Francesco Careri (autor), Maurici Pla (traductor)

Francesco Geminiani claimed to be a pupil of Corelli but there seems to be no documentary evidence of that. There can be no doubt that he was strongly influenced by Corelli: as a token of his admiration he arranged Corelli's sonatas Op. 5 as concerti grossi. Some of these are quite well-known and so are his six sonatas Op. 5 for cello and bc. Otherwise little of his output is part of the standard repertoire of today's performers.

En este segundo disco que la clavicembalista y directora valenciana Marian Rosa Montagut y el conjunto Harmonia del Parnàs consagran a rescatar del olvido la obra del veneciano de nacimiento y español de adopción Francesco Corradini (±1690-1769), se nos brinda una selección de arias, algunas con sus recitativos precedentes, tomadas de la “fábula pastoral” La Dorinda, la cual, por iniciativa del capitán general de Valencia, Luis Regio Branciforte (1677-1757), Príncipe de Campoflorido, fue presentada en hoy desaparecido Palacio Real de la ciudad de Turia el 19 de noviembre de 1730 para festejar la onomástica de la reina Isabel de Farnesio (1692-1766), de quién, por cierto, Corradini andando el tiempo acabaría siendo Maestro de Música de Cámara en el Real Sitio de la Granja de San Ildefonso.

En este segundo disco que la clavicembalista y directora valenciana Marian Rosa Montagut y el conjunto Harmonia del Parnàs consagran a rescatar del olvido la obra del veneciano de nacimiento y español de adopción Francesco Corradini (±1690-1769), se nos brinda una selección de arias, algunas con sus recitativos precedentes, tomadas de la “fábula pastoral” La Dorinda, la cual, por iniciativa del capitán general de Valencia, Luis Regio Branciforte (1677-1757), Príncipe de Campoflorido, fue presentada en hoy desaparecido Palacio Real de la ciudad de Turia el 19 de noviembre de 1730 para festejar la onomástica de la reina Isabel de Farnesio (1692-1766), de quién, por cierto, Corradini andando el tiempo acabaría siendo Maestro de Música de Cámara en el Real Sitio de la Granja de San Ildefonso.

After the album Bach, Little Books , harpsichordist Francesco Corti continues his collaboration with Arcana with a 2-CD recording entirely dedicated to George Frideric Handel. At the center of the project are the eight “Great” suites. These masterpieces were the composer’s first published set, and are a clear testimony to his virtuosity at the keyboard. Their characteristically diversified styles reflect not only the mélange of national traditions assimilated by the young composer, but also his phenomenal improvisatory talent. Moreover, the attraction of these pieces lies in their melodic and rhythmic affinity to the world of singing and orchestral writing, Händel’s strongest interests.

The first monographic recording entirely dedicated to Francesco Rasi is released for the 400th anniversary of his death (30 November 1621). The first interpreter of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, an astonishing tenor and poet with a life studded with triumphs, constant travels, debts and murders, this native of Arezzo was fought over by all the courts of Italy and Europe. The pieces, on texts by Petrarch, Guarini, Chiabrera and Rasi himself – including ten world premieres – are taken from the Vaghezze di Musica (1608) and the Madrigali (1610). Tenor soloist Riccardo Pisani explores their extraordinary poetic and musical power, in a kaleidoscope of affects divided into seven ‘strings of the lyre’. He is accompanied by the Ensemble Arte Musica, directed by harpsichordist Francesco Cera. The two artists have been collaborating for years on rediscovering the Italian vocal repertory of the seventeenth century, as witnessed by the recent success of their set of Frescobaldi CDs, released on Arcana.

Il pomo d’oro and Francesco Corti present Handel’s Apollo e Dafne and Armida abbandonata, together with two outstanding vocalists: soprano Kathryn Lewek (Armida & Dafne) and baritone John Chest (Apollo). Handel composed these two cantatas shortly after his Italian sojourn (1706-1709), and they demonstrate his acquaintance with and aptitude for Italian operatic music. Compared to opera, supporting roles are left out of these relatively compact cantatas, increasing the focus on the main characters, and heightening the expressive depth of their music. Il pomo d’oro performs these pieces with historically-informed ears, lively and colourful. The cantatas alternate with several delightful orchestral pieces by Handel, including several movements from his Almira Suite.

These songs for one and two voices come from the first four of D’India’s five books of Musiche, a series containing masterpieces of astonishing originality in the style of monody (solo melody with accompaniment), which had eclipsed the polyphonic madrigal in popularity at the dawn of the 17th century. With a career based largely in Turin and Rome, Sigismondo D’India nevertheless demonstrates stylistic links to both Monteverdi and Gesualdo, and it is the latter’s influence which supports new scholarship claiming D’India grew up in Naples (not Sicily) in the shadow of the great madrigalist’s free thinking on harmony. That very harmonic freedom – to accentuate key emotions in the text with piquant chord changes – is the hallmark of D’India’s own, self-styled ‘true manner’ of composing monody, adopted from Gesualdo’s intense, chromatic polyphony to the solo song or duet, and it suggests a Neapolitan, rather than Roman–Florentine, musical background.

Monsieur de Sainte-Colombes life is largely shrouded in mystery, and almost nothing was known of his music until these Concerts deux violes esgales were discovered in Geneva in 1966. Full of inspiration and fantasy, these pieces are often technically very demanding, innovatively deploying the viols entire range and putting players to the test in ways that were unprecedented in French viol literature. The sound of the viols is as haunting as the musics titles are teasingly expressive, and for their extraordinary imagination, originality and rare sonic splendour these works are justly considered one of the great monuments of European Baroque music.