Veronica Ramo

The pianist Ramón Valle has lived in the Netherlands for years. In 2006, he had long since returned to his native Cuba when he was asked to write a composition for classical guitarist Esther Steenbergen. He called the piece Molinas which means something like Mills. While he was composing he was inundated with memories of the Netherlands. He felt that the years he spent on Dutch soil clearly left their mark on the way he developed himself as a musician and artist. Thus the idea developed to release Flashes From Holland. It shows how a Cuban who at first does not speak the Dutch language feels, and is slowly becoming more and more established. The relaxed Cuban life collides with the hectic feeling of a metropolis like Amsterdam where tourists get in each other's way, but slowly both cultures unite to form a steadfast feeling of habituation. Valle knows how to interpret this in a phenomenal way and enlisted the help of guitarist Jesse van Ruller for extra Dutch impulses.

Bologna and San Petronio, patron saint and protector of the city, represent an inseparable union, a spiritual and civil unity that goes beyond the only meaning linked to religion. The Basilica named after him, symbol of the city, wants to revive the spirit of reconstruction promoted by the saint, when he found it devastated by the barbarian invasions and was the main protagonist of both material and intellectual rebirth, going as far as laying the foundations of what would be the first university in the world. A celebratory event organized by the 'Messa in Musica' Association that with the same spirit involved the major institutions of the city, the Municipality, the Basilica and the Teatro Comunale, led to the commissioning to the composer Marco Taralli (already on Tactus’, Requiem - In Memoriam, tc.950006) a great mass for solos, choir, children's choir and orchestra, to honor the patron saint of Bologna. The texts of the mass are completed by inserts from Liber Paradisus, the famous Bolognese 1256 text with which slavery was abolished for the first time in history.

Most opera fans are familiar with Gluck the reformist – the composer of Orphée et Eurydice who sought to balance drama and music in his works. But few know his early works which show him to be a master of the Baroque opera seria tradition he later rejected. L'innocenza giustificata, a festa teatrale written in 1755, is one of these works. Its structure – cobbled together from aria texts by Pietro Metastasio, but with new recitatives by Giacomo Durazzo – already shows a desire to create more dramatic continuity and interest than was commonly found in the Baroque period.