In Puccini’s anniversary year, Chief Conductor of Welsh National Opera Carlo Rizzi has created new, purely orchestral versions of some of his most well-known and beloved works. Staying pure and faithful to Puccini’s original orchestration without anything added to ‘cover’ any perceivable lack of vocal line the brilliance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Tosca and other works shine through in this album of world premiere recordings.

REVIEW:

This fabulous album of world premiere recordings is just exhilarating from start to finish. I do hope that by the end of the year Maestro Rizzi will give us other orchestral suites, say, from La bohème or Turandot. I am sure they will be welcomed most enthusiastically.

This is an irresistible programme full of shimmering melodies that help us to really discover Puccini’s orchestral mastery which is often overshadowed by the singing and heartwrenching drama of the stories. This exceptionally innovative music that strongly enhances the total mastery of Puccini’s art is not to be missed.

-- Classical Music Daily

The album 'OCULUS' is Julie Cooper's 2nd to be released on the Signum Classics label. It is an eye into the world of colour in music, from the Italian Renaissance through to present day. Inspired by the talent of the artists recording the tracks, by paintings, dances and architecture of the Italian Renaissance and the vividly descriptive colours the Oculus Ensemble's Conductor Jessica Cottis sees when conducting in certain keys through her synaesthesia.

Duarte’s Partita was completed in 1974. It’s a substantial work in four movements, using all original material. As in the Variations on a Theme of Štepan Rak he adopts a four-note motif, which may be heard forwards, backwards, inverted and stretched. Variations on an Italian Folk Song Op. 139 was written in 2000. It draws on the second movement, “Canzona”, of Duarte’s prior Suite piemontese, which was based on a combination of two tunes: Il testamento dell’avvelenato and Re Gilardin. This gentle theme is characterised by simple movements of a step or a fourth. The six variations all begin with this stepwise movement but they quickly gain individual characters. Valse lyrique (2000) is one of the three short dances Duarte wrote late in his career. The second theme, clearly derived from the first, includes some hemiolas as well as combined harmonics and natural notes. The central section features the melody in the bass. Valse en rondeau was written in 1997 for the American guitarist David Starobin. Duarte stated: “I decided to make reference to my origin as a jazz musician and to my interest in early music (the Rondeau form) and to exercise my unshakeable belief in melody.” The origin of the Variations on a Theme of Štepan Rak Op. 100 is unique. In 1984, Rak was staying with Duarte when Vladimir Mikulka performed a lunchtime concert in London. At the end of the concert, Mikulka announced that he was going to perform an unusual encore – a theme, but without variations that had yet to be written. Afterwards he announced that Rak, Koshkin and Duarte should exchange themes with each other to create six new variation works, and he presented Duarte with Rak’s theme on a piece of manuscript paper. Andres Segovia, a supreme Anglophile, married his third wife in Gibraltar (“under the British flag, on Spanish soil”), and their son was born in London. Duarte’s 3 Songs without Words for Carlos Andres were a present to the happy couple. Danza eccentrica (2000) was dedicated to the Italian guitarist Domenico Lafasciano with the note, “Here is your dance. It may not be what you expected, but it’s what I’ve written – not another ‘cloned’ rumba, tango, waltz or whatever, but something with more individual character.” The unexpected aspects include dissonant harmonies, bass notes which move in ¾ against the treble in 6/8 and sections more reminiscent of a hurdy-gurdy. The Italian guitarist Angelo Gilardino wrote to Duarte about his Fantasia and Fugue on Torre Bermeja Op. 30: “…the melodic and rhythmic feeling is of the sort to easily produce the fascination of the public”. The Torre Bermeja in question is the piano piece by Isaac Albeniz, Op. 92 No. 12. Although it carries Op. 62 (1974) on its cover, the little Prelude en arpèges was written in 1954/5 and intended as the first movement of a Harp Suite Op. 18 that was never completed.

From the outset of his career, Jean Sibelius was recognized as an outstanding representative of a musical language perceived as typically Finnish. In Finland, the dawn of the 20th century saw a veritable outbreak of nationally inspired artistic activities., It was a time of cultural and national self-discovery for Sibelius, too. He allowed himself be stimulated by the whole of Finland’s folklore tradition, without resorting to specific examples of folksong.

