Soprano

Ravello Records presents SOPRANO SUMMIT from revered saxophonist Paul Cohen. Alongside his work as a performer, Cohen is known for his passionate scholarship, rediscovering long-forgotten saxophone works as well as arranging related music for the instrument. In this, his latest contribution, Cohen presents an album of music for the soprano saxophone in chamber and solo settings. The range and diversity of the soprano saxophone is stunning, from Cohen’s arrangement of Percy Grainger’s Arrival Platform Humlet (solo soprano saxophone) to Amanda Harberg’s first piece for saxophone, Feathers and Sax, (soprano saxophone and piano) and Jeff Scott’s new work The Gift of Life (piccolo, soprano/alto saxophone and piano). SOPRANO SUMMIT is both a celebration of the soprano saxophone as a concert instrument and a revelation of new, lost, revived, and beloved works.

Boston Baroque, conducted by founding music director Martin Pearlman release an all-Mozart release Mozart: Arias for Male Soprano. For the project, which marks their 20th release on Telarc, the ensemble has united with the fascinating American vocal artist Michael Maniaci, a true male soprano, in their first recording together and his first solo recording with orchestra. This recording of "firsts" is also the premier recording of Mozart's arias for the castrato voice that gives audiences the opportunity to hear it as Mozart heard it: sung by an artist not only with soprano range, haunting vocal color, and brilliant coloratura, but also with male vocal power. The disc contains arias from Idomeneo, Lucio Silla, and La Clemenza di Tito, as well as the beloved motet Exsultate, jubilate. The recording is rounded out with two brilliant orchestral numbers, the overtures to Idomeneo and Clemenza.

Again Grainger amazes, amuses, arouses, intrigues. These 'Songs for mezzo' originate in Britain (with an excellent sequence of Scottish songs), Jutland and Australia. Some are folksongs collected in the early years of the century; two have words by Kipling, five by Ella, Grainger's wife, and some have no words at all.

Alessandro Melani (1639-1703) was a prolific author of cantatas: we know of some thirty works, many of them written for solo soprano and concertante trumpet, some with the accompaniment of strings and basso continuo and others yet with the only support of basso continuo. Our CD presents six such cantatas some of which - for example Quai bellici accenti - are relatively well-known, while others are less popular although of equally high musical standard. The soprano Rosita Frisani gives of them a fine interpretation, full of virtuosity and beautiful nuances, well supported by the Alessandro Stradella Consort conducted by Estevan Velardi, who has long devoted himself to 17th- and 18th-century Italian music.