That the viola da gamba music of Marin Marais represents a treasure trove of expressive and technical possibilities is just reason for Paolo Pandolfo's eagerly-awaited return to the composer's works with his new Marais 1689 recording for Glossa. Pandolfo's style of playing is apt for this music: meticulousness and sensitivity, and a technical strength which allows him to demonstrate the instrument's versatility and gives him a sense of rare freedom. To follow a recent sequence of recordings which has seen him approach the music of Couperin and de Machy, but which also includes the Pi�ces de viole by Marais' teacher Sainte Colombe, Pandolfo now turns to the year 1689, when Marais (surrounded by constant arguments as to the true way of doing justice to the gamba) had published the continuo accompaniment for his earlier Pi�ces � une et � deux violes - this was quite a revolutionary move on the young composer's part. To reflect this transition effected by Marais - from the gamba being an instrument heard by itself to one operating within a chamber ensemble environment - Paolo Pandolfo has chosen from this First Book works for one or two gambas, with or without continuo support, in the form of a pair of Suites and various individual pieces, including the Tombeau de Mr M�liton and the rarely recorded set of variations Sujet & Diversitez.

The thirty-two polyphonic madrigals by Michelangelo Rossi, which are preserved only in manuscript in a score and a set of partbooks, have only recently become known. These pieces are unusual in a number of ways: on the one hand, for music from the second quarter of the seventeenth century, they seem “conservative”, composed in five parts with two tenor voices instead of two sopranos. On the other hand, they appear to be avant-garde in their vertiginous harmony (chromaticism and modulations), which lead them, in spite of the traditional counterpoint, far beyond the borders of harmonic tonality. And they are strikingly “vieltönig”, as this was especially cultivated in Rome of those years. The term “vieltönig” can perhaps be translated as “multitonal” in the literal sense of using many pitches and refers to a conscious use of more than twelve notated pitches per octave. This recording tries to reproduce the intimate setting in which such madrigals were sung in their time, with the singers sitting around a big table, studying, discussing and singing. Thus the term madrigali al tavolino that was chosen to title the album. A crucial aspect of this project is the use of an arciorgano, which has 36 pitches per octave (instead on the usual 12) and provides the background to the performance of these highly sophisticated vocal pieces. The specialist Johannes Keller leads the Ensemble Domus Artis, a group especially created for the study and interpretation of madrigals intended originally to be performed in tavolino conditions.

The legendary figure of the libertine Don Juan had been straddling European theatre and opera stages for well over a century before Mozart got into the act with his matchless Don Giovanni. Back in 1669, Alessandro Melani became the first composer to create a dramma per musica out of tales of this witty and licentious character, using a libretto provided by a pair of Roman poets in Filippo Acciaiuoli and Giovanni Filippo Apolloni from their adaption of the celebrated Spanish tragic drama, El burlador de Sevilla by Tirso de Molina. Acciauoli and Apolloni transposed the events of Seville into a mythical landscape and called Don Giovanni Acrimante and his servant Leporello Bibi. But they did not change the original plot. This world premiere recording of Melani’s L’empio­punito was captured live during the representations that took place at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa, with an outstanding vocal cast that includes Raffaele Pe in the main role (Acrimante), Raffaelle Milanesi (Atamira), Roberta Invernizzi (Ipomene), Giorgio Celenza (Bibi) and Alberto Allegrezza (Delfa). The instrumental support is provided by the fine orchestra Auser Musici conducted by a Carlo Ipata.

Björn Schmelzer and his ensemble provide their special vision in this Josquin Desprez anniversary. With the conviction that Josquin, during his late years, produced works in sight of his own death, Graindelavoix renders compositions included in Tielman Susato’s 1545 Antwerp print (Septiesme livre de chansons, published 24 years after the composer’s life ended). With an all-male vocal ensemble and a subtle instrumental accompaniment, Graindelavoix again goes beyond all standards and presents another ground-breaking interpretation of well-known repertoire. Added to Josquin’s compositions are three laments for his own death, written by Gombert, Vinders and Appenzeller. Gombert’s deploration Musae Jovis is one of his most breathtaking compositions, finishing with an exceptional dance à l’antique in which subterranean, terrestrial and heavenly elements indulge together praising the undead composer Josquin.

