Pur ti Miro

Anna Lucia Richter returns to PENTATONE after her acclaimed Schubert album Heimweh with Il delirio della passione; a recording full of Monteverdi treasures, from heart-wrenching opera scenes (Lamento d Arianna,Pur ti miro from Poppea and the Prologue of L'orfeo) and religious music (Confitebor) to bucolic songs (Si dolce è il tormento). Richter works together with Ensemble Claudiana and Luca Pianca, one of the most eminent Monteverdi interpreters of our age. They offer a fresh perspective on Monteverdi's music by penetrating deeply into the original sources.

Anna Lucia Richter returns to PENTATONE after her acclaimed Schubert album Heimweh with Il delirio della passione; a recording full of Monteverdi treasures, from heart-wrenching opera scenes (Lamento d’Arianna, ‘Pur ti miro’ from Poppea and the Prologue of L’orfeo) and religious music (Confitebor) to bucolic songs (Si dolce è il tormento). Richter works together with Ensemble Claudiana and Luca Pianca, one of the most eminent Monteverdi interpreters of our age.

This recording gathers together vocal gems from the Italian baroque and some of the most renowned artists in this repertoire: Il Giardino Armonico’s co-founder Luca Pianca, soprano Roberta Invernizzi and contralto Sonia Prina. This intense and heart-stretching programme on love and sadness gathers a series of amazing duets by Monteverdi, Handel (when living in Italy), Marcello, Scarlatti, Lotti…

Following the best-seller 'Love Songs' with Brad Mehldau and a new recording of Berlioz’s 'Les Nuits d’été' with Marc Minkowski, 'Sogno Barocco' is the third project from eclectic Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter on naïve, which she toured 2010-11. Dedicated to early Italian opera protagonists such as Poppea, Penelope, Diana and Helena, this clever programme gathers baroque hit duets such as “Si Dolce è’l tormento” or “Pur ti miro” and the previously unreleased Provenzale cantata or Rossi’s Lamento of the Swedish Queen .

Bright and inventive, the early-music vocal and instrumental group l’Arpeggiata—steered by intrepid theorbist and baroque harpist Christina Pluhar—takes us on an unapologetically idiosyncratic journey through Monteverdi. The Renaissance composer’s avant-garde tendencies are by turns revealed and exploited, most aggressively in the jazzy basso continuo cum walking bass of Ohimè ch’io cado and the swing treatment of the celebrated Chiome d’oro, but also, more subtly, in the gentle rubato of Pur ti miro, the light syncopation of Damigella tutta bella, and the adult-contemporary/Buena Vista Social Club–infused ostinato of Amor. Even seemingly familiar Renaissance fare (Sinfonie & Moresca) receives a late infusion of slightly alien percussion.