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.

A great literary, humanist, teacher, and composer, Giacomo Orefice was a prominent figure of early twentieth century Italian music. His artistic activities are considered a sign of sacred respect for the Italic art, taking place during a time when foreign arts were overpowering it. This collection of chamber music arias utilizes texts from poets, which include Nievo, Carducci, and D’Annunzio. Tenor Giuseppe Veneziano is joined by veritable pianist Adriano Bassi to create these vivid atmospheres painted by the eclectic maestro.

Classical Music

Italian composer Luigi Gazzotti from Modena studied at the Bologna Conservatory where he received honors in composition. The works featured here are his chamber arias, which were largely inspired by poetry, specifically that of Leopardi. Christina Barbieri is the featured vocalist on this recording. Winner of the Luciano Pavarotti prize, she breathes life into these beautiful texts. Alongside Barbieri is pianist Luca Saltini. Saltini has won first prize at the “Czerny” prize in Turin and “Viotti” of Vercelli, and has translated the texts to be included with the album.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Francesco Molino rightfully belongs to the generation of musicians that, in the wave of the general renaissance in the age of the European revolutions between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, elevated the guitar to the status of concert instrument. After a military career and various experiences as violinist and oboist, he arrived in Paris in 1818 and finally reached the role of guitar music composer and teacher: the rise of his fame is also testified by the famous dispute between his supporters against those of Ferdinando Carulli, as reported on a famous illustration of the time. This new album is mainly focused on Francesco Molino chamber music llegacy that the performers Luciano and Mauro Tortorelli manage to capture and deliver to us through the refined simplicity, delicacy and transparency that characterized and distinguished the composer's work from that of his contemporaries.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, when a successful new opera appeared on the scene, the publishing system promoted initiatives that aimed at maximizing its diffusion and creating widespread channels for the exploitation of its popularity. This was helped on by the production of paraphrases, duets and melodies; all these pieces were near-faithful transcriptions of their models, but were enlarged and personalized through the keyboard of a piano or, as in this case, the strings of a harp or the “keys” of a flute. We undoubtedly should add to all this that a typically bourgeois taste led proficient “amateurs” to take pleasure in delightfully playing all sorts of musical instruments and performing, among other things, an original repertoire that was not bound to opera music but influenced by it. Claudio Ortensi’s flute and Anna Pasetti’s harp take this world back to us through this premiere recording of the works by Michelangelo Sola, Giovanni Toja, Angelo Bovio and Giuseppe Gariboldi, active protagonists of the European and Italian compositional streams converging chamber music with the political and cultural trends that crossed the Classicism and the Romanticism.

The sensible and sophisticated pianist Rossella Spinosa faces the arduous task of performing the music of Giacinto Scelsi, a very special composer that grew within the Parisian scene influenced by Debussy, the generation of the Eighties, the Dodecafonia of the German school, and the esotericism of Skriabin, reaching (after traveling to the east in India and Tibet) his very personal idea of global spherical sound. So Scelsi became the interpreter of a new concept of sound that transcends the formal architecture almost renouncing to making music, becoming a link between the earthly world and cosmic forces. The result is music demanding great sensitivity and particular mood by both the performer and the listener, to whom is requested a total and religious immersion in the sound and vibrations of the world of Giacinto Scelsi. Rossella Spinosa holds degrees in piano, harpsichord, composition, and law. She also graduated with highest marks in Musicology. She is a winner of numerous national and international piano competitions, and has performed in the most prestigious halls in Italy and abroad.

Giovanni Battista Fasolo most probably composed its Annuale simultaneously to the famous "Fiori Musicali" by Girolamo Frescobaldi; the Annual, however, was delivered to printing only ten years later, in 1645, possibly for editorial reasons because it was the same Venetian printer - Alessandro Vincenti - specialized in keyboard music, to publish both collections. The goal pursued by Fasolo with his Annuale was to provide "tutto quello, che deve far un Organista, per risponder al Choro tutto l'Anno" (everything that an organist has to do, responding to the Choir throughout the year). More than an artistic stand-alone product, the collection was an example of the repertoire suitable to the liturgical service of the time: a compilation of models and forms, styles and modes of composition tha thad to be learned for finally being reused in the daily practice. Unlike Frescobaldi, Fasolo does not provide any toccata intro: a genre completely absent in teh Annuale. On this album organist Luca Scandali is performing three complete masses at the historic Luca di Bernardino da Cortona organ accompanied in alternatim by the ensemble Bella Gerit.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is the fifth volume of Alessandro Scarlatti's complete works for keybaord series. Francesco Tasini plays the 1836 organ, located in the basilica of S. Maria di Campagna. This unique organ is perfectly suited to the Toccatas, Sonatas and Follias from the great master from Palermo.

This album is entirely dedicated to harp and introduces us to two composers active in the Historical Italian twentieth centruy period - Alfredo Casella. Casella's shy nature led him to compose more for himself than for the public or for the fame. The passionate interpretation by Alessandra Ziveri approaches with great momentum this double challenge: the premiere recording of unknown works and the Casella sonata an absolute harp music milestone.

The musical content of this album presents a cross-section of the typical aesthetic features and diversified representative expressions that were most appreciated by the public during the late Renaissance and early Baroque. The style of In Tabernae Musica's performance stems chiefly from the study of the iconographic sources, from which there emerges an artistic production that is targeted not exclusively at the educated class, but also, at the people.