Bella Plain

Antonio Vivaldi had his own cello specialist for part of his tenure at the Ospedale della Pietà, and there were several other virtuoso cellists in his orbit. His six sonatas for cello and continuo, of an unknown date of composition, are surprisingly simple technically and may have been intended as teaching pieces at the Ospedale. Most Baroque cellists and viol players, as well as quite a few performers on the modern cello, have recorded them, but this set by Dutch-Swiss cellist Roel Dieltiens stands out as dramatic and adventurous.

The performance of Agrippina received a guarded welcome on CD from David Vickers (7/04). Frédéric Fisbach’s production gives an amusing account, respectful yet inventive, of librettist Vincenzo Grimani’s look at the shenanigans of ancient Rome.
Agrippina shares three characters with L’incoronazione di Poppea but at an earlier stage of the story, Poppea here being pursued by Otho, Nero and the emperor Claudius. Agrippina, Claudius’s wife, spends the opera scheming to discredit Otho and to get Nero, her son by a previous marriage, designated as the next emperor. She is ultimately successful, but only after Claudius’s first attempt at a solution proves satisfactory to nobody.
– Richard Lawrence, Gramophone [1/2005]

This two-disc anthology assembled by Mike Patton is, after the spaghetti Western soundtracks and themes, essential Morricone. Never has his music from the strange films he scored in the 1960s and '70s been showcased in such an original and powerful way. Patton has looked closely into the experimental nature of the maestro and found plenty here to offer as well as to crow about. Many of the scores he chose from would be known only to cineastes of minor and obscure Italian films. Yet, Patton understood that Morricone loved his own process and treated crime and exploitation flicks like L'Anticristo and Forza G with the same delightful sense of adventure that he approached The Godfather and The Mission with. Here, all manner of strangeness is on offer: from psychedelic guitars and tripped-out wordless vocals to sitars, layers and layers of percussion, acid-drenched strings, an Echoplexed celeste, toy pianos, psychotic operatic voices in chorus, and more.