For many years, Carl Nielsen was viewed outside his native Denmark as the poor cousin of his more famous Scandinavian counterparts, Grieg and Sibelius. Yet his achievements as Denmark’s greatest symphonist of the 20th century were, if anything, even more remarkable than the successes of his geographical neighbors. Nielsen’s symphonic output is some of the most remarkable of its time.

The Norwegian conductor and composer Johann Svendsen was born in 1840 in Christiania (now Oslo). in 1867, he finished his Symphony No. 1, a work that Grieg later described as showing scintillating genius, superb national feeling and really brilliant handling of an orchestra. In 1872 Svendsen returned to Christiania beginning a fruitful period that saw the creation of his Symphony No. 2 in B flat major Op. 15.

Hugo Alfven's First Symphony (1897) has a melancholy Sturm und Drang mood that recurs at intervals in his later compositions, but there is also a life affirming side that flourished in his Second Symphony, two years later. Of his Third Symphony, he stated "it depicts neither concrete nor abstract. It is an expression of the joy of living, an expression of the sun-lit happiness that filled my whole being.”

Wilhelm Stenhammar's Symphony Op. 34  saw the light of day in 1907, dedicating it to “my dear friends, the members of the Goteborg Symphony Orchestra.” He was to remain its chief conductor until 1922. That symphony, which had its first performance under the composer’s direction in 1915, was in fact Stenhammar’s second and is today called Symphony No. 2, even if the composer himself never gave it that number.

Edvard Grieg’s Symphony in C minor, which the composer withdrew, saw scholar after scholar writing about it disparagingly, with much discussion of the its style, all too often based on the question: what are its unoriginal or unsuccessful features? But it was Grieg himself who began the tradition with his admonition that it “must never be performed”. Now, however, very few feel, on moral grounds, that the work should not be performed.

Secrets of Armenia presents a selection of delightful piano works reflecting the dances and folk songs from everyday Armenian life. Performed by pianist Yulia Ayrapetyan, a specialist in the music of Armenia.

Signum Classics is proud to present Romanian-born soprano Angela Gheorghiu’s first album on the Grammy award winning label. Described as “the world’s most glamorous and gifted opera star” (New York Sun), Ms. Gheorghiu’s magnificent voice and dazzling stage presence have established her as a unique international opera superstar.

Her new album, released to mark the anniversary of celebrated composer Giacomo Puccini, brings together a collection of well-known arias and songs spanning many years of his career. The album features a World Premiere Recording of the recently rediscovered aria “Melanconia”, which is most probably from 1883 and not 1881 as previously thought. Other notable works on the recording are “Salve Regina” from Le villi, “Storiella d’amore” as well as the title track “A te,” composed by Puccini at just 16 years old.

Following their acclaimed mix-tape series on Signum Classics, Earthcycle is the fifth album from Orchestra of the Swan and David Le Page. Earthcycle is an innovative and timely project which finds a compelling way to engage with humanity’s most urgent threat. Through three initial performances, a recording and a film, Earthcycle contem- plates our impact on Earth’s environment and the disruption of its natural rhythms. To celebrate the 300th anniversary of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons they have commissioned a new version from our Associate Artist, baroque/jazz musician and composer David Gordon which is interspersed with traditional folk songs related to the theme of the seasons and performed by singer Jackie Oates. Earthcycle highlights the 21st century’s greatest concern whilst celebrating nature and our place within it.

The forgotten figure of a 17th-century Dutch recorder virtuoso, illuminated by a unique synthesis of art history, scholarship and modern musicianship.

Der Fluyten Lust-hof (The Flute's Pleasure Garden, or Garden of Delights) is the largest collection of music for a single wind instrument ever published by a single composer, and has supplied recorder players, amateurs and professionals, with music for reflection and entertainment ever since the publication of its initial volume in 1644.

