Moricone / Cecilia / Rollastri - Cinema Per Archi - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

With Lux laetitiae, La Reverdie continues it's discographical journey after the success of it's most recent production devoted to Francesco Landini from the Florence of the great blind composer of the fourteenth century, to the splendor of the Este court in fifteenth-century Ferrara! The program presents twelve pieces from an important codex that belonged to the court, in which fashionable composers such as Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple tried their hand at the motet genre. The performances combine six voices with a rich array of instruments and aim to reproduce the resplendent sound of the Este cappella at the time of Lionello and Borso, passionate patrons who attracted to Ferrara many talented artists charged with adorning the court with art, beauty and harmony. An exploration of the prolific tradition of the Marian cult which, from the twelfth century onwards, was manifested in an extraordinary wealth of musical forms and which, in the fifteenth century, resulted in grandiose compositions that can still captivate us today with their complexity and fascination.

The Arcana tag continues it's fruitful collaboration with the Archi di Santa Cecilia, the Rome-based ensemble formed from members of the famous Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The ensemble is conducted by Luigi Piovano, the orchestra's principal cellist and since 2007 a regular partner in a cello-piano duo with Sir Antonio Pappano, it's chief conductor (their recording of the Brahms cello sonatas will be released later this year). The Archi di Santa Cecilia now offer us a brand new recording devoted to Mozart the famous Serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik K525 and the less familiar but equally brilliant Divertimenti K136, K137 and K138. The combination of such luminous music and the virtuoso skill of the players is bound to elicit enormous enthusiasm. Their previous recording of the Tchaikovsky and Dvorák Serenades met with outstanding acclaim, leading Janos Gardonyi in the Canadian magazine The Whole Note to describe the relationship between Piovano and his group in the following terms 'I imagine the orchestra moves with him and his every gesture. A tremendous rapport, like hypnosis, that only a Gergiev, Ozawa, Solti or the great Karajan could muster.'

Il violoncello di Corelli leads us to the origins of the solo cello literature - although one should actually use the term violone. In fact, the cello, as we know it today in it's standard form, had many different sizes before it's current proportions became generally established. Some instruments were larger, and the smaller ones were referred to by the diminutive form of the term violone - hence the word violoncello. And one of these early 'bigger brothers' is the main protagonist of this recording the instrument played by Alessandro Palmeri was built by Simone Cimapane in Rome in 1685. It is a rare testimony to the original size of the violone. It is furthermore a unique instrument because it was used in ensembles in Rome in which Corelli himself played. Alessandro Palmeri presents a compilation of works from the early solo literature for cello by composers such as Domenico Gabrielli, Giuseppe Pietro Gaetano Boni, Giuseppe Colombi and Giovanni Battista Vitali. The extraordinarily prolific period, both artistically and musically, which prevailed in Emilia Romagna throughout the 17th century, provided the conditions for the creation and development of the cello literature. The works on this recording mark the transition from the epoch of the violone to the epoch of the violoncello. With them, the cello was ultimately freed from the continuo role to which it had previously been limited.