The remarkable journey of Claudio Cavina and La Venexiana through and with the music of Claudio Monteverdi... which, of course, has taken in along its way the madrigals, L’Orfeo, L’incoronazione di Poppea, the Selva morale e spirituale and the ensemble’s own modern and popular ‘twist’ on the Cremonese genius in ’Round M – now comes to rest on Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, the penultimate surviving dramatic work by Monteverdi, which was given its first performance in the Venice Carnival of 1640. Along the way, Claudio Cavina has developed a ‘sixth sense’ for recognizing and interpreting Monteverdi’s style and the result, in this new recording made in Mondovì in Italy, captures perfectly the spirit of the fledgling Venetian operatic world which Monteverdi was helping to encourage.[read more...]

A distinctive musical voice in Giovanni Sollima makes his debut on Glossa both as a cellist and as a composer, in a partnership with Antonio Florio resulting in a disc of cello concertos which is no mere digression from I Turchini’s habitual exploration of the secular and sacred vocal music of the Neapolitan Baroque. Sollima, a native Sicilian, is a living embodiment of that strong serious/popular vein running through Southern Italian music-making and, primarily a cellist, he has elsewhere performed with strong musical minds as varied as DJ Scanner and Claudio Abbado, Yo-Yo Ma and Patti Smith or Philip Glass and Giuseppe Sinopoli. His intuitive awareness of the spirit of the Neapolitan Baroque makes him admirably placed to participate in this exploration of the importance of the cello in Naples in the 18th century.[read more...]

In each new recording that he makes of viola da gamba music (and that includes his own ‘contemporary’ offerings such as Improvisando), Paolo Pandolfo has a knack of reaching for and grasping the essence from within the musical scores in front of him. It is not just his technical mastery or an allied assiduous study of the sources – be it of Bach or Marais or Abel – but that more intangible ability to make such music – as here with four Suites by ‘Le Sieur de Machy’ from 1685 – jump off the page and come alive. De Machy’s world was that of Paris in the heyday of Le roi soleil, Louis XIV, and for all that the composer’s biography is today somewhat scant and shadowy (what was his first name? We do not know for sure), his Suites forming the Pièces de Violle vividly and vivaciously reflect the luxuriance and exuberance of the end of the 17th century in France, particularly through the means of dancing.[read more...]

Having entranced audiences across Europe with their performances of the music which Georg Frideric Handel wrote during his time in Italy – mainly in Rome – between 1706-9, and having also delighted record buyers with the seven-volume series of “Le Cantate Italiane di Handel”, released on Glossa, Fabio Bonizzoni and his singers and musicians of La Risonanza have recently gone on to impress the jury of the 2011 Gramophone Classical Music Awards. On October 6, at a ceremony held in The Dorchester hotel in London, the British magazine bestowed upon the Italian musicians a prestigious Gramophone Award in the Baroque Vocal category, for the final volume in the Handel series, Apollo e Dafne. [read more...]

Hervé Niquet is far less interested in being known as a Baroque music specialist than for his passionate interest in all of French music, especially its vocal and lyrical compositions and nowadays he is as liable to be found directing a symphony orchestra as his own period instrument ensemble Le Concert Spirituel. It may come, for some, as a surprise to find Niquet teaming up with the Brussels Philharmonic to record Debussy, Saint-Saëns or Gustave Charpentier, but these releases mark the inauguration of a new adventure focusing on the music associated with the Prix de Rome competition which drew in scores of leading French composers all the way from 1803 through 1968. [read more...]

Roberta Invernizzi is very clearly one of the finest sopranos to be heard today in the Baroque - and especially the Italian Baroque - repertory, as evidenced by the beauty that she brings not only to operatic roles and vocal roles which have been essayed by many other famous singers both on record and in performance, but also by her sense of clarity in and characterization of unknown music from the 17th and 18th centuries. The rediscovery of so much Italian music is a reflection of the labour and artistry of numerous musical minds but as a kind of prima donna inter pares the Milanese soprano stands out from many others for the intensity of her approach, to the point that she is emerging as a new muse for other distinguished modern-day practitioners of the Italian Baroque such as Fabio Bonizzoni and Antonio Florio who contribute here their own thoughts on the artistry of Roberta Invernizzi, adding to the soprano’s own considerations about her musical life.[read more...]

