Raffaele Carpino, performer, researcher and historiographer of guitar, already a protagonist of the rediscovery of unpublished music by Carulli and Legnani, in this new work offers us a taste of one of the most significant composers of nineteenth-century guitar music: the virtuoso Mauro Giuliani. The period in which the six guitar works presented in this release were published includes that of Giuliani’s fortunate stay in Vienna, for opuses 49, 52 and 72, that of his stay in Rome, for op. 109, and that of his stay in Naples, for the reduction of the symphony of the opera La Cenerentola. Variazioni, the last work in this album, was published posthumously. All the pieces have been recorded on the basis of the first editions printed in the nineteenth century, faithfully following all the originally indicated reprises. The instrumental form that prevails in this release is the theme with variations, which is present in four out of six pieces, i.e. opuses 49, 62, 72 and the posthumously published Variazioni.

Performer, composer and teacher Marco Enrico Bossi (1861-1925) was the first internationally famous Italian concert artist. + He was conferred the highest ranks in the Kingdom, became an honorary member of the most prestigious foreign and Italian Academies and enjoyed the esteem and friendship of great musicians and men of letters. + These recordings, based on the critical edition of Bossi’s Complete Organ Works, were performed on organs built at the time the recorded pieces were composed.

Classical Music

In the year 1580, a young Luca Marenzio published his first collection of compositions: Primo libro de’ madrigali a cinque voci, to all a supreme master. Thanks to these works, Marenzio won a position of primacy among Italian composers, his fame soon reaching other European countries. In England, Marenzio’s works were highly admired. This CD contains an overview of the profane musical genres of the late ‘1500's, of which Marenzio and his contemporaries were the leading figures.

Classical Music

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.

This double album dedicated to Psalms and Dialogues (released after the 4-album release titled Oratori, Mottetti e Lamentazioni) is completing the opera omnia of sacred works hitherto known by the Augustinian friar Ippolito Ghezzi. Within these recordings, the Cappella Musicale di San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna led by Roberto Cascio is revealing to us a prolific and talented composer, endowed with technique, inventiveness, and happy melodic vein. The Cappella Musicale San Giacomo Maggiore was founded in 2006 with the aim of reviving the unpublished scores of the many composers who belonged to the order of the Augustinian fathers between the 16th and 18th centuries. Among the ensemble’s performers are renowned theorists such as Lodovico Zacconi and composers like Ippolito Ghezzi, Guglielmo Lipparini and Tiburzio Massaini. The Cappella Musica, with its research and restoration work, intends to contribute to the rediscovery of the Italian historical and musical heritage.

At Puccini's time, transcriptions were very important and widespread, you just need to take a look at the some of the scores published by Casa Ricordi to get an idea: in fact, on the back cover you would be able to read an astonishing list of transcriptions, of fantasias and potpourris, either rewritten for piano solo (or four-hands) or for the most various ensembles, for piano and mandolin, violin, flute, guitar, or for other instruments, either in a solo or in combination with many others. It was the result of a publishing policy that was in full swing at that time and that was addressed to a large public of amateurs, a public keen to learn the repertoires meant to be played by many instruments, like opera scores. These pieces were played at home, in front of a very small and selected audience, the amateurs often wanted to perform operas that they had attended to. But that is not all, these performances were also able to popularize compositions that would have be left unknown otherwise. In the XIX century, the transcriptions for piano, especially for piano four hands, were an important vehicle for the diffusion of musical knowledge. Purposely thought for this formation, in this album the piano duo by the spouses Fabrizio Datteri and Nadia Lencioni is performing compositions inspired by the famous works and the immortal melodies of Giacomo Puccini.

