Mario Hossen is artistic director of the Camerata Orphica and the International Music Academy Orpheus, Vienna. He plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Milan 1749, on loan from the Osterreichische Nationalbank’s collection.

Margherita D’Anjou was Giacomo Meyerbeer’s fourth opera in Italian and his first true success. After an absence from the stage of one and a half centuries, it returned at the 43rd Valle d’Itria Festival in an exemplary production: the ironical setting of the director Talevi- the War of the Roses takes place at the London Fashion Week- is perfectly matched by the elegant direction of Luisi, at the head of the Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia. The opera, which belongs to the semi-serious genre, moves from the warlike tones of Act One to the idyllic ones of Act Two, where both female protagonist appear: the queen, a soprano, and the wife, a contralto; both seeking the love of a heroic tenor equally daring in battle and in music.

Nicolò Paganini’s Quartets for Strings and Guitar are among his finest chamber compositions. The First Guitar Quartet was a wedding gift from Paganini to his younger sister; and both this and the Second Quartet share neo-classical poise with warmly expressive romantic lyricism. The Ninth Quartet features sweet and melancholy moods containing some of Paganini’s most disarmingly simple melodies, and as the composer himself stated, ‘a very fanciful minuet and a moving trio’. The "Paganini Ensemble Vienna" has set its goal high in presenting this rarely played program which offers unique insight into Paganini’s extensive oeuvre for the violin, guitar, viola, and violoncello. These works offer not only technical virtuosity and moments of tremendous passion, but also passages expressing great tenderness, suffering, and joy. Indeed, these emotional elements are essential to understanding the music of Nicolo Paganini, who once said “We must strongly feel to make others feel.”

Paganini’s works for solo violin are among the most important and demanding in the repertoire. In addition to his famed Caprices, Op.1, Paganini wrote a series of characterful solo pieces that reveal his melodic and rhythmic gifts. Those selected here are either World Premiere Recordings or WPR of the critical edition, some – such as Alla Spagnola, the five waltzes and the Duetti – have only recently been rediscovered. His influence on Italian composers can be heard in the works he inspired from leading contemporaries and colleagues, where their preludes, caprices and études show the stylistic breadth and originality of Italian virtuosi.

The first misconception that the Rossini Renaissance has gradually corrected is that Rossini was only able to excel in the comic genre. Rossini’s serious operas, as a matter of fact, are not only overall of high artistic quality but also quite original. Indeed, they had a huge influence on the Italian Romantic output of Donizetti, Bellini, Pacini, Mercadante and of the first Verdi. We could go as far as to say that Rossini was not merely an Italian phenomenon but a European one, whose arrival had the explosive effect of a bomb sweeping away centuries-old conventions and manners of speaking and introducing, in their place, a series of new codes and attitudes which all 19th-century opera drew upon; also and perhaps especially in the serious genre. This collector’s boxset offers an interesting selection of Rossini’s main opera seria (and semiseria, with reference to La Gazza Ladra) played by great interpreters, conductors and directors, recorded live in prestigious venues such as Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) with the philological approach granted by Fondazione Rossini of Pesaro. Such titles as Torvaldo e Dorliska, Ermione, Bianca e Falliero are less knowns works as well.

A lifelong friend of Prokofiev and frequently performed outside of Soviet Russia in his lifetime, Nicolay Myaskovsky is best known today for his 27 symphonies. His lyrical and intensely passionate First Cello Sonata was one of his first important works, finished not long after completing his studies in St Petersburg. Premiered by Rostropovich, the Second Cello Sonata became immediately popular amongst cellists for its imaginative blend of folk-music styles with a sweet Romanticism that recalls Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. The award-winning duo of Kehayova and Miller complete this recording with the perfect encore – Rimsky-Korsakov’s melodious Serenade.

A successful musician in the early 19th century, Giovanni Simone Mayr composed the opera Medea in Corinto in 1813, the same year it premiered at the San Carlo theatre in Naples. The two act tragedy with libretto by Felice Romani was Mayr’s most popular theatrical work. The story is that of the Greek myth of Medea. “Michael Spyres, in the role of Jason, confirms to be one of the finest belcanto performers of the moment, endowed with a nimble voice and pure and solid high notes.” (Dynamic)

Picture Format: NTSC, 16:9
Sound Formats: Dolby Digital 5.1, PCM 2.0
Subtitles: Italian, English, French, German, Korean
Region Code: 0 (All)
Running Time: 167 mins

Margherita D’Anjou was Giacomo Meyerbeer’s fourth opera in Italian and his first true success. After an absence from the stage of one and a half centuries, it returned at the 43rd Valle d’Itria Festival in an exemplary production: the ironical setting of the director Talevi- the War of the Roses takes place at the London Fashion Week- is perfectly matched by the elegant direction of Luisi, at the head of the Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia. The opera, which belongs to the semi-serious genre, moves from the warlike tones of Act One to the idyllic ones of Act Two, where both female protagonist appear: the queen, a soprano, and the wife, a contralto; both seeking the love of a heroic tenor equally daring in battle and in music.