Ensemble Giardino di Delizie, Ewa Anna Augustynowicz
125:31 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Brilliant Classics 96079

This double CD set presents all 12 of Alessandro Stradella’s Violin Sinfonias and two of his Sinfonias a tre played by Ewa Anna Augustynowicz, who also directs a continuo ensemble of cello, archlute/guitar/theorbo and organ/harpsichord. In keeping with the music of a man who knew how to live dangerously, there is a wonderful almost improvisatory spontaneity about these performances, which incorporate inspired ornamentation. In the Sinfonias a tre, in effect trio sonatas, the archlute takes the second melodic voice while the organ plays continuo, an approach which works very well indeed. Instrumental music is only a very small part of Stradella’s output, but his confident writing for this chamber ensemble with its vividly wayward approach to harmonic progressions and mercurial changes of rhythm is wonderfully engaging, especially when played with such imaginative musicality as it is here. Augustynowicz plays a warm-toned and declamatory Baroque violin by the Ravenna maker, Marco Minnozzi.

D. James Ross

https://earlymusicreview.com/stradella-complete-violin-sinfonias/?fbclid=IwAR324eZ1-lNIl3g0UhhGp5sM6rXolxGMXXpRtCX83ybKYmIRe-HxdPcypSM

Musica classica, due cd rarità ci restituiscono due autori dimenticati del Seicento romano

Giuseppina La Face

Due cd mi danno lo spunto per una breve riflessione sulla storia musicale di Roma. Città splendida, entusiasmante e “dificile”, onusta di monumenti e opere d’arte fin dall’antichità, è uno scrigno prezioso per l’arte musicale nel Seicento: da lì i musicisti d’oggi possono estrarre tesori misconosciuti, da valorizzare in sala da concerto e in teatro. Una ragione della dovizia artistica seicentesca di Roma sta nella sua struttura politica: una monarchia elettiva come il papato comporta che i cardinali delle massime famiglie nobili, di volta in volta filofrancesi o filospagnole, puntino al trono di Pietro. Questa competizione stimola una vita mondana intensa, che si manifesta nelle architetture fastose, nella committenza artistica, nella produzione di musiche e, dunque, di un vasto ceto di musicisti in concorrenza.Il florido mercato odierno della musica antica propone due rarità assai diverse di quell’epoca: un cd dedicato alle Sinfonie a tre di Lelio Colista (1627-1680), e un altro all’Empio punito’ di Alessandro Melani (1639-1703).Chi era Colista, chitarrista, liutista, compositore? L’eruditissimo gesuita Athanasius Kircher lo definisce “Orfeo della città di Roma”; non gli lesinarono la stima compositori come Antonio Cesti e Henry Purcell. Lavorò per la corte di Urbano VIII Barberini; fu poi scudiero pontificio di Alessandro VII Chigi. Salvo due anni trascorsi a Bologna, visse e operò sempre a Roma. Non pubblicò mai le proprie musiche: il che spiega l’oblio.Si tenga presente che all’epoca di Colista la musica è generalmente fatta per il consumo immediato: l’idea di un repertorio destinato a sedimentarsi nel tempo è un processo che si manifesterà tra fine Sette e primo Ottocento. In questo senso un compositore come Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) rappresentò l’eccezione che conferma la regola: la sua fama, eccelsa e duratura, fu cementata dalla pubblicazione di Sonate (a tre o assolo), ben presto assurte al rango di “classici”, e dedicate a personaggi eminentissimi, come la regina di Svezia o il cardinale Ottoboni. Colista cadde invece in dimenticanza giacché i frutti del suo ingegno rimasero relegati nella sfera dei committenti. Sono dunque anche i processi di produzione e fruizione a decretare, al di là del valore artistico, la permanenza dei musicisti nella memoria collettiva: cosa che, con le dovute differenze, vale ancora oggi.Di Colista l’“Ensemble Giardino di delizie” – un gruppo diretto dalla violinista Ewa Anna Augustynowicz – ha registrato in prima mondiale le nove Sinfonie a tre e un Ballo: composizioni composte sotto Alessandro VII, conservate nella Biblioteca nazionale di Torino. L’Ensemble esalta la serena severità del costrutto contrappuntistico e nel contempo la sonorità piena ma morbida di questa musica, il fraseggio elegante, il contrasto ritmico nitido, mai aggressivo: si ascolti l’inizio della Sinfonia VI, pacato, cantabile, con movenze di danza che lo strutturano in controluce; o quello più assertivo della terza; o l’altro più suadente, a tratti spirituale, della nona. Un’esecuzione pregevole, che ha il merito di riportare all’attenzione un compositore di qualità e consente agli studiosi di ampliare il quadro musicale della Roma seicentesca. Il cd (Brilliant Classics 96033) contiene un booklet di Pasquale Imbrenda, che da anni si dedica con acribia e passione alla ricostruzione della biografia e dell’opera di Colista: utile per un primo approccio al compositore.

