For many decades, students of Domenico Scarlatti, including me, have been debating about the relationship between most of Scarlatti's Sonatas and Flamenco dance. Silvia Rambaldi and Andreina Di Girolamo deserve our praise for presenting a practical demonstration that moves beyond the boundary of words, uniting dance and harpsichord performance, by means of the collaboration of the dancer Rita Marchesini, who is an expert on both Baroque and Flamenco dance. And since very often within certain Sonatas there is an alternation between the Andalusian style and the Italian one, the dancer, with her performance, demonstrates that it is possible to "play" with both styles appropriately. (Emilia Fadini) This interesting production on the harpsichord sonatas "encrypted" by Domenico Scarlatti is accompanied by a DVD rom containing the video of the sonatas for two harpsichords filmed in the performance "La festa dorata dell'anima", in which Rita Marchesini (historical dance and flamenco) and Alberto Rodriguez (Andalusian guitarist) join the harpsichordists Andreina di Girolamo and Silvia Rambaldi in this "field demonstration" of the influence of Italian and Spanish dance on the works of the great composer. The comments in the interview with the late Emilia Fadini are not to be missed.

Giuseppe Mazzini, the greatest revolutionary of the 19th century in Europe, was very passionate about music, he attended theaters and organized an annual concert to support the Italian School he founded in London. He published a very interesting “Philosophy of music” in Paris in 1836 and, as we know from the letters to his mother written in periods of exile from Italy, he loved to play the guitar.

His three guitars, appearing for the first time together in a single recording, are preserved in his birthplace in Genoa, today Museo del Risorgimento – Istituto Mazziniano, at the Istituto Storico Nazionale Domus Mazziniana in Pisa, where he died, and in the private collection preserved in Milan by Marco Battaglia. The album includes a varied and fascinating repertoire of original music by Niccolò Paganini, Luigi Moretti, Giulio Regondi and Luigi Legnani, a song specifically mentioned in a letter from Mazzini, a theme by Giovanni Pacini varied by Mauro Giuliani, also author of a potpourri that includes parts of works by Gioachino Rossini, and a fantasy on Verdi's Traviata, elaborated by Caspar Joseph Mertz.

According to the composer and conductor Clarence Lucas, writing in 1935, “of the merits of d’Ambrosio... he always maintains his standard of elegance and never becomes commonplace”. By the way d’Ambrosio’s instrumental music was highly appreciated by contemporaries and played by the most acclaimed interpreters of his time, though nowadays seems hélas almost neglected. Alfredo D’Ambrosio (Naples, June 13, 1871-Paris, December 28, 1914) was a Neapolitan violinist and composer studying in Naples Conservatoire with Eusebio Dworzak, Ferdinando Pinto, Enrico Bossi, then in Madrid with Pablo Sarasate and in London with August Wilhelmj. He then set up in Nice where for years he promoted the musical programs of the Club L’Artistique, with his Colleagues Harold Bauer and Jacques Thibaud, or playing in his own Quartet with his cousin Luigi d’Ambrosio (violinist and later teacher of Salvatore Accardo). The Archos Quartet guides us on a chronological path to the discovery of the compositions for quartet and quintet of strings, using the collaboration of two exceptional soloists: Friedrich Thiele on the cello and Mio Tamayama on the double bass.

Within this album the “Insolito 8cento” duo (Angelo de Magistris, violin and Rosaria Dina Rizzo, piano) is rediscovering a little-known feature of the great Belcanto master Gaetano Donizetti: his chamber works dedicated to the violin, an instrumental production little mentioned and often completely ignored. In fact Donizetti never ceased to deal with the composition of instrumental chamber music, giving life to brilliant works that, same as for his vocal works, testify his extraordinary creative vein in which one can recognize great inspiration, almost like a continuous improvisation, yet always refined and elegant as well as completely devoid of those formal negligence typical of the ‘utility music' or composed for mere exercise or pastime.

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.

Among the musical genres that were most appreciated and cultivated in Vienna in the early eighteenth century, one that stands out decidedly is the chamber cantata. The Italian cantatas, which were favourite compositions for the cultivated entertainment of the court, were abundantly circulated in manuscript form and collected in a great quantity of books that made chiefly between the eighteen-tens and the eighteen-forties. Now these cantatas are scattered in collections and libraries that have been the object of important musicological studies.

