MARCELLO : Complete Sonatas for Organ and Harpsichord (Chiara Minali · Laura Farabollini) 3CD-SET (2018) FLAC (image+.cue), lossless|

Historically informed performances of poised and inventive keyboard music from the Golden Age of the Venetian Baroque.

The epitome of a Renaissance man, Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) won success and acclaim as a poet, writer, musician, lawyer, judge, administrator and philologist. Though his keyboard sonatas have appeared on several recorded collections of the Italian Baroque, they have rarely been presented in a comprehensive manner. In doing so, this album celebrates the personal even idiosyncratic style of a composer whose technical accomplishment facilitates rather than stifling his creative voice.

The 12 Sonatas were later published as Op.3. They date from early in Marcello’s career, and are mostly cast in three andfour brief movements, though the first and last of them, in D minor and C minor respectively, feature more extended forms. The minor-key sonatas are generally more dramatic and varied in mood; two complementary performances of the G minor Sonata afford the opportunity to compare the tone-colours of the different instruments used on the recording.

There are several sonatas not belonging to the Op.3 collection which are less often heard, and their inclusion here is valuable, alongside Marcello’s magnificent chaconne, subtitled ‘La stravaganza’: a 15-minute tour-de-force of keyboard invention.

The album is enhanced by a vivid account of Marcello’s music, life and career, written by the harpsichordist Laura Farabollini. On this recording she plays a modern Italian copy of a late-18th century French instrument by Taskin, with two manuals and four registers. Chiara Minali plays an organ built by Gio’ Batta Sona in 1812, in the Cornu Evangelii choir of the parish church of San Pietro in Cattedra at Valeggio sul Mincio near Verona.

From an early age Benedetto Marcello (Venice 1686 - Brescia 1739) proved to be a man of great versatility: a poet, writer, musician, lawyer, judge, administrator and philologist, holding important posts in these functions during his entire life. As a composer he wrote a substantial oeuvre, covering all important fields of composition: sacred and secular choral works, opera and a large body of instrumental music.
This 3CD set presents Marcello’s complete works for keyboard, both harpsichord and organ: the 12 Sonatas for harpsichord and a variety of works specifically written for organ. The Sonatas are in 3 or 4 movements, the slow movements showing an elegant lyricism, while the fast movements brim with vivacious energy.
Played by two expert Italian musicians: organist Chiara Minali on an 1812 Gio’ Batta Sona organ, and Laura Farabollini, who already recorded to great critical acclaim the complete keyboard works by Zipoli for Brilliant Classics. brilliant
BENEDETTO MARCELLO (1686-1739)
Tracklist :
Harpsichord – Laura Farabollini (tracks: 2-1 to 2-24, 3-1 to 3-7)
Organ – Chiara Minali (tracks: 1-1 to 1-21, 3-8 to 3-11)

DOMENICO ZIPOLI : Complete Keyboard Music (Carlo Guandalino • Laura Farabollini) 2CD (2016) FLAC (image+.cue) lossless

If the keyboard music of Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726) is now played or remembered, it is through the gentle swing of his C major Pastorale with its chirpy central section, popular as communion music with organists. Few of them will know that the Pastorale forms part of a larger collection of Sonata d’intavolatura, which were published as Book 1, with a second book which worked in the same genre but for harpsichord. Both books have been recorded before, but they have never been available as a single set, or at budget price.
The individual works in the harpsichord collection are structured as four- and five-movement dance suites, containing ornate preludes, reflective sarabandes and lively gavottes and gigues, with two more stately partitas, in C major and A minor. They are played here on a copy of an instrument by Taskin in the late 18th century, built by the Piedmontese instrument-maker Giuseppe Corazza. The organ used for the first book of sonatas is a two-manual instrument for the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, Castelnuovo Scrivia in the province of Alessandria. It was built in 1612 by the brothers Angelo and Giuseppe Vitani and subsequently revised by Luigi Amati in 1796.

The Princess of Forano to whom he dedicated the sonatas, Maria Teresa Strozzi, may have been related to the bishop, Leone Strozzi, who had confirmed him at Prato Cathedral on 2 May 1699. Both sets of sonatas were written by Zipoli in his early 20s, while he was organist of the Jesuit church in Rome, and they were published in 1716, the same year that he joined the Jesuit order. Having been sent the following year as a missionary to South America, he died of tuberculosis before he could be ordained as a priest, but while in Paraguay composed several cantatas on which he fame now chiefly rests.

Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726) led an turbulent and adventurous life. A student of Alessandro Scarlatti and Pasquini he held important posts as organist and composer in Florence and Rome. However he went to Spain to join the Jesuit Society from where he was sent to South America, where he settled in Cordoba (Argentina) as missionary and composer.
Zipoli wrote in the Italian keyboard style as a worthy successor of Frescobaldi, Scarlatti and Pasquini. He wrote for both organ and harpsichord, and both instruments are included in this new recording of his complete output for the keyboard.
Played by Carlo Guandalino on a historical 1612 organ of Castelnuovo Scrivia, and by Laura Farabollini on a copy of a 17th century French Taskin harpsichord. brilliantclassics.com    Tracklist & Credits :