Richard Strauss's final creative period (1942-1949) brought into being masterpieces such as the Metamorphosen and the Vier letzte Lieder and, alongside those works, two Sonatinas for winds, in F major and E-flat major.

A release that opens the precious casket of the works of two Italian seventeenth-century composers and violinists. It is a journey into the enveloping Baroque musical production through the compositions of Marco Uccellini (c.1610-1680), a prominent figure in the development of the sonata and technique for violin, and Michelangelo Rossi (1601 / 2-1656), a multifaceted composer, violinist and also organist. Born from the in-depth research of Davide Monti and Maria Christina Cleary at the State Archives, at the Museum and at the Estense Library in Modena, where Marco Uccellini was Chapel Master, the album presents an artistic dialogue between the two authors in a path that intertwines the in-depth themes and the respective compositional solutions. Protagonists of this very fine musical tale, careful to capture the spirit of the time in depth in a complex landscape of cultural stories, we find Davide Monti violin, Maria Christina Cleary double harp, Alberto Rasi viola da gamba and violone, Rogério Gonçalves dulciana. The release invites you to discover the suggestions that gather in these rediscovered pages of the Italian Baroque, letting yourself be carried away by a free imaginative and emotional listening.

Classical Music

For some time now musicology has widely reviewed the previously long held belief that Johann Sebastian Bach’s chamber output originates mostly from his Köthen period (1717-1723). Although precise dates are still lacking, various clues have led many of his works for one/two instruments and basso continuo or concertante harpsichord to be moved forward to his Leipzig years (1723-1750) and in particular to the decade 1730-1740. This group of works also includes the three sonatas for viola da gamba and ‘obbligato’ harpsichord BWV 1027 in G major, BWV 1028 in D major and BWV 1029 in G minor, again assigned on the basis of clues to the period 1736-1741. On the other hand, no reference is available to date the posthumous copies of the Sonatas BWV 1028 and 1029 made in 1753 by Christian Friedrich Penzel, one of Bach’s last pupils at the Thomasschule in Leipzig; but stylistic considerations would lead both works to be assigned to the same years as the Sonata BWV 1027. As is known, the three sonatas for viola da gamba do not form an organic corpus like the six Suites for cello or the Sonate e Partite for solo violin. But the pieces in the group share the ‘obbligato’ role of harpsichord, also found in the six Sonate à cembalo certato e Violino solo, datable to around 1725, as well as in the three sonatas for flute and harpsichord, written in the same period as the sonatas for viola da gamba. On this release, Patrizia Marisaldi (harpsichord) and Alberto Rasi (viola da gamba) aim to present this music in a historically accurate manner.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

François Couperin, the main representative of a dynasty that dominated French music from the 16th well into the first half of the 19th century. In 1726 Couperin published his own musical atlas. According to the most plausible reconstructions based on the surviving manuscripts, the author had picked up three sonatas from a series of six trio sonatas written on Corelli’s model of “sonata da chiesa” (four movements, typically alternating slow-fast-slow-fast). These three chosen works were renamed this way: La Pucelle became La Françoise, La Visionnaire turned into L’Espagnole, L’Astrée into La Piédmontoise. To these three works Couperin added a fourth, the most extended of all, called L’Imperiale. To each Sonata, he further added a French Suite whose length suited diplomatic protocols: eight dances each for France and Spain, nine for the Holy Roman Empire, six for Piedmont. In all, four ordres for those Catholic powers that, in a typically French-centred perspective, were considered natural allies in the effort to break the siege by a hostile geopolitical bloc: Anglican Great Britain, Lutheran Prussia and Sweden, Orthodox Russia. Couperin himself writes in the preface to L’Apothéose de Lully: “[...] the complete book of trios that I hope to publish next July (Les Nations), can be played on two harpsichords, as well as on any other instrument.

Starting from our common passion for Italian instrumental music of the early twentieth century declare Chiara Burattini and Umberto Jacopo Laureti we have composed a picture (as varied as possible) around the two key figures of the world of piano (Busoni) and cello (Mainardi) of the time. From the Kultaselle variations (a youthful page, dense and full of passion) and from Busoni's seraphic Albumblatt, we passed through the Art Nouveau drawings of the WolfFerrari Sonata and the Two Album Pages of Alaleona, ending with the Malipiero Sonatines and by Mainardi (the latter, together with the songs by Alaleona, in the very first recording).

It took a long time for the guitar to enter and establish itself in contemporary music. Yet the piece that marked it's entry into the 20th century was a very modern one: the Tombeau that Manuel de Falla dedicated in 1922 to Claude Debussy was pioneering at the time. The instrument had everything it needed to be 'modern': a small, but captivating chamber music sonority, a glorious past (at least in the then halfforgotten noble ancestor, the lute, whose place it took), and a technique still evolving and ready to be explored. However, despite Schonberg's use of the guitar as early as 1924 in his Serenade, mainly owing to Andres Segovia - the main architect of the instrument's renaissance in the 20th century, who long dominated the scene with his own predilections and idiosyncrasies -, the repertoire remained linguistically linked to that debut moment until the 1970s: modern, but no longer contemporary. It was then thanks to the work carried out in Darmstadt by Leo Brouwer (1939), a talented Cuban guitarist and composer, and a few other performers - among whom we should mention at least Siegfried Behrend (19331990) and Angelo Gilardino (19412022) - that the first compositions for guitar built on elements that the composers of the second half of the 20th century had already been using for decades came to the public at large: aleatorism, serialism, free atonality, and extreme timbral research. When contemporary composers finally embraced the instrument, they did so with conviction, developing it's full potential in the knowledge that it possesses the versatility necessary for the languages of our time.