An overlooked detail is the dedication of the first volume, to one Adriana vanden Bergh. Who was she? This book and CD tells the full and fascinating story, shedding light along the way on many aspects of culture, religion and everyday life in Amsterdam during the 17th century. As both a musicologist and art historian, Thiemo Wind is uniquely placed to tell this story. He has identified Adriana as the subject of a famous painting by Jacob Adriaensz Backer (1608/09–1651), hitherto anonymous but considered one of the most beautiful portraits of the Dutch Golden Age.

Through original research, Thiemo Wind has assembled an eventful biography, which moves in short and lively chapters, each of them illustrated with a telling image, from her family background to her birth in 1631, her complex religious inheritance of both Protestant and Catholic observance, her apparently rapid mastery of the recorder, her participation in Amsterdam’s lively performing culture and her status as a musical celebrity even as a teenager, to her marriage in 1650, which probably occasioned the commission of Backer’s portrait. Thereafter the story turns darker, with a tale of bankruptcy, child-birth and -death, family splits and reconciliations, obscurity and ultimately Adriana’s death in 1668, having given birth to her ninth child.

The accompanying CD takes its cue from Der Fluyten Lust-hof, and from the music publications featured in Backer’s portrait, to present new recordings of music with which Adriana would have delighted audiences in her time. Performed by the internationally renowned virtuoso Erik Bosgraaf, in company with his Cordevento ensemble, the recording complements Thiemo Wind’s scholarship to present Adriana’s life and music in the round."

Pedro de Araújo (c. 1630-1707) is an important figure in Portuguese keyboard music of the late 17th century. His oeuvre consists of a total of 13 keyboard works, one of them with merely attributed authorship. These have come down to us through two manuscript sources in Portuguese collections: the Livro de obras de Orgaõ juntas pella coriosidade de Fr. Roque da Conceição, a source dated 1696, and the Livro de Obras de Órgão, a source compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries and originating in the Bouro Monastery (Braga). De Araújo’s output covers the genres that were in vogue in his day on the Iberian Peninsula (e.g. Batalha, Tento, Meio Registo, Fantasia) and which constituted the traditional repertoire of Iberian keyboard players in the service of ecclesiastical institutions.
The Batalha do 6º Tom and the [Susana] do 2º Tom hark back to the 16th century tradition of intabulating existing vocal works, the former based on the chanson ‘La Guerre’ by Clement Janequin, the latter on ‘Susane un jour’ by Orlando di Lasso, a famous vocal work throughout Europe and the target of many other composers’ intabulations.
The Phantasias, Obras and Tentos fall within the stylistic sphere of the tento (Spanish: tiento), an Iberian genre characterised by contrapuntal writing and multiple contrasting sections. In them De Araújo displays his mastery at weaving contrapuntal lines and varying the thematic material. The Consonâncias de 1º Tom corresponds stylistically to a tento de falsas (Sp.: tiento de falsas / It.: durezze e ligature), with the work developing in a succession of dissonances. The Passo solto de 7º Tom is a work entirely in triple meter with a succession of iambic rhythms reminiscent of the vilancico style.

There is still much we do not know about the veritable mandolin-mania of late 18th-century Europe, particularly Vienna, which in that period was home to the three greatest musicians of the Classical period: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The instrument certainly enjoyed dazzling success in Viennese musical circles, embraced by the cultured aristocrats who resided in the Habsburg capital, and its meteoric rise was supported by some extraordinary virtuosos who helped promote its high-quality and fast-growing repertoire.
Giovanni Hoffmann’s refined chamber music featuring the mandolin was warmly received among the Viennese elite, making him one of the foremost figures behind the burgeoning mandolin repertoire of late 18th-century Vienna. Very little is known about his life; the Italianate first name alongside a clearly central-European surname adds to the mystery shrouding his birthplace and sphere of education.
Hoffmann was both a mandolin virtuoso and an esteemed composer. In 1799, the music merchant Johann Traeg advertised a list of the mandolin scores available to purchase from his shop on Vienna’s Singerstraße. It included a Trio for mandolin & bass by Hoffmann, and that same year, the composer released a further number of manuscript works through Traeg including his Quartets for mandolin, violin, viola & cello and
Serenatas for mandolin & viola. Hoffmann’s work is recorded again in Austria in the early decades of the 19th century, but – like his birth – the place and date of his death have not yet come to light. His music, however, lives on, a testament to his talent for composing delightful music in a Classical style evoking the fascinating gatherings of the Viennese literati.

