Giuseppe Torelli, whose native land was Veneto, is deservedly included among the composers who contributed to the renown and success of the Bolognese School, which was undoubtedly one of the keystones of Italian Baroque music, together with the Venetian, Roman and Neapolitan Schools. Torelli’s production that has been handed down to us includes almost 200 works, most of them chamber-music instrumental compositions and orchestral pieces with solo performers. Eight of these works are in print, practically all of them published in Bologna from 1686 onwards. The 12 concerti grossi con una Pastorale per il Santissimo Natale, posthumous work no. 8 from 1709, published by Felice Torelli, brother of the composer and celebrated painter, are undoubtedly his most inspired work, and not only for their extremely high musical quality.
At the age of 12, Alexandre Cavaliere met Didier Lockwood, who invited him to Paris, giving his career a flying start. Then, everything followed naturally. Alexandre Cavaliere has been touring the international scene and has an impressive list of performances: at the Princess Grace Theatre in Monaco, as the opening act for Michel Jonasz at the Olympia, at the Espoo Jazz Festival in Finland, at the Brosella Folk & Jazz Festival and at the Djangofolllies, or again, thanks to Dorado Schmitt, in New York, at the Django Reinhardt Festival at Birdland.
Jerome Correas and Les Paladins invite you to listen to this new disc on b.records where you travel to the court of Mantua when Vivaldi was composing the Concerto da Camera. The works that make up the Tempesta di Mare are extremely virtuoso and expressive and were written at the time in the composers career when he explored timbres and rhythms resulting in an explosion of colour. To consumer without moderation!
This new album is conceived as a mirror of our previous disc. Our aim is not so much to recreate a religious office but, rather, a concert programme in which the innovations of John Dunstable, Nicholas Ludford and William Whitbroke converse with our ymaginacions.
On 1 May 1761, at the age of twenty-nine, Joseph Haydn officially became Vice-Capel-Meister to Prince Paul II Anton Esterházy, after having been Director of Music (Musikdirektor) to Count Karl Joseph von Morzin, who had squandered his fortune and had to disband his orchestra. Much has been made of the contract he signed that day. However, despite its demanding terms, it is not true that Haydn was reduced to the level of a servant, far from it, and his salary of 400 Gulden a year was double what he received from Count Morzin. But one of its restrictive clauses did forbid him to communicate to anyone new compositions requested by the prince, and to compose for anyone else without the monarch’s “gracious permission”.