Having entranced audiences across Europe with their performances of the music which Georg Frideric Handel wrote during his time in Italy – mainly in Rome – between 1706-9, and having also delighted record buyers with the seven-volume series of “Le Cantate Italiane di Handel”, released on Glossa, Fabio Bonizzoni and his singers and musicians of La Risonanza have now gone on to impress the jury of the 2011 Gramophone Classical Music Awards. On October 6, at a ceremony held in The Dorchester hotel in London, the British magazine bestowed upon the Italian musicians a prestigious Gramophone Award in the Baroque Vocal category, for the final volume in the Handel series, Apollo e Dafne (a recording which contains two further cantatas, Agrippina condotta a morire and Cuopre talvolta il cielo as well as the title work). The singers on this disc were soprano Roberta Invernizzi and the two basses Thomas E. Bauer and Furio Zanasi. [read more...]

As talented as Fabio Bonizzoni is in performing music from across the Baroque spectrum – witness his Glossa recording of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge – he has become increasingly celebrated for his interpretations of music from Italy. This embraces not only the music of native composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti (the Serenate a Filli album) but, of course, the series of Handel Cantatas in Italian, Lully’s Ballets et récits italiens and now there is a pastiche opera with music by André Campra (born in Aix-en-Provence, but whose father was from Turin). The new recording, Gli strali d’Amore sees Bonizzoni and La Risonanza joined by haute-contre Cyril Auvity and bass Salvo Vitale as well as Bonizzoni’s fellow Milanese musician, the soprano Roberta Invernizzi, whose career as a solo star – as opposed to as her being an ensemble singer – is now starting to blossom (as they say, watch this space...). [read more...]

In what is set to be a career-defining opportunity for Graindelavoix, Glossa’s Antwerp-based ensemble, along with its director Björn Schmelzer, is joining forces with choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and her company Rosas for a new music and dance production Cesena which will have its world première performance at this year’s Festival d’Avignon in France. On July 16 the medieval Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes – the meeting point of the Old and New Papal Palaces – will provide the setting at the time of 4.30am for an interpretation in sound and movement of the rhythmically and harmonically complex 14th century musical repertory known as the Ars subtilior (strongly associated with the Papal Court in Avignon). [read more...]

Fabio Bonizzoni’s attention on record to the music of Handel - which has, thus far, yielded seven discs devoted to the early Italian-texted cantatas - has just now had the good fortune to receive this year’s Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize for Apollo e Dafne, the final release in the present series for Glossa. This is the third time that Bonizzoni and his period-instrument ensemble La Risonanza have won this prestigious prize for their series of “Le Cantate Italiane di Handel” (previous winners were the first release, Le Cantate per il Cardinal Pamphili and the fifth, Clori, Tirsi e Fileno); three other recordings have also featured as runners-up. [read more...]

Since starting making recordings for Glossa in 2007 Dominique Vellard has been demonstrating the broad range of interests which have been so influential over the thirty years of the career of his Ensemble Gilles Binchois and which help to make up this complex musical personality. From the earliest polyphonies interspersed with Gregorian Chant (in L’Arbre de Jessé and the reissued Music and Poetry in St Gallen) to 21st century compositions from Vellard himself and Jean-Pierre Leguay (in Vox nostra resonet and Motets croisés) by way of the 17th century polyphony of Monteverdi, Schütz and Frescobaldi, some of the facets of Vellard’s continuing interest in religious music have been reflected on the label. [read more...]

It is not only discerning music lovers around the globe who are giving a warm welcome to the recordings which are being published on Glossa; critical approval in the specialist media has been joining in as well. One example of the latter is the newly-instigated International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) which, for its inaugural 2011 edition, has chosen no less than nine of Glossa’s recent releases in its initial nominations. [read more...]

Along with Paolo Pandolfo’s new recording of the Bach Viola da gamba Sonatas we are providing an opportunity to see and hear this thoughtful and thought-provoking musician talking about his current approach to the music of JS Bach; in particular, to what he considers as ‘new music’ (Sonatas) written by the composer for an old instrument (the viola da gamba) as compared to the Six Cello Suites, which were ‘old music’ for a new instrument. Pandolfo has also recorded these Cello Suites for Glossa. [read more...]

There could be no neater way of expressing how the educational aims of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis can be realized today than the recent recording on Glossa of The Passions by William Hayes, with a member of the faculty in Anthony Rooley conducting choral and orchestral forces drawn from the Schola and with soloists who have been students there (or who also teach there like Evelyn Tubb). [read more...]

For the ensemble Graindelavoix’s fifth recording for Glossa, Cecus, Björn Schmelzer has gathered together musicians from Spain, Estonia, the UK, France and Belgium to complete a triptych of recordings presenting an alternative view of performance practice from across a century of Franco-Flemish polyphony. After Joye and La Magdalene, Cecus focuses on music by Alexander Agricola and his contemporaries and concerns itself with music associated with blind players (notably two fiddlers from Bruges) and memory and commemoration (laments on the deaths of Agricola and Johannes Ockeghem) coming from the chapel of Philippe le Beau and Juana of Castile. [read more...]