The six cantatas presented in this recording are all drawn from the Mus.Hs.17567 manuscript in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek of Vienna, and were quite probably all composed there around 1710-1712. It is an extremely interesting handwritten-copy collection formed of twelve compositions that are attributed with certainty to Giovanni Bononcini (three), Francesco Conti (three), Antonio Caldara (three), Emanuele d’Astorga (two), and Andrea Stefano Fioré (one). The two symphonies by Caldara (for solo cello) and Giovanni Bononcini are completing the listening of this cd by the Aurata Fonte ensemble, already protagonist of the recording of some great Italian Baroque music discovery (TC670202, TC611990).

Although now Rossini is remembered for his operatic production, his career had begun as a composer of chamber music. In 1804 the 12-year-old Gioachino was invited to spend the summer in the villa of his friend Agostino Triossi in Conventello. This rich landowner, who was an amateur double-bass player, was in the habit of organising concerts and musical gatherings: Rossini composed many instrumental pieces for him. The "Sei sonate a quattro for two violins, cello and double-bass" were composed for one of these occasions.

As Rossini himself related, “They are six horrible sonatas, composed by me during a holiday near Ravenna, in the house of my friend and patron Agostino Triossi, at a more than childish age, when I had not even had a single accompaniment lesson, and the whole thing was composed and copied in three days and performed dreadfully by Triossi, double-bass, Morini (his cousin) first violin, his brother, cello, and the second violin was me, who, to own the truth, was the least dreadful.”

We must not be misled by such a negative opinion. These sonatas, though elementary from a formal point of view, are genuine and quite inspired: the contrast between the brilliant passages and the lyrical/sentimental ones already reveals what a skillful opera composer Rossini was to become.

Diogenio Bigaglia, a composer who at present is unknown to most people, was active in Venice in the first half of the eighteenth century, so he was a contemporary of the much better known Tomaso Albinoni, Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello, and, above all, Antonio Vivaldi, whose work shows several evident– and more or less explicit – references to Bigaglia’s production. So he turns out to be a composer who is worthy of interest not only for the intrinsic musical worth of his works, but also for the influence his activity may have had on musicians with whom we are more familiar; this is why musicologists have recently started showing an increasing interest in him.

The selection of cantatas presented here is performed by the voice of soprano Tullia Pedersoli that skillfully interprets the musical ‘affetti’ proposed by the simple and elegant style of the composer, who in some points even seems to have provided some cues to Johann Sebastian Bach that, as known, deeply studied Italian and Venetian. All the cantate are about love, and frequently resort to the literary topoi that are typical of this genre.

This album is dedicated to Tomaso Pegolotti, a character who held the double role of notary public and musician in the land of the Estense dukedom between Modena and Reggio Emilia. In fact, his father Livio initiated him into both the study of music and law, and thanks to his commitment and his talent, Tomaso had a brilliant career in both professions. The collection of the "Trattenimenti armonici da camera [...] opera prima", dedicated to Prince Foresto d'Este in 1698, includes his entire instrumental production, as the planned second work was finally never terminated due to Pegolotti's involvement in some unexpected political clash also connected to one of his judicial publications.

The collection consists of twelve sonatas from which can be deduced that the author possessed considerable technical skills on the violin. The Opera Quinta ensemble led by Fabrizio Longo (former protagonist of other important productions by Tactus: tc.630201, tc.670290 and tc.621602) is a solid reference in the musical practice of early and Baroque music.

Among the entertainments with which the Bavarian nobles of the 18th century occupied their monotonous and idle daily life, in addition to gambling, tobacco smoking and reading, the mandora and calichon are often mentioned. The latter were lutes, with only 6- (or even 5-) courses of strings, which – being much less demanding than the contemporary German 13-course lute – became among the favourite instruments of the German, Austrian and Bohemian aristocracy, including women, who were generally excluded from professional instrumental music.

The larger 8-course calichon, due to its versatility was widely used as a continuo-playing instrument in chamber ensembles and orchestras, especially in monasteries and among the clergy. It is precisely an original gallichone of 1754 the instrument used by the specialist Davide Rebuffa for the performance of the pieces attributed to Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello, probably composed in Stuttgart after 1737 for a member of the family of the Dukes of Württemberg, at the service of which he spent much of his existence.

