Skilfully crafted, meticulously executed andutterly enjoyable,Giulia Nuti's solorecordingsincludethree anthologies of keyboard music, the last two released with Arcana. These albumsfeaturehistorically significant instruments carefully chosen by the artist to enhance the repertoirewith which they are associated: Le Coeur et l'Oreille (2017), recorded on the 1658 Louis Denis harpsichordand,more recently, The Fall of the Leaf (2022), featuring the splendid Italian "Rucellai" virginal built around 1575.

After "Roma ’600", dedicated to the cultured and popular music of the Eternal City, I Bassifondi explore the music of the most famous baroque guitarist in 17th-century Europe, who brought the guitar to England and then to the court of the Sun King in France: Francesco Corbetta. The trio, led by Simone Vallerotonda, welcomes a special guest, Bor Zuljan, one of the best lutenists on the scene, with whom Simone Vallerotonda plays a concerto and several "pièces de caractère" for two guitars. This collection represents the triumph of virtuosity, refinement and harmonic experimentation in the 17th century. A music that takes the guitars beyond their limits, competing, and perhaps surpassing, their historical rival, the lute. To seal the recording there are four vocal tracks dedicated to the Kings of England and the Duke of York, in the French style. A visionary recording of rare beauty!

In this recording of the complete piano sonatas on period instruments, the Viennese master Paul Badura-Skoda delivers the work of a lifetime: Schubert's music with his passion, his suffering, and that inimitable tone which makes his native city the place so essentially and existentially identified with music. This collection of the twenty Sonatas for period piano recorded by Paul Badura-Skoda on the instruments in his own collection has every chance of being considered by posterity as one of the most creative and most significant achievements.

In 1594 Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, arrived in Ferrara for his marriage to Donna Eleonora d’Este. His meeting with the musical circles of Ferrara, and in particular with Luzzasco Luzzaschi, was to make an important impact on the musical development of the young Girolamo Frescobaldi. In his maturity Fre scobaldi arrived at a deeply personal fusion between the musical forms of North Italian (and more specifically Venetian) derivation and the musical experimentation of the southern school. The aim of this recording project is to explore the reciprocal influ ences between great keyboard master from Ferrara and his colleagues from the Kingdom of Naples. Represented here in a dialogue with Frescobaldi’s works are not only the great experimental figures from the years bridging the 16th and 17th centuries (J. De M acque, Rodio, Stella), but also the composers from the following generation who absorbed and built on Frescobaldi’s example (Storace, Salvatore, L. Rossi), as well as contemporaries who adopted a parallel course (M. Rossi). This fertile musical exchange, w hich culminated in the profoundly distinctive innovations of Frescobaldi himself, fully exemplifies the spirit of experimentation and musical innovation typical of the early 17th century, a period that, like few others, sought out and celebrated aesthetic renewal.

The disc under review here is the fourth in a series, called ‘The Stradella Project’. I don't know which parts of Stradella's oeuvre will be included in this project. He was a prolific composer, and his extant output comprises music for the stage, liturgical and non-liturgical sacred music, madrigals and cantatas. It also includes six oratorios, and two of them were the subject of volumes 2 and 3. I am sure that the two best-known oratorios, San Giovanni Battista and Susanna, will be recorded at a later stage. As these are available in several performances, it was a good idea to start with those oratorios which are seldom performed. That also goes for Santa Pelagia.

A long-awaited new release of one of the world’s most respected medieval music ensembles, Crawford Young’s Ferrara Ensemble continues its interpretation of late Gothic composers, in the first recording ever of what has been called the Mt. Everest of music notation puzzles - Angelorum psalat of the Codex Chantilly, recently published in a new edition by Crawford Young. A pinnacle of complexity, the Codex Chantilly, c1400, reflects the taste of popes and secular rulers such as Jean, Duc de Berry.

Maestro di cappella in two conservatories in Naples, Francesco Durante was one of the prominent representatives of the eighteenth-century Neapolitan school. A unique case in the history of Neapolitan music, Durante did not write any opera and devoted himself exclusively to pedagogical works and to the composition of sacred and instrumental music. His Concerti per archi are among the most significant contributions to the genre of the orchestral concerto.

Giovanni Mossi and Antonio Montanari, two of the most esteemed violin virtuosi of eighteenth-century Rome, can finally take centre stage, away from the crowded panorama of Corelli\u0027s pupils and imitators; their works can be fully appreciated in this new recording devoted to their sonatas for violin. Three sonatas by Mossi for violin and continuo from his op. 5 and op. 6 are presented here; these collections remain lesser-known and lesser-recorded even today. The three violin sonatas by Montanari that the celebrated virtuoso Johann Pisendel brought from Rome to Dresden in 1717, after having taken lessons from Montanari himself, are recorded here together for the first time. The director of this project is the young violinist Gabriele Pro, one of the most promising Italian Baroque violinists of his generation. He is joined by cellist Maria Calvo, lutenist Simone Vallerotonda, already a star of many Arcana recordings, and award-winning harpsichordist Cristiano Gaudio.

