Andrea Bacchetti follows his album of sonatas by Baldassarre Galuppi with another little-performed 18th century Venetian, Benedetto Marcello, whose work has a surprisingly modern character. The "Sonata III", for instance, opens with a sequence in which the right hand plays the same note 48 times in rapid succession, while the left cycles quadruplets around it – the kind of gambit you'd expect from a Cage or Feldman, but hardly from a contemporary of Vivaldi. Marcello is said to have once fallen into a grave that opened beneath him, a trauma perhaps responsible for the austere, near-spiritual logic of pieces such as the "Sonata V", where the absence of frills prefigures the enigmatic miniatures of Erik Satie.

Modern day recognition of the music of Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) has been totally eclipsed by the music of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). If one looks back at Marcello's popularity in the first half of the 18th century in Venetian Music, you will find that he was considered to be one of the musical glories of Italy on a par with Palestrina and Pergolesi, and was referred to as the 'Noble Venetian'. He was admired for his skillful counterpoint, his masterly attention to the words of the text he set and the noble simplicity of his melodies. All of these attributes are present in this lovely and entertaining Requiem.

Philippe Jaroussky brings his musical and dramatic powers to a programme of music from Italian oratorios of the baroque era, including five arias in world premiere recordings. La vanità del mondo, takes it's name from an oratorio by Pietro Torri and among the other composers are Händel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Hasse, Fago and Caldara. "I think composers of this period often give of their best when setting the great stories of the Old Testament," says Jaroussky. "And if oratorio stories are more static than opera, they allow for deeper reflection on the place of mankind in the universe. I think that resonates with particular intensity in 2020, a year of pandemic."

Any recording of an opera by Benedetto Marcello will, for many, bring to mind his literary satire, IL TEATRO ALLA MODA, subtitled "a safe and easy method of properly composing and producing Italian operas according to modern practice." Within its pages, no one involved in the creation of opera-librettist, composer, singers, impresario-is spared. In one passage, the composer is admonished to "oblige the impresario to provide a great number of violins, oboes, horns, etc., preferring to let him economize on double basses, for these should not be used except in the preliminary tuning."

Countertenor Andreas Scholl's new CD is devoted to little-known, late-17th- and early-18th-century cantatas whose subject matter is Arcadia, a real region in Greece, but more frequently evoked as an idyllic place filled with innocent, simple shepherds and shepherdesses. Scholl employs a more operatic tone and attitude than we're accustomed to from countertenors. Not only does he use vibrato and "lean" on the voice, but he dips down, as in the final moments of a cantata by Marcello, into a deep, dark baritone range. The effect is dramatic and apt. Elsewhere his tone is just gorgeous and always expressive, he pays attention to the text of these works and captures the theatrical moment in each. The last movement of a work by Francesco Gasparini is excitingly acrobatic.

The lament became a current and important feature of Italian Baroque monody, with its rhetorical and therefore dramatic connotations, generally set over a four-note descending bass line. The best known, though not the earliest, of these laments is probably Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna, a later version of which, with a sacred Latin text, was included in the composer's Selva morale e spirituale, published in Venice in 1641. In 1607 Monteverdi had provided the music for a favola in musica performed at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua, where the composer was maestro di cappella. Orfeo, with a libretto by Alessandro striggio, has a literary source in the Metamorphoses of Ovid. The success of Orfeo led to the creation of a new dramatic work, a tragedy in musica, in 1608, a deliberate attempt, as the pastoral Orfeo was not, to create a work that would in some way revive ancient Greek tragedy.

Before the early 20th century, any list of significant Western composers would have included Benedetto Marcello. Through his advocacy of a return to the proportional values and simplicity of ancient Roman civilization, he helped set the stage for the Classical era in Western music, soon to unseat the aesthetic norms of the Baroque in which he lived.

The Venetian poet Antonio Conti received from Marcello the commission for a dramatic text that allows a quick succession of events, rather than the usual succession of recitative and arias.
Cassandra plunges us into Homer’s Trojan War, with its namesake prophetess who has the gift of predicting the future, but whom no one believes. The many [25] extant copies of this cantata, here given its world première recording, testify to the impact it had in its own time.

