Musica Catracha Riocoto

In this recording entitled Enigma Fortuna, the ensemble La Fonte Musica, directed by Michele Pasotti, aims to shed light on the mysterious and eccentric personality of Antonio Zacara da Teramo (1355-1416). A contemporary of Boccaccio, Donatello and Brunelleschi, this composer from the Abruzzi region could almost be likened to a sort of musical Hieronymus Bosch, for the texts he set to music conjure up a ‘topsy-turvy universe’ where the obscene, the imaginary and the grotesque go hand in hand. In his ballata Amor ne tossa he writes ‘Let him understand me who can, for I understand myself’, foreshadowing the proud egotism of the Romantic artists who were to come 400 years after him. With this four-CD set presenting the world premiere of Zacara’s complete works, La Fonte Musica offers us an initial approach to understanding his music. And thereby, through the timeless character of art, to understanding a so-called ‘renascent’ era that seems as ‘topsy-turvy’ as our own.

While Italians and Frenchmen were competing for musical primacy everywhere on the European Continent, a very characteristically British tonal idiom reigned supreme during this short period of history before foreign influences increased in importance. Musica Alta Ripa’s espousal of an epoch that so far has not received much attention turns out to be a genuine instance of good fortune. With their special feel for the peculiar resonances of English music, these Hanoverian baroque specialists present a royal audio feast and with it genuine enrichment not only for early music enthusiasts.

One of the continuing appeals of Hans Werner Henze's music is his ability to use the formidable arsenal of twentieth century musical innovations in works that have immediate aural appeal, while probing ambiguous or disturbing layers of meaning lurking beneath the surface. The complexity of his music is generally not so much apparent on its surface as in its psychology. While Henze has written in virtually every genre of music in his long and remarkably productive career, he is essentially a dramatic composer, and it's for his operas, ballets, music theater pieces, vocal music, and film music that he will be most remembered.

Comprised of vocalist Petra Magoni and bassist Ferruccio Spinetti, Musica Nuda are an Italian vocal jazz-pop duo whose popularity carried over to neighboring countries, especially France, during the mid-2000s. Born in Pisa, Tuscany, on July 28, 1972, Magoni studied music at the Conservatory of Leghorn and at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Milan. A versatile singer, she performed opera at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa early in her career while at the same time fronting a local rock group, Senza Freni. Petra Magoni (1996) marked her full-length solo album debut and was followed by a second solo album, Mulini a Vento (1997). She subsequently adopted the moniker Sweet Anima and released an eponymous album of English-language songs written by Lucio Battisti in 2000. In addition, she collaborated with Giampaolo Antoni in the electro-pop duo Aromatic, which resulted in the album Still Alive (2004). Most successful among her recording ventures, however, was Musica Nuda, a vocal jazz-pop collaboration with Piccola Orchestra Avion Travel bassist Ferruccio Spinetti that made its critically acclaimed eponymous album debut in 2004.

After their acclaimed recording of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, La Nuova Musica and David Bates expand their PENTATONE discography with Handel’s Unsung Heroes, in which the instrumentalists of Handel’s operas are put centre stage. Traditionally restricted to an “invisible” existence in the orchestra pit, La Nuova Musica’s obbligato instrumentalists – violinist Thomas Gould, oboist Leo Duarte and bassoonist Joe Qiu – are now in the limelight. They will stand as equal partners alongside a world-class line up of soloists – soprano Lucy Crowe, mezzo-soprano Christine Rice and countertenor Iestyn Davies – showing how Handel wrote music as virtuosic and lyrical for his unsung heroes as for their singing counterparts. The album includes arias from Handel masterpieces such as Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare, Agrippina and Ariodante.

The first monographic recording entirely dedicated to Francesco Rasi is released for the 400th anniversary of his death (30 November 1621). The first interpreter of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, an astonishing tenor and poet with a life studded with triumphs, constant travels, debts and murders, this native of Arezzo was fought over by all the courts of Italy and Europe. The pieces, on texts by Petrarch, Guarini, Chiabrera and Rasi himself – including ten world premieres – are taken from the Vaghezze di Musica (1608) and the Madrigali (1610). Tenor soloist Riccardo Pisani explores their extraordinary poetic and musical power, in a kaleidoscope of affects divided into seven ‘strings of the lyre’. He is accompanied by the Ensemble Arte Musica, directed by harpsichordist Francesco Cera. The two artists have been collaborating for years on rediscovering the Italian vocal repertory of the seventeenth century, as witnessed by the recent success of their set of Frescobaldi CDs, released on Arcana.

Bach in Context a long-term collaboration series between Musica Amphion and Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam sheds new light on Bach s magnificent repertoire. By employing the church organ as continuo instrument and a one-per-part vocal setting, Bach s sound picture and performing practice is approached as closely as possible.

The Prelude and Fugue in E Minor forms a frame, as it did in Bach’s time, around this program, designed to fit the liturgical format that gave Bach’s music its purpose; the Fantasia precedes the motet on which it is based and follows Cantata BWV 64, which quotes the fifth stanza of Johann Franck’s poem “Jesu, meine Freude.” The recording was made in the Arnstadt church where Bach served from 1703 to 1707 (the 1699 organ has recently been restored), but the two cantatas and the motet date from his first year in Leipzig. This impressive presentation, the first in a series called Bach in Context, is a hardbound book of 84 pages. The notes favor Joshua Rifkin’s understanding of one voice to a part in Bach’s vocal/choral music, the use of a harpsichord as well as the church organ (not the more versatile chest organ), and the liturgical context in which the music was originally sung.