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Youthful Guerrero from a masterly Noone
The scholarly work carried out by Michael Noone in preparation for his revelatory Morales en Toledo release two years ago on Glossa is set to bear more fruit with a disc dedicated to the music of another of Spain’s great Renaissance musical figureheads: Francisco Guerrero. Noone, who has been no stranger to trailblazing releases on Glossa over many years with his work with the Orchestra of the Renaissance, now offers exhilarating performances of sacred works by the Sevillan master with his finely honed Ensemble Plus Ultra in a recording appearing as part of the Los Siglos de Oro series, recognizing support from the Fundación Caja Madrid. In his painstaking research on Toledo Cathedral’s Codex 25 Noone has been able to identify previously unknown compositions from Guerrero’s brief youthful apprenticeship with Cristóbal de Morales and five hymns are presented here for the first time on record, along with the Missa Super flumina Babylonis. Noone’s understanding and awareness of the musical life and times of Guerrero is further demonstrated by the presence of two other world-famous ensembles: Juan Carlos Asensio’s Schola Antiqua which delivers renditions of the appropriate plainchant related to the hymns as Guerrero would have known them and His Majesties Sagbutts and Cornetts underscoring the use of wind band ministriles in music of this nature.

Bonizzoni’s third Handel Cantatas recording on its way!
Proving how exciting musical instincts allied with careful research can produce glorious performances on record, Fabio Bonizzoni is currently surveying for Glossa the chamber cantatas to Italian texts composed by Handel during his sojourn in Italy at the outset of his career. Accompanied by his own ensemble La Risonanza, Bonizzoni is turning to singers who are also leading Baroque specialists to deliver the all-important vocal lines – and with tremendous results. This has recently been recognised by The Stanley Sadie Handel Prize (www.gfhandel.org) which has chosen Le Cantate per il Cardinal Pamphili (with the soloist being Roberta Invernizzi) as its Award winner for 2007. The second volume – in what is fast turning out to be one of the most stimulating musical adventures of recent times – boasts the vocal talents of Emanuela Galli (and Roberta Invernizzi once again) and has recently been issued, whilst a third volume will be released towards the end of the year. At sessions which took place earlier this year in The Hague a trio of soloists were in attendance: soprano Raffaella Milanesi, baritone Furio Zanasi and bass Salvo Vitale. And if that is not enough to demonstrate the keenness of Bonizzoni’s late Baroque sensibilities, he has also been demonstrating his keyboard mastery with a new recording – due out in the autumn – of JS Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge to follow on from his earlier release of the Goldberg Variations.

Venice, Vivaldi and the Op 1 Sonatas
After the recently published disc containing a selection from Vivaldi’s Op 2 works, performed by Enrico Gatti and his Aurora Ensemble, Glossa extends its survey of the Venetian master’s early repertoire with the complete recording of his first published work, the Suonate da camera a tre, due violini e violine or cembalo, Opus 1. And the label is doing so with one if its innovatory ‘Ediciones Singulares’, the collection of book-discs which commenced with L’Orfeo. So, as well as a reference version safely entrusted to the hands of Gatti, Rossella Croce, Judith-Maria Becker, Monica Pustilnik and Guido Morini, the music-lover and reader will be able to enjoy a stunning group of exclusive essays commissioned specially for this particular release, one which will be published independently in English, Spanish and French, each in a limited edition comprising 3099 copies. The articles have been contributed by Michael Talbot (who writes about this first opus of Vivaldi), Stefano Russomano (whom we have asked to outline the socio-cultural setting of Venice at the start of the 18th century), Alessandro Borin (a musicologist who has made a special study of printing in Venice), Adriano Olivieri (an art historian who provides an introduction to the Venetian painters of the age) as well as Enrico Gatti himself, who caps another of the projects particularly dear to the hearts of the Glossa team.

Boccherini in Boadilla
Glossa is also taking advantage of its fifteenth anniversary this year to bring out a marvellous recording, which, purely for questions of scheduling, has been kept in the racks since it was made at the beginning of 2005. This is the final recording from La Real Cámara, Emilio Moreno’s ensemble, prior to it undergoing a full and complete process of Spanish assimilation – something that will be trumpeted this very month of June with the recording of a disc of tonadillas escénicas. Accompanied by Enrico Gatti and Gaetano Nasillo, Moreno is here presenting the Op 14 Trios in their entirety, a group of works written by Luigi Boccherini during those fruitful years that he spent in the service of the Prince Don Luis de Borbón at the Palacio de Boadilla del Monte, a residence situated on the outskirts of Madrid and recently restored for the shooting of Milos Forman’s latest film, Goya’s Ghosts. This superb music comes on a double disc which includes an essay by Jaime Tortella, a great specialist in Boccherini as well as a series of colour illustrations not only of relevant paintings from the time but of photographs of the palace both before and after its restoration.

Sémélé, the opera by Marin Marais
At the beginning of this year, Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel completed the recording of their trilogy of baroque French operas based on mythological female figures. First in the series has been Callirhoé by Destouches (recently released by Glossa), second is Lully’s Proserpine by Lully (advance copies of which will be appearing in the special opera collections currently being published by a number of newspapers such as Le Monde, El País and La Vanguardia) and thirdly Sémélé, the second opera from that fabled viola de gamba player Marin Marais, first performed in 1709. For our release, Glossa is preparing, once more in close collaboration with the musicologists from the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, a CD/book edition in our recently-inaugurated ‘Ediciones Singulares’ collection. The book will contain six essays as well as the two discs and will be available after the summer.

L'Orfeo now in Italian and German as well
Testament to Glossa’s desire to place its superb recordings in the way of people from as many different language cultures as possible, but all the time via high quality publications (and bear in mind we are but a small operation…), we have decided to produce a fourth version (maybe this is a record!) of Claudio Cavina’s gorgeous interpretation of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. In this way we are celebrating not only the 400th anniversary of the first performance of this tremendous opera but also fifteen years of the operation of Glossa itself. Following on from the separate publishing of our L’Orfeo in limited release versions aimed at music-lovers who are Spanish, French and English-speakers (the third of these will be coming out shortly), this fourth unprecedented issue will have texts provided in the Italian and German languages, the recording being accompanied by an essay from Stefano Aresi as well of course, as Alessandro Striggio’s libretto and all appearing in a standard but sumptuous CD presentation.

La Venexiana completes the Monteverdi Edition
Following the relative pause in proceedings with the Monteverdi Edition from La Venexiana (caused by the preparation involved in releasing L’Orfeo), we are currently working on the three issues designed to complete the collection, which will be put out – all of them – this autumn. What we are planning to do is to release Book Five, Book Three (appearing as a re-mastered version of our 2002 disc) and a third volume consisting of Book One and the posthumous Book Nine. The nine volumes making up the Monteverdi Edition will continue to be available only as separate titles; we have no plans for the publishing of a box set of the complete madrigals. This is the way in which one of the most important and indispensable recording projects in recent years is set to be completed.

Glossa on iTunes
Glossa has signed a contract with Apple as a result of which it will be gradually adding all its production (including titles presently unavailable) to the iTunes Music Store. The first 80 titles are now available in the shops of Europe, the United States and Canada. Japan, Australia and New Zealand will join very soon. From this point on all Glossa’s new releases will be available simultaneously as downloads from the iTunes Music Store and as physical product in shops worldwide. We are convinced that, far from representing an obstacle in selling ‘the real thing’, this development will significantly contribute to a broader availability of our artists’ work and also therefore to a larger demand for the – collectable – physical product.