The 43 Ghiribizzi M.S. 43 is the last organic collection of works for solo guitar by Paganini. Written in Naples around 1820, they represent the last stage of a long journey into the guitar world beginning at least twenty years before when the composer was still far from being "Paganini", and was making his first steps into the musical world during the years of Napoleonic domination over most part of Italy. Although the technical demands of the 43 Ghiribizzi are generally inferior to those of the 37 Sonatas or the Grand Sonata, they are still pieces written by Paganini; so the musical results are rich in inventiveness, pleasant themes and perfectly idiomatic writing for the instrument. In the hands of a gifted guitarist, not only with excellent technique but with a plentiful dose of imagination and interpretative flair, they can be very enjoyable and of sure effect, as it is shown by the constant popularity that these 43 small delicious compositions have in the world of the contemporary guitar world.

Pietro Locatto writes of his new release: “This recording was not primarily created for the purpose of creating a monographic work based on part of Federico Moreno Torroba’s repertoire for guitar, but originates from a personal and deeper need to recognize the relationship with my instrument in an expressive world. A world that can encompass within itself the aspects of my own way of playing, which is closer to how I personally “feel the guitar”, thus fixing an image, as true as possible, of this first step of my life and my artistic research. I have always been strongly fascinated by the Impressionist pictorial world, or more generally speaking of what actually comprises Art, by virtue of the fact it is able to synthesize a broader picture through micro images. Impressionism is a current which does not claim to elevate itself as an ambassador of “high ideals”, it is more hedonistic. It finds its strength in grasping that disenchanted beauty which originates from the joy itself of enjoying the smaller things of everyday life, that become the celebrated main actor in all its nuances. This kind of art is born within a context where the rhythms of Man are still marked by its relationship with the earth. Throughout Spain at the time, even more so than elsewhere, this expressive universe had as its leading actors landscapes, nature en plein air, popular songs, village dances, changing colours, light, sounds (the Piezas caracteristicas of this record are an emblematic example in this sense). Federico Moreno Torroba’s guitar music is heir to this expression. Not only. This is also one of the deepest “souls” of the guitar, which reveals itself in a completely unique way, both narrator and main integral participant of this reality, of which it is an eloquent spokesman.”

Fausto Sebastiani’s musical writing can be characterized by a particular attention to timbre. More recently his works have begun to breathe new life to different aspects of other sound worlds. In some cases, references are explicit, but more often they are like distant ghosts hidden in a melodic fragments, in embellishments, or in musical gestures. Such aspects emerge distinctly in the work Il Paese degli uomini integri (“The land of incorruptible people”). Here one perceives another recognizable trait of Sebastiani’s writing, namely the need to identify in each composition a coherence to the overall project, which driving his creative work in the conception, in the conduction of the musical subject, and in the clarity of the formal construction. The work is a tale set to music, based on a text by Sandro Cappelletto, dedicated to the political history of the last decades of Burkina Faso. It draws inspiration from the story of Captain Thomas Sankara, elected Prime Minister of the former French colony of Alto Volta in January 1983, later to be called Burkina-Faso, or “The land of incorruptible people”. Sebastiani’s vision brings into play different aspects of “composing”, such as predicting the slightest variations in musical figures, interweaving relationships and associations of ideas, recalling music from other times or places (for example African or jazz styles), drawing inspiration from other art forms, often literary or poetic, to place the work at the center of a dialogue with current social or political problems (for example migration from disadvantaged countries). This is music, as the composer points out, “that can hint at our hidden and tormented interiority, in which more questions are asked than answers given; it is a musical and artistic study in contrasts, that will reveal possibilities that will exist only if we take the time to listen.”

Wood is a primordial material. As such it contains life, both natural and human. To strike wood, to make it vibrate is the ancestral musical gesture second only to the rhythm of footsteps and breathing. No one can really know for certain, but without too many anthropological doubts, we can assume that the first non-body related instrument was a piece of wood. From that moment on human imagination has discovered countless ways of manipulating this many-sided material as a medium, ranging from constructing to music making. The wooden instrument is of profound cultural significance for the human race. The natural material has always been perceived by humans as an extension of the body. Take for example the stamping stick in the hands of a Master of Ceremonies: as the stick is hitting the ground the Master keeps the tempo for the chorus and the dancers, a primeval action for most music-oriented civilizations. Simone Beneventi’s research is focused on the wooden universe. He has collaborated with composers and master carpenters such as Giuseppe Bussi, ebony woodworker and conservator, creating and constructing wooden sound objects, many of which were made for the occasion.