The collection of 44 motets for solo voice and basso continuo, published in Venice in 1625, is one of the most important works in the field of sacred solo-voice motets. The editor, a chorister in the Claudio Monteverdi-led Cappella Marciana, collected these pieces, choosing them among the most important ones produced by composers chiefly from the area of Venice and Veneto. This magnificent anthology of motets features, besides Monteverdi, other composers active in 16th c. Venice as choirmasters and organists in the churches of Frari, San Salvador, San Marco and in the Venetian Hospitals.

This CD gives the listener the opportunity - until now a rather rare one - to hear Giuseppi Verdi’s music through the filter of an entirely instrumental, chamber music elaboration for flute and piano. It hinges on flutist-composers active during Verdi’s time, with an opening to contemporary music through a solo flute piece by Italian composer Paolo Furlani. Arcadio Baracchi and Andrea Trovato highlight the lyricism and virtuosity of these fantasies and paraphrases, where the performers’ skill is cleverly brought to light through songs that could be considered real “hits” of their time.

This double CD live recording is dedicated to the great pianistic romanticism of the 19th c. Here we can clearly feel how much Italian culture influenced the genius of Franz Liszt, who transposed on his favorite instrument all the magic of great opera (Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti), popular tradition (Venice and Naples) and classic literature (Dante, Petrarca). Literally enchanted by his Italian experience, Liszt composed music of rare effectiveness. Pianist Roberto Cappello has led a notable and highly successful career since his triumph at the 1976 Premio Busoni Int’l Piano Competition.

Renewed interest in outstanding Italian organ works of the 19th and 20thc. explains the decision to dedicate recordings to the work of Polibio Fumagalli, a prominent and prolific figure in 19th c. Italy and a link between the old and the new concept of organ construction and composition in Italy. An organ teacher at the Conservatory of Milan (among his students was Marco Enrico Bossi), Fumagalli succeeded in moving from the Italian opera style to the neoclassical, symphonic tendencies of the German and French style. Organist Fabio Re plays the monumental Valenza cathedral Serassi (1852) organ.

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.

The difficulty of presenting music removed it from its historical context and time, especially music owing its existence to oral vs. written transmission, here inspires the Aquila Altera ensemble’s endeavors in relating these distinct traditions, in both musical and textual terms. The repertoire on this CD, entirely Italian, juxtaposes pieces drawn from 13th – 16th c. manuscripts or printed collections with pieces (and performance practices) stemming from oral traditions and the use of reconstructed musical instruments of the Italian tradition, in addition to the more common ones.

The guitar of Davide Di Ienno is the common denominator of this musical journey within the work of the composer Raffaele Bellafronte. His music touches on many styles; lightheartedly borrowing from various past traditions, he appropriates dance languages rooted in learned and folk music, and also pays tribute to Spanish music, symbol par excellence of guitar expression. Exploration of the guitar’s technical possibilities overlaps with that of the marimba, bassoon, flute and string quartet, making for a fascinating musical journey interspersed with a great rhythm, color and mood variety.

Composer Vieri Tosatti lived and worked in Rome after the Second World War. His music is unique, irreverent, and unlike the compositions of his cohorts. While the compositions being generated by the other more academic composers were deeply rooted in experimentation, Tosatti leaned toward tradition, using his own unique, expressive language, as is evidenced in the five pieces featured on this release. Performing these works is Daniele Adornetto, who was an orchestration student of Tosatti himself.

This unique work by Alessandro Cazzato gives us a glimpse of interesting contemporary authors whose work for solo violin have roots that lie deep in musical tradition. A past that leaves it's traces in new sounds, a revisited past with new signs and gestures, a new type of music, deeply influenced by the past; this is the theme of this project, forcused on "rewriting."

