Among the indisputable achievements of contemporary music is the idea of the static contemplation of sound, slowly forming over time inside those who internally imagine and focus upon it in order to subsequently create and manifest it though a physical act. It's the wondrous path undertaken by those who express the dimension of sound as thought (even before it becomes symbol), and distill it within themselves until sound can be detached from its imaginer. Salvatore Sciarrino utilized this idea of contemplation of sound freely in his compositions, as this album containing his complete works for violin and viola shows. Performing these works is Marco Fusi. Violinist and Violist Marco Fusi is no stranger to contemporary music. He has collaborated with contemporary ensembles all across the world, and has premiered many new works.

A recognized champion of modern music, Marco Angius conducted the world premiere of Sciarrino's Studies by the Intonation of the Sea, for 100 flutes, saxophones and 100 soloists, which was released on the Stradivarius label in 2000. He is heard here conducting three more, recent works by one of the most individual and compelling of modern Italian composers.

Includes sonata(s) for harpsichord by Domenico Scarlatti. Soloist: Ottavio Dantone.

Classical Music

Elena Càsoli writes of her new release on Stradivarius: “This recording is the opportunity to collect, for the first time on a single album, most of the works for and with the guitar by Fausto Romitelli. I feel really gladsome about the possibility to think up and elaborate this release with Stradivarius. For me, it represents the desire to crown my passionate work of years on his music. These are compositions full of strength and inspiration, with a sound that is vibrante e luminoso!, as Fausto writes on the fifth page of the Solare score. I have invited Teresa Hackel and Virginia Arancio to collaborate because of their bravura and their connection the works interpreted.”

Includes work(s) by Fausto Romitelli. Ensemble: Italian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Peter Rundel. Soloist: Donatienne Michel-Dansac.

REUSNER Delitiæ Testudinis, Vol. 1 • Paul Beier (lt) • STRADIVARIUS 33867 (78:47)


Esaias Reusner (1636–79) was taught the lute by his father, became familiar with the published music of such modern masters as Francois Dufault and Ennemond Gaultier, then was influenced by and studied under an unknown lutenist while a valet at the Polish court of Princess Radziwi??. He published two collections of lute suites in the then very popular French style that were very successful, and soon had a pronounced effect on other, similar compositions in the German States. His pieces—naturally contrapuntal, rich in passing dissonances, and prone to the expressive extremes then popular in this kind of intimate music-making—are uniformly attractive. The pavanes and sarabandes in particular revel in an eloquently lyrical melancholy.


Beier’s technique is good, but not perfect. The occasional glanced note—different in dynamics, resonance, and duration from all others around it—interferes with the musical line and his musical insight. Once you get past this, it’s easy to appreciate the fine degree of shading in the Couranta of the Suite No. 4, and the general warmth of tone, but the playing isn’t immaculate. These are stylistically strong performances by a fine lutenist, with the caveat that wrong notes do mar the surface.


The lute on this album is closely miked, but with a pleasantly dry ambiance that keeps textures clean and allows the instrument to sound for itself without any unneeded help from the environment. Beier’s own liner notes are excellent in discussing the influences at work on Reusner, and the disc is an unusually full one. Perhaps best of all, this is only Volume 1—meaning we can look forward to more of the Delitiæ Testudinis in the future. Barring slips of the fingers, this one’s definitely recommended.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Talea, meaning "to cut" or "to carve" in Latin, is an emblematic, striking work thanks to its unique structure and orchestration. The piece is thoroughly antinomic, divided into two by its monadic and polyphonic orchestration and structure, with the wind and string instruments ever oscillating between single and spit tones. The work wonderfully illustrates the great expressiveness of spectralism, which was originally pereived as a simple experiment without any future. This work is followed by Sequenza XII for fagotto solo and Dai Fujikura's Concerto for Bassoon.

This delightful new release from Stradivarius features keyboard works from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the most virtuosic composers for keyboard that has ever lived. In many of Mozart’s first editions, the titles bear the French indication Sonatas pour le Clavecin ou Forte-piani. That is, the works were to be performed on either the harpsichord or the fortepiano. For this release, the rarer option has been chosen: the harpsichord. Basilio Timpanaro and Rossella Policardo make up The Harpsichord Duo. The duo has been engaged in the Italian concert scene for many years, earning public and critical notoriety.

XENAKIS Phlegra. Anaktoria. Dhipli Zyla. Waarg. VARÈSE Octandre. ROMITELLI Mediterraneo I & II • Stefan Asbury, cond; Asko Ens; Marieke Koster (mez) • STRADIVARIUS 33871 (72:34) Live: Milan 11/6/2005


GERVASONI Meta della ripa. MANZONI Ode. Sembianti. WEBERN Passacaglia • Lothar Koenigs, cond; RAI Natl SO • STRADIVARIUS 33872 (69:16) Live: Milan 11/4/2006


Thanks to the cost-cutting and absence of commercial considerations that occur as more orchestras, ensembles, artists, and in this case festivals issue their own recordings or find new outlets for them, audiences now have an increased opportunity to experience more unusual repertory, especially contemporary music. The Milan Music Festival has specialized in the latter since 1991, and these two concert recordings—Volume 2 featuring the Xenakis, Volume 3 the Gervasoni, et al.—show how they are frequently able to establish helpful thematic, stylistic, or conceptual connections between familiar and lesser-known works in their programming.


