For a long time, the genius of Bernardo Pasquini has been associated with his figure of “harpsichord virtuoso”, mostly upstaging his talent as a composer, which had already achieved undisputed fame in his time with a rich production of operas, oratorios and cantatas. It is only in recent times that, thanks to new studies on his biography, new attention has been given to Pasquini’s non-keyboard music. Great interest was aroused by the oratorios, all re-performed and recorded now, but the same cannot be said of the operas and cantatas, which are rarely included in the repertoires of early-music specialists. Such asymmetries in the reception of Pasquini’s music are probably explained by the great emphasis placed, for a long time, on his activity as organist and harpsichordist. Born on 7 December 1637 in Massa in Valdinievole (Pistoia), Pasquini together with a priest uncle, moved to Ferrara around 1650, where he completed his studies and became organist at the local Archconfraternity of Death. At the end of 1655, he moved to Rome, where he held the position of organist in some important churches: first in Santa Maria in Vallicella and then in Santa Maria Maggiore. However, the success of his career is mainly due to the relationships that tied him first to Cardinal Flavio Chigi, nephew of Pope Alexander VII, then to Prince Giovan Battista Borghese, in whose service he remained from 1667 to 1692, and finally to his son, Marcantonio Prince of Rossano, where he served from 1693 to his death, which occurred in Rome on 21 November 1710. Pasquini managed to establish himself as one of the major opera performers active in Roman theatres, but also to work for important figures of the aristocracy, including cardinals Benedetto Pamphilj, Flavio Chigi and Pietro Ottoboni, Queen Christina of Sweden and the Spanish ambassador Luís Francisco de la Cerda duke of Medinaceli. As part of its vast production, the cantatas represent still today a territory virtually unexplored by musicians. This corpus includes about seventy pieces - fifty of them are for solo voice - largely dating back approximately from 1672 to 1691. Many of the cantatas were conceived for the needs of the Borghese court and those of other noble patrons. Those directly related to sacred themes were performed for the Holy Week or the Christmas novena, on the other hand, those referring to moral or historical subjects were intended for academic meetings and mostly for the entertainment of the nobles in city palaces or villas around Rome during spring and autumn vacations, or for large hunting trips in winter. Six cantatas for bass and basso continuo have come down to us from Pasquini’s production and five of them are included in this recording. The cantata Era risorta invano is also known with the title L’ombra di Solimano, an element that allows us to date it to 1686 or shortly after. Its verses allude indeed to the capture of Buda by the imperial troops, which took place in that year, seen through the eyes of the ghost of Suleiman, the Ottoman sultan who had conquered the Hungarian city in 1541 and who is now dismayed to see it reconquered by the enemies. Even though the cantata Quei diroccati sassi cannot be dated with precision, it alludes to a specific context, as pointed out by the title: A bella donna sopra le ruine di Castro. The verses present a moral reflection on the transience of beauty, addressed to a “Filli superba”, which takes its cue from the ruins of Castro, the city seat of the homonymous duchy in northern Lazio, that was demolished in 1649-50 by order of Pope Innocent X in retaliation against the Farnese, who were the feudal lords. Il fulmine son io is part of the genre of the spiritual cantata instead: the subject alludes indeed to divine anger, symbolized by the lightning bolt, which is attracted by sin as a magnet and whose effects are avoidable thanks to the premonitory sign of thunder. The two cantatas Che volete da me and Misero cor fall into the most common amorous genre: in the first one, a betrayed lover tries to resist to a flashback of his feelings; in the second one, a lover complains of a double defeat: one inflicted on him by Mars at war, where he lost “homeland, relatives and freedom”, and the other one by the god of love, who subjugated his heart with the gaze of a woman. Arnaldo Morelli

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at Centro Studi Europeo di Musica Medioevale “Adolfo Broegg”, Spello (Italy)
Recorded: 7-10 January 2021
Booklet 14 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Musicology comment
Artist biography