For the first time in the history of music the incredible history of the people from Viggiano is ‘revealed’ on a recording: wandering musicians that in a time span of four centuries represent a real unicum, both musically and anthropologically. Immortalized in the Neapolitan Christmas cribs of the eighteenth century, the wandering music specialists perfectly integrated themselves into the musical needs of the kingdom of Naples, from which, taking advantage of the Bourbon dynamism, then started spreading around the world with many of them becoming top musicians in major orchestras. Through their talent, existential need, great adaptability and versatility, the musicians from Viggiano - almost all of them belonging to the same family circle - with their harp, identifying symbol of their land, became the promoters of the great Italian musical tradition (Southern in particular). From the “Scuola d’Arpa di Viggiano” (Harp School of Viggiano), young artists led by specialists Sara Simari and Lincoln Almada implement the rebirth of this extraordinary tradition, elaborating the main sources of the historical repertoire from Viggiano.

Padre Pellegrino Santucci, Friar of the Servants of Mary, was a central figure of the Bolognese musical scene from the 60s until shortly before his death in 2010. Composer, teacher and volcanic divulger, as part of the Basilica of Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna created a very active cultural center focused on competitions, conferences, publications and concert seasons involving many of the major international performers of the moment. The armature developed around such a fertile environment quickly crossed the borders of the region, becoming fertile ground for many young scholars, musicians, and passionate audience. Prolific composer, he produced mainly sacred and liturgy music, yet without ignoring the needs of a high-level concert scene. This world premiere album offers a panoramic of his works where the organ, both as soloist or together with voices and other instruments, serves as the center of gravity of a musical poetics focused on his great love for the Madonna and for the great traditions of the past, the Gregorian chant and Johann Sebastian Bach. The performances are by passionate young musicians and Tactus' art director Giuseppe Monari at the organ.

The pieces recorded in this release stem from an all-pervading performance practice that deeply marked out the musical taste of the nineteenth century: that of “transcription”. This practice enabled a widespread dissemination of the most popular opera passages, well beyond the official circuits of the great theatres, and above all into the sphere of holy rites. Arias, cavatinas, cabalettas and symphonies were plentiful everywhere: in many cases they were transcriptions of pieces by well-known composers (it was sufficient to give them a “liturgical” title); more often they were homely elaborations. Almost all these pieces are being performed here for the first time in the modern age; the composers are practically unknown; in their music, famous opera themes are freely mixed with fanciful variations on those themes. The purpose was to reproduce this atmosphere, at once theatrical and sacred, in its entirety, by means of period instruments: a wonderful nineteenth-century organ and a series of precious original brass instruments. In fact Marco Arlotti is sitting the Adeodato Bossi Urbani 1874 organ, and Michele Santi, a specialist in nineteenth-century trumpets, is playing seven different period instruments delivering the best and most characteristic sound to each track.

Francesca Ajossa, young and talented organist from Cagliari by the sophisticated technical and musical skills is the protagonist of this album entirely devoted to the music of the nineteenth century in Sardinia; a unique territory, so particular for its beauty and millennial history where music always occupied a prominent place. The few sources remained to witness the organ literature of the time show a unique fusion of influences of northern Italy, Lombardy and Piedmont organ school (mainly in large urban centers) with the ancient Sardinian folk tradition (passed down orally) that in the rural area outside the city consistently permeated church music. The release can also be considered as a opera omnia of the nineteenth century Sardinian music (as no other handwritten or printed sources could be found). The instrument used in the recording is the Piacentini-Battani organ of 1885 in the Chiesa del Santo Sepolcro in Cagliari.

The German composer Johann Adolf Hasse was born in Bergedorf on 25 March 1699 and died in Venice on 23 December 1783. He chose Italy as his adopted country: there he was nicknamed “the dear Saxon”. He was a pupil of Nicola Porpor and Alessandro Scarlatti, from whom he learned the typical composition style of the Neapolitan School. In 1727 he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Conservatorio degli Incurabili of Venice, the city in which he met his bride, Faustina Bordoni. He was engaged as a composer by the Polish court, for which he composed a great number of operas that were staged in Dresden and in other European countries, particularly Italy. The arias presented here by Elena De Simone belong to the genre of the opera seria and have been chosen among the most representative ones in Hasse’s unpublished production, which is based on texts – most of them by Metastasio and Apostolo Zeno – that were a great source of inspiration for the major European musicians of that time.

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.