Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was one of the more colorful characters among Italian Renaissance composers. He wrote unusual and highly emotional music, and he was a murderer. This podcast looks at both his personal life (sometimes gruesome) as well as his music. Music by Gesualdo’s fellow composers Pomponio Nenna and Luzzasco Luzzaschi is also included. The featured artists in this podcast, and on the CD are Concerto Italiano conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini.
Garnering two nominations this year, the Naxos world premiere recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man picked up a Best Classical Contemporary Composition nomination for the Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy®, and Grawemeyer award-winning composer. The album, which features conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic, also brought in a nomination for the recording’s soloist, Israeli-born soprano Hila Plitmann, who received a nomination for Best Classical Vocal Performance.
The Pacifica Quartet, recently named 2009 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America, was honored with a nomination for Best Chamber Music Performance for its acclaimed Naxos recording of Elliott Carter String Quartets Nos. 1 & 5. The second volume of this series is due for release in February 2009. Renowned producer Judith Sherman picked up a nomination for Producer of the Year for her work on the Carter String Quartets on Naxos and 4 additional albums.
A Choral Performance nomination went to chorus master Henryk Wojnarowski and conductor Antoni Wit for the Naxos recording of Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater with the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. A Best Engineered Album (Classical) nomination went to engineer John Newton for his work on the Naxos recording Respighi: Church Windows, Brazilian Impressions, Rossiniana, which featured conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
NAXOS OF AMERICA DISTRIBUTED LABEL ARTISTS NOMINATED FOR GRAMMYS®
Artists from British-based label Chandos received 5 nominations in multiple categories this year. Spotless Rose: Hymns to the Virgin Mary featuring the Phoenix Chorale, conductor Charles Bruffy, and produced by Blanton Alspaugh, was nominated for Best Classical Album (Awards to Artists and Producer). Additionally, Mr. Bruffy and the Phoenix Chorale were nominated in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category for this recording. Another Chandos choral recording, Rheinberger: Sacred Choral Works, conductor Charles Bruffy (with the Kansas City Chorale and Phoenix Bach Choir) earned nominations for Best Surround Sound Album and Best Choral Performance. Finally, a Best Orchestral Performance nomination went to conductor Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra for their Chandos recording D’Indy Orchestral Works, Volume 1.
A EuroArts production earned two nominations in the categories of Best Classical Album (Award to Artists and Producers) and Best Opera Recording (Award to Conductor, Producer, and Principal Soloists) for their DVD recording of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of The City of Mahagonny. The performance featured conductor James Conlon, soloists Anthony Dean Griffey, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald; the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus; and was produced by Fred Vogler. This is the first Grammy® Awards in which DVD recordings of operas are eligible for nomination. Only the audio portion of the DVD is considered in the nominating process.
Also in the category of Best Opera Recording nominations went to conductors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs for their CPO recording of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Psyché with the Boston Early Music Festival (Mr. O’Dette and Mr. Stubbs also were nominated last year for their CPO recording of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Thésée with the Boston Early Music Festival).
Renowned Italian conductor and Baroque-specialist, Rinaldo Alessandrini was nominated for his Naïve classique recording of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo.
Finally, violinist Elmar Oliveira earned a nomination for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his Artek recording of Violin Concertos by Ernst Bloch and Benjamin Lees with John McLaughlin Williams conducting the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine.
Among the most successful and prolific artists on the naïve label, Rinaldo Alessandrini and his dynamic period-instrument ensemble Concerto Italiano take an exciting turn from their exploration of the Italian Baroque with a new release dedicated to a virtually forgotten but compelling Czech composer, Frantisek Ignác Antonín Tuma. Tuma was born in Bohemia in 1704 and died in Vienna in 1774. According to Wikipedia, which calls him “an important late-Baroque composer, organist, gambist, and theorist,” the composer “lived the greater part of his life in Vienna, first as director of music for Count Franz Ferdinand Kinsky [and] later filling a similar office for the widow of Emperor Karl VI.”Wikipedia also explains, “His sacred works, which were known to Haydn and Mozart, were noted by his contemporaries for their solidity of texture and their sensitive treatment of the text as well as for their chromaticism.” The new recording, however, focuses on a selection of vivid orchestral works - partitas, sinfonias, and sonatas - that convey the intimate spirit of chamber music.
Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano will make their debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York City in August, with two enticing Baroque programs at the Rose Theater. The first (August 4) focuses on sacred music by Melani (Litanie per la Beata Vergine Maria for nine voices and basso continuo), Scarlatti (Messa per il Santissimo Natale), and Pergolesi (Missa Romana, “di S. Emidio”). Pergolesi’s Missa Romana and Scarlatti’s Messa per il Santissimo Natale (Christmas masses) have been recorded for future release on the label, and an album of Melani motets is scheduled for recording as well. The second program (August 5) features a selection of eight Vivaldi concertos for various instruments, some of which have been recorded by Alessandrini for naïve (the ensemble’s rendering of Vivaldi’s ever-popular Four Seasons, named Gramophone CD of the Month soon after its release, is the single recommended version of the work listed in the new book 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die). Alessandrini and the ensemble were heard most recently on naïve in a 400th-anniversary recording of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. ClassicsToday.com called the album a “must-have for Monteverdi fans,” giving it the website’s highest possible rating: ten out of ten for both artistic quality and sound quality.
naïve adds another dynamic young artist to its roster with a new recording by 27-year-old French pianist Bertrand Chamayou. For his debut release, Chamayou focuses exclusively on keyboard works by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), one of his favorite composers, including some transcriptions of Mendelssohn works by Liszt and Rachmaninov (track list follows).
Chamayou explains his choice of composer and his approach to programming the album:
I’ve always been extremely fond of Mendelssohn, whose compositions aren’t played all that often. He’s the least well-known of the great composers, he’s relatively popular, but you also realize that a lot of musicians don’t know the majority of his works, especially his piano pieces. The idea of putting together a program like a poetry anthology began to take shape little by little, inspired by the Songs without Words, which are like German lieder. I wanted the program to be like a lieder recital, and chose a number of short pieces that, although brief, tell very dense little stories.
Bertrand Chamayou has been praised for his stage charisma, his highly-refined sonority, his stunning technical skills, and his unquenchable thirst for discovery. As Diapason has observed, his playing reveals a rare “emotional density and poetic imagination.”
In 2006, Chamayou was named “Revelation of the Year” at “Victoire de la Musique,” France’s annual classical music awards. At 20, Bertrand was a prizewinner at the prestigious Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud International Competition, since when he has been invited to play recitals at renowned festivals and concert venues around the world. Born in 1981, Chamayou was very soon discovered by international pianist Jean-François Heisser, who was later to become his professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Chamayou completed his training with Maria Curcio in London and has received invaluable advice from such great masters as Leon Fleisher, Dimitri Bashkirov, and Murray Perahia.
Besides giving recitals, Chamayou has played as a soloist with some of the best French national orchestras (Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse) and other prestigious European orchestras (Collegium Instrumentale Brugense, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Sinfonia Varsovia) and with such renowned maestros as Michel Plasson, Lawrence Foster, and Yutaka Sado. He regularly performs chamber music with musicians including Augustin Dumay, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, the Ebène Quartet, the Belcea Quartet, Sol Gabetta, Antoine Tamestit, Daishin Kashimoto, Jing Zhao, Xavier Phillips, Henri Demarquette, François Salque, and Eric Le Sage.
Chamayou’s live recording of the complete cycle of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, a 2006 release from Sony Classical, was enthusiastically received.
