Letizia Belmondo - one of the major interpreters of the harp scene and winner of the most important international competitions - is the exceptional interpreter of the fascinating music included on this release, dedicated to the historical revaluation of the great Neapolitan melody, brought on the harp by the masters of the Italian harp school between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It is precisely in Naples itself that these composers were active, and in their compositions evoked the wonder and spontaneity of melodies that became famous all over the world. On addition to these pieces, we have transcriptions of some of the most famous arias of the eighteenth-century in a colorful mixture of folk music and operatic and theatrical tradition. Born in Turin in 1981, Letizia Belmondo began to study harp at the age of eight at the Suzuki Talent Center in Turin. She continued her studies at the G Verdi Conservatory in Turin, and later the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse in Lyon as well as The Juilliard School. In 2001, Belmondo won first prize at the prestigious International Harp Contest in Israel, as well as the Ester Herlitz Prize awarded for the best performance of a contemporary piece. She has gone on to win numerous other competitions and prizes, including the International Harp Competition in Lausanne and special prize for the best performance of the Prelude by Jolivet. She is currently Professor of Harp at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne.

Classical Music

Classical Music

With Gloriosus Franciscus, Anonima Frottolisti presents a cross-section of history of music relevant to the Franciscan ideal through the first three centuries of the history of the Order: this sequence of selected pieces reveals both the learned side of this music and it's closeness to "folk" devotion during the period straddling the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as a symbolic homage to the city where Anonima Frottolisti was born (Assisi): "Where the coast is more fringed than that of the coast, a sun was born in the world, as the Ganges sometimes does, but whoever speaks of it does not say Ascesi, which would say short, but East, if you really want to." (Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, Paradiso, 11th Canto). The ensemble Arnonima Frottolisti is an experienced group, which specializes in early music and medieval music. Their previous recordings have been widely well-received.

Classical Music

Threnody (Trenodia) or “[if]… this is man” is a “lay” oratorio in five parts. The work can be performed also as a theatrical pièce where the spoken parts and the instrumental and vocal music take turns while accompanied by a bare and essential choreography. A simple dramaturgic path - somehow almost evanescent and oneiric - was built to form the spoken part, composed by reading a miscellany of poems and proses written by poets and soldiers who took part in the Great War or wrote about it. The music was written by Pier Paolo Scattolin in 2017: in addition to the original material evocative echoes can be heard of some melodies sung in the “ordinary custom” of life in the trenches, during the alienating and often long pauses of the aberrant war activity. Threnody is not a commemorative “musical”, but a space in time and sound to reflect upon man’s acting. To reflect upon the soldiers’ reasons, reactions and visions giving way to behaviors significantly different from those of the high officers in charge, thus unmasking the squalid strategies of the political power. In this oratorio war is shown bluntly as an anguished sharing of negative experiences from the soldiers.

The project entitled In the Sphere of Sound as Crossroad of Cultures wants to draw a semantic and aesthetic musical path based on the investigation of timbres carried out by the Italian comporary composers from Giacinto Scelsi to Biagio Putignano. The program on this recording shows the interweaving of different musical perspectives in order to interpret the idea of sound as "a crossroad of cultures".

Classical Music

The 20th century composer Terenzio Zardini, a Franciscan Friar whose sacred music compositions included a whimsical ingeniousness that still managed to stay within liturgical boundaries while at the same time being a modern continuation of the tradition. In this CD Zardini's compositions are introduced in a collection that includes a selection of his organ works interpreted by Pier Damiano Peretti playing the great Mascioni organ of the Basilica of Monte Berico in Vicenza. Messa In Simplicitate conceived for choir and organ and composed in honor of little St. Placid, the child saint and a live recording of his Minuet for Orchestra. Performers: Pier Damiano Peretti, organ Chorus: Coro del Conservatoria di Verona, da Camara Orchestra: Orchestra Giovanile Veronese.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This exploration in chamber music takes the listener through a journey through the latter half of the nineteenth century to the present day. This album features works for oboe and piano from composers such as Sinigaglia, Bolzoni, Gariboldi, Donizetti, and more. Oboist Luciano Franca was formerly the Prime Oboe in the Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, and continues to work with other prestigious orchestras. He is also the oboe professor at the Conservatory “B. Maderna” in Cesena.

Within this albu, continuing the last section of the Marco Enrico Bossi complete organ works series dedicated to the transcriptions, the attention is focused on an aspect very important both to the composer and to the Cecilian movement in general: the recovery of the ancient music heritage. In fact, after the excessive power of the Italian opera of those days, two were the aspects for the revival of the instrumental music, sacred and organistic: the alignment to the main European schools, and the rediscovery of the old Italian music school, beacon to the European culture from the Renaissance onwards. In this sense, these "transcriptions of the old masters" revisited by Bossi and adapted to instruments of his time, mark the return to the study of the Italian school of music, making it an integral part and foundation of the modern school. As in the famous phrase by Giuseppe Verdi: "back to the old, it will be progress", a concept followed to the letter by the "generation of eighties." For performing these evocative songs, Andrea Macinanti is playing an organ inaugurated by Marco Enrico Bossi himself in 1893. Giovanni Battista Fabris and Elena Perera work on his side on the scores including strings.