Mazzone / Ensemble Le Vaghe Ninfe - MAZZONE: IL PRIMO LIBRO DELLE CANZONI A QUATTRO - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

With his Canzoni, Frescobaldi affirmed the genre, rather than renewing it, but brought it to it's peak. For this recording, Les Basses Réunies reconstructed a consort of low-pitched members of the violin family, which are joined by the smooth sound of the cornett and a sumptuous continuo section. After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue, Pink and White collections (a total of sixty reissues) which gave a new lease of life to the pearls of the Baroque catalogues from our house labels, here are fourteen new titles which offer a chance to discover other treasures, whether Baroque or dating from an earlier or later era. Like the most recent series, this sixth instalment opens out onto the Classical repertory (Mozart by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini) and the Renaissance (Févin by Doulce Mémoire and Denis Raisin Dadre); recordings that are an integral part of Alpha's identity and history. Fourteen reissues performed by the leading musicians in the field, most of which received one or more awards on their original . Proper booklets accompany the discs, with notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from all over the world have been selected to illustrate the covers, this time with the guiding thread of the color green, a symbol of nature, fertility... and hope!

Albanese / Gentile / Trovarelli - Romanze / Liriche E Canzoni [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/01/1996

Works attributable with certainty to Nicolò Corradini (1585-1646) - likely from Cremona as opposed to Bergamo or Rome as erroneously suggested in the past - are limited to a few printed editions, among them the Primo libro de Canzoni francesi a 4 e alcune suonate (a copy of which has come down to us, printed by Gardano in Venice in 1624). It includes ten French canzonas and four sonatas, works most likely conceived to be performed by several instrumentalists, including one or more possible continuists (because of the speed of some passages and the separation between different parts of often more than an octave). The canzonas are divided into several sections with structures ranging from simple A-B-A to more complex schemes (A-B-C-A-B-D in the Eighth Canzon); these short musical frameworks offer within them a great variety of themes, imitation between parts and repetitions of sections, ensuring cohesiveness of form. The sonatas on the other hand - with the exception of the Suonata a tre (a simple A-B-C-D-A) - are presented in a more madrigalistic vein. The narrative pathway on which they are based passes through multiple melodic cues so completely different from one another as to suggest a rhetorical structure arching from an exordium to a final peroration. This leads to a proliferation of sections - A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I in the case of the Suonata a due cornetti in risposta. (The specification for two cornets Inchin call and responseInch contained in the title of this sonata corresponds to the numerous segments of this piece in which the same melody is first proposed by one performer and then repeated by the other.)