Fede E Amor

With this exciting release, Fabio Biondi, the outstanding Europa Galante, and a cast led by stars Véronique Gens and Vivica Genaux strike a decisive blow for Alessandro Scarlatti's obscure Oratorio per la Santissima Trinità. Old-fashioned even in its day, the work is a musicalized instructional debate about the mysteries of the Holy Trinity between the allegorical personae of Faith, Theology, Faithlessness, Time, and Divine Love. If you're asleep already, it's for good reason. The libretto is the definition of dry – boring both for its rhetorical contrivance and its verbosity. But before you run for the nearest exit, know that Scarlatti responded to this uninspired mess of ideological bickering with outstanding music, entertaining from beginning to end. Drawing only on a small ensemble of strings and continuo, he created an improbably diverse-sounding score full of infectious rhythms, appealing vocal melodies, and rich textures.

Alessandro Scarlatti is a great man but his compositions are very difficult, in a theatre audience of a thousand people only 20 will understand them, thus said Count Francesco Zambeccari, an influential contemporary, and it is a testimony of the skill, complexity and depth of his rich music, a far cry from the facile and fashionable composers of his day. The Oratorio per la Santissima Trinita was composed in 1715, written at the mature age of 50, specifically intended for performance in Naples. The music is at the service of the drama, in a musical action that flows almost without caesura, presenting the richness of Scarlattis invention, always backed up by extremely in-depth knowledge of all the best composition techniques of the long tradition of the Italian School.

If we think of Albinoni beyond the ubiquitous and apocryphal Adagio (not so much arranged as concocted by a 20thcentury musicologist, Giazotto), we may remember collections of lively oboe and violin concertos, maybe also some trio sonatas and works featuring solo flute and trumpet. But Albinoni, the composer of cantatas and operas?
This quartet of Italian musicians puts the record straight with a new recording of secular cantatas. In fact Albinoni married a soprano, Margherita Raimondi, and apparently had a fine singing voice himself.

This set contains 8 operas by Handel in 22 CDs. In many ways, this box is a mix-bag: some of them performed in the "traditional style" with severe cuts, and others in "historically-informed" performances. Selection includes some of the most popular Handel operas and some of the rarely-performed. It's the latter category that one should pay closer attention.

This two-CD reissue contains only the complete set (of 12) that appeared in his lifetime – several dozen more are extant. Published as his Op. 4 in Venice in 1702, these chamber cantatas are typical Baroque ‘languish ’n’ anguish’ love laments, six scored for solo soprano voice, six for solo alto. They are beautifully sung by Barbara Schlick and Derek Lee Ragin.