Luca Civardi

The splendour and cultural heritage of Humanism contain an intricate network of intuitions and revolutions – that are often local or have developed in geographically or politically well defined areas – of culture and of its representation in society: an unlimited theatricalisation of reality, in which each gesture, symbol and behaviour is transformed into an active component of the greatness and beauty of the Court and of its main actuators.In a picturesque fresco of this rich era - musical heir of the Middle Ages - the Anonima Frottolisti ensemble offers a cross-section of the main aspects that characterized it: power, love, celebration, dance, and faith, through an imaginary journey in the wonder of the Italian courts of the fifteenth century.

Luca N. Stradivari (1993) is a composer and pianist of his own music. After he graduated at the University of Nottingham, he started to hold composition seminars and concerts in China since 2018. He writes: “The first part of this release is marked by the performance of The King is Dead – shipwreck for violin and piano. A reworking case for duet – Luca N. Stradivari on the piano and Luca Fanfoni on the violin – of the concert for wind orchestra and violin solo based on the First World War, performed in 2012 in Salò on lake Garda for its annual music festival.

With rich texture and bold femininity, Jeanine De Bique releases her debut album 'Mirrors' on October 22, 2021 on Berlin Classics! Miss De Bique is accompanied by the renowned baroque orchestra Concerto Köln, with musical direction by Luca Quintavalle. The album focuses on baroque arias and includes three world premiere recordings. Arias of heroines such as Rodelinda, Alcina and Cleopatra, composed by George Friderich Handel and his contemporaries - Carl Heinrich Graun, Riccardo Broschi and Georg Philipp Telemann complete the program.

For this 2010 production, the first new staging of the opera in 10 years, Glyndebourne welcome back the winning team of director Jonathan Kent and designer Paul Brown with Festival Music Director, Vladimir Jurowski conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Set at a time of seismic social and cultural change - in a Fellini-esque vision of post-war life - Jonathan Kent's urgently propulsive production offers a 'white-knuckle rollercoaster ride' through the events of the Don's last day as they unfold in and around Paul Brown's magical 'box of tricks' set.

Twelve years younger than Bach and Handel, Giovanni BenedePo PlaPi left us a collection of nine Concerti per il cembalo obligato which rank not only among the very early examples of composition for keyboard instrument and strings, but also and above all, the first specimens especially conceived for the fortepiano, the new instrument invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori. Billiant soloist and regular keyboard player of Zefiro, Luca Guglielmi offers us, for the first time on period instruments three brilliant and foreseeing piano concertos, interspersed with the large-scale Piano Sonata in C minor, a very widespread composition at the time, and the baroque Sonata for oboe, with a special appearence by Paolo Grazzi.

Luca Francesconi is one of the most prominent Italian composer of his generation with a substantial and varied output to his credit. The release under review provides a good idea of his output although all the works recorded here are already some ten or twenty years old. Da Capo (1986) for small ensemble is the earliest work here and is probably one of Francesconi’s best-known and most popular. It is not difficult to understand why. It is a brilliantly scored, colourful piece full of nice instrumental touches and lively rhythms, although it opens and ends in a rather subdued manner. The other works were all composed at about the same time: between 1994 and 1995. They, too, display a considerable variety of means and moods. Etymo is the most substantial both in length and in content. The title, Etymo (as in etymology) is about the search for the origin and development of language. It sets texts from various poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal for soprano, large ensemble and electronics. The final words are drawn from Baudelaire’s Carnets intimes.

Luca Petrosino: I still remember that day, when I went to that music store (now it is unfortunately closed), and saw a mandolin. I was looking for some 'ethnic tunes' for my first album as a songwriter and that tiny instrument caught my attention. I ended up buying it and immediately started to study it on my own. Eventually, I got hooked on its musicality and decided to study it at school. After that decision, my world changed surprisingly. My bond with mandolin became stronger and stronger, and the repertory that I had been discovering became more and more interesting and started to provide more and more gigs all over the country. Gianmarco Volpe: With his album, I am coming back to my origins: classical music and classical guitar. Retracing baroque music’s geometries, Romantic lyricism, and melodic and rhythmic twists of Brazilian music, has made me explore many new tonal avenues with the guitar. This instrument is always able to reinvent itself and, thanks to its popular feature, find its place within ever-evolving musical styles.

Anna Lucia Richter returns to PENTATONE after her acclaimed Schubert album Heimweh with Il delirio della passione; a recording full of Monteverdi treasures, from heart-wrenching opera scenes (Lamento d’Arianna, ‘Pur ti miro’ from Poppea and the Prologue of L’orfeo) and religious music (Confitebor) to bucolic songs (Si dolce è il tormento). Richter works together with Ensemble Claudiana and Luca Pianca, one of the most eminent Monteverdi interpreters of our age.