Mario Sussi

In this wonderful recording, cellist Lorenzo Meseguer and pianist Mario Mora bring together four composers who have historically been undervalued: From Fanny Mendelssohn’s Fantasia to Gustav Jenner’s Sonata in D major, the album also includes Felix Mendelssohn’s Sonata op. 58, a masterpiece for this combination, and an arrangement for cello and piano of Clara Schumann’s Three Romances op. 22.

This is not exactly the Mario Lanza "best-of" album its title might imply; it consists of recordings made during the last 18 months of the great crossover tenor's life, when he was beginning to suffer serious effects from the health problems that killed him in the fall of 1959. Still, it's hard to hear much of an effect from those problems a diminution of sheer vocal power in the selections from Rudolf Friml's musical The Vagabond King that make up the second half of the disc, perhaps, but no loss of the singer's broad, generous lyric impulse.

To mark the 250th anniversary of the death of Giuseppe Tartini, Mario Brunello and the Accademia dell’Annunciata commemorate one of the great partnerships in the history of eighteenth-century music: the relationship between Tartini and Antonio Vandini, a cellist born in Bologna (cradle of the Italian cello school), active in Padua for fifty years, and the author of the first biography of Tartini, whom he had known since the 1720s. Coupled here for the first time are Tartini’s two cello concertos, probably intended for his friend and colleague, alongside the only surviving concerto by Vandini himself.

The art of Shakespeare was a recurring fascination for Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. In addition to two operas and numerous settings of songs and sonnets, he wrote 11 Shakespeare Overtures which here receive their first ever complete recording. Deploying all the resources of the symphony orchestra, these are some of the twentieth century's most dramatic and tuneful orchestral works, spectacular evocations of Shakespeare's greatest plays.

Mario Panseri was an Italian composer and musician born in Rome in 1945. His first self-titled album was released on RCA in 1970. In 1973 came the album "Adolescenza", a suite of music crossing into the progressive realm inspired by a novel called Agostino by writer Alberto Moravia. The critically acclaimed album Adolescenza is a moving piece of music in the soft-prog field, music that will appeal to fans of the beautiful side of RPI rather than the difficult side. Gentle vocals, flute, beautifully played piano and acoustic guitars sparkle throughout. Occasionally a band sound comes in with some electric lead guitar and the bass/drumming will be very tight and well mixed.

Composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Mario Konrad was born June 14, 1973 in Gütersloh, Germany. Grown up and still living in Germany. After experimenting with the first synthesizer in 1989, and deeply inspired by the music of Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno and Michael Brook, own compositions were created. The first electronic ambient album "Submerging" was released on Musique Intemporelle in 1992. 80's style synth sequences combined with world nature instruments.