La célèbre épopée biblique relatant le meurtre d’Abel par Caïn est connue de tous, mais la mise en scène qu’Alessandro Scarlatti lui a dédiée l’est beaucoup moins. Thème récurant pour les oratorios italiens au XVIIe siècle, le sujet est traité ici à la manière d’une histoire policière. Avec un effectif musical réduit, il nous transporte dans un univers baroque étourdissant. Les accents lyriques sont d’une expressivité rare tandis que l’orchestre, faisant preuve de beaucoup de psychologie, exulte. Par bonheur, la prise de son est à l’avenant. Les divers plans sonores sont respectés avec une très belle transparence et une foule de détails sur les voix et sur les instruments.

Three serenatas by Vivaldi survive (he is known to have composed at least eight)‚ of which La Senna festeggiante is by far the most enjoyable…One of the work’s most interesting features is Vivaldi’s deliberate use in places of elements of French style‚ for instance in the solemn ‘ouvertur’ which opens Part 2 and the courtly minuet of The Golden Age’s second aria‚ thereby adding to the richness of a work which for the most part is vintage Vivaldi at his most buoyant and irresistible.

This disc is a sampler of Vivaldi discs released by France's Naïve label, and it's highly recommended to listeners who haven't yet given these recordings a try. The group of performers is pan-European, with French singers and Italian instrumentalists especially strongly represented, but a compilation like this brings home how well this label has done at forging a unified artistic vision. Its Vivaldi indeed tends toward "furious," as the title proclaims; it is also garish, energetic, dynamically extreme, and in every way devoted to making Vivaldi out as a rebel in his time.

Italian singer Sara Mingardo is considered among the more important contraltos of her generation. Her repertory is broad, encompassing works by composers from Monteverdi to Britten, though she has scored some of her greatest successes in operas and sacred music of the Baroque.

A glorious collection of Monteverdi's church music performed expertly by the Concerto Italiano under Rinaldo Alessandrini. Starting of with a number of larger scale psalm settings concluded by a magnificat the focus subsequently moves to smaller scale settings written for avariety of occasions. The diction is very good and the music making always sensitive to the moods and the meaning of the words.

In this programme entitled Variations on Variations, Rinaldo Alessandrini, one of the today’s references on Baroque music, has chosen to adapt the Goldberg Variations and the Aria variata alla maniera italiana - initially composed for the keyboard - for small string ensemble, from duo to quartet.

Despite the public context – the story is played out against the backdrop of the Olympic Games – this is a drama which focuses on the personal predicaments of the principal characters, each of whom faces an interesting conflict between head and heart somewhere along the line. This is more apparent from Metastasio's words than from Vivaldi's music, to be honest, but that isn't to say that the composer has been unresponsive. The most effective and intimate moments occur in the recitatives, which are fluidly conversational and full of realistic interruptions, questions and exclamations, all of which Vivaldi handles with considerable dramatic skill.

Naïve continues its collaboration with renowned conductor, Rinaldo Alessandrini, which sees him lead the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra in an exciting release featuring the overtures from Mozart’s greatest operas. This is in fact Alessandrini’s first recording with an orchestra playing on modern instruments and resulted from Alessandrini’s position as Principal Guest conductor of the Norwegian National Opera that he’s held since 2005. He chose this repertoire as during his years in this position, it was the sublime music of Mozart that the Orchestra responded to best.

Nel vastissimo catalogo delle opere di Antonio Vivaldi (circa 1.000 numeri considerando le appendici), la musica da camera rappresenta una parte non considerevole e, probabilmente, una delle meno note rispetto alla frequentatissima produzione concertistica e sacra, a cui si è agggiunta, negli ultimi anni, quella operistica. Per quest'ultima si pensi, ad esempio, alle recenti produzioni dell'etichetta "Naive" o alle arie d'opera riscoperte e magistralmente eseguite in forma di concerto da Cecilia Bartoli.

Extraordinarily, Alessandro Scarlatti (who died in 1725 and forms a strong bridge between the mature Baroque and later classical traditions, according to musicologist Edward Dent) wrote some sixty-four operas, twenty oratorios, hundreds of chamber cantatas, and a host of madrigals, masses, motets, toccatas, concertos, sonatas and symphonies. Very little of this is heard today, sadly, except in specialist circles. Perhaps one of the more popularly performed pieces is 'Abramo, il tuo sembiante' (a Christmas cantata). When Handel visited Italy between 1706 and 1710, he met Scarlatti and may even have studied with him. This performance of said cantata is well within the Italian style - clear lines and intricate ornamentation.

Girolamo Frescobaldi brought his two volumes of Arie Musicali to publication in Florence in 1630 and distanced himself from Caccini’s purely narrative madrigals by so doing. Frescobaldi brought together secular sonnets, sacred madrigals, recitatives, arias and ensembles in every possible style; it is this immense variety above all else that makes a recording of the complete Arie Musicali so exciting and challenging.

Monteverdi's seminal first opera tells the dramatic story from Ovid's Metamorphoses of the descent of Orfeo (Georg Nigl) into the underworld to recover his beloved wife Euridice (Roberta Invernizzi), who has died from a snake bite. In a new production for La Scala, based on a painting by Titian and directed by Robert Wilson, the opera receives a powerful and inspiring performance from a fine cast, the Orchestra of Teatro alla Scala and Concerto Italiano under the much-admired Italian early music specialist, Rinaldo Alessandrini. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in true surround sound.

Claudio Monteverdi's Seventh Book of Madrigals have been recorded well by several early music groups, but one expects superior readings from harpsichordist Rinaldo Alessandrini and his vocal-instrumental ensemble Concerto Italiano, and indeed, one gets them here. Alessandrini's versions are on the spare side, with seven voices and an instrumental ensemble of 13 that includes three continuo instruments plus percussion, with Alessandrini's harpsichord prominent in the mix, but he has all the equipment he needs to deliver a really distinctive "concerto," as the title of the Seventh Book boldly proclaims itself. With this book, Monteverdi moved decisively away from the old polyphonic madrigal ideal and toward the text-based settings that would be the norm for vocal music over the next four centuries and counting.