The Cappella musicale di Santa Maria in Campitelli, conducted by Maestro Vincenzo Di Betta, who has already been responsible for significant recording revivals such as Orazio Benevoli's "Missa in angustia pestilenti�" (TC600201), Bonaventura Rubino's "Messa de' Morti" (TC601803), and Francesco Giovannini's "Messa � Quattro" (TC700703), is now engaged in this new and notably interesting musical production. This rediscovery focuses on two sacred oratorios from the seventeenth century by two authors active in the Neapolitan orbit: Francesco Nicol� de Rossi, a priest of Apulian origin, and Cristoforo Caresana, of Venetian origin and formerly the organist of St. Mark's Basilica. The two works - performed with the ensemble's customary expertise - are interspersed with an instrumental battle piece by Andrea Falconieri, composed in the spirit of that Baroque theatricality which is the main ingredient of these works and of the sacred musical masterpieces of the seventeenth century.

Since 2010 the Associazione La Cantoria has dedicated its energies to the rediscovery of unpublished musical compositions from Rome, transcribing, studying and performing these both live and recording them under the Tactus record label. This cd is dedicated to the musician, composer and organist Francesco Giovannini who was chapelmeister at the Church of Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli in the 18th century, and whose works are conserved in the archives of the Order of the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God in Rome. The best way to understand and appreciate a liturgical musical composition is to savor it the very same context where it was born and for which it was conceived. This is what this cd intends to do.Composer: to allow us to live the sonorous experience of an ancient mass of the Roman rite. These late-Baroque compositions by Francesco Giovannini shine like precious gems set in an antique piece of jewelry made of Gregorian chant, readings, and orations where the organ is heard almost fleetingly in those moments when the sound of the voice and other instruments is superfluous or even prohibited.

Among the motivations of this disc, the most important one is the wish to present the various styles and periods in a clear, simple way, endeavoring to avoid superabundance and the accumulation of crossover deposits that are often heard where it seems that the music of the past cannot be self-sufficient and needs an extra chromatic and rhythmic shove in order to catch the listeners’ attention, inducing them to compare it with the commercial, repetitive entertainment repertoire. In this musical journey between Italy and Spain of the Baroque era, Paolo Rigano on the archlute and baroque guitar and Cinzia Guarino on the harpsichord are interpreting a singular anthology of pieces enriching the playing through the practice of the basso continuo that marked the entire musical period from the Renaissance to the late Baroque.

Antonio Bazzini, violinist and composer, was born in Brescia on March 11, 1818. At the age of eight, he began to study the violin under the guidance of Fausto Camesani (or Camisani); at thirteen, he published his first composition; and at seventeen, he had six symphonies for great orchestra performed at the theatre of Brescia. In 1836, when he was eighteen, he was auditioned by Paganini, who encouraged him to embark on a career as a concert performer. From that time onwards, he was constantly successful. He held concerts in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Denmark, England and Belgium. He met many contemporary composers, one of whom was Robert Schumann, who praised him saying: “Since many years no virtuoso has given me such an intimate joy and such pleasant, happy moments as Antonio Bazzini has done. It seems to me that he is too little known, and that, even here, he has not been appreciated as much as he deserves.” With this album the Quartetto Bazzini completes the recording of Bazzini’s string quartets (originally printed in the nineteenth century) started in 2018 with the previous album (TC810202). The new album is including quartets n. 2, no. 4 and n. 5, shorter than the monumental n. 1 and n. 3 of the previous release, testify - as the composer Arrigo Boito reminds us - a great intelligence by years of performances and studying of the great German quartets, an experience that allowed him to remain, unlike many contemporaries, independent of the dominant melodramatic context.

A plunge among the sunken composers of Italian chamber music and the salvaged ones. The program recorded in this album is a ticket for a journey of a century and a half, that is the distance between the composition of the Sonata “con accompagnamento” by Muzio Clementi (1792) and its transformation into the Trio ortodosso by Alfredo Casella (1936). An intermediate stop is represented by the Trio op. 59 by Giuseppe Martucci (1882). The route of this journey retraces a history that is not unimportant or unsurprising: it summarises the significance and vicissitudes of the chamber music produced by Italian composers from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. In many texts of music history this topic is relegated in a note, or at most is dealt with in a paragraph, not even a chapter: an upgraded echo of the Fascist nationalism and dislike for Puccini that, for ideological reasons rather than for a historical or critical conviction, made themselves useful in raising the issue in the twentieth century. This recording, which presents a performance for piano, violin and cello, is a tiny artistic compensation, and an aesthetic and formal clarification. It leads us to consider and understand the role that Italian composers played also in the specific area of non-theatrical music.

