The record was produced to revive the personality of a great musician from Abruzzo, who has left a considerable mark on Italian musical culture. The work is the result of a passionate historical research carried out by Prof. Francesco D'urbano, a musician and scholar that, through numerous cultural initiatives, for years has been dealing with the rediscovery of this relevant artist and composer. The research undertaken through the public and private archives and in the various national libraries has led to a historical relocation of the figure of the musician and the recovery of all his printed production. The piano works by Giuseppe Dell'Orefice is performed by maestro Mevio di Federico, highlighting in his performance the peculiar traits of works related both to the Neapolitan school of the nineteenth century and to the influences from the great European masters.

Written to commemorate the centenary of Giacomo Matteotti's death, the opera "Il pellegrino del nulla" does not focus on historical events. Instead of depicting the tragic events of the political assassination, it abstracts them to convey a everlasting message, detached from cultural contingencies. Antonio Gramsci described Matteotti as a "pellegrino del nulla" (pilgrim of nothingness), rebelling and sacrificing for an idea, a value that can symbolically transcends the limitations of his time. Perugini and de Santis exalt the notion that every uncorrupted ideal of freedom is destined to prevail over oppression. The strength of a pure idea allows to overcome the impositions of a prevailing power, causing pain and threatening death. Contrarily, the murder legitimises the censored ideal and a means to eternalises the value of his sacrifice.

The library of Bologna's Conservatory of Music contains a wide set of books about music, which are almost exclusively manuscripts. The library once belonged to the nobleman Antonio Puccetti (1792-1841), a native of Cingoli, a small town in Macerata located in the Marche region. It is indeed an aristocratic music library made up of works which range from the end of the 18th to mid 19th centuries. The interesting aspect of these works consists in the fact that they make up the bibliography of a nobleman who was not a collector but rather an amateur musician. The scores represent important documents about Puccetti's family private music performances within their own four walls, the so-called hausmusik, more intimate, which was different from the brighter salonmusik genre. The recording of these vocal and instrumental scores - including composers of the caliber of Ferdinando Carulli and Giovanni Paisiello - is entrusted to the young talents of ArsEmble, continuing the historical research that began with the rediscovery of composer Mario Bianchelli from Rimini (Tactus, tc 660201).

This recording production rebuilds the complex events of a composition by Gennaro D'Alessandro (Neapolitan musician, pupil of Leonardo Leo) believed to be hopelessly lost after the bombing in Dresden during the Second World War: the "Ottone", opera on the libretto by Antonio Salvi accommodated by Carlo Goldoni. The opera was performed for the first time at the Grimani of S. Giovanni Grisostomo Theatre in Venice in the carnival season from December 26, 1739 to January 31, 1740 in the presence of Frederick Christian Leopold. In 2019 the musicologist Giovanni Tribuzio could finally reconstruct the Ottone thanks to several sources and witnesses. A score from the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria in Modena, partially hands down the work by Gennaro D'Alessandro (including the recitatives and ten arias). This new version was, in fact, represented with great success as "Adelaide/Adelaide, Queen of Italy" in 1744 in Prague, Leipzig and Hamburg. To this highly significant finding we have to add the discovery of a precious nucleus of arias, from the private library of composer Everett Burton Helm (now at the Lilly Library in Bloomington and the National Library of Australia in Canberra).

The group of concertos for bassoon by Antonio Vivaldi (Venice, 4 March 1678 - Vienna, 28 July 1741) is the largest such collection in terms of quantity after those for violin: no less than thirty-nine are in fact extant, and only two are incomplete. But beyond these details, "what is remarkable", as Cesare Fertonani recently wrote, "is Vivaldi's extraordinary understanding of the technical possibilities of the bassoon, reflected in his avant- garde treatment of the instrument which attains the complete and sumptuous dignity of a soloist, and his intuition probably unprecedented in the history of music of it's expressive potential." Paolo Carlini is the soloist of this selection of the most important concerts dedicated to the instrument by Vivaldi, flanked by the famous "Virtuosi Italiani" orchestra, directed by Alberto Martini as a violin concert maestro.

