Andrea Spadoni

Giacomo Orefice is best known as an opera composer. His piano output mainly consists of evocative short pieces that draw inspiration from poetry and paintings, as well as landscapes, nature, and scenes from daily life. The childlike atmosphere of Ninnoli is followed by the delightful Valse des amoureuses, Orefice's only piano piece published outside Italy. The Preludi del mare describe a day at the seaside from the first lights of dawn to the rising of the moon. These impressionist worlds are enhanced in the Quadri di Böcklin by a sound palette that expresses the symbolist painter's moods of sorrow and solitude. The melancholy Cipressi, a piece of unknown origin, is now seen as Orefice's musical epitaph.

Internationally renowned Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli releases breathtaking new album, Believe, celebrating the power of music to soothe the soul. It follows his record-breaking `Music for Hope' performance at Easter from Milan's historic Duomo cathedral. Features classic favorites, a previously unreleased track from late Italian composer Ennio Morricone, Gratia Plena (from acclaimed film Fatima), duets w/ Alison Krauss & Cecilia Bartoli and interpretations of Ave Maria and Cohen's Hallelujah.

Born in Bologna, Giovanni Battista Vitali (1632–1692) spent all his life between his birth city and Modena, where he moved in 1674. There is something noteworthy in this geography of the composer: Vitali’s move from Bologna, then part of the Papal States under the administration of Rome, to the smaller but significantly more secular and artistically stimulating Modena, under the rule of the splendid Este family, is suggestive of a desire to achieve greater expressive freedom. All composers must tackle the dilemmas of their times, and Vitali’s legacy is his ability to use his great skill to achieve that ideal synthesis between tradition and innovation.