Canzoni Fantasie

This is a significant recording for several reasons. Sergio Vartolo has now recorded all of Frescobaldi’s keyboard music (the other issues were on the Tactus label). The Fantasie (1608) and Ricercari (1615) are the earliest of Frescobaldi’s keyboard publications (the latter being issued in the same year as the more famous first book of Toccatas), and as far as I’m aware neither had been issued complete before; so to get both together, and at super-budget price, is treasure-trove indeed. Frescobaldi fanatics need read no further. (Gramophone)

This is the fifth and final volume in the Ligia series of the complete keyboard music of Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643). Previous volumes reviewed in Fanfare include the Primo libro di capricci and Secondo libro di toccate (both 34:2), and the Primo libro di toccate (34:6). The present volume includes published collections from the beginning, middle, and end of Frescobaldi’s career. The Primo libro delle fantasie was published while the composer was still in Milan; it served as a kind of audition piece that eventually won him the position of organist at St. Peter’s in Rome.

This is the fifth and final volume in the Ligia series of the complete keyboard music of Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643). Previous volumes reviewed in Fanfare include the Primo libro di capricci and Secondo libro di toccate (both 34:2), and the Primo libro di toccate (34:6). The present volume includes published collections from the beginning, middle, and end of Frescobaldi’s career. The Primo libro delle fantasie was published while the composer was still in Milan; it served as a kind of audition piece that eventually won him the position of organist at St. Peter’s in Rome.

Small size, four gut strings, a short bow were at beginning the ingredients of the magic. Such magic happened in Italy, the cradle of the violin, during the seventeenth century. “Seicento!” is therefore a multifaceted time-travel through the Early Baroque, from Venice to Sicily, exploring the wonders of the first violin virtuosos and their dexterous-passionated playing. A collection of music born looking at Caravaggio, Bernini and Borromini’s masterworks.

We know that key influences on Flamenco date back to Islamic Iberia or the Al- Andalusian era of Spain between the 8th-15th centuries. Yet the first mention of Flamenco by name is not until 1774, where it appears in an epistolary novel, Cartas Marruecas, by the playwright and soldier, Jose de Cadalso y Vazquez.