Fasolis La Senna Festeggiante

Vivaldi is best known as a composer of instrumental music, but the man has also written a lot of secular vocal music, from large-scale operas to the more intimate cantatas. "La Senna festeggiante" is not a real opera, but a 'serenata', a word derived from the Italian 'sereno' (clear). The genre was so named because the spectacles in question were performed outdoors on clear, warm summer nights. Serenatas were usually written by order of a nobleman or high clergyman, as part of large celebrations to mark a special event such as a birthday, the birth of an heir, a marriage, the arrival of an important person, and so on. They were usually performed in the principal's palace garden.

Three serenatas by Vivaldi survive (he is known to have composed at least eight)‚ of which La Senna festeggiante is by far the most enjoyable…One of the work’s most interesting features is Vivaldi’s deliberate use in places of elements of French style‚ for instance in the solemn ‘ouvertur’ which opens Part 2 and the courtly minuet of The Golden Age’s second aria‚ thereby adding to the richness of a work which for the most part is vintage Vivaldi at his most buoyant and irresistible.

The present recording brings together various examples of night music from the European tradition and constitutes a kaleidoscope refracting the manifold facets of night. In tells of brilliant celebrations, nocturnal love dramas and desires, tender lullabies, ghosts, birds of the night and the most holy of nights. It is Antonio Vivaldi's music that is pivotal to our recording. Providing a bridge between his works and functioning as interludes are songs, diminutions, motets, madrigals, sommeils and chaconnes from Spai, the Netherlands, France, England, Italy, Germany and Austria.

This CD from the Real Compañía Ópera de Cámara presents two cantatas by the Spanish composer Vicente Martín y Soler - Il Sogno and La Dora festeggiante. Il Sogno, written in 1787, is the only example of collaboration of between Martín y Soler and the great librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. These works are like a small fresco of this period of transformation. La Dora represents the end of a period, in which the Olympic gods serve as a model to human behavior, while Il Sogno, is, deep down, a pre-romantic spiritual work, in which the nymphs are no longer unattainable beings, beings that do not suffer or have human passions but on the contrary, they embody them, they live them in their own skin in spite of being in an idyllic place.

On her second PENTATONE album Maria & Maddalena, star soprano Francesca Aspromonte explores the Two Marys in oratorios by Lulier, Bononcini, Leopoldo I d’Asburgo, Caldara, Perti, Handel and Scarlatti, partly in new editions, documenting the extremely bloom of the genre in the years around 1700. She performs these works together with violinist Boris Begelman as well as the seasoned players of I Barocchisti under the baton of the eminent Diego Fasolis. Traditionally seen as two feminine opposites, with far-reaching moral implications, Aspromonte brings the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene together as two beautiful and strong women who turned their lives upside down by making the choice to dedicate themselves completely to an ideal. Her interpretation of these exceptional pieces explores all the emotions of the Two Marys, constituting a fascinating and profoundly moving portrait of what it means to be a woman.

Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI - Venezia Millenaria 700-1797 (2018) {Alia Vox Official Digital Download AVSA9925}
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Classical / Early Music / Medieval / Renaissance / Baroque / Chamber Music / Vocal Music

Over 1,000 years, from the Byzantine Empire to the Napoleonic Wars, Venice played a key role in shaping the Western music. Jordi Savall and his ensembles pay a tribute to a place that fully profited from its priviliged links with the Orient while hosting geniuses like Monteverdi, Gabrieli and Vivaldi. As you have come to expect from Alia Vox, this CD-book is lavishly illustrated and documented.

Despite its hefty, hardbound, 300-plus-page book and attendant top price, Jordi Savall's Venezia Millenaria has appeared on commercial sales charts. It's easy to see why: this is one of Savall's most ambitious concepts, covering the promised millennium of the history of the city of Venice, Italy, plus a bit more as a bonus, taking you up to the end of Venice's independence. The book contains enough information that it could serve as the basis for a little travelers' course, but there's also a case to be made for just listening and letting a thousand years of music wash over you.

The triumphant release of Mission in autumn 2012 drew rave reviews and was followed up in September 2013 with Steffani’s Stabat Mater, alongside his greatest sacred works for chorus, orchestra and soloists, and a further disc of dances and overtures with the celebrated I Barrochisti conducted by Diego Fasolis. On the Stabat Mater, Bartoli leads an array of internationally celebrated singers including countertenor Franco Fagioli, the bass Salvo Vitale and the two young German tenors Daniel Behle and Julian Prégardien. The final album of the collection is Danze & Ouvertures’, contains 43 great tracks of enchanting early-baroque music.

Gossec made an important contribution to the development of French symphonic music and played a central role in Parisian musical life for almost three-quarters of a century. The opera 'Le Triomphe de la République' was composed in 1793 folowing the French Revolution and wonderfully demonstrates the musical movement that France experienced following the change in political climate. Music was recognized as a medium for the diffusion of new ideas and 'Le Triomphe de la République' was a case in point. It was written in the wake of popular enthusiasm at the news of the army's victory at the battle of Vlamy in 1792 against the anti-French troops led by the Duke of Brunswick. It features folk music and popular dances of the day reflecting a kind of life quite distinct from that of intellectual, aristocratic society.

With Philippe Jaroussky’s new album, Storia di Orfeo, the French countertenor realises a long-held dream: to portray the mythic Orpheus – divine musician who ventures into the underworld to retrieve his beloved wife Eurydice from the clutches of death – in his many guises, an inspiration for the very first opera and beyond.