Pergolesi

The legendary Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was born 300 years ago, in 1710. To mark the anniversary, Naïve re-issues three renowned recordings to feature his choral music, in a specially-priced box set, headed by the Gramophone award-winning version of his Stabat Mater by Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano, considered one of the best ever recorded.

La morte di San Giuseppe (The Death of St. Joseph) is a fascinating curiosity from the pen of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the Italian composer of La serva padrona – the little intermezzo through which the irreverent breezes of Mozartian opera first blew. This recording is a world premiere of La morte di San Giuseppe, which was known to scholars through fragmentary manuscripts in European libraries but for which a full autograph manuscript only recently surfaced. Designated as an oratorio, the work depicts the death of Joseph, husband of Mary. It features three characters in addition to Joseph, a tenor; St. Michael and Divine Love, both sopranos; and Mary, a contralto.

Pergolesi’s two settings of the Salve Regina are rather different one from another. That in C minor is darker, more passionate, the string writing (not least at the very beginning) richly expressive; indeed the first of its six movements, is a largo of exquisite beauty, a perfect illustration of a particular kind of baroque beauty, intensely expressive and seeming to hold back a freedom of lyricism which is effectively liberated only in the brief andante which follows. Some of the greatest baroque effects are created by interplay between restraint and excess. This is one of them.

At the end of a brief but brilliant career - his compositions cover a period of just over six years - Giovanni Battista Pergolesi worte his last two works, the 'Stabat Mater' and the 'Salve Regina' in C minor. Nicola Porpora's 'Salve Regina' for solo voice and instruments, recorded here for the first time, was probably written during the composer's stay in Venice as 'maestro di cappella' of the Ospedale degli Incurabili, from 1726 to 1733, no doubt for one of the young ladies attending the musical establishment.

A rare recording of Pergolesi's second opera, a comic and colourful tale of tangled love in which three girls resist their arranged marriages in pursuit of the same young man. Rediscovered by conductor Riccardo Muti, this forgotten jewel sparkles in its 1989 period production.

This Septem verba a Christo in cruce moriente proloata (The Seven Words of the Dying Christ on the Cross) was rediscovered nearly a century ago, and scholars down through the years have reached differing conclusions as to whether or not the work was really by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, as one manuscript claimed. More and more copies surfaced, and finally the discovery by musicologist Reinhard Fehling of a new set of parts at an Austrian monastery in 2009 showed that the work was at the very least popular over a good part of Europe, and the forces represented here gave the work its modern-day premiere performance and first recording.

New love, position, power, revenge, disguise, mistaken identity, complications and passionate devotion – the full spectrum of baroque opera seria is here in this new recording of Pergolesi’s ‘Adriano In Siria’. Franco Fagioli leads the cast, alongside Romina Basso, Yuriy Mynenko, Dilyara Idrisova, Juan Sancho and Cigdem Soyarslan, accompanied by the exuberant Polish orchestra Capella Cracoviensis under the baton of Jan Tomasz Adamus. Famed for his Stabat Mater, Pergolesi died aged just 26 but had already completed four opera seria; ‘Adriano in Siria’ is the third of these and has a libretto by Metastasio.

Pergolesi Year 2010 marks the birth 300 years ago of a first rank composer and singular voice. Claudio Abbado's affinity for Pergolesi is a joy to the ear and balm to the soul. The introductory album of maestro's Pergolesi Project, the famous Stabat Mater, was rapturously received by the press.

This anthology of devotional music from 18th-century Venice and Naples offers an interesting and varied programme. Best known is Pergolesi’s Stabat mater, but the settings by Domenico Scarlatti and Bononcini stand well in comparison. The motets by Lotti, Caldara and Alessandro Scarlatti are real discoveries; Norrington’s performances of the latter are particularly fine. Guest’s Pergolesi suffers from a focus of sound which makes the interpretation seem somewhat generalised. However, all these performances give pleasure, while the music is melodically fresh and rhythmically vital.

The first complete and unabridged recording of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s operatic masterpiece, as well as the world-premiere recording on period instruments, undertaken by the critically acclaimed 2010 production from the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, known as the “Bayreuth of Baroque Opera”. In his all too brief career Pergolesi, who died in 1736 aged only 26, set the course for 18th century opera. His works, especially L’Olimpiade, which was first performed in 1735, introduced a new and sentimental tone to the opera stage. Based on one of the most popular subject matters of opera seria, Pergolesi’s masterpiece L’Olimpiade offers a drama of love and intrigue coupled with highly virtuoso singing. Presenting Italian conductor Alessandro de Marchi, one of the most sought-after Early Music specialists, and a stunning cast of top-league international Baroque singers.