The epitome of a Renaissance man, Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) won success and acclaim as a poet, writer, musician, lawyer, judge, administrator and philologist. Though his keyboard sonatas have appeared on several recorded collections of the Italian Baroque, they have rarely been presented in a comprehensive manner. In doing so, this album celebrates the personal even idiosyncratic style of a composer whose technical accomplishment facilitates rather than stifling his creative voice. The 12 Sonatas were later published as Op.3. They date from early in Marcellos career, and are mostly cast in three and four brief movements, though the first and last of them, in D minor and C minor respectively, feature more extended forms.

Among the most exciting classical musicians of our time, Alison Balsom was first inspired by Dizzy Gillespie to become a virtuosic trumpet soloist. 'I've spent my whole life trying to show how versatile the trumpet can be,' she says. 'It's only limited by your imagination.' In this selection from her award-winning albums, she plays gems from the Baroque repertoire on both natural and valved instruments.

Trumpet Star, Alison Balsom, Transforms The Traditional Italian Baroque Concerto In This New EMI Classics Release Following the popular and critical international success of her Haydn and Hummel concertos recording, Alison Balsom has recorded a program of Italian Baroque concertos. In this new recording, Balsom, plays various popular concertos originally composed for the violin or oboe by Vivaldi, Tartini, B. Marcello, Albinoni and Cimarosa, accompanied by the Scottish Ensemble. This collection provides an apt vehicle for the award-winning trumpeter's characteristic brilliance and grace.Alison Balsom, an exclusive EMI Classics recording artist, studied trumpet at the Guildhall School of Music, the Paris Conservatoire, and with Håkan Hardenberger.

Music is the very soul of Venice. In every square, street, and canal, singing is to be heard, wrote Goldoni. Musical dilettantes were non-professionals who played for their own pleasure and enjoyment, to entertain themselves. This programme is devoted to a number of composers who, without being professionals, left their own very personal mark on the history of music. After Bad Guys , his first album for Aparté (2013), Xavier Sabata presents I Dilettanti , accompanied by the lively ensemble Latinitas Nostras. This recording, made in the singer s native Spain, bears witness to the sincere friendship between these artists, brought together by a passion for music, and to their dilettante spirit.

Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená hasn't often sung Baroque music. Thus, it is all the more impressive that when she does, she devises really innovative programs with unusual music. Her enthusiasm for the project may be gauged by her comment here: "I could hardly imagine more passionate, savage, uninhibited yet loving and caressing companions for these desperate heroines than Vaclav Luks and the musicians of Collegium 1704." She's right about the musicians, yet the real spotlight is on Kožená herself. The program consists of secular cantatas from the first half of the 18th century; this genre has been neglected amidst the general rediscovery of Baroque opera.

“Indisputably the most consummate artist in the history of the classical trumpet,” was how Gramophone described Maurice André, a musician characterised by both brilliance and refinement. These six CDs, which give pride of place to music from the 18th and 20th centuries, complement some of the most popular concertos ever written for trumpet with an enticing and fascinating selection of rarely-heard works.

Franz Szabo schrieb über diese Aufführung: »… Was Christoph Hammer und seine ›Neue Hofkapelle München‹ am Abend des Pfingstsonntags […] im Kolomanisaal darbrachten, kann man schlichtwegs nur als sensationell bezeichnen. Benedotto Marcellos Oratorium ›Joaz‹ bescherte zweieinhalb Stunden hochdramatischer, intelligenter, spannender und differenzierter Barockmusik, deren Schönheit alle Anwesenden restlos in ihren Bann schlug. […] Der österreichische Tenor Daniel Johannsen überzeugte als stimmprächtiger und wortdeutlicher böser Berater mit aufflackernd schlechtem Gewissen. […] Kaum zu glauben und ein weiterer Beweis für die höchste Qualität dieses Ensembles, daß die Künstler nur wenige Tage an der Erprobung des Stückes arbeiten konnten. […] Beruhigend zu wissen, dass dieses Oratorium zum oftmaligen Nachhören vom ORF aufgenommen wurde.«