With Lagrime d’amante, La Compagnia del Madrigale, so accomplished with 16th- and 17thcentury Italian music and words, turns its attention afresh to the music of Claudio Monteverdi. This new Glossa release faithfully conveys the beauty of the ensemble’s vocal blend in a selection of five-part compositions drawn from the Monteverdi of Cremona, Mantua and Venice, but centring on that cornerstone of his art, the Sixth Book. The act of singing whilst weeping – as Marco Bizzarini points out in his booklet essay – is somewhat unfeasible, but time after time Monteverdi strove to overcome that improbability by his music, often calling upon the best Italian poetry of the time: here, the fabulously vivid imagery of Torquato Tasso, Battista Guarini and Petrarch are well served by Monteverdi’s musical response. The programme takes us through various troubled emotional states involving love: a lover dying of love, the partenza amorosa (or lovers’ separation), even a shepherd accidentally wounding his loved one, but also the outpouring of grief in the Lagrime d’amante al sepolcro dell’amata, a commissioned madrigal cycle to newly written words lamenting the death in 1608 of the promising singer Caterina Martinelli, a pupil of the composer, but also that of Monteverdi’s wife. This work and others on this recording involved the lamented bass Daniele Carnovich to whom the group pay tribute; the sessions were completed by Matteo Bellotto. Her latest project, with sonatas by Josef Antonin Stepan, reflects her patient, respectful and profoundly musical approach to her own new discoveries. These newly found sonatas, which she defines as “a sort of missing link in the transition from harpsichord to fortepiano” and being “at he forefront of the development to a new era of composition” with “flavours of Mozart, Haydn, and early Beethoven”, were recorded in Berlin and set yet another milestone in Meyerson’s enthusiastic search for unjustly neglected repertoire.

Classical Music

The Italian cantata “Clori. Tirsi e Fileno” was written by Handel in 1707 in Rome under the umbrella of the Marchese Ruspoli, one of his most important patrons during his stay in Italy. Released by Glossa in 2008 as the 5th volume of the complete Italian cantatas series, this 75-minute work well deserves a second life in our Cabinet series – Roberta Invernizzi, Yetzabel Arias Fernandez and Romina Basso all excel in their roles, as does the instrumental support of Fabio Bonizzoni, with no less than Leila Schayegh as first solo violin. The subject of the cantata at hand is a pretty shepherdess who loves to young men, but loses both when they discover her fickleness. Believed lost for many years, the score is the source of arias in some of Handel’s later, more celebrated operas. Rudolf Ewerhart, in 1960, discovered the complete score in the Santini Collection at Munster, the only complete score in existence.

No Handel opera is as enigmatic as Silla. His fourth London opera, it was composed in 1713 to a libretto by Giacomo Rossi, also the librettist of the composer’s first great London triumph Rinaldo (1711). And that is just about the extent of any certainty on the subject. It might have been premiered in 1713 in London in a private concert at the Queen’s Theatre, but even this remains unconfirmed. This is one of Handel’s few historical operas, being concerned with Plutarch’s account of the latter part of the life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who after taking Rome became a tyrannical despot who murders his opponents, before suddenly retiring to his country estate to enjoy his leisure. The libretto being somewhat weak, it leaves Silla an unlikely candidate to regain a place in the repertoire, but it definitely contains lots of thoroughly rewarding music. Handel itself utilized a significant part of it in his next opera, Amadigi di Gaula. Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante join an overwhelming vocal cast headed by a fantastic Sonia Prina in the title role, with Martina Belli, Sunhae Im, Vivica Genaux, Roberta Invernizzi, Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli, and Luca Tittoto also excelling in their respective parts. Biondi’s ensemble perform with their trademark elegance and precision in a recording made in the Konzerthaus in Vienna over three days in January 2017.

Handel’s dramatic cantata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo is a serenata first performed in Naples in 1708 with a libretto by Niccola Giuvo after Book 13 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Handel adapted this score several times: The one-act masque Acis and Galatea (HWV 49), with an English text by John Gay, was first performed at Cannons in 1718. This was followed by, among others, a version as a three-act serenata for the Italian opera company in London in 1732 and an adaptation of the original English work into a two-act work in 1739. The so-called ‘Senesino version’ presented on this recording is based on a manuscript from the British library in London. In this version probably written for the famous castrato Senesino, Aci is an alto and Galatea is a soprano, all arias of the two characters are transposed. Polifemo’ part is almost completely re-written, with long accompanied recitatives and new arias. The instrumentation is slightly different from the Neapolitan version: No trumpets are present but a more extended use of woodwinds and recorders.

