Italiana 2020

The unconventional structure of Gian Francesco Malipiero’s music takes us on a journey through unexpected, sometimes incredibly beautiful vistas. The Sixth Symphony is a rich and songful celebration of string sonorities and moods, while the heroic Ritrovari and evocative Serenata mattutina display Malipiero’s expertise in writing for unusual chamber ensembles. The Cinque studi, heard here in their premiere recording, demonstrate an astonishing range of contrasting moods- a kaleidoscopic sonic tour with no more than a small orchestra, which juxtaposes orchestral strings with a wind group of a single flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon and two horns, and a percussion group of cymbal, bass drum, tambourine, celesta, and piano.

Lunedì 30 novembre, in cd, vinile e nei migliori store on line, esce “Confini” il quinto album della band salentina Muffx. Prodotto da Riccardo Rinaldi snc e pubblicato su Black Widow Records con il sostegno di Puglia Sounds Record 2020/2021 della Regione Puglia (FSC 2014/2020 – Patto per la Puglia – Investiamo nel vostro futuro), il disco è quasi interamente registrato live durante un concerto tenuto il 21 agosto, nella strana estate 2020, nell’atrio del Palazzo Belmonte Pignatelli di Galatone, in provincia di Lecce (in collaborazione con l’amministrazione comunale).

“In any event, a more convincing case for Krommer, who is also largely forgotten as a symphonist, than the case made with this performance culture could hardly be made.” This is what Pizzicato wrote about the release of Vol. 2 of Krommer’s symphonies. Vol. 3 of this recording series completes the picture of this composer’s quest for harmonic innovations.

Luciano Pavarotti Cavaliere di Gran Croce was an Italian operatic tenor who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, gaining worldwide fame for the quality of his tone, and eventually established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century, achieving the honorific title “King of the High Cs”.

The selection of pieces on this album is a collection of original works for viola and guitar by Italian authors who lived between the early nineteenth and the second half of the twentieth century. Written in a galant style, characterized by a formal cleanness, the Duo op. 137 by Carulli is mostly focused on bel canto rather than on motivic development or elaboration. An emphasis on bel canto also characterizes the music of Niccolò Paganini (1782 - 1840). The Sonata for the Grand Viola by Paganini dates back to the Paris period.

Sumptuous and spectacular Romantic works by ‘Toscanini’s Organist’.
Pietro Yon (1886-1943) played in what is widely regarded as one of the finest-ever performances of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, conducted at Carnegie Hall in 1935 by Arturo Toscanini. Yon was sharing the stage with the likes of Elizabeth Rethberg and Ezio Pinza; he had acquired a comparable celebrity within the organ world in his lifetime, having emigrated from Italy to the US at the age of 21, and become Organist of St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, the foremost seat of Catholicism in the US. A New York Times profile portrayed him as an adopted New Yorker who moved in high-society circles and enjoyed ragtime and vaudeville, and he welcomed the likes of Caruso and Toscanini to his home as friends. When he died in 1943, the world-famous conductor numbered among the 1300 mourners at St Patrick’s.Yon’s own music has a post-Romantic, mid-Atlantic flavour reflecting his background without belonging to a single ‘school’.

The versatile cellist works since several years as a soloist, first cellist in orchestra and professor for cello. He debuts as a soloist on occasion of the Ravenna festival in 2007 with “Concerto Grosso per tre violoncelli e orchestra” of Krzysztof Penderecki with Enrico Bronzi accompanied from the “orchestra giovanile italiana (OGI)” under the direction of Penderecki. Since that time, he performed numerous concerts in Europe and Asia performing the most important pieces of the cello literature accompanied from different orchestras like “l’Orchestra di Roma e del Lazio”, “Orchestra Cherubini”, “Orchestra Giovanile Italiana”, “Yuvaskula Sinfonia (Finland)”, “Sinfonia Roma”, “Gyeongnam Simphony (Korea)”, “Sinfonieorchester Basel (Switzerland)” and “Hokkaido Young Philarmony (Japan)”.

Decca Classics is proud to present the new album from Riccardo Chailly and the Filarmonica Della Scala. Released on 20th May 2022, Musa Italiana celebrates the influence of the “Italian style” on three Austro-German composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn.

In 1650, the scholar Athanasius Kircher wrote for the first time about a phenomenon that had been familiar to the music world for some time: rhapsodically free instrumental music-making, in which virtuosity is expressively in the foreground and compositional inspirations sometimes disregard the rules of harmony. Kircher called this “stylus phantasticus“. With the development of the monody in Italy around 1600, vocalists initially moved the hearts of the audience, but soon the best instrumentalists emulated them in their own way. The melody instruments swung into their own solo and duo songs, which even today impress in rhetoric and emotionality without words. The listeners at that time were almost in ecstasy, as contemporary reports say. CordArte presents outstanding examples of this new art under the motto "Rapsodia italiana". Here, the violin in particular can make its mark as a new virtuoso instrument. But the viola da gamba also comes into its own, both alone and in dialogue. Last but not least, the harpsichord and organ demonstrate their qualities both as harmonic accompanists and as soloists.

Following their recording of Bach's Kunst der Fuge, Alberto Rasi and his Accademia Strumentale Italiana take on a new challenge, recording the French masterpiece by Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Fifteen years after his Nouvelles Suites de Pieces de Clavecin, Rameau once again turns his attention to an instrumental work, for what will be the last time, inspired by the new potential for chamber music glimpsed in the use of the concertante keyboard. The 1741 collection is the only new work he produced between 1740 and 1744, before returning to the musical theatre to which he will dedicate the rest of his life.