From the rich musical scene of the early sixteenth century comes a repertoire that sings the praises of the vegetable world comprised in the vast geographic horizon stretching up from verdant meadows full of flowers to the mountain pastures where shepherds and shepherdesses playfully send back the echo of their own voices. Allusions, onomatopoeias, adages and bywords, maxims, pangs of love, games and dances to ancient tunes sprout from citations of roses, gardens, shady woods, cypresses, triumphant laurels, broad-beans and beans. A music that, through simple words (in vulgar tongue, the language of the Italian renascence), speaks to the listener's fancy and imagination, depicting a unitary world in whose great theatre everything (man, his feelings and nature) is interconnected. This very particular interweaving between culture and music in the Renaissance is interpreted by the "Fortuna Reditus" ensemble conducted by Roberto Cascio that in this new album is continuing his study and recovery of Italian early music in the wake of the numerous productions highly appreciated by the public and critics (Ippolito Ghezzi, TC650770; Falconieri, Coppola, TC640001; Bianchelli, TC660201; Pinxit, TC450002; etc.).

This very interesting monographic recording is dedicated to the figure of Federico Bufaletti, a forgotten artist and main exponent of that Neapolitan piano school that at the end of the nineteenth century moved to Turin. The album is based on an in-depth investigation into the dual role of the Bufaletti composer and pianist: in addition to presenting his complete piano works, we have the recovery of rare recordings of the early twentieth century with the artist performing pieces by Scarlatti, Debussy, Mozart, Liszt, and others. The album also includes works dedicated to Bufaletti by exponents of the Italian piano school such as Alessandro Longo, Costantino Palumbo, Gaetano Foschini, and Pietro Floridia. The interpreter of Bufaletti's music is pianist Massimiliano Genot, already appreciated for having brought to light the piano works by Giuseppe Unia (on TC812101).

Pietro Giannotti, who in the title page of Op. 1 (entirely written in Italian) is described as native of Lucca, was born in that independent Tuscan city, in an unspecified year between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. We do not have any information about his education or his musical pursuits before his activities in France began, in 1728, when he moved to Paris. From the subsequent year to 1758 we know that he served as a double-bass player at the Academie Royale de Musique. A much-appreciated performance of his as a violinist is documented at the "Concert spirituel" of 28 March 1749; on this occasion he also played some pieces of his own. He remained in Paris until his death, on 19 June 1765. In Paris he published about twenty works, all of instrumental chamber music. In all likelihood, Giannotti also carried out his activities within private circles, in the house of an influential French nobleman, as is demonstrated by his first publication, to which we must now turn our attention: Op. 1 is dedicated to Jean-Charles de Crussol (1675-1739), seventh Duke of Uzes and French peer, scion of an ancient aristocratic family, who was not only a patron but also an "amateur" who practised music for his own enjoyment. Pierluigi Mencattini, accompanied by the ensemble Labirinto Armonico (already protagonists of the edition of the sonatas by Giovanni Antonio Piani, tc 671690) in this double CD performs the full version of the Op. I collection.

Luigi Cherubini is one of the most interesting artistic personalities in a historical period of great changes that straddled two centuries, the eighteenth and the nineteenth. His musical career met the best possible conditions in a city, Florence, that was extremely rich in culture and dotted with important events, ranging from the performance of Handel's Messiah in Italian and the staging of operas by Hasse, Gluck, Paisiello, Piccinni, Rutini and Traetta, to Mozart's performance in 1770. The Luigi Cherubini sonatas performed by Chiara Cattani in this recording can be defined as 'galant' without depleting their meaning as compared to the great compositions of the previous period. The eighteenth century is a very prolific century for the cembalistic literature, particularly for the Sonata form, affected by various influences and changes that will bring it to it's apogee in the period of the Classicism. The taste of the Italian society goes through a profound mutation: it is now more pleasing with melodic expansion, clarity, transparency and lightness, characteristics that permeate the art of this century at 360 degrees. Simplicity and proportion are the pillars of the structure and together favor the emanation of a sense of vividness and fervor that makes writing energetic and never obvious.