In 1806, when he moved to Vienna with his family, Mauro Giuliani found in the Habsburg capital an environment ready to appreciate his talent, which at home had not managed to make inroads as he deserved. As soon as he arrived in Vienna, Giuliani managed to fit into many aristocratic salons, where he stood out thanks to a brilliant technique and an intense melodic vein, which the Viennese public proved to really appreciate. In the ten years of his stay in Vienna, Giuliani got to know many of the most important composers of the time, including Beethoven, who, according to some witnesses of the time, was happy to listen to his concerts. In this way, Giuliani was able to make the guitar tradition grow in Vienna, which after him would find numerous highly talented performers, including Johann Kaspar Mertz. Unfortunately, the artistic success was accompanied by serious personal problems, which at the end of 1819 led the composer to return to Italy, where his concert activity dramatically dropped, aggravating his precarious economic situation. The desire to return to Vienna thus crept into Giuliani’s heart, and in a letter of 1828 he confirmed to the publisher Artaria his imminent arrival in the city, a project which, however, his health conditions prevented him, blocking him in Naples, where he died at the age of 47 on May 8, 1829. Among Giuliani’s vocal works, the six Cavatine op. 39 and the Ariette op. 95, based on a text by Pietro Metastasio; it should be emphasized that on the title page of both the words “with piano-forte or guitar accompaniment” appear, which reveals the intention to arouse the interest of the widest possible audience. As can be understood from the same title, the Cavatine op. 39 have their roots in the vocal tradition that belonged to Rossini, looking however already at Bellini’s bel canto styles, with the addition of some Donizetti echoes. Compared to Arcadian cantatas, Giuliani’s little gems decline the sentiment of love in a less abstract atmosphere, in which fleeting cues of greater emotional intensity are inserted, which contribute to conferring a tone of vivid realism. The more ambitious Ariette op. 95, which Giuliani dedicated to Maria Luigia of Austria, Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla. For this refined patron of the arts, Giuliani wrote six highly elaborate pieces of writing, capable of expressing Metastasio’s clear poetic images. From a stylistic point of view, in these works we can perceive an evident influence of the Italian operas such as Giovanni Paisiello and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, as can be seen, for example, in the caressing melody of Ombre amene and in the more pressing tones of Among all the penalties. Works that together reveal the happy inspiration of a composer who, on his death, was honored by a Neapolitan newspaper as one of the greatest guitar virtuosos who “was transformed in his hands into a harp that softened the hearts of men”.

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Recording Pontecorvo (FR) (Italy)
Booklet 16 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Musicology comment
Artist biography

