Concerto Italiano

The programme chosen for this CD by the eminent early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini and performed by members of his hand-picked ensemble Concerto Italiano illustrate most of the forms that instrumental music adopted in the course of the seventeenth century. Amongst the composers featured are Giovanni Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Zanetti, and Torelli, as well as lesser known figures of the period including Giovanni de Macque, Evaristo dall’Abaco, and Giovanni Bononcini.

In 1587 the publication in Venice of a Ricercar per sonar by Andrea Gabrieli was symptomatic of a new order in the history of music. The sole vocation of the art of Europe was no longer to accompany a text, and purely instrumental music was now established in its own right. The city of Venice played a special role in the gradual abandonment of Renaissance forms, where the freedom of thought permitted by the republic and its status as the publishing capital of the world facilitated an unprecedented development of secular music, and it was there in 1617 that Biagio Marini published the first sonata for violin and continuo. The selection of 17th century pieces performed on this CD was entirely recorded by a four-part group (two violins, viola, and continuo), a typically Italian formation that was to lead to the birth of the string quartet in the eighteenth century.

Two of today’s most accomplished and critically acclaimed interpreters of early and baroque music, the singers Sara Mingardo and Sandrine Piau, combined for this best-selling 2009 recording of arias and duos from Handel’s operas Radamisto, Flavio, Poro, Tamerlano, Rinaldo, Orlando, Alessandro, Deidamia, Amadigi, and Ottone. They are accompanied by the world-renowned Concerto Italiano and its conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini.

Award winning, world renowned conductor, Rinaldo Alessandrini with his stunning period-instrument ensemble, Concerto Italiano – about to celebrate its 25th anniversary – perform two Glorias by Vivaldi. It’s their first major release for the Vivaldi Edition since 2004. The all-star soloist line-up is headed by contralto Sara Mingardo, “one of the richest voices before the public today” (Gramophone, July 2009). Don’t miss the stunning “Domine Deus Agnus Dei” from Gloria RV589.The recording presents two major sacred works by Vivaldi: the celebrated Gloria RV589 and the much rarer RV588. The recording also features a work recorded only four times in recording history: the ‘Ostro Picta’ introduction, that Rinaldo has chosen to associate with the Gloria RV589.

Rediscover the feminine vocal world of the red priest. Sara Mingardo and Rinaldo Alessandrini plunge us into the gripping theatricality and emotion of the Stabat Mater, and the exaltation and sorrow of the Virgin at the feet of the cross, plus several other works including three concertos.

One of today’s rare true contraltos, Sara Mingardo has become a highly sought-after performer on both the concert and operatic stage in a wide range of repertoire. She has enjoyed successful collaborations with such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Myung-Whun Chung, Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Riccardo Muti, and Roger Norrington, and has taken major roles in several of the award-winning opera recordings in the Vivaldi Edition, including L’Olimpiade, and La Verita in Cimento.

After initially making her reputation in Baroque music alongside William Christie, Philippe Herreweghe, Christophe Rousset, Emmanuelle Haïm, Sigiswald Kuijken, Gustav Leonhardt and René Jacobs, Sandrine Piau now sings a broad repertoire reflected in her large discography, and has confirmed her outstanding position in the new generation of French singers. Her Handel album with Les Talens Lyriques was an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and was awarded the Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize for 2005. In 2007 she released another award-winning recital CD, Évocation, accompanied by Susan Manoff. Both Sara Mingardo and Sandrine Piau have appeared as soloists in La Fida Ninfa, the most recent opera release in Naïve’s Vivaldi Edition.

This new Handel collection features these two great singers alongside the world-renowned Concerto Italiano and its conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini, performing arias and duos from his operas Radamisto, Flavio, Poro, Tamerlano, Rinaldo, Orlando, Alessandro, Deidamia, Amadigi, and Ottone.

Of the nine masses attributed to Pergolesi only two are authentic, the Mass in D major and the Mass in F major. Both scores include only the Kyrie and the Gloria, and therefore belong to the missa brevis type, although they are in fact relatively substantial pieces. Three manuscript versions of the Mass in F have come down to us, the first is for soloists, five-part choir and orchestra; the second for soloists, five-part choir and two orchestras; and the third for soloists, four five-part choirs, and two orchestras.

Of Alessandro Scarlatti’s ten masses, the Messa per il Santissimo Natale (Christmas Mass), which was written in 1707 while Scarlatti was maestro di cappella of the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, handles its polychorality in a solidly traditional manner. The two choirs always appear as two distinct blocks of sound., and throughout the mass there is virtually no doubling of parts, which gives the score a particular richness of timbre. This is further underlined by the presence in the first choir of two sopranos, who are often allotted solo sections. To this should be added the special treatment accorded to the two violins, which follow their own specific sonic trajectory and in fact constitute a sort of ‘third choir’, since they almost never double the vocal parts.

Founder-director of Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini is considered to be one of the most authoritative interpreters of Monteverdi worldwide. His recordings (for Opus 111, Astrée, Arcana, and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi) include not only Italian music, but also Bach and his contemporaries. He has garnered the highest critical plaudits including three Gramophone Awards, two Grands Prix du Disque, and three Deutsche Schallplattenpreise. Concerto Italiano’s revelatory interpretations have revolutionised our perception of seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian music. The group’s groundbreaking recordings of Monteverdi’s madrigals have achieved international benchmark status, establishing it with critics and audiences as the finest ensemble of its kind in Italy today. The impressive array of critical awards received for these recordings include five Gramophone Awards (the only Italian ensemble to have been thus honoured), ten Diapasons d’Or and 2 Diapasons d’Or de l’Année and two Deutsche Schallplattenpreise,

The beautiful psalms and antiphons that make up the Vespers for the Assumption of the Virgin Mary form a splendidly coherent whole. This recording represents a wonderful reconstruction of Vespers as Vivaldi might have composed them.

Bonus : Scores by Vivaldi & 76-Page Booklet

Although the Czech born composer Frantisek Tuma may not be among the greatest composers of the eighteenth century, there is in his music the exotic atmosphere typical of the transition from the baroque to classical periods. This collection of music written for small ensembles is performed by acknowledged experts in this area of music, Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano.

This new recording of Monteverdi’s “Orfeo”, a work which is generally considered to be the first true opera in musical history, marks its 400th anniversary. It is performed in a new version developed by one of the world’s leading experts on the composer’s music, Rinaldo Alessandrini and his internationally acclaimed ensemble Concerto Italiano, and presented in a luxurious limited edition of 2 CDs within an illuminating book.

A classic of Baroque music, the Stabat Mater by Pergolesi (he wrote it when he was twenty-four and he died two years later) is a constant source of emotion. This superb recording by Rinaldo Alessandrini brings out all the beauty and expression of this work.