Proyecto Brunetti - Divertimenti - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The light and airy chamber-scaled divertimenti on this recording were composed in London in the early 1720s. They must have been among the first works with which Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747) sought to make an impression on the discerning audiences and business-minded entrepreneurs who, at the time, were instrumental to a music-rich environment that made the city one of the main centers of European culture. It is perhaps to the detriment of his posthumous reputation that Bononcini became known as Handel's direct rival for the favor of London's musical public the rivalry between the two men was even immortalized in a piece of satirical doggerel which popularized the English expression 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee'. In fact these divertimenti scored a popular success as soon as they were published; so much so that these harpsichord transcriptions were quickly produced - and then republished two decades later, when they appeared as Suites de Pièces pour le Clavecin, placing them in direct competition with the collection of works under the same name by Handel. The divertimenti are three- and four-movement works designed not to place any great strain upon the listener's attention the longest movement here lasts barely three minutes. Even the slow movements are simple arias, originally conceived with a high melody instrument in mind - violin or transverse flute - and conforming to a serene and courtly character. By and large, however, they are filled with lively, dance-like quick movements, cheerful in temperament even when the tonality is minor, as it is in half the divertimenti. This is the debut album on Brilliant Classics for the harpsichordist Giovanni Paganelli.

Beginning with a trace of uncontrollable laughter that shifts into the driving atmosphere and unfolding elation of opening track InchHint and Omens,Inch Continuous Portrait is an album of strange hypnosis, punctuated by songs that venture quite far from the respective oeuvres of Cooper and Smith. The spry, playful layers of InchCalicoInch bounce against a steady thrum of rhythms and samples from everyday noises, while the dancing lightness of InchOutlook for the FutureInch is met with a storm of emotional resonance. Both tracks emerge as distinctively different directions for Inventions, and it is that very sense of exploration, pleasure, and ceremonial melancholia which informs the entire album from front to back. Inventions has always been the product of two friends who find comfort and inspiration in the genuine surprise of creating and combining sounds. Continuous Portrait whirls and hums like Cooper and Smith want us to invoke our inner playfulness and welcome a greater joy into our lives, if only for a moment. The result is a portrait that continuously embraces the completely foreign and familiar, and evolves with each successive listen.

This album features two compositionsby Jean Sibelius from differentmoments in the Finnish musician's life.The Impromptu Op.5 for stringensemble is an early work from 1894, inwhich Sibelius uses some thematicmaterials from his solo pianoimpromptus Nos. 5 and 6 from the Op.5set. The Romance in C Op.42 (1903) wascomposed during a difficult phase in thecomposer's life caused by excessivealcohol consumption, which promptedhim to leave Helsinki and move with hiswife near to Lake Tuusula, where hecould dedicate himself to compositionfar from the temptations of the Finnishcapital. The piece is divided into shortsections in which the melodic ideasarise from fragments of the octatonic,or diminished, scale of alternatingwhole and half steps supported bydissonant harmonies that add furthertonal instability.Samuel Barber's typically inspiredmelodic vein emerges from the verybeginning in his Serenade Op.1 for StringQuartet or String Orchestra, dating from 1928.Featuring chromaticism's and dissonantpassages, a duality is established between afirst, rhythmic and impetuous thematic ideaand a lyrical melody. The final movementbrings greater serenity and joy through thechoice of a major mode and the adoption of agraceful and leaping theme whose fragmentspass in counterpoint between one voice andanother.When Benjamin Britten composed his SimpleSymphony Op.4 he was just 20 years old, andhe describes the idea in an introduction to thescore 'This InchSimple SymphonyInch is entirelybased on material from works which thecomposer wrote between the ages of nineand twelve [.]. Although the development ofthese themes is in many places quite new,there are large stretches of the work whichare taken bodily from the early pieces - savefor the re-scoring for strings'. In effect, Brittenextrapolates eight themes from his juvenilecompositional production, associates two ofthem with each movement and cr