Admiration for the French composer, harpsichordist and organist, Louis Couperin continues to grow steadily today, but it was not so during his lifetime. The first important edition of his work in modern times, in its latest revision by Thurston Dart (used for this set), catalogues 129 pieces as authentic. Collectively, they help to place Couperin among the greatest composers of the 17th century alongside Frescobaldi, Chambonnieres, Froberger, and D’Anglebert.

Though he wrote religious works as well as chamber music, harpsichord music forms the lion’s share of Louis’s nephew François Couperin’s output: 235 pieces in all, most of them published in the four volumes (or Livres) of Pièces de Clavecin, divided into 27 ordres.

Like the better-known Jacques Duphly and Claude Balbastre, Armand-Louis Couperin belongs to the last generation of French harpsichord composers. The modesty and success which profited Armand-Louis handsomely during his lifetime rather dimmed the light of his creative legacy. He published little during his own lifetime. One of only a few opuses, the magnificent volume of Pièces de clavecin deserves consideration alongside the viol fantazias of Purcell and the Lachrymae of Dowland, examples of lateness in music, where the fruit has ripened beyond high summer, yet there is much of interest in these pieces, beyond their historical value at the end of a distinguished family line.

Armand-Louis’s son, Gervais-François Couperin, studied with his father then replaced him at the Sainte-Chapelle organ. His keyboard compositions reveal a profound understanding of the delicate nuances and expressive capabilities of the harpsichord, characterized by elegance, refinement and meticulous attention to ornamentation. Yet Gervais-François was also a virtuoso on the new instrument of his day, the fortepiano, and this set features his music performed on that keyboard of greatly expanded expressivity.

REVIEW:

Brilliant Classics’ Couperin Dynasty collection usefully gathers together François’s four dazzling books of harpsichord pieces (Michael Borgstede), Massimo Berghella playing harpsichord suites by Louis (historically the first important member of the Couperin family), harpsichord pieces by Armand-Louis (cousin of François) played by Yago Mahugo and catchy, vivacious fortepiano music by Gervais-François (a son of Armand-Louis and a contemporary of Beethoven) adeptly performed by Simone Pierini. The range of music on offer stretches from Gervais-François’s feisty variations to François’s majestic Passacaille, one of the finest masterpieces in the genre. It’s a musical feast to relish, more varied than you might expect. Excellent sound, too, and informative notes by Michael Borgstede, Peter Quantrill, Brigida Cristallo and Massimo Berghella.

— Gramophone

The son of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Carl Philipp Emanuel, described his father’s Sonatas BWV 1014–1019 as among the best works his father ever wrote and continued to perform them extensively after his father’s death. This is music of implication and inference, the emotions no less real for their apparent lack of specificity. There is pleasure in the paradox: even without a text, the music sings. “They still sound very good and give me much joy, although they date back more than fifty years. They contain some Adagios that could not be written in a more singable manner today”, writes C. P. E. Bach. In these new recordings, some of the greatest exponents of Baroque music in the Nordic countries, violinist Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch and keyboardist Tuija Hakkila join forces. Tuija Hakkila plays copy of a Gottfried Silbermann fortepiano 1747 by Andrea Restelli — J. S. Bach played one of his fortepianos in 1747 in Potsdam for Frederick the Great and his court musicians.

His 15th album with Signum Classics, the Welsh pianist, Llŷr Williams, brings a profound musical intelligence to his work as soloist, accompanist and chamber musician. His new album of Robert Schumann works explores a selection of works that span a substantial part of Schumann’s life, including Papillons Op. 2 (written while he studied law at Leipzig University) all the way up to Faschingsschwank aus Wien published in 1841. Llŷr Williams’ long and successful collaboration with Signum Records includes the 8-disc box-set ‘A Schubert Journey’ (2020), the 12-volume ‘Beethoven Unbound’ (2018), a ‘Wagner Without Words’ double album (2014) and highlights from Liszt’s ‘Années de pèlerinage‘ (2012).

