Accademia Ottoboni

Manuel Granatiero presents his first solo album, following several successful concerto recordings with Amandine Beyer's Gli Incogniti and Accademia Ottoboni, of which he is a founding member. Here, Manuel is joined by Yu Yashima and Marco Ceccato, as he turns his attention to the flute music of C.P.E. Bach. The outcome of this project is 'Light and Darkness', five sonatas chosen from the substantial oeuvre that the composer dedicated to this instrument.

Giovanni Battista Bononcini (1670-1747) and his younger brother, Antonio Maria (1677-1726) were considered by their contemporaries to be among the most outstanding cello virtuosi of their time; today, however, they are best known not only as composers of vocal music but also as two of the greatest representatives of the galant style. It is to their music, often unpublished, that Marco Ceccato and his Accademia introduce us here.

In Rome between the late seventeenth century and the early eighteenth, academies and ‘conversazioni’ (artistic gatherings) organised by aristocrats and cardinals attracted the leading writers and musicians. The names of Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti and the young G. F. Handel stand out among many others. Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier (Rome, c.1660-1700), a cellist and composer known as ‘Giovanni del Violone’, participated in this intensive musical activity. […] When he entered the entourage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, in 1690, Lulier already had a decade of compositional activity behind him in the genres of oratorio, opera and above all the chamber cantata.

The peculiar feature of this record is the great variety of the musical styles represented: instrumental and vocal music, very-well known concertos and other less famous ones of different soloists. A release that finds its strength in the specific expressive nature of Vivaldi’s genius that gave cohesiveness to pieces conceived years apart and for different occasions. The brilliant Italian soprano Raffaella Milanesi shares the stage with the soloists of Accademia Ottoboni, an ensemble that performs early music using original period instruments or copies. The ensemble originates from Rome and consists of musicians of the most recent generation active in the international scene.

This recording follows a first collaboration between Zig-Zag Territoires and Marco Ceccato (Vivaldi sonatas), widely hailed by the press. It is devoted to two important aspects of Luigi Bocherini’s work: chamber music and the cello, of which he was a great virtuoso. The two quintets and the divertimento feature the combination of the string quartet – of which Boccherini was, in a way, the co-founder with Haydn – sometimes with the guitar, sometimes with the flute having place of honour, and always with a delightful use of those instruments’ sound capabilities. And, of course, the cello is then to the fore in the Concerto in G major, a summary of virtuosity and lyricism.