Vivaldi Gatti

La Real Cámara was formed in 1992 with the prime aim of rescuing and reviving the Spanish musical heritage of the 17th and 18th centuries. Emilio Moreno was commissioned in 1992 by the Consortium which organized Madrid, European Capital of Culture to create and direct an ensemble of chamber music that was able to interpret this rich and new repertoire. A highly talented group of Spanish musicians was chosen, all well established internationally, plus collaborators of the highest level such as Enrico Gatti, Natsumi Wakamatsu, Wouter Möller, Guido Morini, María Cristina Khier, Gaetano Nasillo and Roel Dieltiens.

After two recent incursions into the musical world of young Vivaldi, the excellent Italian violinist Enrico Gatti, together with his Ensemble Aurora, present, amazingly, a hitherto unpublished work by Johann Sebastian Bach. Using a series of arguments, set out in the cd booklet, the musicologist Francesco Zimei has reconstructed the 'lost' Flute Concerto in B minor.The inclusion of this work in the Neue Bach Ausgabe is currently being arranged. Zimei's meticulous and detailed study has as its starting point Bach's habit of reusing instrumental works for new vocal compositions.

Italian violinist Enrico Gatti has made various recordings of the late Baroque violin repertory with Ensemble 415 and other groups, and his booklet notes, as encrusted with decorations as the music itself, are always part of the attraction. Here he holds forth, in English, French, and German translations of the original Italian, on Giuseppe Tartini's life and career, heading his reflections with an Emily Dickinson poem (unfortunately somewhat less effective in German) and diverging into such avenues as an attack on daily newspaper journalism as it pertains to Baroque music.

Ensemble 415 is a chamber ensemble devoted largely to the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. The numerical reference in the group's name derives from the pitch used for tuning instruments in the Baroque era. In performing chamber music, Ensemble 415 consists of just a few players, but for larger compositions, the number expands to a minimum of 13 and can reach up to as high as 40 performers. The ensemble's repertory has been broad over the years, taking in many Baroque standards by J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel, as well as lesser known fare by Muffat and others.

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

The Japanese company, BMG Japan, sorted the original RCA RED SEAL CDs according to the composers and the year when the music pieces were created. BEST100 series are the best representative CDs, which were carefully chosen from those music pieces by acting and recording, and they were released again with the mark of RCA BEST100. These CDs are the most impressive records in the classical field at RCA’s best. Theoretically, we could find the single originals of those CDs, but BMG Japan reorganised excellently for everyone. During BMG Japan period, it was released for the first time in 1999 and for the second time in 2008 after SONY took over BMG. BEST100 series belong to the latter.

The German chamber ensemble Epoca Barocca’s seventh recording on the CPO label is a turn in a new direction, after six repertoire albums devoted to German composers, including Telemann, Hasse, Heinichen, Schaffrath, and Fasch, and a wonderful disc devoted to the underrated Giovanni Benedetto Platti, an Italian who spent most of his professional life in Würzburg. On their newest venture, simply titled Italian Love Cantatas , they team up with Italian soprano Silvia Vajente to present an attractive sampling of Italian chamber cantatas, mostly with obbligato instruments. Some of the music on this album, especially the last movement of the Vivaldi and the Neapolitan works by Mancini and Scarlatti, is pleasant but ordinary. However, the range of color, affect, and emotion achieved by Vajente and the ensemble adds so much depth and beauty that the effect is Baroque chamber music at its most intimate and satisfying.

Leonardo Leo (1694-1744) was a Neapolitan composer whom academics have sometimes pushed as the missing link between Pergolesi and the full flowering of the early Classical style. Niccolò Jommelli and Gluck Piccinni were among his students, and his own operas feature smooth, lightly accompanied arias that do seem to look forward to the spirit of Gluck and even Mozart. Several recordings of the early 2000s have unearthed his almost-forgotten instrumental music, with liner notes chiding listeners (in the words of the present disc) "so entirely enamored with Vivaldi…that they have ignored music derived from other circles or styles."

Leonardo Leo (1694-1744) was a Neapolitan composer whom academics have sometimes pushed as the missing link between Pergolesi and the full flowering of the early Classical style. Niccolò Jommelli and Gluck Piccinni were among his students, and his own operas feature smooth, lightly accompanied arias that do seem to look forward to the spirit of Gluck and even Mozart. Several recordings of the early 2000s have unearthed his almost-forgotten instrumental music, with liner notes chiding listeners (in the words of the present disc) "so entirely enamored with Vivaldi…that they have ignored music derived from other circles or styles."

Leonardo Leo (1694-1744) was a Neapolitan composer whom academics have sometimes pushed as the missing link between Pergolesi and the full flowering of the early Classical style. Niccolò Jommelli and Gluck Piccinni were among his students, and his own operas feature smooth, lightly accompanied arias that do seem to look forward to the spirit of Gluck and even Mozart. Several recordings of the early 2000s have unearthed his almost-forgotten instrumental music, with liner notes chiding listeners (in the words of the present disc) "so entirely enamored with Vivaldi…that they have ignored music derived from other circles or styles."