Chiara Cordelia

Giuseppe Torelli, whose native land was Veneto, is deservedly included among the composers who contributed to the renown and success of the Bolognese School, which was undoubtedly one of the keystones of Italian Baroque music, together with the Venetian, Roman and Neapolitan Schools. Torelli’s production that has been handed down to us includes almost 200 works, most of them chamber-music instrumental compositions and orchestral pieces with solo performers. Eight of these works are in print, practically all of them published in Bologna from 1686 onwards. The 12 concerti grossi con una Pastorale per il Santissimo Natale, posthumous work no. 8 from 1709, published by Felice Torelli, brother of the composer and celebrated painter, are undoubtedly his most inspired work, and not only for their extremely high musical quality.

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) is one of the most remarkable French composers of the 20th century. Inspired by many (Debussy, Satie, his fellow composers of the "Groupe des Six") he found his essential own voice, a unique blend of French gaiety and a deep, serious and sometimes melancholic feeling. This new recording presents a fine selection of piano music by Poulenc: the Trois Mouvements Perpetuels, Huit Nocturnes, Villageoises, Trois Novelettes, Napoli Suite and two Waltzes, music of great charm, seductive, touching and intimate, or exuberant and jolly.

To mark her return to the recording studio after CDs of Tartini and Albinoni (both awarded a Diapason d’Or), Chiara Banchini joins forces with Jörg Andreas Bötticher to present her version of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and violin BWV 1014-1019. This interpretation is notable, among other features, for the use of a German harpsichord with the disposition 16', 8', 8', 4', freely reconstructed by Matthias Kramer (Hamburg, 2006) after Christian Zell.