Zelenka Il Diamante Ensemble Inégal

Anna Lucia Richter returns to PENTATONE after her acclaimed Schubert album Heimweh with Il delirio della passione; a recording full of Monteverdi treasures, from heart-wrenching opera scenes (Lamento d Arianna,Pur ti miro from Poppea and the Prologue of L'orfeo) and religious music (Confitebor) to bucolic songs (Si dolce è il tormento). Richter works together with Ensemble Claudiana and Luca Pianca, one of the most eminent Monteverdi interpreters of our age. They offer a fresh perspective on Monteverdi's music by penetrating deeply into the original sources.

Bartolomeo Campagnoli was a violinist by training, who worked in the courts and capitals of Baroque-era Europe, with posts in Rome, Dresden and then in Leipzig, where he was leader of the venerable Gewandhaus orchestra. Thus most of his own compositions are for strings, focused on his own instrument, and often with pedagogical or commercial aims in mind, such as the 41 Capricci for solo viola and the 7 Divertimenti for solo violin. There is also an extensive Method - in 132 separate lessons! - which was first published by Ricordi in 1797, and reprinted and translated many times. It was around this time that he wrote the six delightful, serenade-like works on this album, scored for flute and string trio.

Anna Lucia Richter returns to PENTATONE after her acclaimed Schubert album Heimweh with Il delirio della passione; a recording full of Monteverdi treasures, from heart-wrenching opera scenes (Lamento d Arianna,Pur ti miro from Poppea and the Prologue of L'orfeo) and religious music (Confitebor) to bucolic songs (Si dolce è il tormento). Richter works together with Ensemble Claudiana and Luca Pianca, one of the most eminent Monteverdi interpreters of our age. They offer a fresh perspective on Monteverdi's music by penetrating deeply into the original sources.

Perez compuso una treintena de óperas, caracterizadas por la gran elaboración de las partes instrumentales y la riqueza armónica y rítmica, que subrayan el fuerte discurso dramático, como se transmite claramente en Il Solimano (1757). También fue autor de música sacra, considerada por algunos estudiosos cualitativamente superior a su producción teatral, calificada de menos original. En aquel campo destacan su Il martirio di San Bartolomeo y un Te Deum.

Perez compuso una treintena de óperas, caracterizadas por la gran elaboración de las partes instrumentales y la riqueza armónica y rítmica, que subrayan el fuerte discurso dramático, como se transmite claramente en Il Solimano (1757). También fue autor de música sacra, considerada por algunos estudiosos cualitativamente superior a su producción teatral, calificada de menos original. En aquel campo destacan su Il martirio di San Bartolomeo y un Te Deum.

These songs for one and two voices come from the first four of D’India’s five books of Musiche, a series containing masterpieces of astonishing originality in the style of monody (solo melody with accompaniment), which had eclipsed the polyphonic madrigal in popularity at the dawn of the 17th century. With a career based largely in Turin and Rome, Sigismondo D’India nevertheless demonstrates stylistic links to both Monteverdi and Gesualdo, and it is the latter’s influence which supports new scholarship claiming D’India grew up in Naples (not Sicily) in the shadow of the great madrigalist’s free thinking on harmony. That very harmonic freedom – to accentuate key emotions in the text with piquant chord changes – is the hallmark of D’India’s own, self-styled ‘true manner’ of composing monody, adopted from Gesualdo’s intense, chromatic polyphony to the solo song or duet, and it suggests a Neapolitan, rather than Roman–Florentine, musical background.

Bonaventura Aliotti‚ unrepresented in the CD catalogues until now‚ was a Sicilian composer of the middle Baroque‚ born in Palermo around 1640‚ dying some 50 years later. A Minorite friar‚ he worked as organist in Padua and various other Italian cities‚ ending up as maestro di cappella in Palermo. His oratorios‚ of which only four survive‚ seem to have been greatly admired in his time. Il Sansone‚ first performed in Naples in 1686‚ tells the central part of the familiar story of Samson – his seduction and betrayal by Delilah‚ at the bidding of the Philistine Captain and with the help of the allegorical character Inganno (‘Treachery’) and Morpheus‚ god of sleep. It was revised two years later for performance in Modena‚ and the choral music was added; the Modena score‚ as the only surviving source for the work‚ is used here.

The first monographic recording entirely dedicated to Francesco Rasi is released for the 400th anniversary of his death (30 November 1621). The first interpreter of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, an astonishing tenor and poet with a life studded with triumphs, constant travels, debts and murders, this native of Arezzo was fought over by all the courts of Italy and Europe. The pieces, on texts by Petrarch, Guarini, Chiabrera and Rasi himself – including ten world premieres – are taken from the Vaghezze di Musica (1608) and the Madrigali (1610). Tenor soloist Riccardo Pisani explores their extraordinary poetic and musical power, in a kaleidoscope of affects divided into seven ‘strings of the lyre’. He is accompanied by the Ensemble Arte Musica, directed by harpsichordist Francesco Cera. The two artists have been collaborating for years on rediscovering the Italian vocal repertory of the seventeenth century, as witnessed by the recent success of their set of Frescobaldi CDs, released on Arcana.

Giuseppe Torelli, whose native land was Veneto, is deservedly included among the composers who contributed to the renown and success of the Bolognese School, which was undoubtedly one of the keystones of Italian Baroque music, together with the Venetian, Roman and Neapolitan Schools. Torelli’s production that has been handed down to us includes almost 200 works, most of them chamber-music instrumental compositions and orchestral pieces with solo performers. Eight of these works are in print, practically all of them published in Bologna from 1686 onwards. The 12 concerti grossi con una Pastorale per il Santissimo Natale, posthumous work no. 8 from 1709, published by Felice Torelli, brother of the composer and celebrated painter, are undoubtedly his most inspired work, and not only for their extremely high musical quality.