Eduardo

The »Iguazú« stands for »Big Water« in the native language and flows through southern Brazil before it flows into the Paraná at the border with Argentina. Shortly before the mouth it "says goodbye" with one of the largest waterfalls on earth, in the center of which the Garganta de Diabolo (Devil's Throat) opens up. The Argentinian guitarist (and lutenist) Eduardo Egüez and his international ensemble La Chimera take the diversity of the landscape along the 1,300 km of this river as a model and present South American "classics" from folk to classical, tango, jazz and bossa nova.

Welcome to "Alchemy of Happiness", music for the Museum of Alchemy of Córdoba. You enter a sound space that invites meditation and work. Alchemy, the ancient art of transmuting matter, is also an art of spiritual transformation. The alchemist goes through the same phases as the raw material on which he operates.

O felici occhi miei marks a welcome first solo outing for lutenist Eduardo Eguez on Glossa, adding to the label's long succession of releases devoted to Italian Renaissance music. The poem behind this album's title refers to happiness and cruelty, harmony and discord, contrasts evoked by Eguez's programme which focuses on music by five leading Italian lutenists from the first half of the sixteenth century, Francesco Canova da Milano, Alberto da Ripa, Pietro Paolo Borrono, Giovanni Paolo Paladino and Perino Fiorentino. The work and lives of these composers were all mixed up in the Italian Wars (1494-1559) which will have overshadowed their compositional activities as much as their playing at those various courts embroiled in the conflict.

Amadigi di Gaula had its premiere in London in 1715. Its libretto, based on a medieval legend and encompassing such effects as a magically appearing sorceress, reflects the then-fashionable English taste for spectacle in operatic production. Musically, however, the opera is of chamber dimensions, involving just five soloists, and takes in some emotionally intimate moments. In this backward-looking piece – it even ends with a brief ballet – Handel doesn't attempt any structural innovations: the arias and duets are cast firmly in the tripartite da capo format. Still, he finds room for the occasional imaginative touch, as when he uses French-overture gestures in a few of the ritornelli to suggest tragic breadth, or has the two voices in a hitherto contrapuntal duet launch the "B" section in straight thirds.