The ‘Yiruma phenomenon’, which has seen hundreds of millions of album and track sales, stands on the foundations of the South Korean composer and pianist’s 20-year career, which includes film music and sell-out tours throughout Asia, Europe and the US. Performed by the award-winning virtuoso Giacomo Scinardo, this programme features pieces from a variety of Yiruma’s albums and soundtracks. These include the global hit River Flows in You, and capture the essence of a style that conveys peace and serenity to the listener, from a composer who has declared that he wants his music ‘to be the energy that makes people want to live a better life’.

Simon Boccanegra is set in 14th-century Genoa where Simon, formerly a dashing corsair, has become Doge. Though reunited with his long-lost daughter, the city becomes immersed in turmoil in a story rich in vengeance and the redemptive power of love. Verdi wrote the opera in 1857 but revised it in 1881 in association with Arrigo Boito, with whom he was to work on Otello. Verdi’s inclusion of a new scene set in the Great Council Chamber, was part of an approach that defines a completely new musical perspective, coherent with the language of the 1880s, and which ensured the opera’s belated triumph.

En mai 2008, William Christie revenait à ses premières amours avec cette production flamboyante de L’Orfeo de Monteverdi au Teatro Real de Madrid, dans une mise en scène de Pier Luigi Pizzi, premier élément du cycle complet de la trilogie monteverdienne qu’ils présentèrent sur la célèbre scène madrilène. À la tête de ses Arts Florissants avec la participation des Sacqueboutiers de Toulouse et de grandes voix solistes, William Christie déployait des trésors de timbres et de couleurs chatoyantes.

Der norditalienische Haudrauf oder besser römische „Orpheus“ Alessandro Stradella stellt musikalisch das Bindeglied zwischen Monteverdi und Scarlatti her. Trotz aller Arten von kriminellen Machenschaften, anrüchigen Liebesaffären, vereitelten Mordversuchen und einem unrühmlichen gewaltsamen Tod auf offener Straße fand Stradella genügend Zeit, um qualitätsvolle Musik zu schreiben, ja es gelang ihm, Geniestreiche an melodischer Invention und kühnen Studien eines klingenden „chiaroscuro“ zu hinterlassen. Die überirdisch schönen Concerti grossi von Arcangelo Corelli wären ohne Stradellas Experimentierstube undenkbar.

Sing the traditional structures of Neapolitan opera as a basis, in Lucio Silla Mozart gave life to a style that was very Advanced in both forms and ontents: the choruses, the great number accompanied recitatives, the arias that were not necessarily scored with the ”da capo” structure represent the opera’s main novelties alongside wholly unusual, bold harmonic and melodic features.The use of various forms of solo aria - and the consequent abandonment of the single ”da capo” model - confirms the composer’s wish to find the structures best suited to the expression of various different emotional states. ue.

Dynamic releases the Donizetti Opera’s production of “Lucrezia Borgia.” The acclaimed production from the 2019 festival features Carmela Remigio in the title role, Xabier Anduaga as Gennaro, Varduhi Abrahamyan as Orsini and Marko Mimica as Alfonso. Riccardo Frizza conducts the production which OperaWire said, “among the best all year.”

Trotz der vielen Skandale in seinem Leben stieg Alessandro Stradella zu einer bedeutenden Berühmtheit in Rom auf, wo seine Musik durchweg bejubelt wurde. In einer Zeit, in der die Oper vom Papsttum oft verunglimpft wurde, erwiesen sich Stradellas Kantaten und Serenaten als enorm erfolgreich, deren Form eine Abfolge von Rezitativen, Arien und Instrumentalstücken beinhaltet. Das Thema ist der Liebesschmerz, dem Stradella mit einer grenzenlosen Vielfalt an Ausdruck und Virtuosität begegnet, sei es in den Sopran-Echoeffekten von Arsi già di una fiamma, der nahezu opernhaften Weite von Or ch’alla dea notturna oder der strukturellen Perfektion von Infinite son le pene.

The curtain rises and we are…nowhere, but it’s very light and bright. Scenery and costumes are black, white, silver, and gold, and variations within those hues; there are many supernumeraries in white wearing long, conical hats (à la commedia dell’arte); an abstract 3-D backdrop represents brilliant shattered light–perhaps a golden/silver sunburst–that changes shape and color and is used by the opera’s characters to climb upon and peer out from; the costumes for the women, all the same, are lavish evening gowns and mammoth hats similar to those in Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits; video projections alter mood and space (huge, falling leaves of many colors; intangible shapes); and the river in Act 3 is suggested by billowing blue fabric, controlled by men on either side of the stage. In the opening scene the main character is carried in on an altar of white bottles, and the final scene has hints of a Black Sabbath and is peopled by nuns. Furthermore, the main character is thin. Can you guess the opera?

