This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra focuses on works by Perttu Haapanen (b. 1972), one of the most important and interesting Finnish composers of his generation. It includes a recently-written Flute Concerto with Yuki Koyama as soloist and conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk, and two other works conducted by Hannu Lintu: a song-cycle written for soprano Helena Juntunen and an orchestral work, Compulsion Island, written for the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Compulsion Island was written to a commission from the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and makes full use of the resources of a full-sized symphony orchestra. Haapanen creates a multi-layered and richly sonorous texture where extended instrument techniques play a significant and carefully considered role. Quiet, stagnant and expectant yet tense moments alternate with charged and punchy rhythmical passages that increase in force until the final culmination, followed by a subsiding, dreamlike and unreal epilogue. The Flute Concerto lasts about 25 minutes and is in a single movement divided into two halves featuring different materials, according to the composer. At the surface level, it comes across as a flexible and elastic structure consisting of several short sections in rapid succession, with contrasting moods either alternating or superimposed. The palette of sonorities is rich, augmented by extended instrument techniques and a number of rare sound sources such as a typewriter producing crisp rhythms and the absurd sounds of wheezing toys. Ladies’ Room for soprano and chamber orchestra was written to a commission from the Musica nova Helsinki festival. Originally written and premiered in 2007 by Helena Juntunen, it was revised by Haapanen in the following year. The texts come from a wide variety of sources: poems by conductor and mezzosoprano Jutta Seppinen, the Bible, Google, the archives of Scotland Yard and Paul Celan. Between them are four nonsense text settings that pay homage to Adolf Wolfli, an early 20th-century Swiss artist. The soprano part is highly demanding due to its wide range of vocal techniques which make Ladies’ Room a vocal virtuoso work where the virtuoso component is an integral part of the content.

•One of the very few musicians from Ravenna in the 18th century was the outstanding Antonio Pio, opera composer and music teacher at the court of Catherine of Russia. The Archivio Arcivescovile of Ravenna preserves the score of Pio’s oratorio for four voices and orchestra, Gionata. Maria Luisa Baldassari leads the four soloists and the Ensemble I Luoghi dello Spirito in this world-premiere recording.

Venetian musician and composer Antonio Caldara (1670-1736), unlike some of his contemporaries who today are quite famous but experienced little fame during their lifetimes, enjoyed enormous success, then faded inexplicably from music history. +Alongside a vast production of vocal music, his only significant instrumental works are two trio sonata collections published during his youth, as well as these “sonate a violoncello solo col basso”, composed in 1735, a year before his passing.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi brought the theatre into churches, and religious seriousness into theatres. He is also the first musician who was never dropped from the repertory, either in theatres or in churches. Before him, only contemporary music was played and sung. His Stabat Mater and La serva padrona never stopped being performed, admired and applauded. The characters were now men and women made of flesh and blood, not stock characters, types and stilted heroes, and had the same feelings and intentions as the men and women who frequented the theatre. Pergolesi’s modernity still surprises.

This CD includes the world premiere recording of Marco Enrico Bossi complete works for piano four hands. As shown and evident in the Suite de Valses op. 93 and the transcription of the magnificent Suite for Large Orchestra op. 126, while maintaining an original mark, Bossi’s compositions for four hands seem to be inspired by Brahms and by the Hamburg chamber music transplanted in Vienna. Pianists Paolo Borganti and Giulio Giurato have used original editions and manuscripts, revising and correcting them even by comparisons of the transcriptions to the orchestral scores.

This rarity of an album includes original works for plectrum orchestra, an ensemble formed by mandolins and instruments so derived: the mandola, the mandoloncello and mandolone, with guitars, harps, and other plectrum or pizzicato instruments added depending on the situation. Following its heyday and decline, the second half of the 19th c. throughout Europe saw many such ensembles spring up. Founded in 1898, the Gino Neri orchestra was the star of that period of splendor, and now represents the oldest plectrum orchestra still preserving and disseminating this repertoire worldwide.

This unique work by Alessandro Cazzato gives us a glimpse of interesting contemporary authors whose work for solo violin have roots that lie deep in musical tradition. A past that leaves it's traces in new sounds, a revisited past with new signs and gestures, a new type of music, deeply influenced by the past; this is the theme of this project, forcused on "rewriting."

For the first time in the history of music the incredible history of the people from Viggiano is ‘revealed’ on a recording: wandering musicians that in a time span of four centuries represent a real unicum, both musically and anthropologically. Immortalized in the Neapolitan Christmas cribs of the eighteenth century, the wandering music specialists perfectly integrated themselves into the musical needs of the kingdom of Naples, from which, taking advantage of the Bourbon dynamism, then started spreading around the world with many of them becoming top musicians in major orchestras. Through their talent, existential need, great adaptability and versatility, the musicians from Viggiano - almost all of them belonging to the same family circle - with their harp, identifying symbol of their land, became the promoters of the great Italian musical tradition (Southern in particular). From the “Scuola d’Arpa di Viggiano” (Harp School of Viggiano), young artists led by specialists Sara Simari and Lincoln Almada implement the rebirth of this extraordinary tradition, elaborating the main sources of the historical repertoire from Viggiano.