Read more 

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/podcasts/en-pistes/les-symphonies-de-tchaikovski-par-paavo-jaervi-et-le-tonhalle-orchester-7383477

Lelio COLISTA (1629-1680)
Sinfonie a tre
Sinfonia in F, W-K26 [9:05]
Sinfonia in A, W-K22 [9:01]
Sinfonia in C, W-K14 [4;39]
Sinfonia in E minor, W-K31 [7:17]
Sinfonia in C, W-K13 [9:25]
Sinfonia in B-flat, W-K28 [6:20]
Sinfonia in G, W-K37 [9:36]
Sinfonia in C, W-K10 [5:35]
Sinfonia in F, W-K25 [9:08]
Ballo in tre in G minor, W-K41 [3:54]
World premiere recordings.
Ensemble Giardino di Delizie
rec. November 4-7, 2019; Chiesa di San Francesco, Trevi (Umbria).
BRILLIANT CLASSICS 96033 [74:53]

This is, indeed, a garden of delights!

It has to be admitted that some of the baroque composers whose work has been rediscovered (and recorded) in recent decades are minor figures, obscure and little noted even during their lifetimes and of real interest only to specialist scholars nowadays. Their works are the sort of thing an unsympathetic friend of mine dismisses as “music for musicologists”, perhaps remembering Sir Thomas Beecham’s characteristically cruel witticism, “a musicologist is a man who can read music, but can’t hear it”. Both my friend and Sir Thomas are guilty of severe exaggeration. Such judgements are, however, wholly inappropriate where Lelio Colista is concerned.

Who was Colista? His abilities, as a performer (he played several instruments, notably the lute, the guitar, the theorbo and the harp as well as singing) and as a composer, were much admired in his own day; many relevant instances are quoted in the excellent notes by Pasquale Imbrenda (to which I am indebted for many of the details which follow) accompanying this thoroughly enjoyable CD, and I shall return to some of these later, In the following centuries ,however, he was almost entirely forgotten until quite recently.

Why? Perhaps primarily because he published none of his music. He thus entrusted his music to the vagaries of manuscript transmission – a process in which much was inevitably lost (including at least two oratorios), while some works perhaps survived separated from his name. It may well be that he chose not to publish his work because he thought publication unbefitting of his social status – which brings us to further matters of biography.

Born in Rome in 1629, the composer was the youngest son of Margherita Riveri de Honorantis and Piero Colista, a Jurist and scholar who was on the staff of the Vatican Library. Lelio became a choirboy and was educated at the Jesuit Collegio Romano. Aged 8, he danced in a Pazzia di Orlando, a ballo co’ gesti, performed in the Palazzo Barberini. His skills as a lutenist were recognised very early and he contributed to many private concerts in aristocratic Roman palazzi. His father’s important connections and his own evident abilities ensured that as he grew older Lelio soon had an established place in the cultural life of Rome. He is known to have played in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore from 1652. He seems to have had friends in the princely family of the Chigi and when Cardinal Fabio Chigi was elected Pope in 1655 (taking the name of Alexander VII) Colista received several remunerative appointments; in 1656 he was listed as one of the 22 squires in the service of the Chigi family and in the same year was made Papal equerry. In 1659 he was appointed custode delle pittura della capella pontificana (Custodian of the paintings in the Papal chapel), i.e. the Sistine Chapel; he held this position until his death in October 1680. From 1657 he was deputy chamberlain to the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Flavio Chigi (1631-93). In 1664, along with the composer, harpsichordist and organist Bernardo Pasquini, Colista accompanied Flavio Chigi on a diplomatic mission as Cardinal Legate to France. In his notes Imbrenda quotes a report on this trip by the composer (and organist) Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni (1657-1743), “The Roman Lelio Colista, renowned player of the lute and guitar, composer of beautiful symphonies, was taken by Legate Card. Chigi to France, where King Louis XIV heard him play and was highly impressed. On his return to Rome many wished to study with him…”. Imbrenda observes that “it was this experience that turned Colista into a musician of international fame”. During the years of Alexander VII’s papacy, Colista was able to invest much of his various salaries (and it seems that he did so wisely).

