Glossa always follows “microphone in hand” where creative musical ideas are developing, especially in early music, and over the label’s two decades this has often meant turning its attention to the length and breadth that is Italy: think Fabio Bonizzoni in music from Rome, the coverage of the madrigalian repertory from La Venexiana and La Compagnia del Madrigale, the subtle violin mastery of Enrico Gatti, the dazzling vocal virtuosity of Roberta Invernizzi (and not forgetting Paolo Pandolfo’s unique style). In recent years, Antonio Florio and I Turchini have also found a home at the label with their command of Neapolitan repertory. Now, two multi-faceted artists (both of whom have worked with Florio) have joined forces to produce Siciliane: the songs of an island, a journey into the traditional songs of Sicily, using collections brought together by Giacomo Meyerbeer as the basis. The singer is that powerhouse of mood, both vocal and theatrical, Pino De Vittorio (who hails from Puglia), graced with a talent to bring into the present voices from the past across the regions of Italy, whilst the accompaniment is led by Franco Pavan, theorbo and baroque guitar player, director of Laboratorio ’600, music scholar and performer in many fine recordings over the years. [read more...]

Josetxu Obregón is one of a new generation of musicians hailing from Spain and like many younger musicians in many countries he has undergone further studies outside his own native country. However, what sets this early music performer (as also with Fahmi Alqhai) apart from others is that he has been invited to join the “family” of Glossa artists – indeed Obregón and Alqhai are the first Spanish musicians to join the label since the days of José Miguel Moreno and Emilio Moreno. With his fellow performers Obregón has created a spectacular entertainment for their first album, Il Spiritillo Brando, which captures the spirit of Spanish courtly entertainment across the 16th and 17th centuries through instrumental music, as well as allowing today’s modern performers to display their virtuosity in music from the time. Appropriately, the recording was made in the Real Coliseo de Carlos III, in Glossa’s home town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Here, in welcoming Obregón to the label, we have taken the opportunity to talk to him about his new recording and how, as a musician from the recent generation in Spain, he regards the performing of “early music” today. [read more...]

When setting out on their new collection of recordings dedicated to the musical travels of famous singers from the past, entitled ‘Sirene’, Antonio Florio of I Turchini and Dinko Fabris could have considered no other, no better voice from today than that of Roberta Invernizzi to assume the starring role. Invernizzi has, after all, played a crucial role over the years in many of I Turchini’s concert programmes and recordings devoted to Neapolitan music of the Baroque and beyond. With these Viaggi musicali di celebri cantanti the leading Italian musical scholar Fabris and his colleagues are recreating for the modern listener the musical soundworlds of singers who helped forge opera as we know it today: these were the musicians who trekked across Europe at the specific requests of composers, impresarios or audiences to add glitz and star quality to new productions. One such was Faustina Bordoni, whose performing career lasted from 1716 to 1751, starting off in her native Venice before criss-crossing Europe. She appeared in court and public opera houses alike whilst becoming one of the greatest singers of her time (and getting involved in a very modern series of spats with fellow soprano Francesca Cuzzoni). On this new recording from Glossa made in Naples (the setting for important triumphs for Bordoni), Roberta Invernizzi, Antonio Florio and I Turchini recapture the lustre of 18th century opera – in music rarely, if ever, heard today, from composers such as Leonardo Vinci, Domenico Sarro, Nicola Porpora and Francesco Mancini – with a video from the sessions being available on YouTube. To set the scene for this new collection Dinko Fabris talks about the dramatic times of Faustina Bordoni, 18th century Naples and Roberta Invernizzi. [read more...]

Paolo Pandolfo has dedicated so much energy over the years to the presence of the viola da gamba from the Baroque era that it is curious that, until now, he has not provided us with his interpretation of the major works for that instrument by one of France’s leading composers from that time: François Couperin. Together with his own colleagues (Amélie Chemin, playing a second viola da gamba, Thomas Boysen, theorbo and Baroque guitar and Markus Hünninger, harpsichord), Paolo Pandolfo has now turned to the Pièces de violes and to two Concerts from the 1724 collection Les Goûts réunis (which specifically call for the viol) to demonstrate the quality of Couperin’s contribution to the viol literature. Here Pandolfo talks about his relationship to the music and the technical and interpretative challenges posed for the modern player by François Couperin le grand. [read more...]

So taken was Anthony Rooley with his discovery of William Hayes’s extended Ode, The Passions (a Schola Cantorum Basiliensis production from Glossa in 2010) that this legendary explorer of any worthwhile music which lies languishing in oblivion set about assessing and assimilating the music of the Six Cantatas Set to Musick (from 1748) and the Ode, Orpheus and Euridice (1735) by the same English composer. Our complete musician (scholar, conductor, teacher, writer, lutenist...) then proceeded to enthuse and train his students at the Schola Cantorum in Basel. This new album of these examples of small-scale secular vocal music from the late English Baroque is the result; yet more fascinating finds that have been unearthed by the knowledgeable but discerning musician-scholar that is Anthony Rooley, and testament also to the SCB’s capacity to embrace all necessary aspects of a musical project such as this, from research and study to performance and beyond. This is a cause to celebrate and to enjoy: not only do we have Anthony Rooley leading a team of singers and instrumentalists from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, but it is in secular vocal music of the Georgian Baroque today; music composed on secular texts in the English language – and not by that sometimes overpowering figure of the time, Georg Friedrich Handel! For another extended interview here Anthony Rooley reflects on the life and times of William Hayes, the composer’s music and recording this in the 21st century. [read more...]

