After "Roma ’600", dedicated to the cultured and popular music of the Eternal City, I Bassifondi explore the music of the most famous baroque guitarist in 17th-century Europe, who brought the guitar to England and then to the court of the Sun King in France: Francesco Corbetta. The trio, led by Simone Vallerotonda, welcomes a special guest, Bor Zuljan, one of the best lutenists on the scene, with whom Simone Vallerotonda plays a concerto and several "pièces de caractère" for two guitars.
With this CD of arias by Johann Christian Bach, male soprano Philippe Jaroussky edges further afield from the Baroque repertoire in which he has made his reputation, moving into the Classical period. A 2007 album, Carestini, was devoted to arias sung by the legendary castrato, including music by Gluck (from early in his career), Handel, Graun, and Hasse, and offered some excursions slightly beyond the Baroque, but J.C. Bach wrote the solidly Classical operas seria and concert arias represented here after Carestini's death, between 1760 and 1779.
Raymond Leppard's second and more renowned contribution to the modern revival of Cavalli: a classic among Baroque opera recordings which won the coveted Rosette award from the Penguin Record Guide. In 1651, seven years after Ormindo (also reissued by Eloquence in Leppard's recording, 482 9382), Cavalli and his librettist Faustini scored another hit with the hungry but demanding Venetian opera public with a tale from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The change that all of Ovid's central characters undergo is in this case suffered by the nymph Calisto, who is rejected by the goddess Diana, turned into a bear by the Furies and back into a human by Jupiter, who finally sets her among the stars in reward for her patience and her love. Writing as editor of the Musical Times in the summer of 1970, Stanley Sadie observed that.
Alessandro Scarlatti wrote over 600 cantatas, two of which are on this 1987 disc performed by soprano Lynne Dawson and the Purcell Quartet: Correa nel seno amato and Già lusingato appieno. He wrote considerably less keyboard music – and next to nothing compared with the gargantuan achievement of his son Domenico – one of which is on this disc performed by Robert Woolley, the harpsichordist of the Purcell Quartet: the Variations on La Folia. With the chamber cantatas flanking the keyboard variations, this disc is a wonderful program of the elder Scarlatti's art. Though there are some who might argue English soprano Dawson is perhaps too reserved for this repertoire, none would argue that she doesn't have a clear voice and a supple technique. And while there are others who might argue the Purcell Quartet is perhaps too stringent for the repertoire, none would argue they don't play together with consummate ease and they don't accompany Dawson with brilliant mastery. But there are few who would disparage Woolley's blindingly virtuosic and blazingly demonic La Folia Variations.
This disc was an instant classic from the time it was issued in 1988, the Purcell Quartet's C.P.E. Bach: La Folia and other works. The disc features four chamber pieces and one harpsichord solo that, taken together, span all but the first and last decades of his output and contains some of the most pioneering and experimental-sounding music Bach created. The Trio Sonata in C minor "Sanguineus and Melancholicus" (1749) pits the Greek notions of the sanguine and melancholy against one another in a twisted musical dialogue, foreshadowing psychological form, a development that didn't take hold until the advent of Beethoven. Bach's late 12 Variations on La Folia (1776) are blustery and brilliant and played with a sense of urgency by the Purcell Quartet's leader, harpsichordist Robert Woolley.
Born in Venice, Sartorio composed 14 operas. He often made the long journey from Hanover, where he held the post of Maestro di Capella to the Duke of Brunswick, to compose and present new operas in his native city and recruit musicians for the German court. He is credited with introducing Italian opera to the Hanover court in 1672. Sartorio finally returned to Venice to be Maestro at St Mark’s where he composed sacred music, albeit not as much as the renowned Coffi might have been expected of him in that position.
Stadio remained one of the premier bands in Italian pop for more than a quarter century. Singer Gaetano Curreri, guitarist Ricky Portera, bassist Marco Nanni, keyboardist Fabio Liberatori, and drummer Giovanni Pezzoli co-founded the group in 1979 after first collaborating on a session headlined by vocalist Lucio Dalla.