Rinaldo Alessandrini Bach Ouvertures For Orchestra

Facce d’amore, ‘Faces of love’ follows Jakub Józef Orliński’s first solo album, Anima Sacra, which moved Gramophone magazine to announce that “This is a voice with a big future.” It brings a switch from the sacred to the personal and passionate. As the Polish-born, New York-trained countertenor says, the programme – which includes eight world premiere recordings – comprises “operatic arias that tell a story, showing a musical picture of a male lover in the baroque era – not only the positive side, like joyful or reciprocated love, but also anger or even madness.”

For several decades, as solo harpsichordist and director of his ensemble Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini has been exploring not just the Italian repertoire that he is so passionate about but also the works of Bach - as in his benchmark recording of the Brandenburg Concertos in 2005. In this new recording, Alessandrini has mounted a challenge to all currently available recordings of those four Orchestral Suites that Bach called ‘Overtures’, after their imposing opening movements. It’s uncertain when these dance suites were composed or where they were first performed but they were certainly played in Leipzig at the time Bach was directing its celebrated Collegium Musicum.