Jordi Savall has created another lavishly produced and sonically gorgeous album for Alia Vox. Here the theme is the art of Caravaggio, specifically, seven of his most wrenching paintings, all on Biblical or religious themes, six of them images of death, or near-death, and five of them are violent. The program booklet includes reproductions of the paintings and reflective essays by Dominique Fernandez. This collection of 30 pieces differs from many of Savall's releases in that it includes many of his original works, as well as many improvisations, in addition to only a few pieces by Renaissance composers.
In her first solo album as a singer and harpist, Arianna Savall introduces us to a repertoire from the medieval and Baroque periods performed with seven different historical harps. The music comes from three countries where the harp has held a prominent position in cultural life: Italy, France, and Spain, in which the harp experienced a flowering of unique variety and beauty. Arianna Savall with her crystalline voice and her sweet playing, reaches the depths of these distant but at the same time so timeless music.
In her first solo album as a singer and harpist, Arianna Savall introduces us to a repertoire from the medieval and Baroque periods performed with seven different historical harps. The music comes from three countries where the harp has held a prominent position in cultural life: Italy, France, and Spain, in which the harp experienced a flowering of unique variety and beauty. Arianna Savall with her crystalline voice and her sweet playing, reaches the depths of these distant but at the same time so timeless music.
Theatrical chamber music might appear to be a contradiction in terms, but the unlikely idea is fulfilled by these sparkling, highly wrought trio sonatas. For despite their title, that is what they are: most composers of the 18th century may have used the sonata designation for this form, but Alessandro Stradella employed at least several of these works as preludes or overtures to his dramatic and sacred works such as the oratorio Susanna (already recorded on Brilliant Classics, BC94345).
As you like - jocular, sensual, dramatic. opia delves into the musical depths of this game - merging literature from the Renaissance to the early Baroque.
Although the madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa constitute the best-known part of his oeuvre, his religious music is no less important, revealing a completely different facet of the composer. Aside from the Responsoria (1611), of which Philippe Herreweghe recently made a magnificent recording (LPH 010), most of Gesulado’s religious music was published in 1603 under the title Sacrarum cantionum . Unlike the Responsoria , intended for Holy Week services, the motets of 1603 are settings of texts for all circumstances of the liturgical year. For this recording, made in the Santa Trinità abbey church in Venosa, ODHECATON has enriched the sound palette of its men’s voices with a few instruments, including an ensemble of violas da gamba. Liuwe Tamminga counterpoints this programme with selected pieces by Giovanni Maria Trabaci and Giovanni de Macque on an historical organ of the Venosa region.