Lina Tur Bonet & Musica Alchemica Antonio Vivald

Hélène Jourdan Mourhange met Ravel for the first time after a concert in which she performed his Trio. She was an interesting, intelligent woman, well versed in the arts and culture of her time, and was a talented violinist who, however, had to stop playing years later due to rheumatoid arthritis. She then dedicated herself to musicology, reviews and other artistic activities. Not only that she was, like me, a violin player, but also shared that same disease, which I suffered in my youth. This has made me feel even closer to Ravel, and to feel a desire to make a tribute to Hélène by recording all the pieces written for her and thanks to her.

This record is about reparation. History has not let two extraordinary composers meet each other. Georg Friedrich Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach came to the world in 1785, one month apart. Twice they failed to meet each other and never again would their life paths cross, instead following parallel ways. This album is dedicated to this failure.

A hitherto little-known manuscript now in the Czech National Library contains a Missa defunctorum by Caldara that comprises the first three sections of the Requiem liturgy (the Introit, Kyrie and Sequence). Nothing is known about the origins of the music or how it ended up in Prague, but it probably dates from the Venetian’s long years of service at the Habsburg court in Vienna (and it is known that he deputised for his boss Fux at the coronation of Emperor Charles VI in Prague in 1723).

Gaetano Brunetti (1744-1798) was, along with Luigi Boccherini, the main composer of symphonies during Spain ́s Classical period –both because of the quantity of his work and its diversity. Other composers active in Spain in the second half of the eighteenth century were not at the level of the work of the two Italians, although we know of a fair number that wrote symphonies, generally with a religious background. Central European and French symphonic music was freely available, at least in Madrid, and the works of the leading composers of the era were known and performed at the Spanish Court. Names like Haydn, Gossec, Pleyel, Mozart, Wranitzky, Eichner and Rosetti (Anton Rössler) appear on invoices for music purchased or copied for the Spanish court music service, although the composer that stands out above all others is Brunetti.

La Dafne (Daphne) is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a favola in musica (fable set to music) composed in one act and a prologue. The opera is based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo as related by Ovid in the first book of the Metamorphoses. An earlier version of the libretto had been set to music in 1597–98 by Jacopo Peri, whose Dafne is generally considered to be the first opera.