Carlo Francesco Cesarini was one of the most important Italian Baroque composers as well as a virtuoso violinist also known as Carlo del Violino. His six cantatas, receiving their first recording here, were regularly performed between 1700 and 1717. They are all taken from Manuscript 2248 of the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, a rich anthological collection assembled for Cardinal Pamphili, a major figure in Roman cultural life. These major rediscoveries are performed by soprano Stéphanie Varnerin accompanied by the ensemble L'Astrée led by Giorgio Tabacco.

Universally admired for his keyboard music, the vocal music of Domenico Scarlatti has until very recently been largely ignored. For many years, the opera Tolomeo e Alessandro was known only from a manuscript of Act I in a private collection in Milan. Recently the entire opera turned up in England and surprisingly revealed that Domenico was after all a very fine dramatic composer, perhaps even more appealingly so than his father Alessandro. It is tempting to think that Handel, whose Tolomeo uses the same libretto, may have known this setting by his old friend, 'Mimmo', and tried to outdo him in setting the same texts to music. He was not always successful.

In Rome between the late seventeenth century and the early eighteenth, academies and ‘conversazioni’ (artistic gatherings) organised by aristocrats and cardinals attracted the leading writers and musicians. The names of Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti and the young G. F. Handel stand out among many others. Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier (Rome, c.1660-1700), a cellist and composer known as ‘Giovanni del Violone’, participated in this intensive musical activity. […] When he entered the entourage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, in 1690, Lulier already had a decade of compositional activity behind him in the genres of oratorio, opera and above all the chamber cantata.

Emilio Arrieta (1821-1894), the first Spanish composer whose music was heard at the Royal Theatre (Ildegonda, in 1854), and the first to have it sung in Spanish (Marina, in 1871), is an essential figure in 19th-century musical Spain.

The collection presented in this recording by the voice of the mezzo-soprano Manuela Custer – accompanied by Raffaele Cortesi on the piano and the strings of the Dafne Quartet – offers us a series of valuable composers trying their hand at the genre of vocal chamber music. The common denominator of the compositions presented are the Dante Alighieri rhymes – certainly one of the greatest poets of all time – whose immortal verses inspired generations of artists over the centuries. Starting from the notes by Gioachino Rossini, the album then focuses on the historical period going from the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century, including, alongside famous names (Giacomo Puccini, Amilcare Ponchielli, Arrigo Boito, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco) a series of less known composers to the general public but of extraordinary importance for the understanding of this historical period.

Dorothee Oberlinger brought another musical treasure to light last year at the Potsdam Music Festival. "I Portentosi Effetti della madre Natura by Giuseppe Scarlatti had its premiere in the then brand-new Palace Theatre of the New Palace in Sanssouci - with resounding success. Some 250 years later, the work, which stylistically seems to have been written five minutes before Mozart, with a mix of great seria arias and rousing folk echoes, experienced its celebrated resurrection as a production of the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci with the Ensemble 1700 and singers under the artistic direction of Dorothee Oberlinger. The production accompanying the performances will now be released as a world premiere recording on 9 June as a co-production with Musikfestspiele Potsdam and rbb Kultur on the deutsche harmonia mundi label.

‘Hermann of the Cherusci’ and the Varus Battle found their way into the German founding myth a long time ago. Arminius, whose Teutons roundly defeated three of Varus’ legions, was already described as the ‘Liberator of Germania’ by Tacitus. In Handel’s Arminio, the liberation battle is only the background against which the characters come to terms with themes like honour, duty, obedience, love and freedom. Arminio premiered in the Covent Garden Theatre on January 12, 1737 but disappeared from the London stage after only six performances.

Donizetti's great tragedy is his undisputed masterpiece of melancholic romanticism, with the doomed love between Lucia and Edgardo retold from Sir Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor. The 1992 production heightens the story’s powerful libretto with its dramatic visual design and first class musical performances.

Mozart's affectionate quotation from Martín y Soler's Una cosa rara in the Don Giovanni dinner music suggests he admired his Spanish contemporary, whose music was praised by others as 'sweet' and 'graceful'. Such descriptions remain apt for a charming and brilliantly executed performance that's essential for anybody curious about late 18th-century opera beyond Mozart.

In his notes Colin Tilney says that the use of small rooms advocated by Caccini and his colleagues helped the audience to hear the words. Well, a recording heard in one's own music room represents a small enough space, but the listener to this disc will often find the printed texts invaluable; Julianne Baird seems to sacrifice some clarity to the beauty of her musical lines, the 'bel-ness' of her canto.

"Giro de Valzer per Domani" is the sophomore release by Arti & Mestieri. It is a transitional album since it has a couple of sung tracks (with Gianfranco Gaza filling the lead singer's role) that frontally announce the band's growing decision to pursue a musical direction a bit closer to mainstream-related jazz-rock, while still bearing a high predominance of complex jazz-prog. The fact is that this album is not intended to match or reiterate the valiant energy of their debut masterpiece "Tilt", but it is certainly more focused on enhancing the band's melodic terrain, augmenting the Mediterranean feel in a very noticeable way. The jazz core now strays a bit away from the Mahavishnu influence in favor of a stronger relatedness to the compatriot ensemble Perigeo…

A highly prolific composer, Giovanni Legrenzi practised his art in oratorios and other works for the church, as well as in opera and chamber music. In fact he explored all the musical genres of his period, taking over the baton handed on by Gabrieli and Monteverdi, and enjoying an enviable reputation among his contemporaries. Better known during his lifetime (1626-1690) for his operas rather than for his religious music, Legrenzi was widely admired and copied all over Europe.

During the later years of the seventeenth century in Italy the form of the solo cantata with basso continuo became popular. Extra voices with obbligato instruments were often added to the basic formula, but the alternating pattern of recitative and aria remained more or less constant. the majority of Handel's cantatas date from the first decade of the eighteenth century and, more specifically, to his period in Italy between 1706 and 1710. Three of those in the new issue belong to that period whilst the fourth, Mi palpita il cor, suggests Anthony Hicks—in its version for soprano, oboe and continuo—dates from Handel's first years in England. Only recently have two complete copies of Alpestre monte turned up and this performance is, I believe, the first commercially recorded one.