'Note di gusto - musimen� all'italiana' is a culinary-based musical project for 3 recitative-singing voices and an ensemble. The three sopranos are emblematic of the historical 'division' of the Italian peninsular (North/ Centre /South). Besides each singing a song linked to their own home region they share their recipes, thus creating a common thread aimed at uniting their voices at least through an 'ideal' Italian cuisine. They sing 20 recipes, one from each Italian region, born of tradition, chosen and collected by me based on purely 'emotional' criteria, which link my personal imaginative powers to my culinary (and musical) experience in each region. All the recipes were set to music with the initial inspiration being the linguistic idiom in which they were 'told', testimonies of popular oral culture linked to the musical matrix of a song which for me was particularly representative and identifiable with each region. This is a true regional recipe book highlighting different territorial traditions, a showcase of music and singing from north to south, from east to west, following where possible geographical regional borders in a search for the immense wealth and vast cultural musical and culinary heritage. (Roberta Vacca)

The importance of the guitar is evident throughout the span of Paganini's activity as a composer, and it is possible that as a boy, before he began to practice on the violin and the "chittara francese", he received from his father his first musical grounding on a "mandolino genovese", an instrument that had six courses or six single strings, with the same tuning relationship as that of the guitar. The Catalogue's chronological list ranges from 1795, with Carmagnola con variazioni ms. 1, to 1835, with Variazioni sul Barucab�, an entire cycle of compositions that features the constant presence of a guitar in combination with string instruments. This context contains the compositions for solo guitar, which are divided into three groups: Ghiribizzi, Sonate, and Compositions of various types, including some Sonatine. The recording dedicated to Paganini's opera omnia for guitar is divided in two double CDs volumes, the first volume includes the 43 Ghiribizzi and other various compositions (sonatas, sonatinas and free forms). Mauro Bonelli, for the realisation of this work, used a period guitar with catgut strings, tuned to 415 Hz: nineteenth-century Austrian guitar without a label; the fact that it's fretboard can be tilted by means of a peg connects it with the best Legnani-Stauffer tradition.

The Venetian musician Ettore Bonelli has always been known as a violinist, a teacher and revisor, but less so as a composer. Precisely the conspicuous amount of revisions, over a hundred, (the famous version of the Concerto for Oboe by Benedetto Marcello, in fact, composed by Alessandro Marcello, published by Zanibon in Padua) to which Bonelli mainly dedicated himself after World War ii, had over-shadowed his rich activity of composition which had occupied him since 1918. He had abandoned this for thirty years and had taken it up again only in the '70s. With pieces with a didactic aim dedicated to the violin, oboe, double bass, and the flute- harp duo. This recording promoted by Alessandro Curri (violist, nephew of Ettore Bonelli, and son of the harper Ilde Bonelli) represents a first glance to the composer's chamber music production focused on works for violin and piano and for viola and piano. With Giuliano Fontanella on the violin and pianists Tania Salinaro and Giovanni Dal Missier, this world premiere recording is revealing a solid and decisive craftsmanship, which inherits and reworks the styles in vogue in the first half of the twentieth century in Italy, without excessive experimentalism yet with skilful refinement.

The importance of the guitar is evident throughout the span of Paganini’s activity as a composer, and it is possible that as a boy, before he began to practice on the violin and the “chittara francese”, he received from his father his first musical grounding on a “mandolino genovese”, an instrument that had six courses or six single strings, with the same tuning relationship as that of the guitar. The Catalogue’s chronological list ranges from 1795, with Carmagnola con variazioni ms. 1, to 1835, with Variazioni sul Barucabà, an entire cycle of compositions that features the constant presence of a guitar in combination with string instruments. This context contains the compositions for solo guitar, which are divided into three groups: Ghiribizzi, Sonate, and Compositions of various types, including some Sonatine. The recording dedicated to Paganini's opera omnia for guitar is divided in two double CDs volumes, the first volume includes the 43 Ghiribizzi and other various compositions (sonatas, sonatinas and free forms). Mauro Bonelli, for the realisation of this work, used a period guitar with catgut strings, tuned to 415 Hz: nineteenth-century Austrian guitar without a label; the fact that its fretboard can be tilted by means of a peg connects it with the best Legnani-Stauffer tradition.

