"emilio D'emilio"

The last decade or so has seen the blossoming of a new generation of vocal talents from Spain, many of whom have been expressing their art through early music. A leading figure in this artistic array has been the soprano Nuria Rial, a singer blessed with an unaffected declamatory style, sweet and yet intimate in its emotional charm. In recent years the career of Rial has seen her tackle with success music by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, as well as Pergolesi and much Italian seicento repertoire. This newly-prepared Glossa album turns the clock back to collect together recordings made by the fresh voice of the Catalonian soprano in the years immediately following her studies at the Musik-Akademie in Basel.

A signal moment in the arrival of Italian music on Spanish soil came in the summer of 1708 when Antonio Caldara, finding his opportunities for providing dramatic works for the opera-loving Duke of Mantua limited by the War of the Spanish Succession, headed off to Barcelona to take on acommission for putting on an operatic work from Archduke Charles (“Carlos III”), who was preparing his own wedding festivities at the court he had established in order to contend for the Spanish throne.

This CD presents violin sonatas dedicated by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) to German violinist and composer Johann Georg Pisendel (1678-1755). The manuscripts of the works come from the library of the Dresden Court Orchestra to which Pisendel himself made regular contributions in the course of 30 years.

This instrumental disc which bears the subtitle “17th-century violin music in Spain” is a speculation around Spanish organ music having been arranged for other instruments in the same way Italian music of the time was. With a colourful setup of musicians including Enrico Gatti on violin, Leon Berben on harpsichord and organ, and Pedro Estevan on percussion, La Real Camara as directed by Emilio Moreno provides an adventurous and fully enjoyable view of the music which might have been heard in the century of Velazquez and Calderon de la Barca.

Piani was well enough regarded in his own time to get hired in Paris and then across the continent in Vienna, where he spent the last four decades of his life. He has been forgotten probably because the group of Sonatas, Op. 1, that are excerpted here are his sole surviving works. With the rise in popularity of Francesco Maria Veracini and the other Italians who took their music to France and England in the early 18th century, Piani is worth getting to know.