Gianluigi Storto

Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) is one of Mozart’s five great repertoire operas alongside Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte. A typical ‘Singspiel’, a form in which all the dialogue is spoken rather than sung, it was a great success during Mozart’s lifetime and to this day has not lost any of its magic.

For "La forza del destino", Verdi created one of his most famous melodies, the "fate" motif that permeates the whole of the score. Music and action alternate in masterly fashion between large-scale crowd scenes and intimate interiority, in that way illustrating Verdi's real theme: the manner in which fallible human beings are destroyed by a cruel fate.

In his liner notes to this album, philosopher/novelist Umberto Eco talks about Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia revisiting Kurt Weill "in a musical drowse dominated by an almost oneiric principle of contamination." As you do. In plain English, Eco is suggesting that Trovesi and Coscia have approached the music as if in an eclectic, stream of subconsciousness daydream, interweaving Weill's compositions with their own and those of other simpatico composers. And he's spot on. Trovesi and Coscia appear to be in deep free association mode here, employing intuition and impressionism rather than literal historical reconstruction to celebrate Weill's singular and enduring legacy.

The virtuosic duo of multi-reedist Gianluigi Trovesi (performing here on clarinets) and accordionist Gianni Coscia makes its first ECM appearance with In cerca di cibo. Over the course of an affectionate hour, these two points of light join to create a binary star that shines in full spectrum. The album’s title means “In search of food,” thus indicating seeds sown and re-sown until they bear new fruit to nourish the ears. It also points to the music’s folk origins, glazed and fired to perfection.

The acclaimed Italian guitarist Gianluigi Giglio makes his debut on SOMM Recordings with The 19th Century Guitar, a scintillating recital of music by Fernando Sor, a pioneering champion of the guitar in the vanguard of raising its profile out of the tavern and into the concert hall. Giglio's wide-ranging recital explores Sor's innate feeling for the guitar and charts the increasing demands he placed on the instrument in a body of work that transformed its standing with public and pundits alike. From the early Op.9 masterpiece that charted a new and expressive landscape for the guitar - Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart - to the late Elegiac Fantasy (Op.59) with its leanings towards newly-emerging Romanticism, this is a textbook display of the instrument's many abilities given eloquent voice by a master guitarist. Other notable pieces include the Introduction and Variations on 'Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre' (Op.28), a deliciously knowing exercise in re-creating 18th-century style, the possibly unique programmatic caprice Le calme (Op.50) and the no less singular etude The movement of a religious prayer from the Op.31 24 Progressive Lessons for Beginners which is distinguished by its beautiful sense of polyphony. Gianluigi Giglio plays a guitar made by the noted Parisian luthier Rene Lacote in Paris in 1834.