After Alexander VII died in May 1667, Colista, perhaps because some were jealous of his success, left Rome for Bologna. Though his stay in Bologna was not lengthy it is very possible that, as Imbrenda suggests, the example of Colista’s music influenced the work of Bolognese composers such as Bononcini (1642-78) and Giovanni Battista Vitali (1632-92). Colista was, however, back in Rome by September 1669, since on the 8^th of that month he married Margarita Petrignani, daughter of a minor Roman painter, Girolamo Petrignani. The marriage produced 6 children. A few years later Colista served as ‘concertino lutenist’ in oratorios by several composers performed in Rome in the holy (or Jubilee) year of 1675. One of the younger members of the orchestra, which also included Bernardo Pasquini and violinist Carlo Manelli, was violinist Arcangelo Corelli (born in Bologna, 1653) who had made his way to Rome to study with Manelli.
The brief biographical narrative above makes clear, I hope, something of the regard in which Lelio Colista was held by his contemporaries. It can be supplemented by some of the things they said about him. That remarkable man Athanasius Kircher (1602-80), a man summed up in the full title of Joscelyn Godwin’s fascinating 1979 book on him: Athanasius Kircher: A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge: A Late Renaissance Philosopher and Scientist, was perhaps not an impartial witness, since he and Colista knew one another from the years the latter spent at the Collegio Romano. Still, it is worth noting that in his book Musurgia Universalis (1650) Kircher wrote of Colista that he was “in truth the Orpheus of the city of Rome” (veré Romanae Urbis Orpheus) and a famous singer” (insignis Cytharaedus). Corelli (in the preface to his 12 Trio Sonatas, opus 1) numbered Colista among the “major Roman professors of music” (più professori musici di Roma). The famous singer and composer Antonio Cesti, in a letter of 1668 to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, described Colista as one “who composes for and plays the lute excellently, a true virtuoso of the highest quality.” Imbrenda tells us that “Henry Purcell spoke of the famous Lelio Colista” in the 12^th edition, which he revised, of John Playford’s An Introduction to the Skill of Musick, published in 1694”; I have been unable, however, to find the phrase in the single copy of the 1694 edition to which I have had access. That Purcell admired Colista is not, though, in doubt – in the entry on Colista in The New Grove (1980), Michael Tilmouth writes that Colista was “undoubtedly the most important of the Italian models for Henry Purcell’s trio sonatas.” In his 1995 biography of Purcell, Jonathan Keates identifies Colista as “someone who caught the young Purcell’s attention at a crucial moment”. Colista’s music was played in London concerts during the late 17^th century according to Denis Stevens. Some of Colista’s works circulated in manuscript in England either side of 1700. I remember being shown, some years ago, in the library of Christ Church, Oxford a manuscript [Mus.1126] containing 6 sonatas or parts of sonatas by Colista. I noted that the catalogue of Christ Church Library says “these works probably formed part of the repertory of Oxford city/university waits or ‘musick’.” A last illustration of Colista’s fame: The Spanish guitarist and composer Gaspar Sanz (1640-1710) chose to study with Colista in Rome and when, in 1674 he published his important book Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española he singled out Colista for praise calling him (perhaps consciously recalling Kircher’s words), “Orfeo de estos tiempos” (the Orpheus of these times); another of Colista’s pupils was Daniel Eberlin, the German violinist and composer (and, incidentally, father-in-law of Telemann). Colista and his work were, in short, famous across Europe and widely admired by respected judges, though largely overlooked in ensuing centuries.