A cross-section of the Italian production for cello and piano, conceived during the hazy beginning of the twentieth century, shows us how the most varied influences – coming from all sorts of styles: Gregorian, Monteverdi, operatic, German and French late-romantic, avant-gardist, Franco-Russian impressionist, French symbolist, veristic – are absorbed and remoulded, accepted and rejected, by various personalities of the world of composition. In this cultural ambience, a crucial role was played by the so-called Generation of Eighteen-Eighty, whose components, Casella, Malipiero, Pizzetti, Respighi, friends and collaborators, stood out for their pursuit of innovation and their aim to create a character peculiar to Italian music; this quest was accompanied, at least in their artistic choices, by a certain lack of political commitment. Within this recording, cellist Roberto Trainini and pianist Stella Ala Luce Pontoriero are delivering an anthology of precious musical gems as necessary testimony to the great value of some obscured and forgotten Italian early twentieth century repertoire.

While for the most celebrated instrumentalists who defined the period straddling the seventeenth century and the eighteenth, the subsequent interest in the magnificence of late Baroque music promoted their relaying and study, this fate was not shared by Martino Bitti. After having been relegated on the fringe of the history of music, and perfunctorily accused, in the earliest, scanty biographic notes, of lacking in originality and innovative qualities, only in recent times did he begin to be the object of in-depth investigations and writings on the analysis and cataloguing of his works (see Michael Talbot’s ground-breaking essays).

In any case, what emerges from an examination of the sources relevant to Bitti’s biography is the figure of a musician who was fully integrated in one of the contexts that were most lively and stimulating for the Italian musical production between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth: the court of Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (Florence 1663-1713), eldest son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de’ Medici.

The recording of the Sonatas presented here is the final stage of a work of in-depth research that began with the study of the first editions and the experimentation of timbres and interpretations on copies of the early instruments, leading to the creation of a historically informed product.

Carlo Agostino Badia was one of the many Italian musicians making his fortune at the court of Vienna where he was hired as a composer in 1694.

We have no news about his education, but the musical historiography is mentioning about his great compositional period lasting forty-four years at the service of the emperors Leopold I and Joseph I, in which he produced in large quantities cantatas, melodramas and oratorios greatly appreciated at the Austrian court.

From his musical writing it is clear how he was a 'ferryer' of that late Baroque (followed by Antonio Caldara who succeeded him at the Viennese court) anticipating the forms of the imminent galant style.

In this recording, the attention is directed to the profane cantatas, from the collection Tributi Armonici – published in Nuremberg in 1699 – which represent precisely the transition from the traditional style (in particular the Venetian one) to the new eighteenth-century style. The great variety of writing that distinguishes the cantatas is well rendered by the ductile voice of the soprano Raffaella Milanesi accompanied by RomaBarocca Ensemble, under the direction of Lorenzo Tozzi.

The fame of Father Giambattista Martini is largely due to his activity as a historiographer, theoretician and teacher of music unceasingly carried out by him at the Bolognese convent of S. Francesco: his monumental Storia della musica, the first history of music ever written in Italian and published in Italy, was hailed by the most distinguished personalities of that period, who unanimously praised his deep erudition. A great number of young composers and musicographers from all over Europe, wishing to learn the secrets of this art, stopped in Bologna to receive a training or perfect their knowledge under his guidance. A less celebrated activity by Martini was that as composer that he carried out continuously as maestro di cappella in the Basilica next to the Bolognese convent from 1725 to the time of his death. The pieces presented in this CD relate a little-known episode in Martini’s life, an episode that shows how highly he was appreciated also as a composer. Alessandro Quarta, leading the Concerto Romano and the vocal ensemble Ecclesia Nova, is the protagonist of this precious world premiere recording, a live production by Tactus of the concert held in Bologna at the Basilica of San Francesco the 21st of April 2023.