With “Con Passione”, his new album for naïve’s sister label, ambroisie, the exciting young Belgian violinist Yossif Ivanov lets the sparks fly in a virtuoso program of waltzes, variations, and fantasies with pianist Itamar Golan. Ivanov’s program pays tribute, ultimately, to the legacy of Paganini, whose technical brilliance and musical showmanship with the violin revolutionized the instrument (a full track list follows below). As the album’s liner notes point out:If Paganini eclipsed all the other violinists of his day, he also created a tremendous phenomenon of emulation whose legacy would be confirmed after his death by such figures as Ernst, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Sarasate, and Ysaÿe. The violin owes him its prestige as an instrument, for without him its repertoire would probably never have known the same abundance or the same development. The boldest compositions showcasing such flamboyant violinistic virtuosity appeared in the second half of the 19th century. Their composers, mostly violinists themselves, displayed boundless imagination, not hesitating to use themes from the most celebrated operas to attract an ever-increasing audience and to show off their paces, with their double talents as composers and instrumentalists allowing them to reconcile high technical demands with expressive style. Quite apart from the volume of works specifically written for the instrument, illustrious arrangers like Kreisler or Heifetz (to name the two most famous and prolific), Hartmann, Kochanski, Tzïganov, Francescatti, Szigeti, and many others substantially expanded their repertory by adapting for the violin hundreds of pieces initially intended for the voice, the piano, or even the orchestra. All the pieces selected for this recital by the young Yossif Ivanov belong to this Paganinian legacy.
Born in Antwerp in 1986, Yossif Ivanov won the First Grand Prix at the Montreal International Music Competition (2003) and Second (Eugène Ysaÿe) Prize and Audience Prize at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Belgium (2005). In January 2006, he received the Midem Classical Award for “Outstanding Young Artist.”
He was named “Rising Star” by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for the 2005-06 season, appearing at such notable venues as Carnegie Hall in New York, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Vienna Musikverein, and the Cité de la Musique in Paris. In addition to his busy concert schedule in Benelux, he also plays elsewhere in Europe, and in the United States and Canada.
Yossif Ivanov made his London debut in April 2007 at the invitation of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Marin Alsop. He performs as a soloist with the leading orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Katowice Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre national de Lille, the Orquestra Nacional do Porto, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. This enables him to collaborate with today’s foremost conductors, among them Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Yoav Talmi, Jaap van Zweden, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Damian Iorio, David Stern, Pierre Bartholomée, Louis Langrée, and Paul Goodwin. In recitals, Ivanov is accompanied on the piano by Itamar Golan, Frank Braley, Daniel Blumenthal, and Luc Devos.
Jean-François Zygel’s fame in his native France stems from his gifts as music popularizer and educator; his TV show, La Boite à Musique, is watched regularly by more than one million viewers and his Leçons de Musique DVD has become a bestseller for naïve. Beyond these gifts, Zygel is a remarkable improviser, as can be heard on Improvisations, his new album for the label. He has performed improvisation concerts all over France for many years, as well as improvisation duels with the jazz pianist Gonzales. He also improvises regularly to accompany silent films and for radio stations.Zygel is joined on his new album by Philippe Berrod on clarinet, Thomas Bloch on glass harmonica, and Jean Boucault and Johnny Rasse providing bird songs.
Olivier Messiaen
Various artists including Yvonne Loriod, Reinbert de Leeuw,
Pierre Boulez, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain
“I speak of faith to atheists, I speak of birds to people who never got up at four in the morning to listen to the awakening of birds, I put colors in my music but people don’t see them, I am a rythmician but most people confound rhythm with the cadences of a military march.”
- Olivier Messiaen
On the occasion of the great French composer’s centenary, naïve is proud to release a six-CD Messiaen boxed-set, featuring seven of his incomparable masterpieces performed by many of his most celebrated interpreters, including conductors Reinbert de Leeuw and Pierre Boulez, and pianist Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen’s second wife. The featured recordings were previously issued on the Montaigne label, and are newly-available here in this set, at a special price.
Olivier Messiaen (December 10, 1908 - April 27, 1992) was one of the most startlingly original composers of the 20th Century. An ornithologist with a profound love of bird-song (he called birds “the earth’s first musicians”), he was also an organist - and devout Catholic - who, since his appointment there in 1931, played the great instrument virtually every Sunday at the Church of La Trinité in Paris. Messiaen revered and celebrated nature, love, and the divine in works of kaleidoscopic color, bounding rhythms, and vast dynamic range.