«I entered this city, impressed with the highest ideas of the perfect state in which I should find practical music. It was at Naples only that I expected to have my ears gratified with every musical luxury and refinement which Italy could afford. [...] And what lover of music could be in the place which had produced the two Scarlattis, Vinci, Leo, Pergolesi, Porpora, Farinelli, Jommelli, Piccini, Traetta, Sacchini, and innumerable others of the first eminence among composers and performers, both vocal and instrumental, without the most sanguine expectation?». With these words, Charles Burney, the author of one of the most famous and ancient “histories of music” of the modern age, in October 1770 noted in his travel diary his expectations – certainly not unfulfilled – when visiting Naples, a European capital for music. Among the composers mentioned, the name of Leonardo Vinci stands out, whose fame as an opera author, despite the fact that his death occurred four decades before Burney’s stay in Italy, was still known to the English scholar. After having studied his music better, he dedicated to him some flattering words in his General History of Music of 1776, where he wrote that “without degrading his art, rendered it the friend, though not the slave to poetry, by simplifying and polishing melody, and calling the attention of the audience chiefly to the voice-part, by disintangling it from fugue, complication, and laboured contrivance”. Born around 1690 in Strongoli, in the province of Crotone, Vinci moved to Naples at a young age, where he studied with Gaetano Greco at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo. Later he was “maestro di cappella” of the court of the Prince of San Severo and in 1725 he took over from Alessandro Scarlatti as “pro-vicemaestro della Real Cappella”, a position he held until his death in 1730. During his career, Vinci devoted himself almost exclusively to the musical theater, at the beginning composing comic operas in Neapolitan language (he made his debut at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in 1719), then “drammi per musica” on librettos by the most famous poets of the time, such as Silvio Stampiglia and Pietro Metastasio, which were mainly performed in Naples, Rome and Venice. Esteemed by contemporaries and by the intellectuals of the following generations (Giuseppe Sigismondo still defines him in 1820 as “one of the most renowned composers of his time”), Vinci is now considered by scholars to be one of the greatest members of a large group of musicians trained in Naples in the post-Scarlatti era, as well as one of the first to have proposed, with a musical composition of greater simplicity in the harmonic structure and a better melodic line, an overcoming of the late-Baroque musical style, which was felt in that epoque increasingly artificial and less appreciated. These stylistic characteristics, typical of Vinci’s mature phase, are evident not only in the operatic repertoire, but also in the chamber cantatas, a vocal genre that followed the same musical and poetic developments of the contemporary melodrama. Vinci’s currently known cantatas production consists of just over a dozen compositions, almost all for solo voice and continuo, a very small number if compared with the composers of the previous generation, primarily Alessandro Scarlatti. Nevertheless, as the seven cantatas proposed here demonstrate, the composer’s stylistic code and the formal structure of the compositions, strictly fixed in the alternation of two recitatives and two arias or closed pieces which are distinct from each other in terms of musical, textual and dramaturgical features, these pieces are emblematic examples of the last season of this kind of vocal music. On the textual level, the cantatas are all dedicated to the typical love themes of the pastoral tradition, with characters drawn from the Arcadian and mythological world (Filli, Nice, Clori, Irene, Cupido) or from chivalric literature (Olimpia, Bireno). The metric structure of the arias reflects that of the contemporary librettos by Pietro Metastasio and consists of two twin stanzas, symmetrical and homomorphic, i. e. consisting of the same number of verses with the same meter. This formal organization of the text leads to the musical structure of the so-called “aria con da capo”, where each of the two stanzas corresponds to a different and contrasting section of the music (A-B), the first of which is repeated at the end of the second, leaving the possibility to the performer of showing off his singing virtuosity through unwritten embellishments. However, compared to the late 17th-century cantatas tradition, Vinci seems to draw once again from the operatic repertoire, writing some arias in which the first section is more articulated (AA’-B-AA’), so much so that it forms what some scholars recall an embryonic structure of the sonata-form. The vein of a musical playwright is also outlined in some recitatives, where Vinci shows a marked adherence to the semantic value of certain words through sudden and unexpected agogic changes (as a tempo), rhythmic patterns that return in the arias (as if to anticipate the “affection” to which the listener will be moved), or real melodic cells that in some ways recall the visual madrigalisms of the 16th-century tradition. What follows, on the dramatic level even more than on the strictly musical one, is that the cantatas proposed here increasingly take on the shape of small opera scenes, which have nothing to envy to the most famous masterpieces for musical theater composed by Vinci. The apex in this sense is constituted by the cantata Dove sei che non ti sento, a typical lament-scene of Olympia abandoned by Bireno built with all the poetic-musical “topoi” of the well-known Lamento di Arianna, set to music in 1608 by Claudio Monteverdi on text by Ottavio Rinuccini: Vinci’s poem, the only one in the present collection to be devoid of an initial narrative recitative, opens directly with Olimpia despairing over Bireno’s abandonment, in a rhetorical climax that finds its dramatic fulfilment in the Presto of the second aria – which can be defined “of fury” – in which, in full respect of Rinuccini’s canon, the protagonist alternates imprecatio towards the beloved (“Horrid whirlwinds / let them arise / the most murky waves / in order to submerge / the traitor ») to his refutatio (“Ah no! Let them return / also the placid waves / ’cause he doesn’t want / so much this soul / who still loves him!”).