This recording – culmination of a research work that started out in 2020 – follows the previously released album including the third book of madrigals by the same author (Tactus, TC531601, 2021), which was the result of the collaboration between conductor Elia Orlando, ensemble Tuscae Voces and the Tactus record label. It is safe to say that the outcome confirms how the musical landscape in the Renaissance Prato deserves way more attention than it has drawn so far, and that Biagio Pesciolini – besides being closely connected to the Florentine court – was an author whose vision went beyond the city walls of Prato. Although praised by peers Ludovico Zacconi and Antonio Brunelli for his mastery of those techniques that belong to Flemish-origin ars musica, he skilfully took on both “orthogonal” writing for double choir and winding compositions for five and six voices, which proves that Biagio Pesciolini was indeed open and receptive to the different tendencies of Italy’s most important musical centres.

The organist Andrea Toschi - already protagonist of several productions regarding rare music dedicated to the organ and harmonium, both as soloist and in chamber music ensembles (see Tactus tc810001, tc850004, tc870002 and tc890090) - is the common denominator of this collection of contemporary pieces for solo organ or for organ and instrument (trumpet, flute and cello alternate in duo with the organ). Composers in this cd include Sergio D’Aurizio, director of the Istituto Verdi of Ravenna and organist in Bologna, and Giordano Noferini, who was director of the Conservatorio of Bologna: they represent the musicians who were born in the first half of the twentieth century and were firmly connected to the late-nineteenth century tradition, which they reassessed paying attention to the harmonic aspect. The cd proceeds with Giorgio Pressato and Roberto Becheri: Toschi presents several pieces of theirs, in which Gregorian chant, the counterpoint devices, the relationship with the trumpet (as in Pressato’s In excelsis gloria), the relationship between diatonicism and chromaticism (as in In mei memoriam facietis by Becheri, who also uses the cello in Cantantibus chordis) are distinctive features that need to be carefully emphasised and smoothly blended: this is precisely what Toschi does in his interpretation. The most recent composers are Marc Giacone, Claudio Scannavini, Andrea Padova, and Daniele Venturi: in their music we can perceive an opening to stylistic influences other than the traditional ones: for instance African music in Giacone’s melodies, Scannavini’s use of perceptive deceit, the modern techniques adopted by Padova, and Venturi’s use of complexity as an element of composition.

The singular record production “Ex tempore” is proposed to us by the instrumental ensemble “The Italian Consort”, with the collaboration of Andrea Inghisciano, an exceptional guest and international star of the Renaissance cornetto.
The ancestral sounds of the consort of dulciane, accompanied by the lute of Gian Giacomo Pinardi and the organ of Cinzia Guarino, guide us to listen to a repertoire of both early music - represented by composers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - and contemporary, thanks to the compositional contribution of Marco Betta and Giovanni Sollima. The particular timbres of the ancient instruments are the expressive key to intricate labyrinths of contrapuntal alchemies, intense relationships with sacred or poetic texts and implied invitations to dance, in a continuous search for imitation of the human voice that in the Renaissance was considered as the absolute reference for any musical instrument.

Ferruccio Busoni (Empoli 1866 – Berlin 1924) died the same year as Puccini and was born when Puccini was a child, yet he was way more than an opera composer. While he lived several years in Trieste and some time in Bologna, he mainly lived abroad and spent the second half of his life in Berlin. Way more than a composer, he was a wide-ranging artist and musician, an acclaimed concert pianist and sought-after piano teacher, a learned reviser of piano music, and the author of many and varied pieces. Busoni was also an aesthete, an intellectual, a music reformer, and author of texts on musical topics. A child prodigy, he wrote the Symphonische Suite for orchestra at the age of 17.
Nicola Bignami and Lucija Majstorovic brilliantly face the arduous task of performing the two monumental and demanding sonatas for violin and piano that the composer wrote at twenty-four (first sonata) and at thirty-two (second sonata), in which the equal and dialogical relationship between the two instruments combines with a wealth of invention with respect for the great tradition.

