Maria Eckermann

This new release is a brilliant collection of chamber music works by Polish composer Józef Elsner and his disciples Józef Władyslaw Krogurski and Ignatzi Felix Dobzinski. Known as Chopin's teacher, Elsner was also active as a violinist and conductor, and was also a renowned educator. He established the Warsaw Conservatory and taught excellent composers. On this release, enjoy a number of very beautiful works by these early Polish Romantic composers. Also notable is the participation of Yakubu Kushrik, a virtuoso who won the 4th place (the highest Polish person in the competition), which is the same as Aimi Kobayashi at the 18th Chopin International Piano Competition in 2021.

The so-called “Anna Maria Partbook” consists of an elegantly bound volume in red leather containing the violin parts of 31 violin concertos, of which 26 are by Antonio Vivaldi. It was the personal repertoire of Vivaldi's most gifted pupil, the famous “Anna Maria della Pietà”, who played also the viola d'amore, the mandolin, the theorbo, and the harpsichord. Anna Maria's partbook represents an extraordinary collection of violin concerts of high virtuosity.

This is a splendid fellow and musician - with this quote Robert Schumann characterized the then 26-year-old Danish composer-colleague Niels Wilhelm Gade in a letter of January 5, 1844 to his Dutch friend Johannes Verhulst. The works on this release are testimonies of three different creative periods of Gade: an early work is the first Sonata in A major, op. 6 (dedicated to Clara Schumann) - the second Sonata in D minor, op. 21, (dedicated to Robert Schumann) was composed in 1850 - the third Sonata in B flat major, op. 59, (dedicated to Wilma Normann-Neruda) belongs to the circle of his late compositions. Among Gade's last works is the collection Volkstänze i'm nordischen Charakter, op. 62, written in 1886 for the great violinist Joseph Joachim.

In a very specific sense in 16th- and 17th-century Spain and again in today’s Mexico (and elsewhere in Latin America) the Spanish term son denotes a particular genre of music with certain common traits including a close association with dance, text composed of several verses (coplas) and a fundamental harmonic pattern unique to each son.

Maria Pia De Vito is an Italian jazz singer, composer, and arranger. A native of Naples, Italy, she studied classical music, opera, and Italian folk music. In 1976 she performed folk songs as a singer, guitarist, and pianist. In 1980 she sang with jazz musicians such as Art Ensemble of Chicago, Michael Brecker, Uri Caine, Peter Erskine, Paolo Fresu, Billy Hart, Maria Joao, Nguyên Lê, Dave Liebman, Bruno Tommaso, Gianluigi Trovesi, Steve Turre, Miroslav Vitous, and Joe Zawinul. In the 1980s she worked with Toots Thielemans and Mike Stern. She collaborated with Rita Marcotulli in the 1990s on the albums Nauplia and Fore Paese. She has often worked with the British composer Colin Towns and with pianist John Taylor.

A wonderfully and sensitively curated recital of piano music with light and darkness, or night and day as the central theme. Water, fantastical dreams and visions also inhabit the world conjured by Maria Martinova from the music of Debussy, Ravel and the contemporary Swiss composer Gregorio Zanon, who’s two movement work gives this album its title. Martinova’s pianism is by turn dazzling, tender and dramatic as she interprets the vivid sound world of these composers.

With his sharp and lively conducting, Fabrizio Maria Carminati puts the Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice entirely at the service of three exceptional singers, Sonia Ganassi ("an extraordinary performance," Opera Today) as Elisabetta, Fiorenza Cedolins ("colorful, nuanced, highly dramatic heroine," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) as Maria Stuarda, and José Bros as a passionate Leicester. "Maria Stuarda" is the most popular work in Donizetti's trilogy of bel canto operas on Tudor queens.

L'apparition de compositrices en Italie au Seicento, siècle d'un extraordinaire bouillonnement musical, est un phénomène unique par son ampleur et la qualité des musiques qui nous sont parvenues. Qui ne connaît la compositrice et cantatrice virtuose Barbara Strozzi, ou encore Francesca Caccini, première femme a avoir composé des opéras ? De même, les œuvres de Caterina Assandra et Isabella Leonarda, empreintes d'un réel mysticisme, sont saisissantes. La cantatrice Maria-Cristina Kiehr, à la voix d'une extrême sensualité, accompagnée du Concerto Soave de Jean-Marc Aymes, nous plongent au cœur de la vitalité artistique de l'Italie du Seicento.