Giacomo Sciommeri Study Center on Italian Cantata University of Rome “Tor Vergata”

Additional info about this CD
Recording il 4-6th August 2020, Sant'Eligio Vescovo Church, La Mandria di Chivasso (To) (Italy)
Booklet 22 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Musicology comment
Artist biography

Together with Caravaggio, Alessandro Stradella is one of the most fascinating figures of the Italian Baroque era, not just in virtue of an outstanding talent, but also for a tormented life spent in constant fleeting, that contributed to make him very much alike to a protagonist of a modern day novels. Like the famous painter, Stradella died still young at age 38, killed by a knife wound inflicted to him from the hired assassins sent by Giovan Battista Lomellini, a nobleman from Genoa that thus intended to avenge the honor of his sister who – according to his views – the composer had seduced while giving her music lessons. This tragic epilogue brusquely ended a vast musical production that included at the time eight dramas and comedies in music, six sacred Oratorios – that many consider to be among the greatest works of the composer from Nepi – and a large collection of cantatas, both of spiritual and profane character. One of the most emblematic aspects of the style of Stradella is his spirited and vibrant sense of theater that finds full expression in the works conceived for theater representation as well as in works written for performance in private spaces like the cantatas. In the context of sacred music, these often reach intense and brilliant tones that underline with impressive effectiveness the affetti in the text. A work of Stradella maturity, Esule dalle sfere was written in 1680 for the festivity of All Saints Day on a noteworthy text by Pompeo Figari, a priest originally from Rapallo who showed to possess a good literary talent. This quality allowed him to be in among the founders of the Academy of Arcadia in Rome in 1690 and to be admitted to the restricted circles of Pope Clement XI. Written in a purely didactic context, this cantata opens with Lucifer (bass), who expresses all of his rage for having been relegated to the shady atmosphere of Hell and states his will to make the punishment for the souls of Purgatory (chorus) as bitter as possible. After a long and painful path of purification, the souls are destined to reach Heaven. The desperate Purgatory souls ask for mercy, and in the end the Archangel Gabriel (soprano) grants it to them and opens wide the doors of Paradise, that will instead always remain forbidden to Lucifer and his acolytes, who are guilty of daring to place themselves on the same level as God. After a short section in which the importance of the prayers of the living for the eternal salvation of the deceased is explained, the Oratorio ends with jubilant themes underlined by the verse «After a brief sorrow, eternal is the bliss». From the musical standpoint, Esule dalle sfere presents an excellent characterization of the “negative” protagonist, without the bombastic excesses that can be noticed in many works of the last part of the 17th Century. It is supported by brilliant and often virtuosic writing and by an intense dramatic atmosphere that lightens up only in the final chorus with the jubilant souls that are finally saved. Altogether different, the cantata Chi resiste al dio bendato was also composed in the last phase of the creative production of Stadella, and it is centered on the ever-present amorous theme that in this work is declined in happy and luminous tones. In this instance, we do not find ourselves in front of a scene of theatrical nature, but in front of a “love discourse”. This finds its full expression in the final soprano aria «He who lives with love, lives blissfully», preceded by a lively tarantella. From the standpoint of musicology, this cantata is of great importance since in the autograph manuscript the division of the instrumental ensemble between concertino and concerto grosso is clearly indicated, and these were the elements that two decades later were brought to perfection by Arcangelo Corelli in his Opus 6. The scarcity of theatrical aspects of the poetic text translates into a distended, melodious and expressive writing, without excessively virtuosic passages, almost as if Stradella feared that music that was too lively could disturb the serenity of a love fable.