This collection of arias from the operas Il Tigrane, Poro, La Sofonisba, L’Ippolito is a testimony of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera activity from the year 1743 to 1745. At the age of 30, yet already successful composer, Gluck wrote his operas for the most important events in the cities of Crema, Turin and Milan, almost without a break. He seems to be at the peak of his career, yet he has not created those great compositions such as Orpheus and Euridice, Paride ed Elena, Alceste, that would have linked his name to the reform of opera theorised together with Ranieri de’ Calzabigi and which made him one of the immortal names in the music history. The autographs of these arias no longer exist, nor the scores of the entire operas. Some pieces, sometimes with only basso continuo accompaniment, are all that remain of the enormous fortune that those performances had at the time. To be as close as possible to the original performance, arias with existing orchestral part have been chosen, except for the aria""Se viver non poss’io"" from the opera Poro which was orchestrated from the basso continuo and some indication of the first violin motif, as complete scores of the opera Poro no longer exist. The curator of the work is Elena De Simone herself, a mezzo-soprano that – accompanied by Il Mosaico ensemble – already distinguished herself with the rediscovery of the works by Hasse and Maria Teresa Agnesi (Tactus' TC690801, TC720101 and TC720102).

The experience of Gregor Aichinger (Regensburg, 1564/65 – Augsburg, 20/21 January 1628) in Italy, which took place during two distinct periods, made it possible for the Bavarian musician to be an important connection between the music that was practiced at that time in Italy and the musical culture on the other side of the Alps (Aichinger was one of the very first German musicians to publish compositions with basso continuo, a practice with which he had become acquainted precisely during his visits to Italy). The Virginalia consist of twenty five-part pieces. The introductory one, Virgo, Dei mater pura, is followed by the pieces of the Joyful Mysteries (from the second to the sixth), then – from the seventh to the eleventh – by those of the Sorrowful Mysteries, and subsequently – from the twelfth to the sixteenth – by those of the Glorious Mysteries. In the last four pieces there is a contemplation of the Virgin Mary, by now projected in a light and a dimension that are beyond the world, as the mediator between mankind and God. The collection dedicated to Maria is performed by the Ensemble Concentus Vocum directed by Michelangelo Gabbrielli, already protagonist in some important world premiere recording of the Armonia Ecclesiastica 1653 by Sisto Reina [TC621801].

The Italian 19th Century is characterized by an unparalleled opera bulimia, the theaters tirelessly program stagings to be submitted to the perennial abstinents of “belcanto” and the music publishing industry that revolves around the phenomenon flourishes and gears up to not disappoint the fleets of music lovers. This inexhaustible desire is counterbalanced by the other “case” represented by the nascent idolatry for instrument virtuosos who build around themselves a legendary aura - very closed to the configuration of the romantic hero with a fascinating and mysterious biography - and an adequate literature to inflame the delirious audiences. The relapse of similar “obsessions” has an extraordinary confirmation in the salon and academic consumption of pages intended to “evoke” the emotions felt in crowded theater halls, a secular celebration is consumed between more or less prestigious salons aimed at the beloved entertainment between the promotion of young talents, noble amateurs, damsels to marry, prestigious guests. The work of Ferdinando Sebastiani, one of the most accredited clarinetist of the nineteenth century and founder of a recognized “school” which enjoyed great prestige in the national and international context, fits into this so articulated landscape. Aldo Botta on the clarinet and Giuseppe Galiano on the piano try their hand at this fascinating challenge in the name of a funambolic virtuosity and a marked theatrical expressiveness.

This world premiere recording by ArsEmble is focused on the rediscovery of the seventeenth-century composer from Rimini, Mario Bianchelli, an amateur instrumentalist (belonging to a noble and wealthy family, and therefore without the need to practice the musical profession for living) formed at the Collegio dei Nobili in the city of Parma, managed by the Jesuit fathers. The young Bianchelli excelled there in the study of the guitar, the lute and the harpsichord.

His activity as a composer was widespread and renowned, and this production is dedicated to the manuscript chamber cantatas preserved in the Gambalunga library in Rimini, one of the richest and most important public libraries in Italy. The concertation of the cantatas is by Roberto Cascio, protagonist of many productions within the Tactus catalog (tc650770, Ippolito Ghezzi; tc520003 La historia del Beato Martino; tc640001, Il Seicento Italiano “alla Spagnuola”; tc660005, Baruffe Amorose del Settecento).