A. SCARLATTI, Magnificat – H. HOWELLS, Requiem
INTENDE VOCI ENSEMBLE
MIRKO GUADAGNINI
URANIA RECORDS
Awards:
MUSICA Magazine
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This project is a homage to Alessandro Scarlatti, one of the most significant and impressive Italian baroque composers. His music masterfully tells the story of the Italian and Neapolitan style, center of the musical landscape in the 1700s.
Unlike the Salve Regina, a brilliant a cappella masterpiece that deploys a soft and warm vocality, the Magnificat a 5 by Alessandro Scarlatti immediately appears as a rainbow of colors in which the composer combines the ancient expressiveness with rather convoluted modulations and a basso continuo at times concertante and at times solistic.
Although it was written for 5 voices, INTENDE VOCI ENSEMBLE alternates pure soloism and chorality: it is a new reading, that in the feeling of the ensemble director, Mirko Guadagnini, gives a new rendition to Scarlatti’s writing that in the Magnificat enhances the vocal virtuosity, a sign of the Mediterranean and fiery character of the composer, and creates chorality with the sudden insertion of dancing emissaries.
The CD is enriched with other compositions in an organic structure between ancient and modern. In addition to the exciting Te Deum, a tribute to Domenico, Alessandro’s son, INTENDE VOCI ENSEMBLE puts a seal on the long-established pairing between Renaissance music and 20th century polyphony with Herbert Howells’ Requiem, an ecstatic a cappella composition written in 1936 that posed a great challenge because of the complexity of its writing. As other great composers from last century such as Britten, Pizzetti and Arvo Pärt have taught us, the dialogue between ancient and modern is extremely fascinating and always inspirational.
5 STARS FROM THE MUSIC REVIEW - Intende Voci Ensemble and its director Mirko Guadagnini show confidence with this repertoire, perfect harmony and ensemble unity, as well as excellent quality in the individual voices called to solo interventions, even very complex. A disc that can be appreciated and that deserves the highest recognition.
There is involvement, there is due emotional expressiveness... there is a lucidity of interpretation that always offers a balance in which vocal research and textual tradition find their place."
The composer Herbert Howells invested his Requiem with a deep expressive intensity and Mirko Guadagnini and his ensemble give it back to us with the same interpretative intention, through a reading able on the one hand to untangle the passages of high technical difficulty and on the other hand to enhance the wide sound fields in which the most intimate feelings of the human soul find voice
The executive level is very high, Maestro Guadagnini's direction is always authoritative and elegant, and the result is really able to touch the most intimate chords, exiting from beginning to end