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Recorded: on 27th, 28th, 29th February 2020, in Cappella del Seminario di Vercelli (Italy)
18 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Artist biography
Musicology comment

Around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries numerous chamber, orchestral and even operatic works were transcribed for small chamber groups. This fairly widespread practice enabled a wide range of instrumental combinations to perform the successful compositions of the day. We have examples of operatic overtures transcribed for solo guitar, of operatic arias transcribed for a solo instrument and, subsequently, “variations on a theme”. The instrumental ensembles used for such arrangements were numerous and varied. The importance of this 19th century phenomenon is its opening up of two pathways. In the first place, it led to a spreading of musical culture. Secondly, it encouraged and increased the pool of enthusiastic amateurs who experienced directly the study of musical instruments. Lastly, the economic angle should not be underestimated: the 19th century European musical salon offered a genuine financial opportunity for both publishers and musicians. The music of Mozart, too, lent itself well to this practice and was revamped and transcribed for instrumental ensembles of every possible kind. The programme offered here provides good examples. In some cases these transcriptions were made by high-ranking, celebrated musicians of the day, while others were made by anonymous transcribers paid by the publishers. An anonymous hand, in fact, made the transcription of the three Trios extracted from the five Divertimentos K.439b, an illustration of the amateur groups catered for by the Viennese publisher Artaria in 1804. The two quartets, on the other hand, are the work of Antoine Hugot (1761-1803), for K.370, and Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754-1812) for K.311. Antoine Hugot, flautist and composer, was among the first teachers of the flute after the foundation of the Paris Conservatoire. He is the author of a famous method, written jointly with his colleague J.G. Wunderlich (1756-1819) and published posthumously in 1804. Franz Anton Hoffmeister was himself the founder of a Viennese publishing house in 1784 and issued works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. Hoffmeister was a prolific musician and composer. His transcription for flute of works by Mozart may have been partly inspired by his friendship and collaboration with the flautist F. Thurner. Luigi Lupo

After the recording dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach (CD Elegia, Eleorg037, 2016), Riverberi continues his journey into the world of baroque repertoire featuring Georg Friedrich Handel’s music, exploring many musical genres addressed by the composer, from the Suite for orchestra to the opera aria, from the organ concert to the trio sonata. The intent is to offer a glimpse, as narrow as you want but still significant, that can intrigue the listener’s ear with a new sound experience, through the particular combination of two instruments so far apart - the organ and the soprano saxophone - to look incompatible. The arrangement for violin or flute (or other soprano instrument) and basso continuo of the famous Suite “Music for the Royal Fireworks” , which an anonymous composer wrote in the same year of its composition (1749) - yet another proof of the exceptional fame enjoyed by Händel when he was still alive – was a safe base of work: the various movements, from the solemn Ouverture to the graceful final minuets, exploit the rich sound combinations of the Ruffatti organ to display the different affections that this music offers. The Organ Concerto in F, transcription by Händel himself of the Sonata for flute HWV 369, is particularly suitable for combining the sound the two instruments: in slow movements, the sax keeps for itself the soprano part, in the second and fourth ones, the alternation of solo stops of the organ and the voice of the sax creates a particularly impressive tonal effect. The “Lascia ch’io pianga” Air, which Almirena addresses to the jailer Argante in the Rinaldo (but already used by Handel in “Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno”), is so well known - but also so beautiful! - to appear almost obvious in this anthology; the performance alternates between two different perspectives: the one of the organ which, inspired by author’s transcriptions such as that by William Babell (1717), imbues the motif with long and sometimes complex embellishments, and the other of the sax, which, leaving the baroque paths for a moment, returns to its usual way of expression and gives jazz improvisations on the air. In this recording, for the first time a third instrument is added to propose a chamber music composition: it is the oboe, played by Camillo Mozzoni, professor at the Conservatory in Piacenza. For just this piece the use of a small positive organ, more suitable for basso continuo, was chosen as well as a less generous acoustics than the one of the vast hall of the Parish Church in Portomaggiore - more suitable for grandiloquent and sumptuous compositions - exploiting the “chamber” acoustics of the sixteenth-century sacristy of the church of San Sisto in Piacenza. Who among us knows Händel’s “Clock Music”? Around 1720, the clockmaker Charles Clay, from Yorkshire, presented himself to George I of England, offering his clock with sound pipes, and not without effort in 1723 he became the official supplier of His Majesty. Who could he turn to, if not to Händel, to have short motifs composed for his clocks to reproduce? Händel wrote both original and rearranged motifs for Clay. The four proposed here offer examples of different writing: from the fluttering of the angelic wings (to Flight of Angels), made admirably by the sounds of the 4 foot flutes of the Ruffatti organ, to the soft dance steps of the Minuet (all the 8 foot foundation stops of the organ), from the brilliant arabesques of the Gavotte (the small pipes of the Vigesimaseconda 1’ sound like chimes) to the grandiose notes of the Gigue (the Tutti of the organ), where you can listen to the power of the Ruffatti organ. The Andante from the Organ Concerto in G minor, a real “andante with variations”, soon reached such degrees of appreciation to be circulated autonomously and to have been the subject of countless transcriptions, including that of Marco Enrico Bossi: each variation is entrusted first to one then to the other instrument. None other than Francesco Geminiani in 1743 adapted for keyboard instrument another very famous Suite from Water Music (1717): according to the example of the anonymous transcriber of the Royal Fireworks – which opens this recording - he entrusted the saxophone to the most acute part, often alternating it with the solo organ stops (pay attention, for example, to the alternation of sax and the two Trumpets 8’ and the Chiarina 4’ in the Hornpipe, or the very particular tonal effect created by the Corno Inglese 16’ in the Lentement), with the intention of maintaining grateful fidelity to the language of that “Jupiter of Music” whose greatness continues to orbit, luminous, on our skies. Stefano Pellini