The 20th century was a century of anathemas and radical stances in favour of this or that style. The works of these four authors still speak of innocence, of confidence in the solidity of a world that can keep its balance. The grace of their emotions, in no way grandiose or clamorous, reflect Europe’s nostalgia, and it is for this reason that they summarise the history of 20th century “side alleys” music.The four works recorded here have in common the fact that they are on the margins of the beaten path, belonging to the “side alleys” of the history of music. As Stefan Zweig said, these works look at “yesterday’s world”. Their dates of composition are rather significant: 1900, when Pierné’s Sonata was written, was marked by great enthusiasm for Paris’s Universal Expo; in 1919, while a wounded Europe strained to bounce back, Karg-Elert returned from the war to resume his musical profession and wrote his Suite Pointillistique; in 1926, as a very young Pilati composed his Sonata per flauto e pianoforte, Fascism had already seized power and thick clouds were gathering on the horizon; 1985, finally, was the year of composition of Jean-Michel Damase’s Variations, in which he glimpses at the carefree Europe of an unspecified time, an idyllic time before the wars destroyed the faith in culture and its invulnerability.

Franco Alfano’s opera Risurrezione draws its inspiration from Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection and was the work that ensured Alfano’s considerable success as a composer. The plot narrates the story of Katiusha and her tragic love for prince Dimitri who seduces and abandons her, condemning her to a life of sacrifice and desperation. Seen here in Fancesco Lanzillotta’s acclaimed Florence production, Risurrezione recalls Richard Strauss and Puccini – the drama evolving in an uninterrupted flow with moments of soaring lyricism alongside striking and evocative orchestration. The work gives voice to an idea that Alfano left in his memoirs: ‘Recoiling from catastrophes, I believed and still believe in the renovation, regeneration, and final purification of human passions from evil to goodness.’

Benedetto Marcello was born in Venice in 1686 and died in Brescia in 1739. His vast musical output remains largely unexplored, but his most famous work is the Estro poetico-armonico a collection of 50 psalms, including 11 ancient Jewish songs (called Intonazioni) and two sacred hymns from Greek classicism. Marcello acknowledged the importance of Jewish and classical music heritage, and by blending these different styles he sought to underline their universal value.

Mauro DAlay was a virtuoso violinist and composer from Parma who acquired great fame and fortune throughout Europe. A contemporary of Vivaldi, who praised his musical skills, DAlay held official positions as a musician, first in Parmas Cathedral and then at the Spanish court of King Philip V, whose wife Elisabetta Farnese gifted DAlay the famous San Lorenzo Stradivarius in 1718, which he kept until his death. Now largely forgotten, this ambitious and dynamic composer wrote sonatas, cantatas and concertos. This album features the world premiere recording of his 12 Violin Concertos, Op. 1, published in 1725; they are composed in the Parmesan style, but with Venetian influences. Parma born violinist Luca Fanfoni recorded these concertos adhering to the instrumentation indicated in the score: principal violin, first violin, second violin, viola, cello and organ. Ensemble Reale Concerto (which counts Fanfonis wife and children among its members) recorded this album during lockdown in 2020.

L’Empio Punito is a dramma per musica in three acts composed by Alessandro Melani, on a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni, based on Filippo Acciaiuoli’s adaptation of El burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de piedra (1616) by Tirso da Molina. It was premiered in 1669 and this release features the first performance in modern times that took place at Teatro di Villa Torlonia in Rome in October 2019, 350 years after its debut. Acrimante, the male protagonist of l’Empio Punito, can be considered the first Don Giovanni in the history of opera. His seductive power brings chaos and pain in the lives of the other characters but a lot of energy as well. Although Melani was at the beginning of his career as an operatic composer – he wrote mainly sacred music – in L’empio punito he proves to be very skilful in alternating lyrical moments and pure recitative, and in introducing at the right moment dramatic recitatives that interrupt the course of the arias.

This collection of piano works is a journey through the music that represents the years spanning the end of the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s. It is a varied itinerary, marked by that typically Parisian ésprit nouveau that captured the most diverse influences: popular music, jazz, exoticism, quotes from popular tradition, songs, circus exhibitions. At that time in fact the divide between cultured and light music came down as new forms of entertainment blossomed, different from those proposed by the great institutions. Cradles of this change were the artistic cabarets, the cafés-concerts, the music halls, the tabarins, but also bistrots, taverns, bookshops, and all the places where intellectuals and artists met. This release offers an historical playlist imbued with the mood of that time, alternating the energy and joie de vivre with more melancholic moods. For the centrality of his figure and the originality of his works, the fruit of a constant process of renewal, Erik Satie is present here with six works which represent several stages in his amazing creative parabola. Dario Müller has performed in concert for important institutions and has collaborated with Dynamic since 1984.

At the age of 13 Beethoven was already hailed as the new Mozart and many of his early works, especially in the chamber music genre, were influenced by Mozart’s model, like the Three Quartets for Piano and Strings WoO 36, composed in 1785 and published posthumously in November 1828. These three chamber works are directly modeled on three of the six violin sonatas that Mozart published in 1781: KV 296, 379 and 380. One of young Beethoven’s patrons was Johann Gottfried Mastiaux , whose children played violin, viola, cello and the piano.