Andrea Paganetto Ianua(2023)[24 48]

The disc under review here is the fourth in a series, called ‘The Stradella Project’. I don't know which parts of Stradella's oeuvre will be included in this project. He was a prolific composer, and his extant output comprises music for the stage, liturgical and non-liturgical sacred music, madrigals and cantatas. It also includes six oratorios, and two of them were the subject of volumes 2 and 3. I am sure that the two best-known oratorios, San Giovanni Battista and Susanna, will be recorded at a later stage. As these are available in several performances, it was a good idea to start with those oratorios which are seldom performed. That also goes for Santa Pelagia.

Born with congenital glaucoma, Andrea Bocelli became permanently blind at the age of 12. Finding passion in music at a young age, he now channels his energy through singing. Bocelli has become a legendary tenor, recording 15 solo studio albums and selling over 80 million records worldwide. Bocelli has been nominated for both a Grammy and Academy Award, and has won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Bocelli has even captured a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records as he simultaneously held the top three positions on the US Classical Albums charts. Seven of his albums have since reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200, and a record-setting ten have topped the classical crossover album charts in the United States.

“The most exciting thing on this journey of a hundred stages was to find in each individual minuet a unique and unrepeatable sense of originality: a hundred miniatures comprising a kaleidoscope as rich and coherent as was ever heard.” – Andrea Coen

Andrea Zani (1696-1757) was active in his native northern Italy but his career included an extended period in Vienna in the 1730s, where he enjoyed the patronage of Count von Schönborn. These 12 cello concertos survive in manuscript parts in the Schönborn archive and have been rediscovered by Zani’s biographer, the New Zealand musicologist Jill Ward. They make a notable addition to the 18th-century cello repertoire; the idiom is quite Vivaldian but tending towards the decorative elegance characteristic of the middle of the 1700s and demonstrating a distinctive, pleasing melodic quality.

Concerto: One Night in Central Park is a live album by Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. The album was recorded September 15, 2011, during a concert at the Central Park's Great Lawn, in New York. Guest performers included Celine Dion, Tony Bennett, Chris Botti, Bryn Terfel, Pretty Yende, and music producer David Foster. The album, immediately upon release, entered the Billboard Top 10 and peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200.