Anne Warthmann, soprano is accompanied by Hyowon Chi, flute, Arthur Stockel, clarinet and Naji Hakim at the historic STAHLHUTH-JANN ORGAN at St. Martin’s Church, Dudelange , Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, in a program including the following world premiere recordings of Naji Hakim’s works : Abana for soprano and organ (2019) - Assalamu for soprano and organ (2019) - Our Lady's Minstrel (Prelude for clarinet and organ, Three poems for soprano and organ, Dance for clarinet and organ) (2013) - Adoration for soprano, flute and organ (2015) - Römisches Triptychon for soprano and organ (2010).

This will be the 5th NAJI HAKIM PLAYS NAJI HAKIM organ CD released by SIGNUM Classics (visit https://signumrecords.com/product-category/artists/naji-hakim/) . It will include the following world premiere recordings of Naji Hakim's works at the historic STAHLHUTH-JANN ORGAN at St Martin’s Church, Dudelange , Grand-Duché de Luxembourg : Gregoriana (2003) - Bogurodzica (2018) – Prière (2020) - Villancico aragonés (2018) - Carnaval (2014) - Sindbad (2014) - Korean Prelude (2014) - Cantilena (2016) - Trois Paraphrases sur Ave maris stella (2003) - O sacrum convivium (2018) - Tanets (2019).

To mark the 50th anniversary of Noël Coward's death, celebrated musicians and regular Signum artists Mary Bevan, Nicky Spence and Joseph Middleton join forces for this album of works by Coward and his contemporaries. Featuring songs such as Parisian Pierrot and The Man I Love, the album comprises of a collection of solos, duets and instrumental songs by composers such as Ned Rorem, Liza Lehmann, William Walton, and Benjamin Britten.

Works attributable with certainty to Nicolò Corradini (1585–1646) – likely from Cremona as opposed to Bergamo or Rome as erroneously suggested in the past – are limited to a few printed editions, among them the Primo libro de Canzoni francesi a 4 e alcune suonate (a copy of which has come down to us, printed by Gardano in Venice in 1624). It includes ten French canzonas and four sonatas, works most likely conceived to be performed by several instrumentalists, including one or more possible continuists (because of the speed of some passages and the separation between different parts of often more than an octave).
The canzonas are divided into several sections with structures ranging from simple A-B-A to more complex schemes (A-B-C-A-B-D in the Eighth Canzon); these short musical frameworks offer within them a great variety of themes, imitation between parts and repetitions of sections, ensuring cohesiveness of form. The sonatas on the other hand – with the exception of the Suonata a tre (a simple A-B-C-D-A) – are presented in a more madrigalistic vein. The narrative pathway on which they are based passes through multiple melodic cues so completely different from one another as to suggest a rhetorical structure arching from an exordium to a final peroration. This leads to a proliferation of sections – A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I in the case of the Suonata a due cornetti in risposta. (The specification for two cornets “in call and response” contained in the title of this sonata corresponds to the numerous segments of this piece in which the same melody is first proposed by one performer and then repeated by the other.)

The sublime Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge return with the third volume in their Advent series celebrating the advent season from within the Christian tradition; a season celebrated since at least the sixth century.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote this set of six keyboard concertos Wq43 once he had been released from the constricting service to Frederick the Great of Prussia. Published in 1772, these concertos are among the first-fruits of such liberated imagination. The solo parts of these works will test the mettle of any aspiring or proven virtuoso. Their greatest originality, though, lies in their form.

Each concerto is written cyclically, or continuously, meaning that one movement leads directly into the next. Even the cadenzas are fully written out, anticipating in this regard Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto of two generations later.

The panoply of CPE’s instrumentation is necessarily compressed by this transcription of the concertos for two harpsichords, but the vitality of dialogue is fully preserved. It was made (or at least copied) by Johann Gottlieb Haußstädler, a copyist working for Peter August, the organist for the Elector of Saxony. The two men may have collaborated on the arrangement; at any rate, it has been unknown until now, and comes to life in the hands of a pair of Italian musicians with a serious pedigree in recording music of this period for Brilliant Classics.

