TRAVEL NOTES New music for the viola da gamba
Paolo Pandolfo with Andrea Pandolfo, Laura Polimeno et al.
GCD P30407
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Performing artists
Paolo Pandolfo, viola da gamba Andrea Pandolfo, trumpet Laura Polimeno, voice Álvaro Garrido, percussion
Production details
Playing time: 61’31 Recorded by Manuel Mohino in Namur (Belgium) in September 2003, except ‘Baghdad’s Spring’, recorded by Isidro Matamoros in Robledo de Chavela (Spain) in June 2003 Produced by Manuel Mohino, Andrea Pandolfo and Paolo Pandolfo Executive producer: Carlos Céster Editorial assistant: María Díaz Artwork: oficina tresminutos 00:03:00 Booklet essay: Paolo Pandolfo Booklet in English-Français-Español-Deutsch
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Commercial release sheet (PDF)
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TRAVEL NOTES
Note di viaggio - New music for the viola da gamba
1 Keep Going 2 Albanese 3 Brothers 4 La Florentine 5 Metamorphosis 6 Nana Bobò 7 8 Maggio 8 Il Sogno di Proserpina 9 Baghdad’s Spring10 Prairies
All compositions by Paolo Pandolfo, except ‘Albanese’ by Andrea Pandolfo
About this CD
Pandolfo is a musician committed to his instrument and his time. His is an alert mind, at times even tormented, always grappling with the idea of his role as a viola da gamba soloist three centuries after the instrument’s virtual disappearance. In 2003 things fell into place and the realization ofan idea with a vague and uncertain outline became possible…
At first conceived as a solo recording project, a few days before the sessions were to begin, and almost by coincidence, the singer Laura Polimeno and Paolo’s brother, the trumpet player Andrea Pandolfo, joined the adventure. The stage was set for two real surprises: on the one hand, a viola da gamba CD comprised entirely of new, modern works, and on the other, the creation of a new and fascinating sonority, produced by combining the viola da gamba with trumpet and voice.
The result is profoundly and unusually beautiful. Recorded in Spain (Robledo de Chavela) and Belgium (Namur), this is a truly important CD. It is one of those discs which defines our label’s commitments, not only to the painstaking reconstruction of the sounds of the past, but also and above all to the projection of this immense treasure into the future, so in need of intelligent aesthetic statements.
It seemed that the music of Carl Friedrich Abel was proving singularly impervious to modern performance initiatives. More is known about the life and times of this Köthen-born composer than about his actual music (he can be placed as a pupil of JS Bach and as someone who died in the year of the 17 year-old Beethoven’s first visit to Vienna). Yet it was as a virtuosic improviser on the by then (surely?) outdated instrument of the viola da gamba that Abel was equally known for by his contemporaries. So, the most suitable candidate in the 21st century for bringing back Abel’s music to its rightful place needs to be not only a supreme interpreter on the viola da gamba and steeped in its repertory but one capable of understanding the almost lost art of improvisation. [read more...]
Widely admired as a virtuoso exponent of the viola da gamba through his concert performances and recordings of key composers from Germany, France, Spain, England and his native Italy, Paolo Pandolfo has in recent years been concentrating on his instincts and skills for improvising and composing (not to mention continuing with his teaching). An artist who can bring out the expressive vitality and poetry in the viol music of composers such as Sainte-Colombe, Marin Marais or J.S. Bach is plainly also relishing the challenges of other musical explorations that have included, on disc, an unaccompanied tour de force in A Solo and a travelogue (from this artist who is a modern, high-tech nomad himself) in Travel Notes. [read more...]