The cult and devotion to Mary have been among the greatest and most important sources of inspiration for all the arts in the history of humanity, and in the history of music they have given rise to a myriad of compositions that have spanned the centuries since the beginning of Christianity to the present day. Within this record the ensembles Vox Poetica and Nova Alta directed by the master Sabino Manzo offer to us some examples of the most significant Italian composers of the Renaissance and Baroque period, starting from the "divine" Claudio Monteverdi, a milestone in the history of music, up to Alessandro Scarlatti, a leading exponent of that Neapolitan school that in the eighteenth century exploded in all it's shining vitality, passing through Girolamo Frescobaldi, "monster organist" whose fame as a composer and keyboardist went across the Italian borders.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The name of Vittore Veneziani (1878-1958) is mainly associated with La Scala Opera House, where he was engaged as Chorus Master from 1921 to 1954. His fortunate Milanese idyll was abruptly interrupted in 1938 by the imposition of racial laws. Veneziani, being of Jewish religion, was obliged to flee to Switzerland, abandoning his profession as well as his post as choral conductor at the Synagogue and to Israelian School. When he came back to Italy, soon after Liberation was declared and La Scala lay in ruins, Veneziani resumed his activity with a memorable concert at La Scala on May 11th 1946 working side by side with Arturo Toscanini who had come back, too, from his American exile. His Catalogue, not at all a brief one, includes quite a lot of choir works, four melologues for spoken voice and orchestra, some Operas, symphonic and chamber compositions and a series of choir transcriptions of folk songs and Hebrew melodies. In the field of chamber music, an interesting sylloge of lyrics for voice and piano stands out. It is based on poems by writer Guido Pusinich (1908-1966) from Veneto. The present song collection and recording – by Beatrice Palumbo and Gian Francesco amoroso – form a project sustained and promoted by the Viktor Ullmann Festival, and these songs, despite their variety of musical language, can be defined as chamber music, clearly representing an evolution of both style and the social context in Italy at that time.

The endless genre of operatic fantasy, which explodes and spreads without embankments in the musical culture of the entire Italian nineteenth century, has already been extensively explored in various Tactus productions dedicated both to chamber and sacred music. This time, however, the main protagonists are the oboe and the English horn, fascinating orchestral instruments that, thanks to the great virtuoso from Palermo, Antonino Pasculli, take part in that great musical activity - attended by myriads of Italian and European composers - that unconditionally suffered the charm of Italian melodrama. In this case they are the immortal melodies of Giuseppe Verdi - one of the most successful opera composers of all time - inspiring the fantasies of Pasculli, in the interpretation (both acrobatic to the oboe and cantabile and expressive to the English horn) of the master Paolo Grazia accompanied by the Orchestra Senzaspine conducted by the masters Matteo Parmeggiani and Tommaso Ussardi.

Giovanni Bononcini was born in Modena on 18 July 1670, the eldest and best-known son of the composer, violinist and theoretician Giovanni Maria (1642-1678), one of the main exponents of the musical school of Modena in the second half of the seventeenth century. His talent was extremely precocious: in 1685 he published Trattenimenti da camera op. 1, Concerti da camera op. 2 and Sinfonie op. 3. Giovanni Bononcini is known above all for his dramatic and vocal chamber music, whose simple, refined intensity of expression was acknowledged by his contemporaries. The cantatas are formed of the prescribed succession of arias (or duets) and recitativos, and show Bononcini’s outstanding expressive skill and his ability in finely crafting the close relationship between words and music that was required by this genre of chamber music because of the need to “further the feeling of that divine poetry by means of the expression of the harmonious melodies” (as he wrote in a letter to Benedetto Marcello from London on 6 April 1725). This ability of his made it possible for him, through his perfect knowledge of counterpoint, to tastefully adjust “the exact observation of the different moods produced in the soul by the different modulations of the sound, so as to be able to adapt them suitably to the needs of the words”. Within this world premiere recording the Aurata Fonte ensemble is performing the manuscripts of a composer whose talent was recognized and affirmed by a great career throughout Europe.