A beloved trio of Romantic violin sonatas in the passionate and assured hands of an exciting Italian violinist near the start of her career: an auspicious debut on Brilliant Classics.

Germana Porcu Morano has produced a gripping account of the three violin sonatas by Edvard Grieg in partnership with one of the great Italian musicians of his generation, Bruno Canino. The pianist brings decades of experience to bear on parts which, especially in the testing Third Sonata, demand a virtuosity beyond anything in the Lyric Pieces. Meanwhile Porcu Morano’s urgently communicative musicianship is well suited to works which exemplify the fascinating tension between Grieg’s musical nationalism and his cosmopolitan outlook as a composer with colleagues and friends across Europe.

There are Norwegian elements to all three sonatas – Grieg’s teacher, Niels W Gade, even pronounced his verdict on the Second as ‘too Norwegian’ – but in counterbalance to the folk-like melodies which especially bring a rustic character to both slow movements and finales, there is a breadth of form and broad current of German romanticism to be appreciated in the first movements. Grieg himself took particular pride in the Third, a work of full maturity written in 1886 unlike the student efforts of the first two sonatas, and Porcu Morano’s performance captures the composer’s sense of its ‘broader horizons’.

Winner of the 30th edition of Michelangelo Abbado violin competition held in Milan in 2009, Germana Porcu Morano studied in Bergamo, and has gone on to win several other national and international prizes. She has performed as a soloist and in chamber ensembles across Europe and in China. She is a member of the Paganini String Quartet, with plans afoot to record the complete quartets by Paganini.

Georges Migot (1891–1976) authored a vast oeuvre founded on two principles that in various ways pervade all of his work: a nationalist aesthetic and a link to the past. This emerges and is reinforced in repeated references to the French lutenists of old, as well as troubadours and trouveÌres, folk song and ancient monodic forms, particularly plainchant. Rather than limit himself to copying their external structure, however, Migot sought to extract the spirit, sensitivity, grace and sense of freedom from these historic forms, which he believed better suited the infinite nature of human sensitivity. Despite strong and professed ties to his contemporaries Faureì and Debussy, Migot cannot be placed in any school or branch of 20th-century music.

Pour un Hommage aÌ Claude Debussy (composed May 1924) coincided with the Paris debut of Andreìs Segovia and is dedicated to him. Migot composes lines with a modal flavour supported by rich and resonant arpeggiated chords, with densely packed notes providing a thorough exploration of all the instrument’s colours.

His four-movement Sonate pour guitare, two PreÌludes pour 2 guitares dedicated to the Argentinian Duo Pomponio-ZaÌrate, and a substantial and tricky Sonate pour 2 guitares date to the early 1960s. These pieces have a more clearly defined and linear style, and feature a profound musical idiom, brimming with emotion.

The three movements of the Sonate pour flu^te et guitare – dedicated to Brazilian guitarist Turíbio Santos – are stylistically similar to the above compositions. Migot gives both instruments various solo opportunities, and the two accompany each other, both during the more evanescent passages, where the writing is extremely sparse, and in more densely notated sections.

The 3 Chansons de joye et de souci originate in a cycle of 6 PoeÌmes setting Pierre Moussarie for voice and piano. They were arranged for voice and guitar in 1969 by the composer himself. In these, his final works for guitar, Migot provides us with a sample of his highly refined aesthetic, obtaining sounds not commonly heard on the instrument.

Marking the quadricentenary of Byrd’s death in 2023, the Men & Boys Choir of Saint Thomas, Fifth Avenue, New York, recreates the Catholic Mass for the Feast of Corpus Christi as Byrd might have experienced it in the late 16th century. This new recording includes various Latin motets written by Byrd for the feast, along with the remarkable Mass setting in four parts.

Part of this album is a recording, originally released on LP only in 1981, of the Saint Thomas Choir under the late Gerre Hancock, singing Byrd’s complete Great Service, written in the vernacular for the reformed Anglican liturgy – the flip side of Byrd’s Latinate expression.

