Sebastiani Impianti

The Italian 19th Century is characterized by an unparalleled opera bulimia, the theaters tirelessly program stagings to be submitted to the perennial abstinents of “belcanto” and the music publishing industry that revolves around the phenomenon flourishes and gears up to not disappoint the fleets of music lovers.

Johann Sebastiani's name no doubt will be familiar only to a few certified music experts. Born in Weimar in 1622, Sebastiani spent a good many years of his life in Konigsberg, where he arrived around 1650 and later was appointed court chapel master. He composed countless occasional works as well as a St. Matthew Passion (1672) – a welcome addition to CPO's picture of Lutheran church music and a work closing a gap in the history of Passion settings between Heinrich Schutz and Johann Sebastian Bach. Stephen Stubbs, Paul O'Dette, and their Boston Early Music Festival Chamber & Vocal Ensemble have fond memories of Bremen, where they have recorded in the radio broadcast hall on various occasions and produced Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Baroque opera La Descente d'Orphee aux Enfers, for which they won a Grammy Award in 2015. Their current release featuring Johann Sebastiani's St. Matthew Passion pays tribute to Konigsberg's music culture and to the composer who was one of its central representatives.

The music of US composer Ralph Towner represents an original and rare example of 'music unity', for it blends, in a truly wonderful fashion, innovative traits with the most significant styles of western music, attaining an incredible synthesis among ’learned’ music, popular music and jazz. In the present CD the guitar of Adriano Sebastiani describes with passion Towner’s tireless harmonic and tone-colour research, the overwhelming beauty of his melodies and surprising rhythmic variety of his pieces, all of which creates oneiric and almost surreal atmospheres that reach deep into our unconscious.