The present release synthesizes some stages characterizing the composition path of Pier Paolo Scattolin: from a cappella vocality to instrumentalism with stylistic dynamics sometimes distant but all having in common the research on sound, from the linguistic phoneme to the eclectic and sometimes experimental use of instrumental emission. The path winds through almost forty years of continuous investigation and dissection of both choral and instrumental sound, the latter of a chamber/soloistic character and in some cases concerted and intersected with the voice. In the a cappella choral repertoire a varied anthology collects poetic and literary texts by Dante Alighieri, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Alda Merini, Umberto Saba, Emily Dickinson, Alessandro Striggio, Agnolo Poliziano, Alceo, Saffo, Ipponatte, Enzo Iacchetti, Agnese Troilo and the composer himself. Some choral pieces are concerted with the Ensemble of ancient instruments Circe from Bologna, whose presence stems from the search for a sound language proceeding towards the stripping and essentiality of a music and a sound coherent with the setting of the poetic texts in order to transfer their instrumental characteristics to contemporary musical expression. In some pieces the solo voices are added as an almost instrumental colour, a timbre enrichment of the sonorities of the organ, the recorders, and the trumpets.

The repertoire included in this recording by Marco Molaschi represents an important evidence in the panorama of harpsichord music of the eighteenth century. It was precisely as a harpsichord and singing teacher that Paradisi met his success in London, where he moved after his studies in his native Naples. Charles Burney - an important historian of English music - called him “the great master of the harpsichord”. The sonatas in the collection - dedicated to King George II of England - were published in 1754, precisely in the composer’s London period and contributed significantly to affirming his fame as a virtuoso and composer of keyboard music.

The recording of “La Leggenda di Vittore e Corona” focuses on the musical-liturgical repertoire that the ancient Venetian medieval tradition named after the two proto-martyrs. The source (Antifonario Marciano, Archivio di Stato di Venezia, 14th century) sings in the form of the minor liturgy of the Vespers the different moments of the Passio involving Vittore until he joined Corona in the martyrdom, reaching eternal glory. Far from representing only a local cult, the legend of Vittore and Corona is fully part of the history of Christianity and, in particular, of the defenseless yet determined struggle for the freedom of faith, thought and conscience. The style between the Gregorian and the Aquileian rite of the Marcian vespers (first performance in modern times) is very well accompanied by that of the polyphonic pieces taken from European codes of the same period, underlining the salient moments of the legend; the original alternation of the voices and medieval instruments between concordant monody and polyphonic dialogue connotes the performance of the InUnum Ensemble enhancing the narrative.

The city of Modena, under the rule of the Este family, was the capital of the Dukedom of Modena e Reggio. Thanks to Duke Francesco ii’s fondness for the violin, music became an essential element in the most important events at the Este court, such as receptions, weddings and official visits of foreign sovereigns. These were the occasions in which the Duke displayed all his magnificence. Modena stands out for the abundance of its collection of musical documents in the Biblioteca Estense: the library is a real mine, largely unexplored so far. This consideration gave rise to the idea of making this beautiful, extraordinarily modern music available to those who are “pursuing” culture and art. So our goal is to promote a rediscovery of the enormous heritage preserved in the Biblioteca Estense, by carrying out a meticulous study of the sources of the works of the composers who were active at the Este Court in Modena, transcribing them into modern notation and critical editions, and producing monographic recordings of them. The first step consisted in the study and recording of the instrumental works of Giovanni Battista Vitali. The twelve sonatas op. 9 from 1684, for two violins and basso continuo, typically meant to be performed in a church, unfortunately have not survived in print, but only in manuscript form. Moreover the manuscript is not very well preserved, and in some points the paper has been irreparably damaged by time, so some passages are illegible. We have carried out a painstaking work of checking and reconstructing – only where we considered it indispensable – and in some points, even if the result is not particularly harmonious or formally correct, we have chosen to accept what history has handed down to us: loose scores, sometimes not devoid of certain mistakes that typically occur in versions that have not yet been printed by some publisher.