Over the course of more than half a century, Wolfgang Rübsam has consistently brought new insights to bear on the keyboard music of Bach, firstly in sets of the canonic organ music for Philips, then the same for Naxos. In the last few years, his musicianship and understanding of Bach enriched by those decades of experience, he has turned to the harpsichord/piano repertoire for Brilliant Classics. A series of critically acclaimed albums has shed new light on The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas and Toccatas with Rübsam’s performance of them on a lautenwerk – a ‘lute-harpsichord’ with a distinctive chime and colour which Bach himself would have been familiar with. Rübsam now returns to the organ, with new transcriptions and recordings of two Orchestral Suites and Chaconne from the D minor Partita for solo violin. While the Chaconne has attracted transcribers and arrangers ever since the 19th century, drawn magnetically to its evolving variations on a ground bass which accumulate an emotional power unusual even for Bach, the Orchestral Suites are much less often encountered outside their original garb. Yet we can be sure that Bach himself would have embraced Rübsam’s idea with enthusiasm. The Suites themselves are compilations of dances, probably not all originally designed for their eventual destination as high-class entertainment music for the concert series at Café Zimmermann in Leipzig, and Bach repurposed some of their movements as sinfonias and even choruses for his church cantatas. As in his fairly free transcription of the Chaconne, Rübsam has made full use of the instrument at his disposal, a magnificent Casavant instrument (1998) at the Church of St. Louis, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The booklet includes a full disposition for the organ as well as an essay introducing both the works and Rübsam’s uniquely imaginative approach to them. ‘If the sound of the lute-harpsichord highlights Bach’s debt to French lute music, especially in the First Prelude, the instrument clarifies that homage while Rübsam’s interpretation transcends it.’ (Fanfare, November 2018, The Well-Tempered Clavier, 96750)

This substantial set dedicated to the vocal music of Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) features the great cycle undertaken (to date) by Krijn Koetsveld and the singers of Le Nuove Musiche: all nine books of madrigals, the music in Monteverdi collections such as the Selva Morale e Spirituale (1641), the posthumous Messa a quattro voci ed salmi (1650), and the individual works by Monteverdi compiled in the collections of others, the so-called Fragments. To this is joined the cycle of operas directed by Sergio Vartolo and sung by casts of Italian early music specialists, including the first recording of the five-act version of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria.

These thoroughly researched, historically informed interpretations demonstrate Monteverdi’s pioneering and transformative role in the emergence and development of staged, dramatic vocal music. Also featured are the grand Vespers – sacred music in the Gregorian plainchant tradition but on an operatic scale – in a fantastic recording with fine Italian soloists and authentic period instruments including the early brass of La Pifarescha. Federico Bardazzi and Ensemble Felice make scrupulous interpretative decisions about the order of movements, interpolating the choral motets within the prescribed sequence of psalms to great effect. Finally, there are Monteverdi’s youthful three-part canzonettas, written when the composer was 17. They are rather simpler than the madrigals, both to sing and to appreciate, but their musical worth is amply demonstrated by the largely female voices of Armoniosoincanto joined by a mixed period-instrument ensemble of flutes, violas, theorbo and harpsichord. They impart just the right light-hearted mood and dramatic impact to the playful, folkloric secular strophic poetry.

CONTENTS:

