La Passion D'augustine

Edmund Wylfing (ca. 844-870), a Saxon king of East Anglia, virgin and martyr, was the the first patron-saint of England. The Italian ensemble La Reverdie brings to life again his story through a medieval liturgical drama, in three parts: life, passion and miracles.

A century after his death on 25 March 1918, many Harmonia Mundi artists are eager to pay tribute to Claude Debussy, the magician of melody and timbre, the great ‘colourist’ and father of modern music.

Francesco Cavalli is one of the main baroque opera composers of the XVIIth Century. His music is full of passion, dissonances, beauty, joy, torment… And the ensemble of La Galanía, leaded by theorbo player Jesús Fernández Baena and soprano Raquel Andueza, has compiled a selection of his most wonderful arias and duets for soprano and alto, creating themselves their own small play, Miracolo d’Amore, a love and betrayal story between the two singers.

A hit in its first run in 1726, in London and elsewhere, Alessandro has had less success in our day. It is a demanding and lengthy work. The story moves quickly and is fairly silly, and meant to be. This Alexander conquers Ossidraca during the overture, but manages to bungle his subsequent amatory assaults, which constitute the rest of the opera. All manages to end well for him in the nick of time, however, as a good lieto fine requires. The performance takes just over three hours, though Bernd Feuchtner, the author of the notes, claims that London audiences in 1726 were in the theater for five.

Composed in three different moments (in Italy, Hanover and London), these delicious duets contain a lot of music that Handel later reused in great works like The Messiah, The Passion of Brockers, Solomon, Jubilate de Chandos, Alcina, Aquatic Music, Esther, Belshazzar , Judas Macabeo, Deborah or the Jubilate of Utrecht, to name a few. Technically very difficult, these jewels contain movements of great beauty and passages of enormous virtuosity that demonstrate not only the brilliance of Handel's vocal writing, but its insurmountable melodic sense and musical imagery. Rossana Bertini and Claudio Cavina, founders of Concerto Italiano, demonstrate the reason why they are considered among the most important specialists in baroque singing.

Cinque Profeti is a little known Christmas cantata by Alessandro Scarlatti. It has a power and subtlety redolent of Handel coupled with touches of early Monteverdi. Sung here to great effect by the five soloists with sensitive instrumentalists, they play together to bring the gentle and subtle melodies - surely written to confer a sense of the special nature of the Christmas season - to life. It’s a recording which is sure to please. Opera was not performed in Rome for much of Alessandro Scarlatti's lifetime; that's why his vocal church music mostly comprised oratorios and cantatas, of which he wrote three for the Palazzo Apostolico. Only one survives: to a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia. Cinque Profeti takes the inventive form of a conversation between the five old testament prophets, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Abraham (the cinque profeti) about the birth of Christ – which was about to be celebrated on the occasion of the cantata’s first performance, in 1705 at the Papal Palace in Rome.