Press - CD Reviews

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

We are delighted to award first prize to Fabio Bonizzoni, La Risonanza and Glossa for their recording of Handel‟s dialogue cantata Apollo e Dafne. Probably started in Venice but completed at Hanover in 1710 in the months shortly after Handel left Italy, the enchanting tale of the braggart Apollo falling head over heels in lust with the reluctant nymph Dafne inspired some of the composer‟s most attractive and emotionally diverse early writing. The cantata has rightly become established as one of Handel‟s most popular “Italian” compositions, and this captivating performance by La Risonanza forms a fittingly essential conclusion to Fabio Bonizzoni‟s ambitious project to record all of Handel‟s Italian-period cantate con stromenti for the Spanish early music label Glossa. Thomas E. Bauer and Roberta Invernizzi are to be praised for their outstanding singing, which is always aptly characterised and suavely stylish, and the playing of La Risonanza is gently dramatic and always beautifully detailed. The disc also includes an excellent performance of the dramatic soprano monologue Agrippina condotta a morire and the seldom-recorded bass cantata Cuopre tal volta il cielo (the latter sung by Furio Zanasi). The seventh and final volume of La Risonanza‟s “Le cantate Italiane di Handel” is the third of the series to be awarded the Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize (and another three were also runners-up in recent years); the panel of judges hopes that the critical and artistic success of this special project encourages La Risonanza, Fabio Bonizzoni and Glossa to continue exploring this repertoire.

“Every so often a series comes along where every issue is worthy of inclusion as an Editor’s Choice. More than that, it seems an injustice not to include it. This has certainly been the case with Bonizzoni’s scintillating Handel traversal. And, with the sense of drama that has been its hallmark, this last instalment may be the best yet. [...] Apollo e Dafne [...] is given, surely, as sublime a performance as any on disc. Usually at this point I would reel off a list of the soloists and their individual merits, but the overwhelming sense of this recording and that of the whole series is of a musical and dramatic collective – one in which the players are characterful soloists every bit as much as the singers and the vocalists are an integral part of the instrumental fabric. [...] There is a sense of glory in spontaneous musik-making, just as there is beauty in every bar.”
David Vickers, Gramophone, October 2010