• Monteverdi: Il primo libro de madrigali, 1587
• Monteverdi: Il secondo libro de madrigali, 1590
• Monteverdi: Il terzo libro de madrigali, 1592
• Monteverdi: Il quarto libro de madrigali, 1603
• Monteverdi: Il quinto libro de madrigali, 1605
• Monteverdi: Il sesto libro de madrigali, 1614
• Monteverdi: Il settimo libro de madrigali, 1619 'Concerto'
• Monteverdi: Il ottavo libro de madrigali, 1638 'Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi'
• Monteverdi: Il nono libro de madrigali, 1651
• Monteverdi: O ciechi il tanto affaticar, SV 252
• Monteverdi: Voi ch'ascoltate
• Monteverdi: È questa vita un lampo
• Monteverdi: Spuntava il dì, SV 255
• Monteverdi: Chi vol che m’innamori
• Monteverdi: Confitebor tibi III alla francese, SV267
• Monteverdi: Gloria a 7, SV 258
• Monteverdi: Crucifixus, SV 259
• Monteverdi: Pianto della Madonna 'Iam moriar, mi fili' (sopra il Lamento dell'Arianna), SV 288
• Monteverdi: Et resurrexit, a quattro
• Monteverdi: Et iterum
• Monteverdi: Laudate Dominum in sancta Eius
• Monteverdi: Salve Regina, SV 285
• Monteverdi: Laudate Dominum
• Monteverdi: Beatus vir (from Selva Morale e Spirituali)
• Monteverdi: Sanctorum meritis (Primo)
• Monteverdi: Dixit [Dominus] Primo
• Monteverdi: Ab aeternum, SV 262
• Monteverdi: Confitebor tibi Domine, SV266
• Monteverdi: Memento Domine David
• Monteverdi: Laudate pueri Primo
• Monteverdi: Salve Regina, SV 284
• Monteverdi: Laudate Dominum omnes gentes II
• Monteverdi: Magnificat Primo
• Monteverdi: Gloria (1641)
• Monteverdi: Dixit Dominus secondo a8 SV 192
• Monteverdi: Deus tuorum militum sors et corona
• Monteverdi: Confitebor tibi, Domine
• Monteverdi: Iste confessor
• Monteverdi: Beatus vir (second setting)
• Monteverdi: Ut queant laxis, hymnus sancti Joannis
• Monteverdi: Laudate pueri (Secondo)
• Monteverdi: Deus tuorum militum sors et corona
• Monteverdi: Credidi propter quod locutus sum, SV 275
• Monteverdi: Jubilet a voce sola in dialogo
• Monteverdi: Magnificat (Secondo)
• Monteverdi: Salve Regina
• Monteverdi: Laudate Dominum
• Monteverdi: Canzonette
• Monteverdi: Vespro della beata Vergine (1610)
• Monteverdi: Cantate Domino
• Monteverdi: O beatae viae
• Monteverdi: Currite populi
• Monteverdi: Ego flos campi
• Monteverdi: Venite, venite
• Monteverdi: Christe, adoramus te
• Monteverdi: O quam pulchra es
• Monteverdi: Salve Regina
• Monteverdi: Fuge, anima mea
• Monteverdi: Sancta Maria
• Monteverdi: Domine, ne il furore
• Monteverdi: Ego dormio
• Monteverdi: Ecce sacrum paratum
• Monteverdi: Salve Regina
• Monteverdi: O bone Jesu, o piissime Jesu
• Monteverdi: En gratulemur hodie, SV 302
• Monteverdi: Laudate Dominum omnes gentes
• Monteverdi: Adoramus te, Christe
• Monteverdi: Messa a 4 voci da Cappella (1650)
• Monteverdi: Dixit [Dominus] Primo
• Monteverdi: Confitebor tibi, Domine
• Monteverdi: Nisi Dominus a 6, SV201
• Monteverdi: Laudate pueri
• Monteverdi: Laetatus sum
• Monteverdi: Lauda Jerusalem a 3, SV202
• Monteverdi: Beatus vir (from Selva Morale e Spirituali)
• Monteverdi: Magnificat Primo
• Monteverdi: Missa 'In illo tempore' (1610)
• Monteverdi: Dixit Dominus II
• Monteverdi: Confitebor tibi Domine II, SV194
• Monteverdi: Nisi Dominus a 6, SV201
• Monteverdi: Laudate Dominum, SV197a
• Monteverdi: Laetatus sum
• Monteverdi: Laetaniae della Beata Vergine a 6 voci
• Monteverdi: Lauda Jerusalem a 5, SV203
• Monteverdi: L'Orfeo
• Monteverdi: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
• Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea

Christopher Glynn continues his Schubert in English series by joining baritone Roderick Williams and soprano Rowan Pierce for songs of loneliness and companionship, nature and the seasons, faith and doubt, wandering and homecoming, caution and consolation - all in new English versions by Jeremy Sams.