Jose Marichan

The last decade or so has seen the blossoming of a new generation of vocal talents from Spain, many of whom have been expressing their art through early music. A leading figure in this artistic array has been the soprano Nuria Rial, a singer blessed with an unaffected declamatory style, sweet and yet intimate in its emotional charm. In recent years the career of Rial has seen her tackle with success music by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, as well as Pergolesi and much Italian seicento repertoire. This newly-prepared Glossa album turns the clock back to collect together recordings made by the fresh voice of the Catalonian soprano in the years immediately following her studies at the Musik-Akademie in Basel.

This collection of music for guitar, brought together by Jose Luis Bieito as the musical element of his music+image binomis, Reflections, possesses a delightful balance of sounds. These are flowing, pulsing, mostly gentle sounds that tend to soothe and calm the listener's mind. Sounds that - through a variety of compositional techniques - tend to be sustained in time; the effects of which can sometimes capture a listener’s attention, holding it inside an extended musical moment, like a spell. When heard while viewing the accompanying (provocative, sometimes disturbing) images, the sounds can serve an additional function: grounding the listener's reaction, enabling the passage of emotion; like electricity discharging through a lightening rod.

James Levine's conducting of this work is magnificent. You can just see the passion that he brings forth for this opera. He is paired with a very talented group of singers in the principal roles. Both Agnes Baltsa and José Carreras are doing a brilliant job with both their singing and acting. They both have a stage presence that very few can beat. Agnes Baltsa possesses a crystal clear voice, but she can also belt if that's what it takes to make the final outcome more believable. José Carreras' voice contains so much beauty; it's full of emotions, sensual and with that irresistible hint of honey. Like Baltsa he can also sacrifize beauty to enhance his performance.

Based on an epic poem by Niccolò Forteguerri and set in the times of the Crusades, Ricciardo e Zoraide is a drama full of infatuations and jealousy, imprisonment and murderous plots, concluding with a gallant rescue and a benevolent outcome. The problems of such a complex and intense libretto were solved by Rossini through sheer dramatic skill, sophisticated melodic inventiveness, an emphasis on contrasts between dark and light, and the innovative and extensive use of on-stage musicians. This rarely heard opera is a true bel canto feast that reinvents the long tradition of chivalrous tales that still fascinate us today.

The repertory of the Spanish vihuela from the 16th century remains little investigated, partly because few original instruments exist; when vihuela works appear on recordings they are often played on the lute or guitar. This is a shame, for the instrument has its own sound and a repertory (albeit one that often claimed playability on various instruments) that exploited that sound. The vihuela is large, with six pairs of strings running up a large body and long neck, and the music on this album exploits the instrument's rich sonority and capability for ornamentation rather than the rapid runs, called redobles in Spanish, that are characteristic of music for other plucked stringed instruments.

The comic-heroic romp Matilde di Shabran was Rossini’s last commission for the theatres of Rome, the city where he’d had great successes such as Il barbiere di Siviglia. Rossini took advantage of the agile, sparkling style of librettist Jacopo Ferretti to create a narrative in which the ferocious Corradino, a declared misogynist, is introduced to the resourceful Matilde, who succeeds in melting his iron heart and winning his love. This premiere recording revives the original 1821 Rome version, which was conducted at the last minute by Paganini, and caused brawling in the streets between Rossini’s admirers and detractors.