Three composers, Tedeschi, Galeotti and Mortari, with three completely different musical styles: what they share is the sound of the harp and the rediscovery of its late-Romantic, early-modern Italian repertory, which is mostly still unknown, or very nearly so. Completing with highest honors her diploma and post-grad work at the Conservatory of Parma, prize-winning harpist Eleonora Valpato was until January 2011 was First Harp Philharmonic Orchestra of Santiago de Chile. Since 2009 she has played with Nicholas Vaiente in the unusual harp and marimba ensemble Step Two.

The sacred-music production of Augustinian friar Ippolito Ghezzi (1655-1725) is collected almost in full in this 4CD box set containing the complete edition of his Oratorios, Psalms and Lamentations for Holy Week. A fresh, inspired writing and a sober, but not austere style are the mainstays of the composer’s approach to the great Biblical episodes. The intention of this music is to reach the listeners’ understanding in a direct (and sometimes also dramatic) way, unfailingly guiding them towards a conversion to faith. Roberto Cascio leads the Cappella Musicale di San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna.

Non-professional lovers of music ranged, in their mastery of the instruments, from amateurs to concert performers. So the instrumental fantasias were “molded” to the patrons’ specific requirements, and nourished a constantly growing market. The history of Pietro Morlacchi (1828-68) and Antonio Torriani (1829-1911) coincides with the history of the success of instrumental music genre in Italy. That these of the many published fantasias of the time survived, testify to their musical worth.

The recording of the two harpsichord sonatas by Bernardo Pasquini, master of the Italian style of the organ and harpsichord in the period between the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, is a particularly interesting cameo in the panorama of the music dedicated to the genre of the partimento, advanced practice of the basso continuo that in Italy formed the basis of compositional and keyboard teaching in the 18th century Neapolitan school. In fact the sonatas consist of only the bass lines on which the two performers must create the entire composition thanks to the technical and expressive expertise obtained from a consummate knowledge and experience of the performance practice of the time. Marina Scaioli and Francesco Tasini face this instrumental 'challenge' on two Italian historical harpsichords copies: a 1725 Giovanni Ferrini and a 1778 Roberto and Federigo Cresci.

Classical Music

Vivaldi, more than any of his Italian contemporaries, left a great number of works composed for diverse and highly imaginative combinations of wind and string instruments. The source of this inspiration can be traced back not only to the composer’s own personal tastes, but especially to his good fortune to have worked for an institution such as the Pietà, which had at its disposal an unrivalled wealth of instrumental forces. This interest is a constant element throughout his entire production.

The city of Modena, under the rule of the Este family, was the capital of the Dukedom of Modena e Reggio. Thanks to Duke Francesco ii’s fondness for the violin, music became an essential element in the most important events at the Este court, such as receptions, weddings and official visits of foreign sovereigns. These were the occasions in which the Duke displayed all his magnificence. Modena stands out for the abundance of its collection of musical documents in the Biblioteca Estense: the library is a real mine, largely unexplored so far. This consideration gave rise to the idea of making this beautiful, extraordinarily modern music available to those who are “pursuing” culture and art. So our goal is to promote a rediscovery of the enormous heritage preserved in the Biblioteca Estense, by carrying out a meticulous study of the sources of the works of the composers who were active at the Este Court in Modena, transcribing them into modern notation and critical editions, and producing monographic recordings of them. The first step consisted in the study and recording of the instrumental works of Giovanni Battista Vitali. In this third of 6 albums dedicated to his music preserved at the Estense Library of Modena, the baroque group Italico Splendore performs the Partitas and the Sonatas op. 13.The Partitas are formed of ten pieces for violone and eight for violin, in the form of variations introduced by a toccata. It is worthwhile to mention the fact that the sixty pieces of the Artificii, which are based on several counterpoint techniques and arranged in an order of growing complexity, from two to twelve parts, are an extraordinary example of a study of counterpoint that comes before J.S. Bach’s colossal work.