Gran Consort Li Stromenti

To create a sense of the Venetian liturgical celebrations attendant on the birth of Louis XIV in 1638, Benjamin Chénier and the Galilei Consort have constructed a sumptuous performance from various works composed by Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni Rovetta, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, Claudio Monteverdi, and Giovanni Bassano. Rovetta had been chosen by Louis XIII to assemble the singers and instrumentalists, and his Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo from the Messa e Salmi Concertati form the core of this historical simulation, which is completed by a Sanctus and Agnus Dei by Rigatti, and various instrumental pieces and motets.

I return to the large genre of early music, the renaissance to be more precise, the work is of spanish renaissance and starring David Munrow & The Early Music Consort of London…

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660 – 1725) was the prolific composer of more than 800 cantatas. However, the majority of these compositions are unpublished and preserved in manuscript copy only. In this context, Maestro Estévan Velardi and Alessandro Stradella Consort will give life and exposure to two of Alessandro Scarlatti’s repertoire gems: the Serenatas “Al fragor di lieta tromba” and “Bel piacere ch’è la caccia”, First World recorded in this release on period instruments. The clamshell box with contains 2 CDs and a 100 pages volume edited by musicologists and Alessandro Scarlatti’s music scholars including the late Maestro Roberto Pagano, to whose memory the release is dedicated.

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.

Acclaimed soprano Carolyn Sampson, partnered by Robert King and The King's Consort,with whom she has been associated throughout her professional career, turns her talents to Handel's two most dramatic cantatas, linked by the theme of abandoned women.

Hyperion’s Record of the Month sees the long overdue return to the studio of The King’s Consort, under the baton of the group’s newly appointed Artistic Director Matthew Halls. Here the ensemble presents the premiere recording of Handel’s Parnasso in Festa: a unique example in Handel’s enormous creative career of a fully-fledged celebratory serenata (or Festa teatrale). This form was rare in England but had developed in parallel with opera in Italy, where it was popular for commemorating special occasions of international significance. Parnasso in Festa was written for Princess Anne’s marriage to Prince William of Orange.

A Lenten oratorio in the Italian tradition of sacred opera, Il Dolore di Maria Vergine is widely held to be the outstanding masterpiece in the genre by Alessandro Scarlatti. Structured in two extended parts, it assigns roles to the Virgin Mary, St John, Nicodemus and to a High Priest named Onìa. The challenge taken on by the composer and his anonymous librettist early in 1717 was to make a mere four characters effective as vehicles for conveying the drama of the Passion, moving as Bach does from the capture of Jesus in Gethsemane, to his interrogation by Pilate, his scourging and crowning with thorns, his journey to Calvary and his crucifixion and death.