Published in 1611 one year after Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, Gesualdo’s Sesto Libro di Madrigali offers a strikingly different reflection of Italian music as the Renaissance era evolved into the Baroque. The emotional charge and intensity of the texts for Gesualdo’s madrigals, allied to a complex music involving chromaticisms and dissonances, helped create a collection that has intrigued, delighted and puzzled its listeners from the point of its publication on to our own days. To offer a faithful interpretation of these five-part madrigals from the Sesto Libro in modern times requires musicians of great skill and experience, voices of beauty and clarity, and a sense of musical direction between the singers which is united and consistent. La Compagnia del Madrigale fulfils all these conditions (and expectations) on their new Glossa recording. To understand more about what drives La Compagnia del Madrigale, Daniele Carnovich and Giuseppe Maletto were asked to share their views on approaching the Sesto Libro di Madrigali by Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa. [read more...]

Björn Schmelzer, who animates and sings in Graindelavoix, is not your typical director of an early music ensemble. Nor is the highly articulate sound world of Graindelavoix, now deployed on the newly-released Ossuaires album from Glossa, reminiscent of typical recordings of medieval music. Over the last decade or so, the Belgian group has created programmes which, whilst embracing the music of known musicians from the 12th century onwards (Johannes Ockeghem, Gilles Binchois and composers from the Ars subtilior period among them), seek new pathways for the comprehension of that art for today. Nowhere is this more evident than on Ossuaires, the first of three ambitious recordings created around the travels and shadowy biography of a certain Villard de Honnecourt, a 13th century draughtsman, whose carnet or portfolio is still in existence. [read more...]

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...]

Emboldened by her experiences with the solo keyboard of the shadowy English composer from the first half of the 18th century, Richard Jones (the Sets of Lessons for the Harpsichord, London, 1732 – recorded in 2010), and propelled by her zest for rediscovering unwarrantedly neglected music for her instrument, Mitzi Meyerson has returned to the music of this enigmatic figure with a second release on Glossa: Jones’s Chamber Airs for a Violin (and Thorough Bass). This collection of violin sonatas was published in London and 1735 and for the new recording Meyerson is joined by violinist Kreeta-Maria Kentala and cellist Lauri Pulakka. How much music from this time is lying mouldering unloved and in archives, but deserving being put in front of audiences today is, of course, at best an inexact art. However, as listeners, we can be grateful for the labours of talented performers like Mitzi Meyerson, who are also equipped with the appropriate scholarly skills and the intuitive nous to help them separate the wheat from the chaff. [read more...]

The remarkable journey of Claudio Cavina and La Venexiana through and with the music of Claudio Monteverdi... which, of course, has taken in along its way the madrigals, L’Orfeo, L’incoronazione di Poppea, the Selva morale e spirituale and the ensemble’s own modern and popular ‘twist’ on the Cremonese genius in ’Round M – now comes to rest on Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, the penultimate surviving dramatic work by Monteverdi, which was given its first performance in the Venice Carnival of 1640. Along the way, Claudio Cavina has developed a ‘sixth sense’ for recognizing and interpreting Monteverdi’s style and the result, in this new recording made in Mondovì in Italy, captures perfectly the spirit of the fledgling Venetian operatic world which Monteverdi was helping to encourage.[read more...]

A distinctive musical voice in Giovanni Sollima makes his debut on Glossa both as a cellist and as a composer, in a partnership with Antonio Florio resulting in a disc of cello concertos which is no mere digression from I Turchini’s habitual exploration of the secular and sacred vocal music of the Neapolitan Baroque. Sollima, a native Sicilian, is a living embodiment of that strong serious/popular vein running through Southern Italian music-making and, primarily a cellist, he has elsewhere performed with strong musical minds as varied as DJ Scanner and Claudio Abbado, Yo-Yo Ma and Patti Smith or Philip Glass and Giuseppe Sinopoli. His intuitive awareness of the spirit of the Neapolitan Baroque makes him admirably placed to participate in this exploration of the importance of the cello in Naples in the 18th century.[read more...]

In each new recording that he makes of viola da gamba music (and that includes his own ‘contemporary’ offerings such as Improvisando), Paolo Pandolfo has a knack of reaching for and grasping the essence from within the musical scores in front of him. It is not just his technical mastery or an allied assiduous study of the sources – be it of Bach or Marais or Abel – but that more intangible ability to make such music – as here with four Suites by ‘Le Sieur de Machy’ from 1685 – jump off the page and come alive. De Machy’s world was that of Paris in the heyday of Le roi soleil, Louis XIV, and for all that the composer’s biography is today somewhat scant and shadowy (what was his first name? We do not know for sure), his Suites forming the Pièces de Violle vividly and vivaciously reflect the luxuriance and exuberance of the end of the 17th century in France, particularly through the means of dancing.[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...]

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...]

Since starting making recordings for Glossa in 2007 Dominique Vellard has been demonstrating the broad range of interests which have been so influential over the thirty years of the career of his Ensemble Gilles Binchois and which help to make up this complex musical personality. From the earliest polyphonies interspersed with Gregorian Chant (in L’Arbre de Jessé and the reissued Music and Poetry in St Gallen) to 21st century compositions from Vellard himself and Jean-Pierre Leguay (in Vox nostra resonet and Motets croisés) by way of the 17th century polyphony of Monteverdi, Schütz and Frescobaldi, some of the facets of Vellard’s continuing interest in religious music have been reflected on the label. [read more...]