Nuria Rial Handel

An invitation to the intimate setting of an Austrian or Italian Court at the beginning of the XVIIIth century.
Contrasting voices and instruments performing as a solo or together will compete with charm and impetuosity to conjure up the vivacity and the beauty of the Italian music at the time. In the early years of the 18th century the mandolin was an integral part of the Baroque musical scene. As such, it is found in a hundred or so operas.

The last decade or so has seen the blossoming of a new generation of vocal talents from Spain, many of whom have been expressing their art through early music. A leading figure in this artistic array has been the soprano Nuria Rial, a singer blessed with an unaffected declamatory style, sweet and yet intimate in its emotional charm. In recent years the career of Rial has seen her tackle with success music by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, as well as Pergolesi and much Italian seicento repertoire. This newly-prepared Glossa album turns the clock back to collect together recordings made by the fresh voice of the Catalonian soprano in the years immediately following her studies at the Musik-Akademie in Basel.

In 2009 the music world celebrates the 250th anniversary of Georg Friedich Handel's death.
"Caro Amor" presents on 2 CDs the most beautiful and expressive arias from his most famous operas and oratorios, performed by the best in their field: Ian Bostridge ("Ombra mai fu", "Where'er you walk"), Maria Bayo ("Lascia ch'io pianga"), Vesselina Kasarova ("Caro Amor"), Nuria Rial and Lawrence Zazzo ("Alma mia, dolce ristoro", "Caro amico amplesso"), Angelika Kirchschlager ("Qui d'Amor," "Scherza Infida","Cara Spem"), Marijana Mijanovic ("Qual nave smarrita"), Annette Dasch ("Ah Crudele") and instrumental gems, played by Gabor Boldoczki ("Arrival of the Queen of Sheba"), Il Complesso Barocco, Kammerorchester Basel, etc. The double CD will be released as a high quality 2 CD digipak with a very attractive cover and is the right product for the many fans of beautiful Baroque music.

Nuria Rial and Lothar Odinius are the stars of the show. Rial has a fine voice, and excellent diction, and her text expression is mostly very good. The arias 'Pious orgies' and 'O liberty, thou choicest treasure' are two examples. She also performs the recitatives in a truly declamatory style. A particularly telling example of her treatment of the text is the delightful aria 'So shall the lute and harp awake' (act 3). Lothar Odinius shows the same qualities, and I was especially impressed with his differentiated performance of the coloratura passages in his arias. Like Nuria Rial he performs the recitatives very well. The aria 'Call forth thy pow'rs' (act 1) and the aria with chorus 'Sound an alarm' (act 2) are particularly well done.

Two new voices join Fabio Bonizzoni's project of recording the entirety of the cantatas with instrumental accompaniment which Handel composed when in Italy: sopranos Nuria Rial and Maria Grazia Schiavo enter the compan of Roberta Invernizzi, Emanuela Galli, Raffaella Milanesi and Salvo Vitale, the singers who we have been able to hear in the first three volumes of the collection. In this fourth instalment (out of a total of seven CDs planned for release up to the end of 2009), we rediscover the patronage of the Marquis Francesco Maria Ruspoli, which lay behind the important cantata a due entitled Aminta e Fillide; this was a work which was to provide the composer with a veritable seam of musical material for use, as "borrowings", in his operas Agrippina and Rinaldo - one of the reasons perhaps why this cantata has been rarely performed and even less recorded.

Athalia, first performed in Oxford in 1733 was enthusiastically received, bar the comment by a crusty academic complaining of ‘Handel and (his lowsy Crew) a great number of forreign fidlers’. All current recordings are of this version, perhaps explaining why Paul Goodwin chose Handel’s London revival from 1735.

Nach der hoch gelobten Aufnahme von Händels "Riccardo Primo" hat sich das Kammerorchester Basel unter Leitung des Händel-Spezialisten Paul Godwin mit den Solisten Nuria Rial, Lawrence Zazzo und Geraldine McGreevy erneut zusammengetan und eines der schönsten Oratorien Händels, "Athalia", neu eingespielt. Das Libretto (geschrieben von Samuel Humphreys) geht auf das Zweite Buch der Könige zurück und erzählt von der Königin Athalia, die vom jüdischen- zum Baalsglauben übertrat. Als Vorlage diente Jean Racines Tragödie Athalie. Die Uraufführung des Oratoriums 1735 war ein solcher Erfolg, dass das Werk noch vier Mal wiederholt werden musste.