The Netherlands’s Asko Ensemble, featured in Vol. 2, has a long history of exceptional performances of 20th- and 21st-century works (see its large and impressive catalog of recordings at askoschoenberg.nl), and by anchoring its concert with Edgard Varèse’s Octandre , it focuses the listener’s attention on the variety of ways in which kindred composers Iannis Xenakis and Fausto Romitelli construct surprising tonal environments out of sometimes subtle, sometimes extravagant timbral and textural resources. The four Xenakis selections wisely reflect different periods, and thus distinct characteristics, from his career. Dhipli Zyla (1952), the earliest, is a contrapuntal dance for violin and cello, showing Bartók’s influence on the composer’s use of Greek folk material, while Phlegra (1975), for 11 instruments, suggests a Stravinsky-like rhythmic lilt and an almost slapstick humor to the ever-more-insistent harmonic disorientation. The harsh juxtaposition of colors swells and recedes in Anaktoria (1969), while the separate layers of activity in Waarg (1988), like isolated lines drawn in the air, twist and blend in the wind. Heard together, they are good preparation for Romitelli’s Mediterraneo (1992). Divided into two parts, the first sets contrasting qualities in instrumental groups against each other—sliding strings, resonating chimes, sustained wind tones—as if the sounds were reaching out from a common nucleus; the second part, including mezzo-soprano Marieke Koster’s intonation of an elliptical text by the French poet Paul Valéry, is equally dense but more compact, implying a nevertheless vague tonal center toward which the pitches are now drawn.


Though placed at the end of Vol. 3, Anton Webern’s richly textured, lyrically abstracted Passacaglia (1909) conceptually sets the stage for the music of Stefano Gervasoni and Giacomo Manzoni, whose works imaginatively reorganize the orchestra into patterns of colors rather than instrumental sections. The shimmering motives and static but evocative sonorities in Gervasoni’s Meta della ripa (2002–03) may seem reminiscent of some spectral strategies, but the fluctuating events, alternately chilly and heated, form a cohesive, gradually emerging drama. Likewise, Manzoni’s two compositions are full of shifting textures and dynamics creating dramatic tension, but obtained through unpredictable, partially indeterminate, devices. In Ode (1982), the orchestral material is divided into five “tracks” that progress horizontally in and out of sync with each other, although the blend of sounds is altogether natural and convincing. Sembianti (2003) is a kind of Enigma Variations , with parts of the composition dedicated to friends, using pitch motives derived from their names, mixing in solos from all sections of the orchestra, and inserting free rhythmic episodes—less of a storytelling enigma, however, à la Elgar, than a structural one.


Both the Asko Ensemble and the RAI National Orchestra make a strong case for the new music as well as the more familiar items they are presenting. Recommended to adventurous listeners.


FANFARE: Art Lange

This release views “French style” from a strictly historic point of view, exploring the musical language of absolutism which reigned in Paris from the time of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and part of the time of Louis XV (1715-1774). Marin Marais was one of the most famous composers of “French-style,” excelling in chamber music. Performing on period instruments are Alberto Rasi on viola da gamba, Patrizia Marisaldi on harpsichord, and Beatrice Pornon on theorbo.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Alessandro Solbiati writes: “To discuss in chronological order the pieces on the album dedicated to the 37-year-old Iranian composer Mehdi Khayami represents for me both a thrill and an enrichment. Why a thrill? Because I have had the joy of sharing with him much of his Italian journey: he arrived in Italy in 2006, having already obtained his diploma of composition in Iran. Mehdi (as we always called him) began my composition class at the Conservatorio di Milano, doing entire bachelor course and master degree course. Five years later, he took his diploma and obtained the highest honours, and subsequently specialised at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Ivan Fedele. I want, at least, to remember the splendid way the composer leads us by the hand slowly to the appearance of an instrument that is so strange for us: a dense texture of the ensemble, which does not allow individuality to show through, starts from a rather dark region and gradually rises: the subtle sound of the Kamanche will take up the register given to it by the ensemble and will lead it still higher, much higher. From there begins a formal curve that becomes progressively dramatic, until it culminates in an extremely tense climax, which fundamentally we did not expect, given the initial climate. It opens a final chasm between the very high and very low regions, a true abyss into which the rhythmic pulsation reminds us of the climax of the Violinkonzert by Alban Berg: east and west shake hands, in the life and work of Mehdi Khayami.”

"Imago", one of the last words spoken by Dido as she approaches death after having been abandoned by Aeneas, becomes the emblem of this overview on Virgil's musical fortune during the Renaissance. To the humanists, Publius Vergilius Maro was a model to aim for, by virtue of his garland of subjects and perfection of style. The search for manuscripts of his works in documented to have been ongoing since the late fourteenth century. In Mantua, amongst his collections, Francesco Gonzaga had Vergilian codices and a copy of the Aeneid in vernacular - Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, born and educated in Ferrara, once become Marquise, began to cultivate reading Virgil and planned to honor the poet with a monument, designed by Andrea Mantegna. At the courts of teh Padan Plain, Virgil's verses became moreover creative material for musicians, who, with increasing frequency, set them to music according to the forms and styles of the moment. To gather them, means also to draw a line which, from Josquin Desprez to Orlando di Lasso, traces Virgil's fortune amidst the flow of compositional research of those years. Although the use of the Latin text in fact characterizes the form of the motet, usually elevated and abstract, it will not escape notice that especially the passages from Aeneid inspire compositional solutions similar to those experimented in the tumultuous world of the madrigal in Italian. Wanting thus to give a hint of this very turmoil, vocal arrangements were chosen which enhance the narrative texts, and some passages were entrusted solely to the instruments - practice much in vogue at the time. The selection, which is only part of the existing repertoire, follows a narrative thread - the bucolic exordium, the epic and encomiastic occasions, the telling of Dido, the inspiration given by Virgil.