What paths did the composition of sacred music take at the beginning of this millennium? What is its relationship with liturgy? What prospects does it have? On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Domenico Bartolucci (1917-2013), historic conductor of the choir of the Sistine Chapel and prolific composer, the Second National Conference of Composers of Sacred Music, promoted by the Associazione Italiana Santa Cecilia, was held in Rome from 1 to 3 September 2017. The conclusive Mass that was celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica, in the Cappella del Coro, offered the chance to observe how today’s composers deal with the holy texts, ideally proceeding along the paths that since the first centuries of the Christian era, with time, branched out from the papal seat to the ends of the earth. Contrary to what happens at present in a widespread practice, the texts that are set to music in this celebration are not juxtaposed to the rite but spring from it, and the lexicon used by the composers – albeit with differences between the individual composers – aims to express the deep meaning of the celebration without misleading the listeners or shocking them with avant-garde languages and shifting their attention to matters that are foreign to the liturgical prayer.

In the month of what would have been his ninetieth birthday, this record comes as a tribute to Sylvano Bussotti. One of the most singular and emblematic composers on the international contemporary classical scene, Bussotti passed away in September 2021. This music comes to us thanks to Jonathan Faralli on percussion and Roberto Fabbriciani on flute, an equally emblematic performer and constant point of reference in the musical production of our century, as well as a great friend and close collaborator of Bussotti himself. A must-have for lovers of the genre as well as the curious newcomer, the album offers masterful work by the two performers as they stage Bussotti's famously theatrical scores, full of dramaturgy, poetry and scenography for both eyes and ears.

Each of the three violin concertos by Telemann on the seventh volume (but not the last!) of our complete series merits separate consideration in view of its singular musical character and special transmission history. In two cases stylistic descriptions and evaluations are bound up with the question of the authenticity of these compositions. This applies to the Overture Suites TWV 55:A8 and TWV 55:A4. Our expert booklet author Dr. Wolfgang Hirschmann regards the attribution of the first suite to Telemann as entirely justified, even though it perhaps involves a rather early example of this composer’s concerts en ouverture. The interpretation of this work by the Wallfisch Band is a multifaceted and just as virtuosic rendering that makes a compelling case for this fine one-of-a-kind piece situated between the concerto and suite genres – a work that absolutely has to be included in a complete recording! Although the second overture suite really should be assigned to the ranks of the anonymous, Adolf Hoffmann categorically labeled it as a piece by Telemann in his dissertation on the orchestral suites (1969) and classified it as a “masterpiece” by this composer. The solo violin is highly effectively employed along with a finely developed feeling for tone-color effects, and the movements are ambitiously elaborated in length and form. No matter how plausible the case for Telemann’s authorship may be – these works enable us to participate in a fascinating journey back in time to European music culture around 1720.

There are indeed many recordings of Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin, but the special thing about this particular recording is that it was produced following the performances of a scenic interpretation with the Spanish stage director Calixto Bieito. What now follows is a musical exploration forming a sequel to scenic occupation with the Vespers. Since 2017 Il Gusto Barocco has been the guest ensemble for the four-part Monteverdi cycle initiated by opera director Albrecht Puhlmann at the Mannheim National Theater. From the musician’s perspective, the scenic exploration of music rooted in the liturgy does in fact clearly differ from a performance during a religious service or a non-scenic concert performance. During the time-intensive process prior to the staging of an opera, scenes, images, and figures gradually take shape. In each stage figure the quest is for an emotional truth from which her or his artistic nature, aesthetic character, and credibility result – and ultimately word and tone, in order to produce empathy and engage the public. Another important aspect of this recording is the great number of diminutions in all the instrumental and vocal parts, all of which were improvised at the particular moment. During the shared scenic preparation for the opera stage, the individual movements of the Marian Vespers obtained a definite emotional space in the dramaturgical sequence. Accordingly, sections and their basic characters were defined and invented at the particular moment for each performance and for this recording.

The WESER-RENAISSANCE ensemble had two goals in mind in its concert series “Breslau – A City in the Heart of Europe”: the first was to offer musical enjoyment and the second was to remember an old cultural environment that had been forgotten for many decades. The music manuscripts and printed editions discovered in the Berlin State Library attest to the great diversity and high quality of music culture in what was once the capital of Silesia. “Die Geburt unsers Herrn and Heylands Jesu Christi” (The Birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ), a Christmas narrative by Tobias Zeutschner, who was active at Breslau’s principal churches St. Bernhardin and St. Mary Magdalene, forms the focus of the present selection from these sources in a program entitled “Weihnachten im Breslau des 17. Jahrhunderts – Festmusik in der Kirche St. Maria Magdalena” (Christmas in Seventeenth-Century Breslau – Festive Music in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene). This early example of a Biblical history composition is richly scored for eighteen voices.