Among the highlights of the set is a live recording of Messiaen’s 80th-birthday concert, conducted by Pierre Boulez at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris on November 26, 1988. The concert featured Yvonne Loriod as soloist in the world-premiere performance of Messiaen’s Un vitrail et des oiseuax (”Stained-glass window and birds”) - and two of Messiaen’s grandest orchestral scores: La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ and Des canyons aux étoiles… (”From the Canyons to the stars…”). “Canyons” was commissioned by Alice Tully in celebration of America’s Bicentennial and was first performed in 1974. The work was inspired by the great canyons of Utah, particularly the blazing red rocks of Bryce Canyon, which Messiaen visited in 1972, and, more than any other of his scores, it demonstrates his deep devotion to nature. As Messiaen once observed, “Nature has retained a purity, an exuberance, a freshness we have lost. I have an absolute horror of cities, a horror of all the bad taste man has accumulated around him. Nature never displays anything in bad taste; you’ll never find a mistake in lighting or coloration or, in bird songs, an error in rhythm, melody, or counterpoint.”
CDs 1 & 2
La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ
Yvonne Loriod, piano
Arturo Muruzabal, cello
Martine van der Loo, flute
Harmen de Boer, clarinet
Peter Prommel, marimba
Ruud Stoÿen, vibraphone
Henk de Vlieger, xylorimba
Ludwig van Gijsegem, tenor
Reiner Holthaus, baritone
Choir of the BRT, Brussels
Netherlands Radio Choir & Radio Symfonie Orkest Hiversum / Reinbert de Leeuw
CD 3
Visions de l’Amen
Maarten Bon and Reinbert de Leeuw, pianos
CD 4
Sept Haïkaï; Couleurs de la cité céleste
Un vitrail et des oiseaux; Oiseaux exotiques
Yvonne Loriod, piano
Ensemble Intercontemporain / Pierre Boulez
CDs 5 & 6
Des canyons aux étoiles…
Marja Bon, piano
Hans Dullaert, cor anglais
Ger de Zeeuw, xylorimba
Wim Vos, glockenspiel
Asko Ensemble, Schönberg Ensemble, and Slagwerkgroep Den Haag / Reinbert de Leeuw
“In performance, [Beethoven's ‘Hammerklavier'] often sounds just as hard as it is. But not on the new recording by François-Frédéric Guy. This 37-year-old French pianist captures the audaciousness and wild flights of the score and plays brilliantly. Yet there is remarkable clarity and poise in his performance. Textures are clear; every note speaks; no detail is fudged.”
- New York Times
With the release of Beethoven’s exuberant Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 and magisterial Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, “Emperor,” the remarkable French pianist François-Frédéric Guy and the young Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan launch their recorded cycle of Beethoven’s five piano concertos with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, for naïve.
The album is a milestone for Guy, who has embarked on an important phase in his career by playing all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and concertos around the world. His credentials as a major interpreter of Beethoven’s music have already been displayed in two widely-acclaimed recordings for naïve. The first disc featured sonatas for cello and piano, which he recorded with Anne Gastinel and to which ClassicsToday.com gave its highest rating: ten out of ten for artistic quality and sound quality. The second featured three solo piano sonatas: No. 8, Op. 13, “Pathétique”; No. 19, Op. 49, no. 1; and No. 29, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier.” BBC Radio 3’s CD Review named Guy’s “Hammerklavier” the best version currently available, as does the new book 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die. London’s Times had this to say about the disc:
Guy plays Beethoven like an old friend. His touch is assured and familiar, yet not afraid to step outside formulaic convention. The “Pathétique” has an introspective quality as if Guy were confiding simple truths. His account of the “Hammerklavier” is naturally more robust. The opening and adagio sostenuto exude confidence, while the dazzling scherzo shows off his extraordinarily virtuosic abilities. His subsequent embrace of Op. 49, no. 1 has an almost impertinent familiarity, cheekiest in the throwaway brilliance of the rondo allegro.
