L’insolito Legume

Within this album the “Insolito 8cento” duo (Angelo de Magistris, violin and Rosaria Dina Rizzo, piano) is rediscovering a little-known feature of the great Belcanto master Gaetano Donizetti: his chamber works dedicated to the violin, an instrumental production little mentioned and often completely ignored. In fact Donizetti never ceased to deal with the composition of instrumental chamber music, giving life to brilliant works that, same as for his vocal works, testify his extraordinary creative vein in which one can recognize great inspiration, almost like a continuous improvisation, yet always refined and elegant as well as completely devoid of those formal negligence typical of the ‘utility music' or composed for mere exercise or pastime.

This new OSR recording presents the two most ambitious musical responses to Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 epoch-making play Pelléas et Mélisande.

The opera L’incontro improvviso (The Unexpected Encounter), a work set in Egypt’s Cairo when it was under Ottoman dominion, was the main musical attraction during the four days of festivities held at Esterház Castle, near Süttör, at the end of August 1775 and hosted by Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy. The occasion was a visit from the Viennese imperial court led by Ferdinand Karl, Empress Maria Theresia’s second youngest son, the later Governor of Lombardy and the founder of the House of Austria-Este.

Michel McLean (guitar, ex-Les Karrik) and Pierre Moreau write most of the music for L'Engoulevent, and the core band is completed by Francoise Turcotte (violin) and Russel Cagnon (cello). They are aided by a number of musicians from Conventum, as well as McLean's old Les Karrik cohort Claude LaFrance on one track. Their first album was entitled "L'Ile Ou Vivent Les Loups", and was released on the Le Tamanour label in 1977. Roughly half the tracks are instrumental, and the vocal tracks are done in a folk style but are not traditional pieces. Perhaps because half the core band is employed on string instruments, there is both an exquisite beauty and contrapuntal richness to much of the music. There can sometimes be three semi-independent, but mutually supportive, harmonic lines going at once…