In the case of Johan Sebastian Bach, the practice of musical transcription can be considered, an audacious act or an act of will, depending on the perspective from which it is observed. It is an audacity in relation to the level of boldness necessary to confront such a challenge, and an act of will in relation to an aspiration that risks to be unsustainable, because of the high level of difficulty of the task. The musical form of instrumental concerto occupied a role of primary importance in the evolution and the definition of the style and language of the German musician. Such form encountered extreme fortune and growing importance starting from the end of the XVII century until the end of the XVIII century. He was certainly not the first musician to confront himself with this genre; indeed, it is possible to state that the activity of musical transcription characterized the first productions of keyboard music, and accompanied it constantly from its origins to our day, As it is well known, the transcriptions of concertos composed by Italian musicians were made by Bach in 1713/14 on a prompting by young Prince Johann Ernst of Saxony–Weimar (1696-1715), the nephew of Duke Wilhelm Ernst. Moreover, during that period Bach had occasions to work in close contact with his second cousin Johann Gottfried Walther (organist of the Stadtkirche St. Peter und Paul of Weimar). Likewise, Johann Gottfried Walther devoted himself to various organ transcriptions of concertos composed by Italian musicians such as Tomaso Albinoni, Giorgio Gentili, Giovanni Lorenzo Gregori, Luigi Mancia, Giulio Taglietti e Giuseppe Torelli, naturally in addition to Antonio Vivaldi. Furthermore, Walther wrote a series of variations on a basso continuo taken from the Prelude of the Sonata op. V n. 11 by Arcangelo Corelli. Bach instead concentrated on Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello and, most of all, on Antonio Vivaldi: 10 out of his 12 concertos transcribed from Italian masters were those that had come out of the pen of the "The Red Priest". It was around 1713 that Prince John Ernst had the occasion to listen to blind organist Jan Jacob de Graaf (1672-1738) playing his own transcriptions of concertos by Italian authors on the occasions of the concerts that he performed at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. Johan Ernst often went from Utrecht, where he studied at the local university, to Amsterdam to listen to concerts and to purchase the scores as soon as these came out of the printing presses of the publishers of the Netherlands. The path that characterized the diffusion of the Vivaldi concertos from Italy to Gemany therefore appears to be unique: from Venice to Weimar through Amsterdam… The attitude of Bach and Walther with respect to transcription work appear to be different from this, as different are the elements that characterize the modus operandi of Bach in relation to the history and practices of this genre. If for many of his contemporary musicians we can speak about a simple reduction or an adaptation to the possibilities and the idiom of the keyboard instrument, for Bach instead it is a matter of authentic appropriation, or better, of elaboration of the orchestral score. In the concertos by Bach in object, we do not find any trace of the intent of fidelity to the original that characterizes many other transcriptions of that era, and that very often reveals to be rather far from the intrinsic effect of the original score, whence the spirit for an excess of fidelity can be derived… Evidently, manifold aesthetics and ideological reasons reside at the root of this choice. Definitely, it is a sort of second reading, of reinterpretation conduced in the light of experimentation that characterized those years, both in the field of composition and of performance, starting from the possibilities offered by the keyboard technique, contributing even to widen their horizons, and from the characteristics of the keyboard instruments of the time. There are numerous examples that corroborate this thesis: Bach did not hesitate to operate significant changes in all parameters of the musical language, which is in the melodic substance and in the original key mostly for necessities of musical texture and of the extension of manuals and pedals, and in values, rhythm and harmony for aesthetical reasons. He rewrote entire passages and sometimes omitted bars or repetitions of phrases, filled chordal structures and general pauses, and realized and added many implicit counterpoint lines and imitation cells, besides writing the diminutions of the original melodic line and adding a rich ornamentation. In some cases, these are minor interventions, while in many other instances they are rather radical modifications, in an overloaded writing style distinguished by a greater harmonic complexity that actually sacrifices the simplicity and sometimes the transparency that characterized the original score. In other instances, especially in the expressive movements, the analysis of the diminutions and of the ornamentation added offers many ideas of great musical interest. However, this profound work of rewriting allowed him to assimilate the form and geometry of the Italian style of concerto to later elaborate it anew in many other works; consider, for example, the Concerto nach italienischen Gusto BWV 971, published in 1735. Therefore, this is a very precise choice, operated in the direction of a strong virtuoso aspect, and not only with regard to composition. The organist is called to imitate dynamics and agogic of the orchestra. Under this aspect, the indications of registers, both explicit and implied, contained in the scores of the organ works (concertos BWV 593, 594, and 596) appear to be conceived on the guidelines of ad evident imitation of the orchestra in general, and of the violin idiom in particular. Moreover, many sources testify the vivacity of tempi and the extreme dynamic contrasts that characterized the performances of Italian musician and orchestras of the era. Also in the light of the brief considerations exposed here, the transcriptions by Bach carry the evident taste of challenge, an element that recurs in the corpus of keyboard music and other works of the German musician. The organist must use all the means at his disposal to compete with the orchestra in a convincing manner: the imitation of the idiom of violin, the variety in articulation, the possible changes of stops in the light of orchestral imitation, changes of keyboards, a show of virtuoso resources both for the manuals and pedals, a complexity and spectacular writing style very rich and elaborate… Therefore, is this audacity, or a vain quest? To each, its answer.