Johann Caspar Kerll (1627-1693) worked mainly in Vienna, during the 17th century. He was pupil of Carissimi and teacher of Pachelbel, thus belonging within the line of succession culminating in Johann Sebastian Bach, who much admired his music. Eighteen masses by Kerll have survived of which only one, the first, a 5-part Requiem, is written a cappella, in the so-called old style. All the others are written in stile concertato, that is, with soloists, one or more full choirs, various instruments (violins, violas, trombones) and continuo. The Missa non sine quare is the first of a collection of six masses published in Munich in 1689. In this mass, Kerll gives proof of his undeniable mastery of counterpoint and of contrapuntal blend. Both the solo and the tutti sections exhibit the use of superb, imitative counterpoint. Kerll’s melodic ingenuity, contrapuntal finesse and harmonic audacity were admired twenty years later by J. S. Bach.

Francesco Gasparini was held in high esteem by his contemporaries, as can be easily seen from his curriculum vitae: In Rome he was in the service of the great patrons of the arts Cardinal Pamphili, Marchese Ruspoli and the Borghese family, and in between he was music director at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice for twelve years, at the same time as Antonio Vivaldi. Gasparini wrote a total of almost 60 operas and nearly 30 oratorios, which were performed in many Italian cities. The countertenor Filippo Mineccia has cherry-picked the repertoire that suits his voice and presents a portrait of Gasparini's alto arias. He was very careful to select arias with different affects in order to present Gasparini's broad dramatic palette. Slow arias are interspersed with furioso pieces and contrapuntal pieces. Particularly brilliant are the rage arias, in which Mineccia is able to display all his vocal prowess. In the richly orchestrated and harmonically exciting arias from Gasparini's oratorios, the Orchestra Nazionale Barocca dei Conservatori Italiani can shine with its qualities.

Classical Music

Hubert Le Blanc considered these two players to be two of the leading figures from the world of the French viola da gamba playing, Marin Marais playing like an angel and Antoine Forqueray playing like a devil. Many of the pieces on this release are fiendishly difficult to play, prepared by Jean-Baptiste Forqueray in 1747, and drawn from his sketches and memories.

The music of Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) had an explosive impact on all European musical circles. As both composer and violin virtuoso, Corelli’s reputation and fame was immense. In this regard, there is no lack of important sources bearing witness to a genuine enthusiasm for his music, which was welcomed as a revelation, an illumination, a pure and refined distillation of the traditional language of the Baroque sonata and Italian style. it is not difficult to imagine how the compositions of Corelli would have circulated all over Europe, being performed, listened to, copied, and also transcribed. Among musicians, there was a veritable legion of composers influenced by Corelli’s models. This phenomenon is one of the reasons for the existence of a transcription for bass viola da gamba and continuo of Corelli’s opus 5, originally composed for violin and continuo. The manuscript used for the present recording contains all 12 sonatas and can be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It is of anonymous authorship, most likely originating in the German-speaking world. The transcription was probably made on the basis of a copy of the original edition for violin printed in Rome in 1700, the only autograph edition.

This recording is released on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the death of Antonio Giannettini (1649-1721), a composer almost unknown today, who musically can be placed on a level with Stradella and Pasquini, generally regarded as the pinnacle of late 17th century Italian music. Giannettini received his training from Sebastiano Enno, Carlo Grossi and probably from Giovanni Legrenzi in Venice. He worked at St Mark's Cathedral from 1674, first as a singer and from 1677 as an organist. In 1686 he was appointed maestro di cappella at the court of Modena, a position he was to hold until his death in 1721. Giannettini wrote about 20 stage works, oratorios, cantatas, masses and other sacred music. The oratorio "L'uomo in bivio" (The Man at the Crossroads), written in Modena in 1687, has a remarkable theological content: an angel and the devil fight for the soul of a young man. In the dispute, the devil initially prevails, winning the man over with earthly pleasures and the figure of a lovely girl. But the angel does not give up: With the terrible vision of the girl's rotting body in an open grave, he induces him to repent, and the man chooses the path of faith. The Devil goes back to hell, and the doors of Paradise are opening for an happy end.