The next Guy/Jordan Beethoven recording, due for release in the fall, will feature the Concerto No. 4. London’s Independent reviewed Guy’s performance of the work at the Edinburgh Festival and observed that, “Full of youthful fire, and a touch impatient with it, he took quite a robust approach in the first movement to this most lyrical of the concertos, while demonstrating sensitivity and control in the enigmatic slow movement, and a delightful quicksilver dexterity in the finale.”
While François-Frédéric Guy is especially admired for his interpretations of music in the Austro-German tradition (with a particular affinity for Brahms), he is also at home in other repertoire; his regular appearances at festivals and international concert venues feature such composers as Liszt, Prokofiev, and Bartók, as well as much contemporary music. For more information visit: www.ffguy.com
Conductor Philippe Jordan has, at just 33 years of age, established himself as one of the most gifted and exciting conductors of his generation. He is currently Principal Guest Conductor of the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden and was recently named the next music director of the Paris Opéra (his tenure begins in 2009-10). He had a busy and exciting fall in the U.S. this season, when he conducted Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at New York’s Metropolitan Opera to great acclaim and made his debuts with the San Francisco Symphony and New York Philharmonic, with programs that included Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (with soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard).
A special note on the cover art for the new album: both pianist and conductor had a hand in producing the selected image!
naïve’s “Baroque Voices” series
Seven new titles
Various artists
naïve’s “Baroque Voices” series features gems from the naïve classique catalogue (from the astrée and opus 111 labels) presented in eye-catching and easily identifiable packaging, and made available at mid-price. Inside the handsome new slipcases are the original CDs - many of them award winners - and booklets, featuring all the vocal texts, for both familiar baroque works and beautiful rarities, performed by leading artists. This second installment in the series once again showcases the splendid vocal wealth of the 17th and 18th centuries, in both the secular and sacred traditions.
For the 400th anniversary of Monteverdi’s opera, L’Orfeo, first produced in Mantua, Italy in 1607 and recognized as the earliest opera still performed today, naïve celebrates in suitably grand style with a new and lavishly packaged recording of the landmark work conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini. The new recording was issued in Europe this summer, coinciding with Alessandrini’s performances of L’Orfeo – with the Concerto Italiano and the cast featured on the recording – at the 25th annual Festival Beaune.
Rinaldo Alessandrini is a noted Monteverdi specialist. His biography of the composer is considered definitive, he is the official editor of the composer’s scores, and his previous Monteverdi recordings have been widely praised (his recordings of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine and the Sixth Book of Madrigals were both Gramophone “Editor’s Choice” selections). The new release is Alessandrini’s first recording of L’Orfeo and it features his new performing version of Monteverdi’s ravishing score. Italian tenor Furio Zanasi sings the title role, which he has performed to consistent acclaim at Europe’s leading opera houses and music festivals (additional cast details follow).
naïve’s new recording of L’Orfeo is presented in a luxurious limited edition 2CD + book that spans a remarkable 172 pages. Highlights include an illuminating introductory text, in which Rinaldo Alessandrini explains not only Monteverdi’s music and its interpretation, but also the mythology contained in the libretto; a fascinating – and hitherto unpublished – short story by the writer Camille Laurens, setting the Orpheus myth in the present day; iconography presenting the faces of Orpheus, from Italian Renaissance representations to those of Edvard Munch and the engravings of Raoul Dufy; and the complete libretto, featuring annotations by Alessandrini.
Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, who attempts to rescue his dead lover Eurydice from Hades, the underworld. Though Monteverdi wrote eighteen operas, L’Orfeo is one of just three of his operas – along with Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea – to have survived. Four centuries have not diminished the dramatic power, transcendent beauty, and emotional resonance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, which finds in Alessandrini an advocate of singular authority, insight and passion. Says Alessandrini, “Orpheus, even before being a love story, is a grandiose celebration of the power of music.”
London’s Guardian has recently published a superlative, five-star review of the new recording:
The 400th anniversary this year of the premiere of the first operatic masterpiece has already been widely celebrated, but this recording by Rinaldo Alessandrini’s outstanding group of singers and instrumentalists puts the icing on the birthday cake. It follows on naturally from Concerto Italiano’s superlative cycle of the Monteverdi madrigals, and emphasizes once again the advantage of having a cast of native Italians in an opera in which music and text have equal importance.