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16 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Artist biography
Musicology comment

Alongside with composers, in the beginning of the XVIII century the first great singers began to come to the front scene of music. In some instances - mostly in the case of Senesino and Farinelli, the castrati – they ascended to the role of international stars. Among these, Francesca Cuzzoni deserves mention. A soprano born in Parma in 1696, she had an adventurous life and Georg Friedrich Händel composed 13 operas for her. Besides that for her extraordinary virtuoso voice, the Parmigiana - as she was known – stood out for her temperamental excesses as well, that caused fierce reproaches from Händel and brought her to a true physical fight on stage with her rival Faustina Bordoni. On the occasion of the nomination of Parma as Italian Capital of Culture in 2020, Elegia Classics celebrates this great interpreter with an attractive record that covers the important steps of her inimitable career, with a beautiful anthology of arias from the works of some of the most famous composers of the time, from Giovanni Bononcini, the fierce rival of Händel in London, to Geminiano Giacomelli, an author almost neglected today and composer of arias of an unbridled virtuosic character, Francesco Veracini from Florence and Leonardo Leo from Puglia. The role of Francesca Cuzzoni is worthily covered by Lucia Cortese, the recent protagonist of a CD dedicated to the cantatas of Benedetto Marcello, that for the occasion is accompanied by the period instrument ensemble Trigono Armonico directed by Maurizio Cadossi.

