Giulia Borio Milano

For the problem of ‘genuine’ and ‘spurious’ works by Pergolesi has preoccupied musicologists for centuries. Of the approximately one hundred and fifty works that circulate under his name, he probably composed only thirty or so. Most of them were attributed to him posthumously, since publishers such as Bremner hoped to drum up better business thereby.

Born in Bonn around 1620 to Veronese parents, Massimiliano Neri was choirmaster at the Ospedaletto and organist at St. Mark's in Venice, where he published his first volume of Sonatas and Canzonas. He presented his second collection of Canzonas and Sonatas to the Emperor Ferdinand III in Vienna in 1651, later becoming Kapellmeister to the Prince-Elector of Cologne in Bonn in 1664. His affections, however, remained Italian: he married the Florentine singer and composer Caterina Giani in 1654. Many of Neri's compositions suffered extensive war damage in various periods; important musicological reconstruction has recovered parts of them that would otherwise have been lost forever. Concerto Scirocco offers a comprehensive selection of pieces that range from small groups to polychoral ensembles, all of which have a magnificent and typically Venetian opulence.

Giulia Semenzato, already renowned for her interpretations of the Baroque repertory and her Mozartian roles, presents here her first solo album. The programme, entitled Angelica diabolica, is devoted to the female protagonists of Ludovico Ariosto, author of the epic poem Orlando furioso, whose emblematic figure is Angelica, a revolutionary heroine, ready to resort to any trick in order to regain her freedom. After the Baroque Rome of Luigi Rossi and his opera Il palazzo incantato (1642), we turn to the galant style of Naples with Nicola Porpora’s serenata Angelica (1720), then to Milan in 1702 with the warlike heroine of Bernardo Sabadini’s opera Angelica nel Catai, before a more melancholy take on the character by Agostino Steffani (1691).

Two of the brightest singing talents to have emerged from Italy in recent years, Giulia Semenzato and Raffaele Pe, join forces for Sospiri d’amore, a dazzling celebration of operatic arias and duets by that Baroque master of amorous emotions, Francesco Cavalli. Soprano and countertenor are supported by a modern master of Italian Baroque style in Claudio Cavina, who directs La Venexiana (Cavina has also led the Glossa recording of Cavalli’s 1656 opera Artemisia).

Acclaimed for its ‘rhythmic verve, spontaneity and riot of splendid colours’ (Pizzicato magazine on Giovanni Picchi’s Canzoni da Sonar con ogni sorte d’istromenti ), Concerto Scirocco now immerses itself in the English musical scene of the Elizabethan era, and more especially the genres of the masque and the fantasia.