Zelenka Il Diamante Ensemble Inégal

Albert è un bambino intelligente e sfacciato che è molto temuto per i suoi scherzi in tutta la città. Quando distrugge accidentalmente la statua dell’eroe locale, il famoso capitano di mongolfiera Leopoldus, per risolvere il guaio che ha combinato, decide di partire all’avventura per diventare lui stesso un capitano…

Opposing the deprecatory view of a backward and isolated Spain that has prevailed until recently, Brunetti’s music shows that what was composed in the rest of Europe was widely and intensely welcomed in Madrid.

This collection of arias from the operas Il Tigrane, Poro, La Sofonisba, L’Ippolito is a testimony of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera activity from the year 1743 to 1745. At the age of 30, yet already successful composer, Gluck wrote his operas for the most important events in the cities of Crema, Turin and Milan, almost without a break. He seems to be at the peak of his career, yet he has not created those great compositions such as Orpheus and Euridice, Paride ed Elena, Alceste, that would have linked his name to the reform of opera theorised together with Ranieri de’ Calzabigi and which made him one of the immortal names in the music history.

Opposing the deprecatory view of a backward and isolated Spain that has prevailed until recently, Brunetti’s music shows that what was composed in the rest of Europe was widely and intensely welcomed in Madrid. Cayetano Brunetti was born around 1744 in Fano, a city located on the Adriatic coast. We know that in 1760, aged 15 or 16, he already lived in Madrid with his parents. Due to their unusual instrumentation, the six “Sestetti a due violini, oboe, due viole e violoncello” stand out within Brunetti’s work. According to the manuscript scores, the sextets were composed “per divertimento di S.M.C” (for the amusement of His Catholic Majesty), which means that they were originally written for the concerts that the musicians of the Royal Chamber would perform for Carlos IV. Lightness, emotion, brilliance, and complexity is what gives these sextets their peculiar beauty, which is hardly found in chamber music written during the second half of the 18th century. World premiere recording

Overshadowed by his father, Johann Sebastian, and his brothers Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, the music of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach provides a bridge between the high art of the first and expressive tendencies of Sturm und Drang. His Harpsichord Concertos, as performed here by Maude Gratton [of the Ricercar Consort] and Il Convito, offer a very successful synthesis of these two trends.