La Risonanza’s recording, under Fabio Bonizzoni, of Alessandro Scarlatti: Serenate a Filli [...] gives us exactly what it says on the tin: two fairly short, encomiastic serenatas written in Rome in 1706 in honour of a lady going under the Arcadian pseudonym of Filli and probably identifiable as the wife of Scarlatti’s occasional patron Prince Ruspoli. In these highly attractive works Scarlatti, with three voices and a string orchestra at his disposal, shows unfailing resource- fulness in the variety of his scoring patterns. Like Bonizzoni’s impressive series of recordings of Handel cantatas and serenatas for Glossa, this is a musicologically informed project, as Nicolò Maccavino’s erudite booklet text makes clear, but the lively, precise and excellently recorded per- formances are anything but academic.

“Time and again, La Risonanza’s softly affectionate performances are subtly nuanced and beautifully stylish.”
David Vickers – Gramophone – August 2011

“Parfait continuiste, [Bonizzoni] excelle à flatter l’atmosphère bucolique de ces partitions arcadiennes, et la façon dont ses excellents violonistes épousent la rhytmique complexe de Scarlatti confère beaucoup de naturel, de suavité à une écriture qu’on a connue plus anguleuse. […] Une belle réussite musicale…”
Olivier Rouvière – Diapason – juillet 2011

“The playing of La Risonanza’s strings i sas accomplished as the singing, the CD making for a fully worthy adjunct to the ensemble’s universally praised Handel cantata cycle. Dare one hope this is the first of another series?”
Brian Robins – Early Music – June 2011

“La lettura di Bonizzoni e della Risonanza […] si dimostra molto rispettosa del testo poetico e delle sue valenze emotive, ma piacevole è anche il colore strumentale che scaturisce dall’affiatamento dell’ensemble e della prassi esecutiva barocca. Ne deriva un linguaggio ricco di sfumature, di sottolineature psicologiche, di umori, di affetti, che rende onore a un padre fondatore della moderna musica europea.”
Lorenzo Tozzi – Musica – giugno 2011

In short they are stunning. These performers clearly loved performing these works and it shows.
Bonizzoni clearly ranks as one of the most intelligent and thoughtful baroque interpreters around today, and his ensemble, La Risonanza are faultless. This music is not easy to perform. Scored simply for strings and continuo it’s simplicity belies the challenge to deliver performances of subtlety, colour and verve. They deliver it in buckets. The playing is articulate, crisp, with a real sense of rhythm and gesture. Yet from the very start they achieve a rare feat – of balance. Balance between the singers and the instrumentalists but also the fine balance of emotions between the individual numbers.
Without a doubt, this is a disc to buy for yourself and your friends.
http://lietofinelondon.wordpress.com, 21st May 2011

One of the elder Scarlatti's periods of employment in Rome (1703-08) coincided with Handel's visit to the eternal city. Opera languished under a papal ban, but there was plenty opportunity for both to write quasi-operatic works in the guise of cantatas or serenatas, performed in concert but with a dramatic thread and discernible characters. Handel wrote cantatas for three voices and instruments - Clori, Tirsi e Fileno and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo - and they may have used those of Scarlatti, the foremost Italian opera composer of this day, as models. The Serenata a Filli (Serenade to Phyllis) and Le Muse Urania e Clio Lodano le Bellezze di Filli (The Muses Urania and Cleo praise the Beauty of Phyllis) are contrasting works from 1706: the former a dark, nocturnal sequence of languishing arias, duets and trios sung by two sopranos and an alto in male roles; the latter the muses' brighter meditation on the nymph's beauty, inspired by the personification of the sun (Il Sole). In both cases, these roles would have been sung by castrati; Bonizzoni uses two sopranos and a countertenor. If the music is not quite on the level of Scarlatti's best cantatas - Il giardino d' amore (The Garden of Love) and Endymion and Cynthia are overdue for modern recordings - he always makes a speciality of intertwining high voices. Svegliati, o bella (Awake, my beauty) is ravishingly sung by Emanuela Galli, Yetzabel Arias Fernandez and Martin Oro. Like La Risonanza's award-winning Handel series, this is irresistible. HC