Orlando di Lasso, 16th century musician and composer, is one of the masters of 16th century polyphony, considered by many the most versatile. +For over thirty years from 1560, he remained at the court of Duke Albert V of Bavaria, becoming court choirmaster. +In this capacity he traveled widely, often to Italy. +This collection consists of 24 bicinia, a polyphonic instructional genre then in vogue. +Half the collection uses sacred Latin text; the rest have no text. +A world premiere recording.

Antonio Salieri’s (1750-1825) catalog of instrumental music is not particularly extensive. +The symphonic works known from available recordings include two symphonies, several concerti, serenades and the like. +There is, also, a small body of chamber works, including those present on this disc. +Oboist Paolo Pollastri (b. 1960) has been first oboe of numerous orchestras and performs often as a soloist. +The Canadian Amati Quartet made its international debut in 2005 and indulges in a diverse repertoire.

Claudio Merulo (1533–1604) enjoyed great renown in his time. +
His famous Toccate expresses most vividly his considerable skill in the practice of intavolare diminuito. + These world premiere recordings present the entire corpus of Merulo’s Toccate: the 9 Toccate contained in the First Book of Toccate d’intavolatvra d’organo (1598), the 10 Toccate contained in the Second Book of Toccate d’intavolatura d’organo (1604) and the 7 manuscript Toccate drawn from the Nuova intavolatura d’organo tedesca.

From the scanty information we have about the life of Luigi Gianella (1770ca.-1817), we know his fame among his contemporaries must have been much greater than we can imagine today. His compositions were staged at the Teatro La Fenice, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala and at the Opéra in Paris. The three, three-movement concertanti duets for flute and harp, op. 2, stand out for variety and richness of melodic invention, and demonstrate Luigi Gianella’s musical creativity. World premiere recordings.

Angelo Berardi (1636–94) maintained in his day that modern music had reached “greater perfection compared to the past” and that the practice of music was more important than theory; he asserted, moreover, that a good composition should also elevate the soul to virtuous thoughts. In terms of his stylistic profile, Berardi shows great richness of inspiration, so much so that this, his only work assigned to the violin, seems to cover the entirety of the instrument’s abilities and expressive variety.

The Codex of Guardiagrele includes several compositions by artists (from Abruzzo and other regions) that worked in Guardiagrele at the Santa Maria Maggiore church. These compositions expose the then-richness of polyphonic music in this region. The Codex includes several early 15th c. manuscripts of liturgic missals conserved until 1979 in Guardiagrele. Directing the De Bon Parole ensemble in this world premiere recording is Marco Giacintucci, who also realized the reconstructions.

The Primo Libro di Madrigali a quatro voci was, chronologically speaking, the second work published by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. On the publication’s title page the composer refers to himself as «Cantore nella Cappella di N[ostro] S[ignore]», a title which in Rome at that time represented the highest position to which a musician might aspire. The highly regarded Concerto Italiano and their founder-director Rinaldo Alessandrini perform these light, lovely and expressive secular songs from the Renaissance’s greatest sacred music composer.

The four cantatas by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi recorded here were published in Naples c. 1736. A short while later, perhaps 1738, a new edition of the cantatas was published. The fact that the two publications following in short succession testifies to the singular interest the chamber works of this very young composer from Jesi, who had died in 1736, aroused in Italian and European musical circles. For all, mention need only be made of the testimony of Charles de Brosses, who, in 1739, judged the fourth cantata of the collection as “the best of the Italian cantatas”.

This ten-track, single-disc overview of the clarinet in a 20th c. contemporary musical context offers up performances and interpretations by the skilled Italian virtuoso and avant-garde music specialist Josè Daniel Cirigliano. These works, all but one by Italian composers and all heard in world premiere recordings, exploit the many timbral and expressive variations the instrument is capable of in the hands of a master. Among the featured composers, both living and deceased, is famed Italian modernist Luciano Berio (1925-2003).

The second half of the 18th c. and beyond witnessed the widespread popularity in Germanic and Hapsburg regions of a particular type of wind ensemble of varying forces known as Harmonie. The repertoire consisted of divertissements, cassations, serenades and nocturnes, performed for the most part outdoors, as well as “dining music” played at important banquets, and Harmoniemusik heard at parties and ceremonies. Original pieces were performed together with transcriptions of celebrated works, such as this adaptation by Wenzel Sedlak of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

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.

Alessandro Scarlatti’s cantata Bella madre de’ fiori, opens with a slow-tempo Sinfonia followed by a series of arias and recitatives, the last of which is perhaps the most intensely poetic and stylistically original section of the whole cantata. Giovanni Bononcini’s Il lamento di Olimpia opens with a two-movement delicately pastoral prelude; the most important dramatic moments of the text are in the two recitatives rather than in the cantata’s da capo arias. For the cantata Care luci del mio bene, Bononcini has given us a composition of exquisite elegance in superb cantabile style.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi brought the theatre into churches, and religious seriousness into theatres. He is also the first musician who was never dropped from the repertory, either in theatres or in churches. Before him, only contemporary music was played and sung. His Stabat Mater and La serva padrona never stopped being performed, admired and applauded. The characters were now men and women made of flesh and blood, not stock characters, types and stilted heroes, and had the same feelings and intentions as the men and women who frequented the theatre. Pergolesi’s modernity still surprises.

The juxtaposition of Bellini and Chopin, coeval romantics, is significant because of the affinity they show in their melodic inspiration. Their “long, long, long melodies”, exhibit a sonic and ecstatic sensuality that engrosses listeners. The real revolution introduced by Bellini consisted in the fact that the feelings expressed by words took shape in his musical discourse. Bellini’s rootedness in 18th c. opera corresponds to the link between Italian vocal style and Chopin’s music, where that influence, requiring instrumental music to imitate vocal music, was vivid and vibrant.

Roberto Noferini performs the brilliant and alluring 24 Caprices of Paganini on an instrument and bow of Paganini's time.

"The electricity I feel when I'm dealing with the magic harmony" Paganini wrote on 15, January 1832 in a letter to his friend Luigi Guglielmo-Germi. There could be no better definition of Paganini's musical temperament. After hearing Paganini play in a concert, Franz Schubert wrote: "I have heard the voice of an angel." And Franz Liszt's comment was: "How much passion, how much suffering in those four strings." How can we imagine Paganini's art today, at such a distance in time, unless we refer to the impressions of his contemporaries, of the people who had the chance to see him, listen to him and be thrilled by his music? The search for a performance that endeavors to be as near as possible to the magic of a live concert of this great Genoese musician can only start from here. In order to attempt this feat of moving musically back two centuries, it is necessary to aquire to the wood, horsehair strings and bow technique within painstaking attention to the directions left by Paganini in his original scores (this was in fact the advice of violinist Artur Grumiaux.) To all this we add the talent of a present-day virtuoso who is less subject to the harsh law of time and can find another way of bringing back to our time the masterpieces of the past. - Tactus

Established in 1986 by Serafino Rossi, Tactus is devoted to the discovery and preservation of the enormous and still unexplored Italian classical music repertoire, from Gregorian chants to Contemporary Classics.