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].

This unexpected finding, found in an old trunk in an attic in Trento, makes it possible for us now to reconstruct a brilliant passage in the musical history of that city. The trunk contained some organ scores that had been written by Davide Urmacher (organist at the nearby church of San Pietro) and played by him, first on the fifteenth century organ, then on the organ made in 1862 by Giovanni Battista De Lorenzi, from Vicenza. Together with other scores countersigned by members of the Dall’Armi family, owners of a shop near the Ginnasio in Via San Pietro, this treasure chest has yielded some invaluable organ scores that were in use in the city between the end of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. This entire collection, together with others (both public and private) existing in Trentino, provides a complex, varied and wide-ranging picture of the organ music that was being played in that period over the entire territory, with a lively circulation of material. The organist Simone Vebber makes use of a historic nineteenth-century organ in the performance of the compositions in the classic theatrical styles of the time.

Bologna and San Petronio, patron saint and protector of the city, represent an inseparable union, a spiritual and civil unity that goes beyond the only meaning linked to religion. The Basilica named after him, symbol of the city, wants to revive the spirit of reconstruction promoted by the saint, when he found it devastated by the barbarian invasions and was the main protagonist of both material and intellectual rebirth, going as far as laying the foundations of what would be the first university in the world. A celebratory event organized by the "Messa in Musica" Association that with the same spirit involved the major institutions of the city, the Municipality, the Basilica and the Teatro Comunale, led to the commissioning to the composer Marco Taralli (already on Tactus’, Requiem - In Memoriam, TC950006) a great mass for solos, choir, children's choir and orchestra, to honor the patron saint of Bologna. The texts of the mass are completed by inserts from Liber Paradisus, the famous Bolognese 1256 text with which slavery was abolished for the first time in history.

The recording project of organist Giovanni Battista Vaglica aims to enhance the original artistic heritage of the Sicilian Archdiocese of Monreale (Palermo). The territory of Monreale is in fact particularly rich in ancient instruments dating back to the Sicilian school of the eighteenth century, usually small in size and designed mainly for liturgical use. Our care in the choice of the repertoire to be used in this journey through organ music was focused chiefly on the Neapolitan school, on which several generations of musicians coming from the Mediterranean area and elsewhere have drawn and have based their musical education. Within this school, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti are two important figures; particularly Alessandro, the father, who decided to move from Palermo to Naples, where he became the teacher of many musicians.

The artistic event “La Grande Guerra – Requiem in memoriam” (The Great War - Requiem in memoriam) is a mark of profound gratitude and deeply-felt remembrance, created in order to keep alive among all of us today the memory of those who gave up their precious lives on the battlefields between 1914 and 1918. A multitude of young people from both sides, sacrificed on the great altars of homeland and fraternity; a warning for today’s generations and an appeal to life through the vehicle of music, whose ability to touch the sublime opens the door to the infinite and to the essence, reaffirming the longing for peace and hope that we carry with us in our hearts. A unique event, a unique situation, honored by the presence of the major institutional authorities. Hence the idea of a new work that engages with the past using today’s forms of artistic expression, entrusted to two internationally-recognized musicians – Maurizio Dones and Marco Taralli. The result is a fascinating and radiant requiem that appeals on first hearing even to the musical neophyte, being captivating for the performer and easy upon the ear despite its virtuoso touches and rough edges.

Art historians unanimously regard Carlo Rainaldi as the most important architect of seventeenth-century Baroque Rome after Bernini, Borromini and Pietro da Cortona. He was born in Rome, on 4 May 1611, to Girolama Verovio and Girolamo Rainaldi, a Roman architect, and received his education at the Collegio Romano, for music, and at the Sapienza, for architecture. He was active in all the major Roman constructions of that period, ranging from S. Agnese in Agone, in Piazza Navona, to the two twin churches of Piazza del Popolo, from S. Maria in Campitelli to the façade of S. Andrea della Valle, from S. Maria in Via to the apse of S. Maria Maggiore, not to mention Palazzo Salviati in the Corso, the loggia of Palazzo Borghese and the sepulchral monument to Clement ix in S. Maria Maggiore. We should also add to this list a number of chapels, sepulchral monuments, altars, triumphal arches and decorations for papal transits and processions. While as an architect Rainaldi has aroused the interest of art historians, he is not well-known yet as a musician. This third cd dedicated to the composer's chamber vocal production (see TC611801 and TC611802), edited by Lorenzo Tozzi at the helm of the RomaBarocca Ensemble, contributes to the necessary rediscovery of this aspect; the refined Roman cantata of the seventeenth century that sees its standard bearers in Giacomo Carissimi and Luigi Rossi, finds another and unexpected protagonist in the architect Rainaldi.

