Firebird Ensemble Plot in Fiction Italian Music For Ensemble (2002)

One of the main protagonists of the Italian dance music scene, Planet Funk emerged in 1999 as the fusion of two successful club music outfits, Souled Out (formed by Neapolitan producers Alessandro Sommella, Domenico "GG" Canu, and Sergio Della Monica) and Kamasutra (Florence's keyboard player Marco Baroni and DJ Alex Neri). The name Planet Funk was taken from an old Alex Neri track. English vocalists Auli Kokko and Dan Black were asked to join, and the ensemble mixed the track "Chase the Sun" for the summer of 2000. The song became an unexpected hit in Ibiza, prompting Verve's discoverer David Boyd to sign the group with Virgin Records. The first album, 2002's Non Zero Sumness, went gold and was also crowned at the Italian Music Awards. A remixed version Non Zero Sumness Plus One appeared toward the end of the year, followed by The Illogical Consequence in 2005 and Static in 2006. Other vocalists featured in the albums include Raiss, Sally Doherty, John Graham, and Luke Allen. Planet Funk have been invited to collaborate with Simple Minds, and to remix tracks by New Order and Faithless, among others.

Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747) was a gifted cellist and a rival of Handel's; he wrote more than 30 operas and 300 cantatas. I approached this "serenata a tre" with trepidation, fearing something coy and intermezzo-like; in fact, it's simply beautiful. The not-riveting plot concerns soprano nymph Cloris' refusal of love for countertenor shepherd Tirsi, and her subsequent turnaround. Baritone Fileno, a satyr, loves her but convinces her that love is cruel because he is jealous of her love for Tirsi. In the end, Fileno vows vengeance and departs, and the lovers unite, praising fidelity and love. Bononcini manages to capture truly felt moments of love, anger, warmth, happiness, and heartbreak with minimal forces–just a few strings, all played stunningly (as usual) by Ensemble 415–and fine melodies.

Montserrat Figueras & Jordi Savall - Ninna Nanna (ca. 1500-2002) {Alia Vox AV 9826 rel 2002}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 340 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 182 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 2002 Alia Vox | AVSA 9826
Classical / Vocal Music

Who doesn't love a lullaby? As a tribute "to all mothers and children", singer Montserrat Figueras offers this unusual program of 18 such songs from diverse sources and anonymous composers–Portuguese, English, Greek, Catalan, Hebrew, Sephardic, and North African–as well as pieces written by the likes of Byrd, Mussorgsky, Reger, Falla, Milhaud, and Pärt (two lullabies composed for this recording). Accompaniments show the stylish hand and always-tasteful imaginings of Jordi Savall and the instrumentalists of Hesperion XXI–viols, guitar, flutes, psaltery, harp–and, in three tracks, the piano of Paul Badura-Skoda. Although the liner notes prime us to expect very simple, repetitive tunes, Figueras transforms these ostensibly sleep-inducing songs into high, mind-and-ear-engaging art, embellishing, shaping, and imbuing them with deeply felt expression, sometimes wistful and at others fervent, but always delivered as if in intimate, personal touch with her listener(s).

Dream Journal - Four works commissioned by the Network for New Music (2002)
Classical | EAC: FLAC+Cue+Log | 1 Cd, Covers | 295 Mb
Label: Albany - Date: 2002

Presented on this release are four pieces commissioned by the Philadelphia-based Network for New Music Ensemble. All prove to be worthy listens by composers of much ability…

The tone poem Cauchemar, which means "nightmare" in Portuguese, is much a product of its time, similar in tone to contemporaneous works by Schoenberg, Massenet, Stravinsky and Schmitt. This is not surprising since the composer was studying in Europe at the time. Despite the title, there is nothing terribly frightening about the music which has a mood rather somewhere between the Rienzi overture of Wagner and something by Nielsen.

Is it possible that a recorded performance could be too much of a good thing? Well, such an assessment probably would be unfair to a singer as gifted and in command of such astonishing technical skills as countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, so impressively exhibited on this surprising and thoroughly mesmerizing CD. While you may not have heard of this French singer, he's part of a relatively new group of performers–calling themselves Ensemble Artaserse–who have recently joined to explore their mutual interests in "early 17th-century Italian music". These songs by Benedetto Ferrari provide the perfect medium for Jaroussky's art–and it's quite formidable in both purity of tone and subtlety of expression as well as the near-inhuman technical feats he brandishes as naturally as breathing.

Until quite recently, the Faroe Islands were much better-known as a remote archipelago lost in the icy Arctic waters rather than a musical nation. Some may recall a Faroese tune used by Grainger in Let’s Dance in Green Meadows for piano duet and by Nielsen in his atmospheric, though rather slight An Imaginary Journey to the Faroes. Now, thanks to the tireless vitality of a Mighty Handful of Faroese composers (Kristian Blak, Atli Petersen, Pauli í Sandagerđi, Edvard Debess and Sunleif Rasmussen) whose music placed the Faroes on the contemporary musical map, things have changed considerably.