Marc Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) was never as famous as his contemporary Jean-Baptiste Lully. He never was a court composer, and did not get involved in the social or political circles of Versailles. His music was largely unappreciated until its rediscovery in the 1900s. Charpentier’s large output of sacred music, which includes more than 500 works, show his indisputable compositional refinement and prove the talent of this largely unperformed composer. L’Apotheose and Ricercare perform these works for voice, flute, string instrument, and more, drawing out the harmonic and melodic refinement that defines Charpentier’s music.

Great composers between the Baroque and Classical periods had the chance to write important works in Leipzig, where music had a new impulse thanks to the Collegium Musicum directed by George Philip Telemann from 1701. On this new recording, we hear compositions for the peculiar duo of two harpsichords performed by the Daccapo Italian Harpsichord Duo of Luigi Accardo and Enrico Bissolo.

An important composer during the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras, Adriano Banchieri is most noted for his founding of the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna. Banchieri was one of the first composers to convert the madrigal into use for dramatic purposes. He developed a form called “madrigal comedy,” which was an unstaged, but still dramatic, collection of madrigals which told a story when sung together. These works are performed by the Delitiae Musicae, conducted by Marco Longhini.

The universe of Stefano Bulfon appears to find its poetic necessity in offering a harmony of contrasts which only music can exemplify as an oxymoron. It is this kind of interworld, which has ceased to draw dramatic boundaries between lyric subjectivity and the dull setting of man. The Divertimento Ensemble, founded in 1977 brings Bulfon's works to life with their internationally-renowned soloists. The ensemble is strong dedicated to music education as well as the promotion of young people's creativity.

The bassoon, it's history, it's repertoire, the didactics, the research. The LowBb Bassoon Cluster proposes the bassoon repertoire through original compositions and re-ela-borations for bassoon ensemble, working alongside contemporary composers to broaden the repertoire for this splendid instrument. While constantly searching for new sonorities, the group also places great attention on tradition and the past thanks to their experience gained through the study of performing practice on historic instruments. The LowBb Bassoon Cluster regularly holds international master classes focusing on many aspects of the instrument and it's repertoire. Four teachers that contemporaneously offer their pupils lessons on their different specialties. On this release, the main point of research is the development of the repertoire for ensemble with the inclusion of one of the smallest members of the bassoon family, the Fagottino. It is no coincidence that this project is concurrent with the research being carried out by the Schola Cantorum in Basel on the rediscovery of the historical role of the Fagottino. The organological study and the rediscovery of it's repertoire prompted us to promote new compositions that exploit this extraordinary instrument as soloist and free it from it's mere didactic use.

Composer Brice Pauset writes: "Eurydice" is an isolated work and unlike the other works does not belong to a cycle. "Eurydice" is related to an experience of thinking, one of my favorite concerns. In this particular case and following to the ideological line rather closed to that of the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, it consists in revisiting a myth which accustomed to us to a single point of view, that of a victorious hero. Here I am interested in the subjectivity of the unfortunate and powerless heroine or more exactly an heroine condemned to unpower..."Un-Ruhe" (upheaval) is a cycle of four works gathering three main ideas under different ways: chattering voice, harpischord and a spacialized and in a three groups divided orchestra. The complete cycle is a critic of democracy in it's today normative form and refers easily to experiences of thinking: There are two litterary sources in the first piece: firstly Rosa Luxemburg, one of the most radical main figure of our past revolution history recognized by the global oligarchy as a past figure and for that reason has to be ignored; and secondly some graffitis, banners, anonymous tracts seen on Tahrir Place in Cairo: still alive traces of a recent revolution but acceptable because of the distance. "Theorie der Tr�nen" (Theory of tears) is the main title of a perfect informal cycle: works are gathering according to meetings and readings. Here I am interested in the interference of an uncontrolled subjective element, our own tears, but considered as a signal of realities seen as objective and significant: a social reality, a specific codification of interpersonal relations, the descrambling of specific affects. "Schlamm" (mud in English) is related to the World War I. The last survivors of this massacre have discreetly passed away. To talk about the experience of the trenches was hard, almost impossible for them. At a moment tears prevent from speaking. But the witness will often have time enough to speak about another fluid : mud. This almost half-an-hour long piece aims to build an incomplete, heterogeneous and rough process with these two materials."

