Alberto Mesirca - Complete Guitar Music - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The 'living Baroque' idiom of Federico Maria Sardelli has been extensively documented on Brilliant Classics, with albums of concertos (BC94749), cantatas (BC95068) and harpsichord music (BC95488) that have advanced the reputation of this modern composer and scholar and won international attention, with 5-star reviews in Diapason and elsewhere. Now Sardelli turns his imagination to the genre of the trio sonata that exemplified chamber music-making in the Baroque era. The collection of six presented here divides into two sub-genres, of the church sonatas (Nos. 2, 4, 5) and chamber sonata (Nos. 1, 3, 6) which would have been heard in a domestic, albeit aristocratically appointed, context. Sardelli makes passing and subtle allusions to poignant melancholy (in the Larghetto of the First Sonata), to an infernal rhythmic impulse (the second movement of the Fifth), to more profound meditations on mortality (such as the Adagio without bass of the Third), and even to declarations of love (the opening of the Sixth) - though the subject of Sardelli's affection is surely Vivaldi himself. According to the composer, this is not Baroque pastiche. Rather, as a noted scholar of Vivaldi, he seeks to recreate such music in his own image with music of the present which 'regains it's own original language and adheres to it's own original criteria, expressing vibrant new ideas that are in keeping with it's identity.' It would be quite possible to think that the trio sonatas here had been written with a goose quill in 17th-century Venice, but they are by no means dry exercises in imitation. Rather they are full of an authentically Venetian vibrancy and color from any age, sparkling with a variety of knowing brilliance that belongs to the temperamental character of the city. The performances here are given by musicians who have long worked with Sardelli in his Modo Antiquo ensemble which has

Backstabbin,' a rare slice of electronic hip-hop from Eddie InchD,Inch originally released on the legendary Philly World tag in 1985, takes the Ojay's hit tune and does a complete overhaul. This rare single, which contains four original mixes that has been highly sought after by DJs and rare groove fans alike, is finally available in the digital domnain. Newly remastered.

Sylvano Bussotti (1931-2021) counts among the most original and underappreciated composers working in the second half of the last century. He became famous - notorious - in the 1960s for 'graphic' scores which required considerable realization on the part of the performer. His early work, however, is invested with a rhythmic regularity, a clarity of phrase structure and a lyricism reminiscent of Luigi Dallapiccola. Pierre Boulez saw Bussotti as an anachronism when they met and (in the composer's recollection 'completely rejected everything that I had written so far, compositions in his view largely influenced by that lyrical mediterranean dodecaphonic style which he particularly detested.' In retrospect Bussotti's music takes it's place alongside that of his elder Italian contemporary Bruno Maderna as a oblique and distinctively Italian, discursive and colourful view over the variegated and sometimes alienated landscape of postwar serialism. Beyond The Rara Requiem, recorded by Sinopoli for DG, most of Bussotti's large-scale projects such as a 'Passion according to Sade' have so far failed to find a place in the record catalogues, where he is mostly represented by various pieces with or for the flute. However, Bussotti also wrote prominently for the guitar throughout his career. This new album from Alberto Mesirca is the most complete survey yet recorded, beginning with Ermafrodito (1999), a 'mythological fantasy' for guitar which evokes a magical ballet with a body that gradually emerges in the background and takes over the scene. Bussotti's other substantial work for guitar is Ultima rara (Pop Song), which from the beginning undermines the promised concept of 'last things' with a teasing textual commentary (spoken here by Luca Scarlini) and a playful use of the kind of refrain which extends pop songs beyond the organic life of their material.