As a consequence of this ‘disappearance’, Colista is entirely absent from representative scholarly studies such as Manfred F. Bukofzer’s Music in the Baroque Era (1947/48) and William S. Newman’s The Sonata in the Baroque Era (1959) . So far as I am aware, the ‘rediscovery’ of Lelio Colista effectively began with Helene Wessely’s Lelio Costa: ein römischer Meister vor Corelli (Vienna, 1961). By the time of Julie Ann Sadie’s Companion to Baroque Music (1990), Colista was sufficiently well-known to merit an individual entry, which contains the observation that “by their imitative counterpoint, the chains of suspensions and ‘walking basses’, Colista’s trios anticipate the achievements of Corelli and, although forgotten in Italy in the wake of the younger man’s polished chamber music, they were performed elsewhere in Europe, well into the 18^th century.” Scholarship on Colista was greatly aided by the publication in 2002 (in Rome) of H. Wessely-Kropik’s Lelio Colista: un maestro romano prima di Corelli. (I presume that the H. Wessely-Kropik responsible for the 2002 book is the same Helene Wessely who wrote the 1961 book, later publishing under her married name).

The sinfonie played on this disc appear to have been written during the years of Alexander VII’s pontificate and are known to have been performed in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome on Christmas Eve, 1664. They are delightful works which display both a genuine lyricism and well-made counterpoint, with a powerful, if relatively narrow, emotional expressiveness. All of the works recorded here (for the first time) are taken from a manuscript [Giordano 15] in the Biblioteca Nazionale (Turin). They are played by a superb ensemble made up of two baroque violins (Eva Anna Augustynowicz and Katarzyna Solecka; the first of these also being the artistic director of Giardino di Delizie), one baroque cello, played by Valeria Brunelli, plus Fabrizio Carta who plays the archlute on some tracks and the baroque guitar on others, and Elisabetta Ferri (who alternates between harpsichord and organ). Eva Anna Augustynowicz plays 1^st violin on tracks 2, 4-5,7 and 9, while Katarzyna Solecka is 1^st violin on the remaining tracks. Colista’s sinfoniefollow a basic four-‘movement’ pattern, in which the first movement is usually slow and melodious, sometimes with a melancholy quality, with some admirable contrapuntal writing in later movement(s).

It is some time since the work of a ‘forgotten’ baroque composer gave me as much pleasure as this world premiere recording. The performances of Giardino di Delizie are subtle but energetic, by turns thoughtful and vivacious. The ensemble work seems (I don’t have access to scores) utterly perfect; Giardino di Delizie, founded by Ms. Agustynowicz in 2014 and based in Rome had already made a favourable impression on me in two previous recordings on Brilliant Classics – a 2 CD set of the Complete Sinfonias of Carlo Ambrogio Lonati (BC 95590) and the anthology Gems of the Polish Baroque (BC 95955). This, I suggest, is an even more important recording which should do much to restore Colista’s reputation and make it easier to see his importance in the music of the Italian baroque.

Glyn Pursglove
 

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Aug/Colista-sinfonia-96033.htm?fbclid=IwAR0rtGYVkxamVRlER8FrLdqrokqJFHF24xTh2RcjcBGWONeqPhtPNPKCwak

Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682), über dessen Ermordung durch einen Attentäter die Musikgeschichte manche mögliche und etliche eher unwahrscheinliche Versionen überliefert hat, ist vor allem als Vokalkomponist bekannt. Dieses Doppelalbum wendet sich seiner Instrumentalmusik zu. Nun ist es so, dass diese Violin-Sinfonien für Sologeige, Cello, Gitarre, Cembalo oder Orgel irgendwo auch etwas Vokales haben. Sie sind dramatisch und kantabel, mit einem bemerkenswerten Sinn für die effektreiche Ausdeutung des Affekts.

In einer vielleicht etwas zu halligen Aufnahme überzeugt Giardino di Delizie mit seinem Schwung, seinem Sinn für angemessene Tempi und die klanglichen Eigenheiten der Werke, was alle Schwingungen der Musik überträgt und daran erinnert, dass der Basso continuo das Rückgrat dieser Musik ist. Das soll uns nicht daran hindern, die Rhetorik der Solistin Ewa Anna Augustynowicz hervorzustreichen.

Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682), about whose assassination by a murderer music history has handed down many possible and several rather improbable versions, is known primarily as a vocal composer. This double album turns to his instrumental music. Now it so happens that these violin symphonies for solo violin, cello, guitar, harpsichord or organ somewhere have something vocal about them. They are dramatic and cantabile, with a remarkable sense of effect-laden affetto.
In a recording that is perhaps a bit too reverberant, Giardino di Delizie is convincing in its elegant élan, its sense of appropriate tempi and the works’ tonal idiosyncrasies, which transmits all the music’s vibrations and reminds us that the basso continuo is the backbone of this music. This should not prevent us from highlighting the rhetoric of soloist Ewa Anna Augustynowicz

https://www.pizzicato.lu/stradellas-instrumentalmusik-in-rhetorisch-kantablen-darbietungen/?fbclid=IwAR3jnwpvkT8Eukha0TtkmaYbWiYDw3h0JPeNAo1tDGGei4_09yRH5Dm9ABA

Analyste: Olivier Fourés

Diapason # 696 (01 /2021)
Brilliant Classics
BR96033

Figure centrale de la Rome seicentesca, Lelio Colista est un « excellent » joueur de luth, théorbe et surtout guitare, danseur à ses heures. Sa renommée le porte jusqu’en France, où il éblouit Louis XIV, et il est tenu en haute estime par ses contemporains Kircher, Abbatini, Cesti, Purcell ou Sanz (qui est son élève).

Ses neuf sinfonie à trois parties, dont le manuscrit est conservé dans le même fond que ceux de Vivaldi à Turin, sont ici enregistrées pour la première fois. Il s’agit pourtant de pièces richement contrastées, entre danses et recueillement, pleines d’esprit. Leur remarquable contrepoint, entre chambre et église, doit sans doute à sa collaboration avec les, violinistes Michelangelo Rossi et Salvatore MazzeIla. Notre attention est surtout retenue par deux sonates dont la basse obstinée invite les exécutants à improviser « solo se piace » (seulement si on en a envie), ce qui étaye l’hypothèse de la destination de ces oeuvres à des musiciens professionnels.

L’ensemble Giardino di Delizie fait honneur à ce baptême discographique: précision, sensualité et couleurs dans le jeu, connivence entre les parties. La prise de son, réverbérée et distante (bien trop « église » pour tous ces motifs de danse), ôte beaucoup d’énergie aux musiciens et nous force à tendre l’oreille pour percevoir les détails. Toutefois la fluidité du discours prend le dessus et permet d’apprécier le génie de Lelio Colista, « Orfeo della citta di Roma » (Kircher).

http://www.classicalacarte.net/Production2021/Production_01_21/BR96033_01_21_diapason.htm?fbclid=IwAR296MGuJjo1C9Sr4EV58rvWoEBQSfjRtVHuAvr7aJqEuesxm_v2ywzVSmA

Uwielbienie dla włoskiej muzyki, które rozlało się po Europie już w epoce renesansu, a przybrało na sile w baroku, prowokowało pielgrzymki muzyków z różnych krajów do słonecznej Italii.

Dla polskich artystów, jak i wcześniej dla adeptów nauk wszelakich, był to naturalny kierunek wypraw po wiedzę. Także włoscy wirtuozi i śpiewacy byli gośćmi na polskich dworach królewskich, szczególnie za panowania wielkiego miłośnika muzyki Władysława IV. Występy polsko-włoskich zespołów były na porządku dziennym.

Mikołaj Zieleński był pierwszym polskim kompozytorem, który publikował utwory w Italii, chociaż nie potwierdzono jego podróży na południe. Niewątpliwie dotarł tam Adam Jarzębski skąd prowadziła prosta droga na dwór Zygmunta III Wazy. Razem z nim występował Marcin Mielczewski.

Obaj pisali w stylu włoskim. Z Gdańska pochodził Kaspar Foerster, który po naukach w Rzymie został śpiewakiem w kapeli królewskiej. Rezydujący w Rzymie zespół Ensemble Giardino Di Delizie złożony jest z włoskich i polskich instrumentalistek, a kierowany przez grającą na skrzypcach barokowych Ewę Annę Augustynowicz.

Na podwójnym albumie “Gems of the Polish Baroque” znajdziemy znakomite interpretacje muzyczne klejnotów polskiego baroku, niemal sto minut ujmującej pięknem muzyki, w tym słynne Koncerty Jarzębskiego: Tamburettę i Cantate Domino.

