Alberto Bile Spadaccini

This recording features a work with a strange coincidence in its compositional process and an astonishing dual authorship. Remarkably, Silvius Leopold Weiss’s Lute Suite SW47 (which he named Suonata) also comes with a violin part that can be played over the top of it, composed by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. A recent comparison of sources revealed that the harpsichord part in Bach’s Suite for Violin & Harpsichord BWV1025, long considered to be of doubtful attribution, perfectly matches Weiss’s suite. The violin part, meanwhile, was indeed composed entirely by Bach and is an additional melody independent of Weiss’s musical material. It feels almost like a ‘free improvisation’ above the suite and recalls a similar process carried out by Charles Gounod in 1859: his Ave Maria fits over the first Prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier BWV846. The sole exception is the Fantasia movement in Bach’s piece, which is not derived from Weiss’s suite, meaning both the violin and harpsichord parts in it are unique to Bach.

The most comprehensive collection of organ music by a major forerunner to Monteverdi, recorded on a historically significant instrument by an organist with a distinguished catalogue of 17th-century repertoire.

The first ever album dedicated to the music of Ernest Shand, including several first recordings.

Out on Glossa is the first-ever recording of one of the most important preserved dramatic works by one of the major figures of the European full Baroque, José de Nebra: Vendado es Amor, no es ciego, a 1744 summertime zarzuela success in Madrid. Alberto Miguélez Rouco conducts an animated vocal sextet and Los Elementos in a production prepared for and executed under the auspices of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Rather than the moralizing plots of the dramma per musica, zarzuelas focused on tales of love, power and slanging matches between mythological figures with commentary provided by comic frequently bawdy characters.

Longtime Pedro Almodóvar collaborator Alberto Iglesias composed the sad and gentle soundtrack to Talk to Her, the Spanish director's 2002 meditation on loss and loneliness. Aside from the violin and guitar-accented score, there are five vocal tracks sprinkled throughout, most notably "Cucurrucucú Paloma," which is performed by Tropicalia legend Caetano Veloso (who also sings it in the movie). Almodóvar has described this rendition, which he first heard live in Brazil while in support of 1995's The Flower of My Secret, as "stylized, heart-rending, and intimate." Another highlight is the lovely flamenco-style track "Raquel," from Cape Verdean string player Bau (Rufino Almeida), who leads the band that has backed Césaria Évora for the a number of years (and is featured prominently in the film's trailers). The prolific Iglesias, who has won several Goya Awards for his film work, has also composed for all of Basque director Julio Medem's films, from 1991's Vacas through 2001's Sex and Lucia.

From an early age Benedetto Marcello proved to be a man of great versatility: a poet, writer, musician, lawyer, judge, administrator and philologist, holding important posts in these functions during his entire life. As a composer he wrote a substantial oeuvre, covering all important fields of composition: sacred and secular choral works, opera and a large body of instrumental music.

The RAI Pasquale of 1955 is almost as good as the two Verdis [#4 Otello and #551 Traviata], marred only by Italo Tajo's overdone mugging in the title-part. Alda Noni, remembered affectionately by older opera-goers in the same part at London's Cambridge Theatre in the late 1940s, remains a charming, minxish though now more buxom Norina. Sesto Bruscantini is a model of a Malatesta, Cesare Valletti even better as an Ernesto in the class of his teacher, Tito Schipa. Erede's seasoned conducting and a resourceful staging makes this a delightful experience.

The score to this beautiful movie (released as All About My Mother in the U.S.) was composed by Alberto Iglesias and recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic under the production of Lucio Godoy. The haunting music leads the perfect mood to the film, which received critical acclaim at the Cannes Film festival and elsewhere.