La célèbre épopée biblique relatant le meurtre d’Abel par Caïn est connue de tous, mais la mise en scène qu’Alessandro Scarlatti lui a dédiée l’est beaucoup moins. Thème récurant pour les oratorios italiens au XVIIe siècle, le sujet est traité ici à la manière d’une histoire policière. Avec un effectif musical réduit, il nous transporte dans un univers baroque étourdissant. Les accents lyriques sont d’une expressivité rare tandis que l’orchestre, faisant preuve de beaucoup de psychologie, exulte. Par bonheur, la prise de son est à l’avenant. Les divers plans sonores sont respectés avec une très belle transparence et une foule de détails sur les voix et sur les instruments.

The Brook Street Band join forces with the Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, and their director Owen Rees, for the first ever pairing on disc of the two settings of the Dixit Dominus by Alessandro Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel.

“Roma travestita” è il titolo dell’album di debutto discografico per il sopranista Bruno de Sá con l’etichetta Erato. Il repertorio esplorato dal giovane cantante brasiliano corrisponde al periodo storico in cui alle donne era proibito calcare i palcoscenici teatrali a Roma ed erano gli uomini ad interpretare ruoli operistici femminili. Otto delle tredici arie dell’album vengono presentate in prima registrazione assoluta. Il progetto vede la collaborazione dell’orchestra Il Pomo d’Oro diretta da Francesco Corti per l’esecuzione di arie del XVIII secolo di Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Vinci, Galuppi e Piccinni, e di autori meno frequentati come Capua, Arena, Cocchi, Conforto e Garcìa Fajer. In scena Bruno de Sá ha già cantato in ruoli come Sesto nel Giulio Cesare di Händel e ne La clemenza di Tito di Mozart, Barbarina ne Le nozze di Figaro di Mozart e La Sirenetta nell’adattamento operistico della favola di Hans Christian Andersen composto da Jherek Bischoff.

On this sixth volume of Alessandro Scarlatti's opera omnia for keyboard, once again the star is the eighteenth century Italian Anonymous Ferrarese harpsichord owned by Francesco Tasini. Toccatas, Arpeggi, Introduzioni, and even the famous 'Folly of Spain', are contained in this volume featuring the brilliant and rich harmonics of the precious historical instrument. Extremely interesting is the interpretation by Francesco Tasini - a master of the period performance practice - that succeeds in giving us a perfect understanding of the correct approach to the compositions by Alessandro Scarlatti, true founder of the Neapolitan keyboard School.

This 25CD set presents the most famous, iconic and best-loved works from the Baroque Era, works which are part of our common musical heritage and conscience, eternally young and cherished for their charm, beauty and deeply human emotions, shared by audiences all over the world.
Played by specialized Early Music Groups like L’Arte Dell’arco, Musica Amphion, Violini Capricciosi, Musica ad Rhenum and many others.

Alessandro Scarlatti's celebrated Stabat mater was commissioned by a confraternity of aristocrats, the Cavalieri della Vergine dei Dolori, for its annual Lenten service at the Franciscan church of San Luigi in Naples. It remained in use until the confraternity commissioned Pergolesi to compose his famous setting to supplant Scarlatti's old-fashioned music. Both Pergolesi and Scarlatti composed for limited resources, each using two solo voices, two violins and basso continuo. Scarlatti's setting is by no means inferior to Pergolesi's but remains much less familiar, despite several excellent recordings.

The fifth volume of the Alessandro Scarlatti complete works for keyboard series. On this new release we enjoy the small Carlo Serassi op.442 organ (“Organino”) of 1836, today located in the basilica of S. Maria di Campagna, in Piacenza, after being placed in 1859 in the Municipal Theatre in the same city. This unique instrument, originally “Organo da Sala in Casa Serassi”, is perfectly suited to the Toccatas, Sonatas and Follias from the great master from Palermo.

The program is a strong point straight off here; the Alessandro Scarlatti Missa Breve and the Stabat Mater by his son Domenico are both rich, fascinating works that progressively deconstruct the model of making music around two (or more) separate choirs, a century old by the time the Scarlattis took it up. The Stabat Mater is a really lovely work, but it's been hampered in the repertory but uncertainty over performance practice; it's not clear how many singers should be used, or how they should be deployed in solos and massed groups (if any). It is not really a double-choir work at all but a mass in 10 parts, with those subdivided into various groupings including five plus five.

In 2014, Bruce began a project together with Czech soprano Hana Blažíková to explore the affinity of the cornetto and the human voice. The project was called Breathtaking: A Cornetto and a Voice Entwined. With the program that evolved from that project, Bruce and Hana recorded a CD for the Passacaille label and toured the world performing the program more than forty times in North America, Europe and Australia. In order to make the touring financially viable, they have paired with backup ensembles in Europe, the USA and Australia.

To celebrate the 350 anniversary of the birth of Alessandro Scarlatti, Alexander Weimann continues his project of recording the complete keyboard works of this great Italian baroque composer. This oeuvre comprises some 30 toccatas and variations, the scores of which are conserved in the collections of European and American libraries. Some of these works have never been recorded before.

This album of Baroque cantatas and chamber duets grew out of a 2007 performance of Stefano Landi's 1631 opera Il Sant'Alessio starring Philippe Jaroussky and Max Emanuel Cencic (among the eight countertenors in the cast) with William Christie conducting Les Arts Florissants. Christie was so impressed with the blend of Jaroussky and Cencic's voices that he brought them together to explore the vast and rarely performed repertoire of late 17th and early 18th century Italian duets for equal voices.

Tafelmusik, Canada's orchestra on period instruments, was founded in 1979. Since the arrival of its Music Director and concertmaster Jeanne Lamon in 1981, Tafelmusik has achieved international recognition for its concerts and recordings. The ensemble has eighteen core members and is expanded as the need arises. All members of the orchestra are specialists in historical performance practice and perform on original instruments or modern replicas faithful in design and construction to the originals.

Right now the music of Alessandro Scarlatti is getting more attention than ever before, but musicians are still very selective in what they are performing. One part of Scarlatti's oeuvre that is widely neglected is his keyboard music. Alexander Weimann is not the first to pay attention to this genre: the Italian keyboard player and director of the Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini, devoted a disc to the genre. But Weimann is the first to plan to record it all. He writes in the booklet, "as a composer for the keyboard, Alessandro Scarlatti … deserves the same respect that we show for his vocal works."

The Ensemble Musica Antiqua is dedicated to performances of Renaissance and Baroque music on historical instruments. Christian Mendoze has performed with the most important early music specialists. He is a renowned recorder virtuoso and artistic director of the «Saison de Musique» at Convent Royal in Saint-Maximin.

The works presented on this dise are by the young Scarlatti, freshly appointed master of thé Chapel Royal in Naples (1684). Despite an occasional use of the da capo, the form is extremely free, more often obeying theatrical instinct than more musical convention. With the présence of ritornelli and with its declamatory recitatives reminiscent of Monteverdi and Legrenzi, the writing testifies to an evident relationship with the Venetian style. The mostly monosyllabic arias occasionally give way to vocalises not in any spirit of virtuosity, but in order to develop an expressive idea. The words here take centre stage ; the broad and dramatic melodie lines call to mind the reforms of Gluck as well as Italian verismo. Apparent here are signs ofan inspirational vein which reappears throughout musical history, complying with a cycle which oscillates between the stylish and the genuine.