Grzegorz Dusza
Brilliant Classics/CM

Więcej: https://audio.com.pl/muzyka/recenzje/klasyczna/27751-ensemble-giardino-di-delizie-gems-of-the-polish-baroque

Fra Varsavia e Venezia

di Roberta Pedrotti

Mielczewski, Foerster, Zieleński, Jarzębski, Szarzyński

Gems of the Polish Baroque

Ensemble Giardino di Delizie

Ewa Anna Augustynowicz e Katarzyna Solecka violini · Cristina Vidoni violoncello · Silvia de Maria viola da gamba · Paola Ventrella tiorba · Elisabetta Ferri cembalo e organo. Ospiti: Elena Bianchi dulcian · Fabrizio Carta tiorba · Amalia Ottone viola da gamba · Marco Contessi violone

Registrazioni effettuate a Nepi in aprile e maggio 2019

2CD Brilliant Classics 95955, 2020

Generazioni diverse circoscritte nell’arco di all’incirca un secolo e mezzo, fra la nascita del più anziano (Mikołaj Zieleński, 1560) e la morte del più giovane (Szarzyński, 1713). Così l’ensemble Giardino di Delizie, dopo aver debuttato in CD con il barocco romano, si dedica all’altra tradizione rappresentata dalle sue componenti (e dalla direttrice artistica, la violinista Ewa Anna Augustynowicz), quella polacca.

I rapporti fra Italia e Polonia, d’altra parte, sono antichi ed evidenti. Si parla una stessa lingua, seppur con inflessioni diverse e anche quando non si hanno prove di viaggi nella Penisola, o si ha la conferma che le Alpi non siano proprio mai state varcate, l’interesse per la scuola italiana è evidente, sarà anche per le predilezioni della casa reale che, inevitabilmente, dettano la moda. Sbaglierebbe, però, chi s’incaponisse a fare della storia della musica – e delle arti in generale – storia di scuole nazionali e magari di rivendicazioni che dal patriottico possono virare al vieto nazionalismo, tanto più che all’inizio del XVII secolo questo parrebbe pure anacronistico. Punti di riferimento, scuole, centri d’attività e dottrina sono nodi di contatti, luoghi d’incontro, fuochi da cui si irradiano movimenti di uomini e idee. Il riferimento ai modelli italiani, conosciuti direttamente o meno, non esclude l’invenzione personale, la memoria non solo di composizioni e prassi subalpine, ma anche di ritmi e spunti melodici del nord Europa. Basti pensare che, se i titoli sono quasi tutti in italiano o in latino, fra le canzonette di Jarzębski troviamo una Berlinesa.

L’incontro che non si consumò solo sulla carta pentagrammata, ma anche con suggestioni intellettuali a più ampio spettro e con il movimento di strumentisti e cantanti che costituirono anche ensemble italo-polacchi. Il risultato, affidato in continuità storica proprio a un affiatato ensemble italo-polacco, dimostra tutta la vitalità di una scuola che non è composta da epigoni ed emuli diligenti, ma possiede una sua propria vitalità, come sempre quando idee, dottrine, arti e tradizioni si confrontano e s’intrecciano, tant’è vero che alcune di queste musiche furono stampate anche a Venezia. L’organico di base, quartetto barocco d’archi con tiorba e tastiera (organo), si arricchisce all’occorrenza di una seconda tiorba, di un’altra viola da gamba o di un violone, in due casi anche del dulcian, un antico fagotto il cui colorito pastorale sviluppa non solo il potenziale coloristico, ma anche l’articolazione stessa dell’architettura compositiva. Là dove, nel cd dedicato al barocco romano, avevamo apprezzato la morbida compattezza degli archi, ci troviamo ora a constatare l’abilità nel declinare quella stessa concezione del suono in accostamenti diversi, magari meno sofisticati quanto a contrappunto, ma capaci di esprimere una continuità stilistica in diversi affetti, texture e fraseggi mobili, com’è giusto che sia. Siamo intorno al ‘600, epoca di contrasti, opposti, sorprese, l’epoca del metodo cartesiano dopo il secolo segnato nelle scienze dall’italiano Galileo e dal polacco Copernico, ma anche l’epoca dell’iperbole fantastica, del macabro e del grottesco, dell’estasi carnale e spirituale, dell’effetto stupefacente e dell’affetto ragionevole dell’Arcadia. Guai sarebbe anestetizzare anche questa musica in esercizio di stile, trasformare questi compositori polacchi inebriati di suggestioni e modelli lontani in opachi adepti di una maniera. Ecco qui, con passione e competenza, che anche un repertorio seminascosto, magari privo di scintille di genio, riluce nella sua giusta dimensione storica, nel suo intrinseco valore.

 https://www.apemusicale.it/joomla/recensioni/15-cd/9793-cd-gems-of-polish-baroque