An interesting and goliardic representation of Bologna at the beginning of the seventeenth century is proposed to us by the Dramatodia theatrical company directed by Alberto Allegrezza and with the participation of Enrico Bonavera. The theme is the Carnival, the texts are by the storyteller, writer and poet Giulio Cesare Croce and the music by the brilliant and non-conformist Olivetan friar Adriano Banchieri. The irresistible combination formed by these two authors stages an irreverent and paradoxical triumph of hyperbole, satire, jokes and double meanings, which find their expression - at the same time popular and artistic - in the dramaturgic representations linked to the commedia dell'arte and in the musical forms of the time such as the villanella, the canzonetta and the ballet.

The musical production of Francesco Saverio Geminiani is totally focused on instrumental music, and includes two collections of violin sonatas, one of cello sonatas, three of concerti grossi, two of Pièces de Clavecin, and a series of transcriptions and revisions of works by other important Italian composers such as Arcangelo Corelli and Francesco Mancini. Geminiani was very active as a treatise writer: he published no less than six works, among which the one that stands out is The art of playing on the violin, published in 1751 and still regarded as the most important violin treatise of that period, together with that of Leopold Mozart from 1756. The treatise became quite famous at once, and was much used by the composer’s contemporaries; several versions of it were published up to 1790, with English and French editions, reaching the New World. The composer’s only digression from his customary work consisted of La Forêt enchantée, a theatrical pantomime meant to be performed by mimes and dancers on expressly-composed music; it had been inspired by Canti xiii and xviii of Gerusalemme liberata, by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595). The version drawn up by Claudio Valenti – who devised the dramatic part together with the actor Piero Nannini – seeks out and re-creates the prosodic relationship between the text and the music that constitutes the core of the composer’s inspiration in his reading of Tasso’s text. For this reason, the work is presented not only in its version for string instruments alone, with the addition of a single flute, but has also been stripped of its orchestral repetitions (all of them), so as to outline an instrumental structure that is transparent, but able to catch and amplify the expressive peculiarities of the score in relation to the text, achieving a novel sort of representative madrigal.

At the dawn of the 19th century, the guitar was a very widespread instrument both in courtyards and living rooms. Vienna and Paris were cultural centers of great appeal, attracting artists and musicians from all over Europe. The transcription of operatic pieces was a common practice and intended for those who wished to remember, listen to and in some way perform the beautiful pieces heard in the theatres. In this release there are arias and cavatinas by more or less known authors, all linked to the Neapolitan school; the transcriptions were done by François Doisy, Anton Diabelli, Mauro Giuliani, Roger Dias, George Henri Derwort, and many of them are recorded here for the first time. The soprano Alessandra Borin performs this “bel canto” florilegium with an incredible ductility of her vocal technique, accompanied by Alessandro Marchiori playing a copy of the historical guitar Etienne Lapravotte (ca 1830), built by the luthier Gabriele Lodi di Carpi (Modena - Italy).

Francesco Balilla Pratella, one of the most important and eclectic figures of the early-twentieth- century cultural scene in Italy, molded his life to the constant pursuit of spiritual ascension and the quest for the essence of humanity. For him, these conditions were indispensable for achieving the “humanized re-creation of the world”, the primary, essential goal of an artist-creator: “Creation, in an absolute sense, is not a human faculty; we cannot add or remove anything in the universe. But we can humanly re-create the universe, that is, translate it and re-express it with images and values that are essentially human. This is what art is, and this is what life is: a human re-creation of the world in its terms and values, and only for man: a humanization of the world.” So he re-created the world, his world, untiringly dividing himself between musical composition, teaching, the passionate study of folk traditions, and the writing of hundreds and hundreds of theoretic, critical, musical-aesthetic and philosophic texts. The Pratella Ensemble is the interpreter of this production that collects a varied anthology of the composer's chamber production: lieder, instrumental and choral pages that reflect the work and life of a highly original author, protagonist of a historical and cultural moment - that of the futurism - of great experimentation and artistic travail.