Paola Brusasco

10 giugno 2014. Con la presa di Mosul, e la successiva proclamazione dello Stato Islamico in Siria e Iraq, non solo si viene a creare una vera e propria enclave terroristica, ma ha inizio la distruzione sistematica e intenzionale della civiltà millenaria dell'antica Mesopotamia. Un drammatico atto di violenza iconoclastica che non ha paralleli nella storia moderna. Dentro la devastazione ci porta nel cuore di un'analisi approfondita e completa sulle cause ideologiche e politiche che hanno generato questo buco nero dell'umanità e della sua cultura più antica, attraverso un attacco deliberato all'arte e alle identità etniche e confessionali. In Siria, alle palesate, spettacolari distruzioni compiute dall'ISIS, si aggiungono, sommessamente, gli enormi danni causati dalle forze del regime siriano e dei suoi alleati a Palmira, Aleppo, Ebla e Apamea..

The Complete Songs (Liriche) by Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) form a significant portion of his vocal output, bearing witness to his deep connection with Italian literary traditions and his ability to translate poetry into expressive music.

Belonging to the generation of Respighi but dying several decades later, Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) is a far more varied composer than listeners to his post-Romantic chamber and orchestral music would guess. This album is both the most comprehensive publication ever issued of his song output on record, and a valuable opportunity to reappraise an often under-rated 20th-century composer.

In this new opera, the interior world of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz comes to light. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a trailblazing poet, dramatist, scholar, and nun, and is regarded as one of the most remarkable writers of the colonial Latin American period and a pioneering feminist of the New World.

A native of England, Elias Parish Alvars became established as a fully\-fledged European artist. He travelled extensively, working alongside Carl Czerny and gained the esteem of Mendelssohn and Berlioz, who declared that ‘this man is a magician’, with a ‘passionate impulse to express the music of another world’.

Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari studied in Naples before finding esteem in the Parisian musical world of the late 1780s. Fleeing the Revolution he settled in London. His compositions divide equally between vocal and chamber music, but also include two piano concertos. His Four Duets for Piano and Harp reveal clearly the main features of his art: easy melodic grace founded on his studies with Paisiello, high musical quality, formal balance, and a veneration of Haydn and Mozart. Intended for professionals and amateurs alike, slow movements are expressive and rondos full of vigor. In this recording original instruments are used to do full justice to the period timbre of Ferrari’s dialogues between fortepiano and harp.

A native of Italy, Paola Baron received her Master’s Degree with highest honors from the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Sarah O’Brien. She has also studied at the Conservatoire National Supérior de Musique in Lyon with Fabrice Pierre. She has been Principal Harpist of Teatro Opera and Ballet in Ljubljana (Slovenia), Orchestra Fondazione Arturo Toscanini (Italy), Orchester der Tiroler Festspiele (Austria), and the Birmingham Royal Ballet (USA), among others. In 2002, she won the Second Prize at the Victor Salvi Competiton, the most prestigious harp competition in Italy, and in 2007, she won the International Competition of the Slovene Harp Association.

Dopo 22 anni dalla pubblicazione dell’edizione in italiano che trascinata dai singoli “Festival”, “Hey!” e “Kamasutra” ebbe grande successo, “Festival” FINALMENTE viene per la prima volta in assoluto pubblicato in spagnolo!

A native of Italy, Paola Baron received her Master’s Degree with highest honors from the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Sarah O’Brien. She has also studied at the Conservatoire National Supérior de Musique in Lyon with Fabrice Pierre.

The debut album of the young gambist André Lislevand is devoted to the great oeuvre for viol of Antoine Forqueray. Ambiguity: a word that can easily have a negative or derogatory meaning but which also accurately describes the various aspects of Forqueray’s music and the duality of style that distinguished music in the France of the Sun King: indubitably French, but also strongly influenced by the Italian idiom.