Italy was a reference point for the cultural élite of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which looked to Venice for its republican system, and to Rome for its Christian heritage. Seventeenth-century Polish singers, players and composers soon adopted Italian manners, both at home and abroad, and many courts established Polish-Italian ensembles, to which the all-female Ensemble Giardino di Delizie is a unique modern counterpart.

Mikolaj Zielenski was the first Polish composer to publish his works in Italy: a huge collection of sacred works originating from Venice in 1611 and including a pair of instrumental fantasias featured on this album. Adam Jarzebsky (1590-1649) was another cosmopolitan figure, a violinist who worked in royal courts in Germany and Italy and whose music naturally absorbs the idioms of his adopted countries. Marcin Mielczewski (c. 1651) was a colleague of Jarzebsky’s at the royal Polish court under the period of Swedish occupation, and Kaspar Förster (1616-1673) studied under Carissimi in Rome before returning to Warsaw and then to Danzig, the city of his birth; his Italianate compositions include the trio sonatas which here receive their first recordings.

The musicians of Ensemble Giardino di Delizie aspire to the Baroque aesthetic of ‘saper ben parlare per ben suonare’; thus they take their cue from their fluency in both Polish and Italian, and a phonetic analysis of each language, in order to inflect their interpretations. Full of both suave, Corellian phrasing and lively Polish rhythms, their performances are unfailingly intense and exciting. Founded in 2014 by the violinist Ewa Anna Augustynowicz, the ensemble is joined here by a quartet of guests: Elena Bianchi (dulcian), Fabrizio Carta (theorbo), Amalia Ottone (viola da gamba) and Marco Contessi (violone).

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REVIEW:

All of these pieces have their charms, partly because of a careful choice amongst available sources, I'm sure, but also due to the scholarship of Ewa Anna Augustynowicz and the lively musical camaraderie she fosters among her ensemble. The blue jeans on the album cover are the sign of a relative informality that's always welcome in the sometimes buttoned down world of Historically Informed Practice. It's a delight!

– Music for Several Instruments (Dean Frey)