SACDs - Geminiani

Young Norwegian mezzo-soprano Tuva Semmingsen displays both vocal agility and a wide-ranging emotional range in a disc of arias from Handel.

The disc unveils a portrait of Handel: his emergence in the early Italian-styled Amadigi, reaching maturity in the ‘English operatic’, and arriving finally in the perennial melodic grace of Theodora.

These works interspersed with instrumental works by Handel’s Italian contemporaries. Corelli and Geminiani, played by Norwegian period band Barokksolistene.

The talented young soloist Christina Day Martinson is a native of Saskatchewan, Canada, and twice a National Finalist and prize-winner in the Canadian Music Competition. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory, holds a diploma from the Royal Conservatory in the Netherlands, and earned a Master of Music degree in historical performance from Boston University. It was at the Boston University School of Music that Ms. Day Martinson made the decision to concentrate on period violin and baroque performance. She studied performance practice with Martin Pearlman, who became her mentor and provided her first professional opportunities on period violin.

Telarc’s premier ensemble, Boston Baroque, has enjoyed international critical and popular success with releases such as Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral suites, Handel’s Concerti Grossi Op. 6, Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, and choral recordings including Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Mozart’s Requiem and Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Virgine.

Martin Pearlman is among this country’s leading interpreters of baroque and classical music on both period and modern instruments. Pearlman has been acclaimed for more than thirty years in the orchestral, choral, and operatic repertoire from Monteverdi to Beethoven.

The celebrated “Four Seasons” are the first four of a set of twelve concertos which Vivaldi composed with the overall title Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (”The contest between harmony and invention”), Op. 8. The title is also being made available in the CD format.

London in the early 1700’s offered a dazzling mix of virtually every European musical style. The recent union between England and Scotland led to an increased cultural exchange, and English audiences were entranced by the rhythms and colours of the traditional tunes of Scotland. Various collections, such as the settings by the recorder virtuoso Francesco Barsanti, were published and even Handel could not resist a few turns at the hornpipe in his Water Music. This state of affairs is reflected in the present mix of four baroque sonatas, by composers associated with London in various ways, and nine Scottish tunes in arrangements based on the Barsanti settings.

This imaginative programme is characteristic of the approach adopted by Parnassus Avenue, an ensemble which is constantly challenging ‘baroque standards’: according to Parnassus Avenue there is no ‘early’ music, just a never-ending ‘now’. In lending a John Stanley Adagio the same melancholy expressivity as the mournful Waly waly, and applying the same virtuosity to the hypnotic Clout the Cauldron as to a Handel Allegro, Dan Laurin and his colleagues also demonstrate that there are no genres, only one seamless musical whole.