Fadi Stagioni

Following the success of his solo recordings, Paolo Zanzu returns at the head of his ensemble Le Stagioni with ‘Officina Romana’, featuring the countertenor Carlo Vistoli. In the early eighteenth century, Rome was one of the great music capitals of Europe. In the space of a few years, Corelli, Handel, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Caldara, Cesarini and many others crossed paths there, surrounded by painters, sculptors, poets and philosophers who were among the great names of the age. The fruit of long reflection and research, ‘Officina Romana’ crystallises this unique moment in the history of music by recreating an idealised musical evening, a conversazione, a sort of liberal meeting of lofty minds in the palace of a Roman cardinal, with a programme mingling vocal and instrumental music in both orchestral and chamber formation.

After the success ofOfficina Romana(awarded 5 Diapasons, 5 stars inMusica, and selected amongst the best albums inLe Mondein 2021), Le Stagioni, under the direction of Paolo Zanzu, invites the listeneron a journey through 17th-century Venice in the company of outstanding singers:Emmanuelle de Negri, Blandine Staskiewicz, Paul-Antoine Benos-Djian, Zachary Wilder and Salvo Vitale.From 1637 to 1645, between the opening of the firstpublicopera houses and the start ofthe Cretan War, Venicewitnessed a musical blossoming of international significance.

After the success ofOfficina Romana(awarded 5 Diapasons, 5 stars inMusica, and selected amongst the best albums inLe Mondein 2021), Le Stagioni, under the direction of Paolo Zanzu, invites the listeneron a journey through 17th-century Venice in the company of outstanding singers:Emmanuelle de Negri, Blandine Staskiewicz, Paul-Antoine Benos-Djian, Zachary Wilder and Salvo Vitale.From 1637 to 1645, between the opening of the firstpublicopera houses and the start ofthe Cretan War, Venicewitnessed a musical blossoming of international significance.

After the success of Officina Romana (awarded 5 Diapasons, 5 stars in Musica , and selected amongst the best albums in Le Monde in 2021), Le Stagioni, under the direction of Paolo Zanzu, invites the listener on a journey through 17th-century Venice in the company of outstanding singers: Emmanuelle de Negri, Blandine Staskiewicz, Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian, Zachary Wilder and Salvo Vitale. From 1637 to 1645, between the opening of the first public opera houses and the start of the Cretan War, Venice witnessed a musical blossoming of international significance. Numerous operas were premiered on Venetian stages, with travellers from all over Europe in attendance. Alongside famous extracts of L'incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria , Un secolo cantante allows us to hear little-known works by Cavalli, Sacrati and Strozzi, as well as previously unrecorded, forgotten pieces, making use of sources from the period and the most recent scholarship to offer a fresh listening experience of this fascinating music.

On the current CD issue you can hear just how superbly Carmirelli plays the most difficult passages, and how glowing a sound stage the engineers captured at the recording site. The fullness of so many Stradivarius string instruments creates a lavish outpouring of tones, an embarrasment of riches which quite overwhelms one.

Mayke Rademakers writes of her third album: The e-cello is a relatively new instrument; it has not yet conquered its true place in the world of classical music. It presents an enormous spectrum of sound colors as well as the possibility of polyphony when played in conjunction with a loop and other effect pedals. It has inspired me significantly as a classical musician and I cannot now imagine undertaking my compositions and improvisations without it. Improvisation directly engages intuition and spontaneity which in turn enlarges perspective. Following the improvisations which I combined with the Bach suites and works by contemporary composers, I felt the need to work on a larger piece. This has resulted in STAGIONI. I could not nor have I wished to ignore Vivaldi and have woven several quotes from his masterpiece into my improvisations. Inspiration has also come from the medieval mystic and first recognized feminine composer, Hildegard von Bingen. Other primal sources which have fed me along the way include early polyphony, Sephardic folk music and Afro-American blues. This was not according to any plan, rather repertoire influences which are recognizable only in hindsight.

For this new recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Jordi Savall conducts an all-female orchestra, as Vivaldi did in his time at the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice. The soloist Alfia Bakieva is a violinist of Tatar origin currently living in Salzburg, Austria. She is a multi-instrumentalist, particularly in the field of folk music, playing violin, folk fiddle, kyl- kobiz, ghizzhak and similar instruments. She studied Baroque violin with Enrico Onofri (Palermo Conservatory) and Hiro Kurosaki (Mozarteum University), focusing on historically informed performance practices in the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertoires.

For this new recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Jordi Savall conducts an all-female orchestra, as Vivaldi did in his time at the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice. The soloist Alfia Bakieva is a violinist of Tatar origin currently living in Salzburg, Austria. She is a multi-instrumentalist, particularly in the field of folk music, playing violin, folk fiddle, kyl- kobiz, ghizzhak and similar instruments. She studied Baroque violin with Enrico Onofri (Palermo Conservatory) and Hiro Kurosaki (Mozarteum University), focusing on historically informed performance practices in the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertoires.

Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739), remembered best today for some attractive instrumental music, including some virtuosic works for oboe, and his satire of the opera house, Il teatro alla moda, also wrote a small group of oratorios, including a pair of allegorical pieces for the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin at Macerata. One of these was Il pianto e il riso delle quattro stagioni from 1733. It has been described as a "highly poetic, generally mellow, faintly comic" work, in which Marcello employed "the whole arsenal of techniques he had mastered over a quarter-century"; in fact, not only is there amazing attention to detail in the string articulation, but it also provides an important record of a composer's expectations of his string orchestra. Few oratorios from this locale and period are available in modern editions, and this example has all the formal characteristics associated with the genre of oratorio in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Il pianto e il riso delle quattro stagioni dell'anno per la morte, esultazione e coronazione di Maria Assunta in Cielo, written in 1731, is the second last of the four oratorios by Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739). As a member of the Venetian aristocracy he didn‘t have to consider the musical conventions as much as his professional contemporaries. Thanks to his unconventional style he is one of the most interesting Italian baroque composers.