Alessandrini puts a vivid, theatrical stamp on the proceedings, from the very first drum beats of the opening Toccata, and shows his preference for fast tempi in the ritornelli that punctuate La Musica’s opening invocation, sung with rapturous intensity by Monica Piccinini. Furio Zanasi is the peerless Orfeo… The rest of the cast, including Sara Mingardo as a wonderfully moving Messenger, is equally fine, and instrumental playing unfailingly deft and loaded with character.”
Antonio Vivaldi: Atenaide (world-premiere recording)
Sandrine Piau, Vivica Genaux, Guillemette Laurens, Romina Basso, Nathalie Stutzmann, Paul Agnew, Stefano Ferrari
Modo Antiquo / Federico Maria Sardelli
3-CD set available in the U.S. October 30, 2007
Susan Orlando, the director for naïve’s acclaimed Vivaldi Edition, calls the label’s new world-premiere recording of Vivaldi’s tour-de-force opera Atenaide “a little miracle,” that rare opera recording where a remarkable work is performed by an equally and uniformly remarkable cast. Orlando explains:
“This work was commissioned from Vivaldi by the Teatro della Pergola in Florence and premiered in 1728. What’s especially exciting about this recording is that when we did the casting for it everything came together perfectly. When you cast an opera you put together a dream list, but you rarely end up with your number one choices. For some reason – pure luck, I suppose – we got all our number one choices – Sandrine Piau [Atenaide/Eudossa], Vivica Genaux [Teodosio], Nathalie Stutzmann [Marziano], Guillemette Laurens [Pulcheria], Romina Basso [Varane], Paul Agnew [Leontino], and Stefano Ferrari [Probo]. It’s an extraordinary cast!
As luck would have it that this happens to be one of Vivaldi’s most spectacular operas. Basically, he took the best arias from his other operas and put them all into this one opera. What you end up with is a collection of great bravura arias with singers who have all of the agility to rise to the demands of this very challenging music. The result is unbelievable – a little miracle! Everything came together perfectly for this recording, and that rarely happens.”
Eminent Florentine conductor and Vivaldi specialist Federico Maria Sardelli achieves his long-held goal of recording this exotically-set and compulsively entertaining opera not only in his native Florence, but in the very theatre in which it was first performed two hundred and seventy-nine years ago.
Susan Orlando explains the genesis of naïve’s Vivaldi Edition:
“When Vivaldi died in 1741 he had at home the original music scores of most of what he had written during his lifetime, some 450 pieces including 110 concerti for violin, 40 concerti for bassoon, 20 operas, sacred music, and much more. Most of it had never been published. Through an intriguing tale that I won’t go into now, that enormous bulk of music ended up intact in the National Library in Torino (Turin), Italy in the 1930s, and has been there ever since. Specialists have occasionally performed a few of the scores but for the most part this music has remained totally unknown to the greater public. An eminent Italian musicologist living in Torino, Alberto Basso, conceived the idea of recording the entire collection. He divided the works by genre so that you have, for example, theatrical music, sacred music, concerti for violin, concerti for two or more soloists, etc. He presented the idea to naive, they were enthusiastic, and thus in 2000 the Vivaldi Edition began.”
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Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was one of the more colorful characters among Italian Renaissance composers. He wrote unusual and highly emotional music, and he was a murderer. This podcast looks at both his personal life (sometimes gruesome) as well as his music. Music by Gesualdo’s fellow composers Pomponio Nenna and Luzzasco Luzzaschi is also included. The featured artists in this podcast, and on the CD are Concerto Italiano conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini.
Among the most successful and prolific artists on the naïve label, Rinaldo Alessandrini and his dynamic period-instrument ensemble Concerto Italiano take an exciting turn from their exploration of the Italian Baroque with a new release dedicated to a virtually forgotten but compelling Czech composer, 
naïve adds another dynamic young artist to its roster with a new recording by 27-year-old 
With 
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