The splendour of Mozart’s motet Exsultate, jubilate stands out in a repertoire that has for too long remained in the shadows: the magnificent output of church music composed in 18th-century Milan, the city in which Mozart, then not even 17 years old, wrote his first masterpiece of sacred music precisely 250 years ago. The virtuosity and melodic beauty of that score, conceived for the celebrated castrato Venanzio Rauzzini, can finally be heard alongside the brilliant works – for soloists and choir, in both the stile antico and the new modern manner – composed for the exacting noble patrons of the capital of Austrian Lombardy by musicians of great refinement and talent: names that include the universally renowned Johann Christian Bach, Giovanni Andrea Fioroni, the then maestro di cappella of the cathedral, and the hitherto obscure Melchiorre Chiesa.

After the success of their Tartini disc (Arcana 478, Diapason d'or, 5 stars from Musica), Mario Brunello and the Accademia dell'Annunciata return for an ingenious collection of six concertos, all of which are transcriptions of other works. Not only do we hear the keyboard arrangements of Venetian concertos such as Marcello's famous oboe concerto and Vivaldi's Violin Concerto RV230, but also reconstructed concertos by Bach such as those for oboe and oboe d'amore (BWV 1056 and 1055) and those that have come down to us in their original version — from the Violin Concerto BWV 1042 up to and including the renowned Concerto nach Italienischen Gusto BWV 971. The dialogue between the tutti and the solo passages in the latter work, only imagined in its keyboard version, here finds its full realisation in Riccardo Doni's brilliant transcription for piccolo cello and strings, supported here by the energy and passion of the Accademia dell'Annunciata.

Celebrating the golden age of English keyboard music from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, this personal anthology features works by the greatest composers of the time. John Dowland’s beguiling Pavanes and Galliards, transcribed by Martin Peerson and William Byrd, are punctuated by John Tomkins’ dazzling song-variations, Thomas Morley and William Tisdall’s whirling dances, and ravishing madrigals set by Peter Philips and others. John Amner’s masterful O Lord, in Thee is all my trust contrasts with William Byrd’s evocative, chiming variations The Bells, showcasing the different styles of these composers.This recording extends Giulia Nuti’s oeuvre of critically acclaimed recordings on historical harpsichords; her solo recital "Le Cœur et l’oreille" (Arcana, 2017), recorded on the harpsichord built by Louis Denis in 1658, was awarded the "Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik". In this recording Giulia plays an exquisite Italian virginal from c. 1575.

On its debut album, La Petite Écurie presents a fascinating collection of English music by the most respected composers from around 1700: Thomas Morgan, Godfrey Finger, James Paisible and Henry Purcell. Paisible, who came originally from France, was Queen Anne’s favourite composer; he composed and directed numerous works for "the Queen's Oboe Band". However, it is not only suites by Paisible himself that feature in this manuscript source; his handwriting can be recognised in both his own music and several other pieces, suggesting that he may have copied, organised performances of and perhaps arranged works by his colleagues for concerts at court.

Two years after the great acclaim aroused by "Beethoven and his Contemporaries", his first recording for Arcana, Raffaele La Ragione returns with an album containing the four best-known mandolin concertos, which appear in a new light here thanks to the use of three different period mandolins. For this ambitious project he is joined by the brilliant orchestra Il pomo d’oro, universally renowned for its lively, dynamic interpretations of instrumental and vocal music from the Baroque and Classical periods (with Joyce DiDonato, Franco Fagioli, Jakub Józef Orliński) and directed here by its principal guest conductor Francesco Corti, a harpsichordist of international repute.From Vivaldi’s famous mandolin concertos, by way of the typically Neapolitan examples by Paisiello and Lecce, to the two more Classical concertos of Hummel (these last in their world premiere recording on historical instruments), four concertos and three precious instruments restore this repertory to its rightful place and relate almost a century of mandolin history.

After a wonderful Bach album, harpsichordist Francesco Corti continues his collaboration with Arcana with a recording entirely dedicated to George Frideric Handel. At the center of the project are the eight “Great” suites. These masterpieces were the composer’s first published set, and are a clear testimony to his virtuosity at the keyboard. Their characteristically diversified styles reflect not only the "mélange" of national traditions assimilated by the young composer, but also his phenomenal improvisatory talent. Moreover, the attraction of these pieces lies in their melodic and rhythmic affinity to the world of singing and orchestral writing, Händel’s strongest interests.Arrangements of Handel’s operatic overtures and arias started circulating early in his career in England, and in his later years he was known to perform his overtures on the keyboard himself. Corti designs a program showcasing the composer’s brilliant treatment of the instrument, choosing to complement the “Great” Suites with a selection of transcriptions from Händel’s own hand and from his close musical circle.

Un jeune ensemble comportant musiciens et chanteurs met en lumière la précieuse pratique historique du chant avec accompagnement (déjà remise à l’honneur par la soliste Vivabiancaluna Biffi), faisant résonner de manière totalement nouvelle un répertoire dédié habituellement aux voix solistes. Avec le Concerto di Margherita, le chant avec accompagnement devient « collectif » pour la première fois et est amplifié par un geste commun dans lequel tous les membres du groupe, jouant et chantant dans une symbiose extraordinaire, offrent une sonorité totalement inédite pour ce répertoire.