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Recording on october 2019, in Castello della Musica, Noceto, Parma, Italy
20 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Arias lyrics
Artist biography
Musicology commen.

When one thinks of the Venetian Baroque repertory, the thought spontaneously runs to Antonio Vivaldi and his famous Four Seasons, forgetting that for a long time this context was identified with authors such as Benedetto Marcello – after whom the Conservatory of the lagoon city is named. For this reason, Elegia Classics decided to dedicate the second volume of its series on the Glories of the Italian Cantatas to Marcello, a Venetian nobleman with manifold interests. Besides being a musician, he devoted himself with appraisable results to the literary field and wrote Il teatro alla moda, a merciless satire on the protagonists of the musical scene in Venice during the first years of the XVIII century. In the musical field, Marcello left us over 300 cantatas of remarkable value for voice and basso continuo, both with or without obbligato instruments. This record features three very beautiful pieces, among which we mention Arianna abbandonata, a long cantata in which Marcello revisits in a very original manner the myth of Theseus and Arianna. The program is competed by Irene sdegnata, These little known works are proposed in the interpretation of Lucia Cortese, one of the most interesting Baroque sopranos of the latest generation, accompanied by the Padua Baroque orchestra Camerata Accademica, under the very tasteful and witty direction of an inspired Paolo Faldi.

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Recorded: 24bit/88.2kHz original recording made at Auditorium Pollini, Padova, on July, 4, 5, 6, 2019
20 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Lyrics of the Cantatas
Musicology comment
Artist biography..

During Middle Ages the bishopric of Vercelli was one of the most important episcopal venue in northern Italy, also thanks to its position: along Via Francigena, one of the most important European communication routes of the time, crossed both by pilgrims and rich merchants. This strategic position allows Vercelli to get richness, bringing a huge art spread. Beside the architectural masterpieces of the city, the visitors can rediscover the brilliant musical works that were composed here. This CD presents a series of motets by Marco Antonio Centorio and Pietro Heredia. This latter wrote pieces of great interest and he was until today unknown: thanks to Don Denis Silano, director of Cappella Musicale del Duomo, we can listen to this musical beauty. It is an evocative CD, which is added to the first-half of the seventeenth century repertoire, that many identify almost exclusively with Claudio Monteverdi.

Additional info about this CD
Recorded in Cappella del Seminario Arcivescovile Vercelli, Italy, on 17-21 January 2019
20 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Artist biography
Musicology comment.

In order to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, the Italian genius who in his Trattato della pittura wrote “Music is nothing but depiction’s sister”, Elegia Classics is proud to present an entirely CD dedicated to Franchinus Gaffurius, composer from Lodi, nowadays almost forgotten, but who had the extraordinary honour to be painted by Leonardo. The programme is focused on Missa da Carnaval, one of his most significant works, composed for the last Sunday before the Lent, to which he added some motets of striking beauty, that underline a fascinating view of the musical panorama during the last years of the XV century. Of these works Accademia del Ricercare ensemble, directed by Pietro Busca, gives us an inspired performance both expressive and instrumental, with the four masculine voices facing krummhorns, flutes, Renaissance traverse, vielle and basso continuo.

Additional info about this CD
Recorded: in Cappella del Seminario Arcivescovile Vercelli, Italy, on 23-25 February 2019
12 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Artist biography
Musicology comment,