Riccardo Scocciante Anima

Recording Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, aside from playing the notes, is no easy task. What is the most important aspect? For the musical effects and ideas that Vivaldi enveloped in the notation to find their way to the minds of today’s audiences, creating the same forceful effect as in the eighteenth century.

Donizetti's three-act tragic opera Belisario was a resounding success in its day, driven by its composer’s superlative theatrical instinct and his skilful interweaving of intense tragic narrative and emotional pathos. Belisario is betrayed by his wife Antonina, who falsely accuses him of high treason. Belisario is blinded and exiled, with proof of his innocence coming too late, and is mortally wounded during a final military victory. This production was performed and recorded without an audience in Bergamo during the Covid-19 lockdown in November 2020 – a moving performance reflecting a spirit of defiance amidst ruin and darkness.

For the problem of ‘genuine’ and ‘spurious’ works by Pergolesi has preoccupied musicologists for centuries. Of the approximately one hundred and fifty works that circulate under his name, he probably composed only thirty or so. Most of them were attributed to him posthumously, since publishers such as Bremner hoped to drum up better business thereby.

The first monographic recording entirely dedicated to Francesco Rasi is released for the 400th anniversary of his death (30 November 1621). The first interpreter of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, an astonishing tenor and poet with a life studded with triumphs, constant travels, debts and murders, this native of Arezzo was fought over by all the courts of Italy and Europe. The pieces, on texts by Petrarch, Guarini, Chiabrera and Rasi himself – including ten world premieres – are taken from the Vaghezze di Musica (1608) and the Madrigali (1610). Tenor soloist Riccardo Pisani explores their extraordinary poetic and musical power, in a kaleidoscope of affects divided into seven ‘strings of the lyre’. He is accompanied by the Ensemble Arte Musica, directed by harpsichordist Francesco Cera. The two artists have been collaborating for years on rediscovering the Italian vocal repertory of the seventeenth century, as witnessed by the recent success of their set of Frescobaldi CDs, released on Arcana.

Performed to coincide with Mozart's bicentenary celebrations, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with conductor Ricardo Muti, performs Symphonies 40 and 41 and the Divertimento in D major, K136.
There aren't any surprises or spectacular splendors as such, and anyway Mozart doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve in his symphonies in the way he does in his more intimate and elusive piano concertos. That said, both the music and the performances here are of the highest quality. In addition, there's a very attractive early Divertimento, K.136, for strings only, played here as a curtain-raiser.

Maria Guleghina impresses strongly. To my mind she is Puccini’s ideal ‘tart with a heart for gold’. She has control and sensitivity and she acts everybody off the stage. She’s coy (but with just a hint of being street-wise) in Act I, outrageously flighty and avaricious in Act II, and, at last, contrite in Act IV. Just watch her as she taunts Geronte di Ravoir (a far too gentlemanly Luigi Roni) in Act II and the way she disports herself on the floor of the stage to seduce Des Grieux back to her charms.

The staging is fascinating. Vast panelled video screens provide the scenic backdrops. Videos of nature in all its glory are projected onto these. It makes for breathtaking effect, and the good news is that one does not tire of it.
Muti conducts with real assurance. Pacing the drama magnificently, it is on performances like these that the controversial Maestro has made his well-deserved musical reputation. Tell emerges as a masterpiece from first to last. Rossini's compositional confidence in his craft is never once in doubt, and there is no trace of any longueur anywhere… (Musicweb International)