Giovanni Sollima Aquilarco (1998)

Giovanni Sollima is an internationally renowned cellist and one of the most frequently performed Italian composers in the world today. His original BaRock Cello project gave new readings to Rock pieces in the intimate setting of a solo performance, matching these to little-known 17th- and 18th-century Italian composers. These improbable contrasts and surprising connections are now extended further back to their musical roots in Folk & Ba-Rock Cello. In this Sollima takes up the tonal colours and rhythmic grooves of archaic songs from a diversity of countries and blends the common features shared by all music, whether it is globally iconic, nationally popular, or long lost amidst the dusty manuscripts of time.

From Arturo Toscanini and Sir John Barbirolli to Riccardo Muti and Antonio Pappano in our own time, Italian-heritage performers have often brought special qualities of sympathy and understanding to Edward Elgar’s (1857-1934) music. Now comes a new recording made in the ‘boot’ of southern Italy, lending Mediterranean warmth and passion to a trio of Elgarian masterpieces.

The charismatic, cosmopolitan cellist Giovanni Sollima joins the instrumentalists of Il Pomo d’Oro for Al-Bunduqiyya – The Lost Concerto.

Gidon Kremer and Mario Brunello pay tribute to Beethoven by presenting two of his most famous quartets in a version for string orchestra played by Kremerata Baltica. The ensembles founder Gidon Kremer directs op.131 from the violin, while Mario Brunello conducts op. 135 and adds two contemporary pieces, one by Leo Ferre, the revolutionary, anarchic, inspired singer-songwriter and great lover of Beethoven: Muss es sein? Es muss sein! We perform this hymn to free music in a version arranged by Valter Sivilotti for cello, strings and percussion with Ferres original voice Note sconte means hidden notes in Venetian dialect.

Suite italienne is the brainchild of violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha – his second album on Linn – and the Swiss ensemble CHAARTS Chamber Artists. With Italy as the common thread through each of the three works, the riotous programme includes the premiere recording of Sollima’s TYCHE, a violin concerto that was composed specifically for Jonian. Echoing Jonian and Sollima’s mixed roots, the work absorbs musical ideas from different sources and, as the title suggests, reflects on the Greek goddess of fate, or the Italian equivalent Fortuna, and the ambivalence of life itself.