Giuseppe Sarti

In 1779 he was elected maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Milan, where he remained until 1784. Here he exercised his true vocation of composer, in addition to at least twenty of his most successful operas, a vast amount of sacred music for the cathedral, and educating a number of clever pupils, the most distinguished of whom was Cherubini.

As is the case with so many 18th-century composers, Giuseppe Sarti (1727–1802) enjoyed fame in his lifetime to rival W.A. Mozart’s but is scarcely known today. Some might remember him as the author of the aria “Come un agnello”, borrowed by Mozart in Don Giovanni. After all, Sarti’s arias were in his lifetime regarded as true models of Italian style. Even after his death, they were regularly performed in the salons of the nobility. But by about 1840 the memory of the man and his works had largely faded. In recent decades, however, there has been a renewed focus on Sarti; not only for his compositions, but also for his merits as a pedagogue and theorist.

Aris Christofellis was born on February 5, 1960 in Athens. Very early, he began to play the piano and to sing opera arias. In 1979 he moved to France. After having studied piano with Francis Clidat he concentrated on singing and developed his unique voice, incredible technique and range with Fofi Sarandopoulo. His debut was in 1984 in Bordeaux.

Salon de Femmes in St. Petersburg:
Works by Cardon, Cimarosa, Galuppi, Koslovski, Kourakin, Manfredini, Paisiello, Sarti
Classical | 1 CD | EAC | FLAC, CUE, LOG | Scans | 357 MB | RS
Recorded: June 2000, Eglise Notre-Dame de Bon Secours, Paris
Released: 2001 | Label: Opus 111 OP 30299 | TT: 76:36
Olga Pasichnyk - soprano, Mara Galassi - harp, Musica Petropolitana

From the time of the reign of the empress Elizabeth Petrovna a different way of life began to establish itself in Russia, and a different kind of woman, not only aristocratic through birth but also because she belonged to a creative élite: a woman at one and the same time musician, poetess and composer of ballads, who sang and played several instruments […] These 'new' aristocrats adopted European manners, combining them with typically Russian tradition. (Irina Chudinova)

Cherubini is not known for keyboard music, and, indeed, wrote very little of it. The six sonatas for keyboard were composed while Cherubini was living in Milan in 1780, studying with Giuseppe Sarti, the Maestro di Cappella at Milan Cathedral. They were published in Florence three years later and remained his only keyboard music to go to press. The sonatas are therefore early works, very much in the ‘Classical’ style and all consist of only two movements and all are in major keys. While the sonatas …….

Peter Wells @ musicweb-international.com