Stacey Mastrian writes of her new release: "Was there an Italian art song tradition? What happened after Puccini? These questions started me on a journey of exploration eighteen years ago. The answer is that there is a wealth of worthwhile but relatively unknown music written by Italian composers from the past century. These twentiethcentury composers were the generation born in the 1880s (Generazione dell'ottanta) and their pupils. Despite the fact that they were extremely influential figures in Italian music, a variety of socio-political and economic issues, including the overwhelming popularity of opera, nationalistic hurdles, two world wars, conservatism, and financial problems of publishers, have contributed to the relative obscurity of much of their output. Their compositions for voice and piano have been particularly neglected. These are works that deserve to be heard. The songs for voice and piano that were written by twentieth-century Italian composers were called liriche, which means "lyrics" (singular lirica or lirica da camera). The name itself emphasizes the central importance of the text in these pieces. As with art songs from other countries, such as German Lieder or French melodies, liriche are a sophisticated form in which the voice and piano work together to present the poem. The piano parts are elaborate, and the music is rhythmically and harmonically complex, often incorporating an increased use of dissonances, nonfunctional harmonies, shifting and mixed meters, and polyrhythms-the aim of all of these elements being to fully express the text."

Luca N. Stradivari (1993) is a composer and pianist of his own music. After he graduated at the University of Nottingham, he started to hold composition seminars and concerts in China since 2018. He writes: "The first part of this release is marked by the performance of The King is Dead - shipwreck for violin and piano. A reworking case for duet - Luca N. Stradivari on the piano and Luca Fanfoni on the violin - of the concert for wind orchestra and violin solo based on the First World War, performed in 2012 in Sal� on lake Garda for it's annual music festival. Seven years later, maestro Fanfoni and I began a long process of studying my work in order to understand it's complex rhythms and sonorities, as well as it's symbols and deep historical meaning. The movement's titles (Mad Earth's screams, Lazy Hell, Stars shot into memories) were taken from some poems of mine in order to better emphasize what the music is describing within a particular section... Paciugo84 is a stream of consciousness running through different frames: absurd imagines, erotic fantasies, impossible loves, all orbiting around the initial thematic idea, those four melancholic notes opening and closing the score turning it into a true madhouse of butter-files.* To elevate the power of this piece I inserted in the recording a soundscape of city noises and turn them into active part of the composition since when I was creating this piece I was reading Sartre's writings, whose diaries were inspired by what he could see from his window. The music changes and reacts depending also on external noises such as the departing car at the end of the composition becoming a whole with the melancholic ending."

From October 2018 to January 2019, after dividing Europe in four big regions, each managed by one of the partners, DYCE announced a call for scores addressed to composition students and alumni from all European Universities, Conservatories, Musikhochschulen and Music Schools. About 150 scores from every European country were evaluated by an international jury made up of Hanspeter Kyburz, Brigitta Muntendorf, Johannes Sch�llhorn and the four artistic directors of the DYCE partners, Sandro Gorli, Christian Eggen, Tarmo Johannes and Ignacio Torner. Eventually, 12 scores were selected, 3 for each region. On 28 April 2019, the 12 winning pieces were performed at four concerts, held by the four DYCE ensembles, at different times in their respective four cities, with an audio/video streaming broadcast from each concert hall to the other three. In this way, the audiences of the four cities were able to listen to all 12 pieces: 3 live and 9 streamed. After the concerts, the audiences and the ensembles voted to select 4 composers from among the 12 winners: Jo�o Ceitil, Andreas Tsiartas, J-T Vesikkala Wittmacher and Yiqing Zhu. These composers were then commissioned to write a new piece to be performed in 2020 by the four ensembles in their own cities. This album presents the four new compositions, each performed by the ensemble in charge of the respective European region.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Many of the pieces in this anthology are morceaux de concours, pieces commissioned by the Paris Conservatory for the candidates who were preparing to pass the Prix that marked the end of higher musical studies.

Classical Music

Classical Music