Lumi 32

This album marked Vesala's return to ECM a decade after his last release for the label, Satu. Only one musician remained from his last appearance, Pentti Lahti. However, the aesthetic remains the same: a sensuous kind of free jazz with an air of ritual, and one tune from long ago reappears in a new guise ("The Wind" off the Nan Madol album). Most of the tracks here have something very distinctive about them, even if the instrumental lines wildly proliferate in the free jazz fashion. "Frozen Melody" opens with a beautiful introduction from Lahti that sounds like mid-period Coltrane. "Calypso Bulbosa" suddenly turns things electric and slightly funky with its electronic drums.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) - The Madrigals - Raymond Leppard (1998) {8CD Box Set Philips 462 243-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.56 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.20 Gb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 286 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1969, 1971, 1975, 1998 Philips Classics | 462 243-2
Classical / Renaissance / Baroque / Vocal Music / Secular and Sacred

Genius can be defined in a number of ways. One such definition is to be the right person in the right place at the right time; another is to have the capacity to move your audience to tears. Monteverdi meets both these criteria with flying colours. His professed ambition was to "move the passions of the soul," thereby drawing tears from his audience, and he achieved this with greater efficacy than any of his contemporaries. The use of the word "madrigal" on the title pages of his eight collections (and a posthumous Ninth Book from 1651) is therefore deceptive, concealing radical stylistic changes which brilliantly reflect the turbulent, exciting times in which he lived.

French contralto Delphine Galou has gained attention in opera performances and now with this debut recital album, covers a variety of Italian Baroque music. Much of it is sacred in one way or another, making the biker jacket on the cover just a bit overindulgent for the always innovative Alpha label. But the voice is worth the price of admission in itself: silky and smooth in the lower register, with a metallic edge that sparks into fire higher up.

George Frideric Handel - Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin / Andreas Scholl - Ombra mai fu: Airs, Overtures & Concerti
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 356 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Harmonia Munid # HMC 901685 | Country/Year: Europe 1999
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

A stunning recital disc which helped establish Scholl as the first countertenor superstar. The sound is outstanding, the voice perfectly balanced, the orchestral sonorities richly detailed and displaying an impressive tonal depth. In short, the complete artist and the ideal recording.

A highly prolific composer, Giovanni Legrenzi practised his art in oratorios and other works for the church, as well as in opera and chamber music. In fact he explored all the musical genres of his period, taking over the baton handed on by Gabrieli and Monteverdi, and enjoying an enviable reputation among his contemporaries. Better known during his lifetime (1626-1690) for his operas rather than for his religious music, Legrenzi was widely admired and copied all over Europe.

Alessandro Stradella was, along with Henry Purcell and Heinrich von Biber, among the most striking and idiosyncratic composers of the late seventeenth century. He is known principally for his cantatas on sacred subjects such as "La Susanna" and "San Giovanni Battista," which prefigure Handel's oratorios, and from which Handel borrowed freely. Stradella's musical eccentricities were paralleled by his irregular life. A member of the minor nobility, he ran through his inheritance while young, and thereafter supplemented his musical earnings by questionable financial dealings that incurred the anger of influential families.