Fabio Bonizzoni’s instinct for honing in on the music of the great Baroque composers, such as Bach and Handel, and finding each time a fresh and inspirational response (proving once more, if needed, their greatness), now turns to two contrasting Italian masters in two separate recordings released on Glossa, which are devoted to the music of Antonio Vivaldi and Girolamo Frescobaldi. As the director of La Risonanza, Bonizzoni has demonstrated a rare understanding for the ever-evolving nature of Handel’s response to changing working stimuli. He also has an innate response to the depths of Italian musical expression as a keyboard player. So, there is no better musical direction for Bonizzoni’s journey to head off towards than the music of Girolamo Frescobaldi. By way of an introduction to both his new Frescobaldi and Vivaldi recordings Fabio Bonizzoni here touches upon certain key issues regarding his Italian musical forebears. [read more...]

Roberta Invernizzi is very clearly one of the finest sopranos to be heard today in the Baroque - and especially the Italian Baroque - repertory, as evidenced by the beauty that she brings not only to operatic roles and vocal roles which have been essayed by many other famous singers both on record and in performance, but also by her sense of clarity in and characterization of unknown music from the 17th and 18th centuries. The rediscovery of so much Italian music is a reflection of the labour and artistry of numerous musical minds but as a kind of prima donna inter pares the Milanese soprano stands out from many others for the intensity of her approach, to the point that she is emerging as a new muse for other distinguished modern-day practitioners of the Italian Baroque such as Fabio Bonizzoni and Antonio Florio who contribute here their own thoughts on the artistry of Roberta Invernizzi, adding to the soprano’s own considerations about her musical life.[read more...]

Having entranced audiences across Europe with their performances of the music which Georg Frideric Handel wrote during his time in Italy – mainly in Rome – between 1706-9, and having also delighted record buyers with the seven-volume series of “Le Cantate Italiane di Handel”, released on Glossa, Fabio Bonizzoni and his singers and musicians of La Risonanza have now gone on to impress the jury of the 2011 Gramophone Classical Music Awards. On October 6, at a ceremony held in The Dorchester hotel in London, the British magazine bestowed upon the Italian musicians a prestigious Gramophone Award in the Baroque Vocal category, for the final volume in the Handel series, Apollo e Dafne (a recording which contains two further cantatas, Agrippina condotta a morire and Cuopre talvolta il cielo as well as the title work). The singers on this disc were soprano Roberta Invernizzi and the two basses Thomas E. Bauer and Furio Zanasi. [read more...]

As talented as Fabio Bonizzoni is in performing music from across the Baroque spectrum – witness his Glossa recording of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge – he has become increasingly celebrated for his interpretations of music from Italy. This embraces not only the music of native composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti (the Serenate a Filli album) but, of course, the series of Handel Cantatas in Italian, Lully’s Ballets et récits italiens and now there is a pastiche opera with music by André Campra (born in Aix-en-Provence, but whose father was from Turin). The new recording, Gli strali d’Amore sees Bonizzoni and La Risonanza joined by haute-contre Cyril Auvity and bass Salvo Vitale as well as Bonizzoni’s fellow Milanese musician, the soprano Roberta Invernizzi, whose career as a solo star – as opposed to as her being an ensemble singer – is now starting to blossom (as they say, watch this space...). [read more...]

Fabio Bonizzoni’s attention on record to the music of Handel - which has, thus far, yielded seven discs devoted to the early Italian-texted cantatas - has just now had the good fortune to receive this year’s Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize for Apollo e Dafne, the final release in the present series for Glossa. This is the third time that Bonizzoni and his period-instrument ensemble La Risonanza have won this prestigious prize for their series of “Le Cantate Italiane di Handel” (previous winners were the first release, Le Cantate per il Cardinal Pamphili and the fifth, Clori, Tirsi e Fileno); three other recordings have also featured as runners-up. [read more...]

It is not only discerning music lovers around the globe who are giving a warm welcome to the recordings which are being published on Glossa; critical approval in the specialist media has been joining in as well. One example of the latter is the newly-instigated International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) which, for its inaugural 2011 edition, has chosen no less than nine of Glossa’s recent releases in its initial nominations. [read more...]