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NOTES (FRA)
Dans le troisième volume du parcours deFabio Bonizzoni dans le corpus des cantatesprofanes avec accompagnement instrumentalque Georg Friedrich Haendel composa durantson séjour en Italie, le chef milanais présenteun quatuor d’œuvres associées au cardinalPietro Ottoboni : ce mécène vénitien, dont lefaste était célèbre dans toute l’Europe, a trèsprobablement écrit le livret de la remarquablecantate intitulée Ero e Leandro. Aux côtés deSpande ancora a mio dispetto, la cantate pourvoix de basse, rarement interprétée et de Ah!Crudel, nel pianto mio, écrite pour soprano,nous trouvons dans ce disque la cantate surun texte espagnol ayant pour titre No seemendará jamás.
Bonizzoni applique ici encore sa somptueusepolitique consistant à ne choisir que des voix depremier ordre, pouvant apporter la touche etl’intensité nécessaires à l’italianità du jeuneHaendel. Alors que Roberta Invernizzi etEmanuela Galli se partageaient la vedette desdeux premiers volumes, dans cet « Ottoboni »les projecteurs sont braqués sur la sopranoRaffaella Milanesi et la basse Salvo Vitale. Demême que dans les volumes antérieurs, lesnotes du livret nous permettent de mieux abordercette aire négligée du génie haendelien. C’estau tour de Livio Marcaletti, expert dans lesmusiques de Bononcini et de Haendel, de nousguider dans les cantates du compositeur saxon.
NOTIZEN (DEU)
Der dritte Teil von Fabio Bonizzonis Einspielungenweltlicher Kantaten mit Instrumentalbegleitungaus Georg Friedrich Händels italienischer Zeitbeinhaltet vier Werke, die in Zusammenhangmit dem in Venedig geborenen Mäzen PietroOttoboni stehen. Darunter ist auch die bekannteKantate Ero e Leandro, deren Libretto mit hoherWahrscheinlichkeit Kardinal Ottoboni selbstverfasst hat. Neben der selten aufgeführtenBass-Kantate Spande ancora a mio dispettound Ah! Crudel, nel pianto mio für Soprandirigiert Bonizzoni auch die Kantate No seemendará jamás über einen spanischen Text.
In dieser neuesten Veröffentlichung verfolgtBonizzoni seine Strategie weiter, versierteSänger herauszubringen, die einen intensivenund direkten Zugang zu Händels italienischenWerken haben. Während in den ersten beidenCDs Beiträge von Roberta Invernizzi undEmanuela Galli zu hören waren, stehen in dieser»Ottoboni«-Aufnahme nun die SopranistinRaffaella Milanesi und der Bassist Salvo Vitaleim Rampenlicht. Wie auch in den vorangegan-genen Aufnahmen dienen die begleitendenAusführungen im Booklet zum besseren Ver-ständnis dieser vernachlässigten Werke desgenialen Händel. Diese wurden von LivioMarcaletti, einem ausgewiesenen Kenner derMusik von Antonio Bononcini wie auch derWerke Händels, verfasst.
NOTAS (ESP)
En el tercer volumen del recorrido que FabioBonizzoni está realizando por el corpus decantatas profanas con acompañamientoinstrumental que Georg Friedrich Haendelcompuso durante su estancia en Italia, el directormilanés presenta un cuarteto de obras asociadospor el mecenas Pietro Ottoboni, incluyendo lamuy notable Ero e Leandro, cuyo libreto seconsidera con bastante fundamento que pudohaber sido escrito por el mismo CardenalOttoboni. Además de la raramente interpretadacantata para bajo Spande ancora a mio dispettoy de Ah! Crudel, nel pianto mio, escrita parasoprano, el disco incluye la cantata con textoen español titulada No se emendará jamás.
Bonizzoni continúa en esta entrega con supolítica de utilizar a una variedad de cantantesde primera fila que puedan aportar un toqueintenso y directo a estas obras «italianas» deHaendel. Si los primeros dos volúmenescontaban con la colaboración de RobertaInvernizzi y de Emanuela Galli, en este«Ottoboni» el foco se centra en la sopranoRaffaella Milanesi y el bajo Salvo Vitale. Igualque en ocasiones anteriores, las notascontenidas en el libreto nos ayudan acomprender este repertorio tan desatendidode Haendel. Aquí es el profesor Livio Marcaletti,experto en las músicas de Bononcini y deHaendel, quien nos guía por las cantatas delmaestro sajón.
NOTES (ENG)
In the third instalment in Fabio Bonizzoni’ssurvey of the secular cantatas with instrumentalaccompaniment composed by Georg FridericHandel during his stay in Italy, come a quartetof works associated with the Venice-bornmaecenas Pietro Ottoboni – including thesubstantial Ero e Leandro, the libretto forwhich is plausibly considered to have beenwritten by the Cardinal Ottoboni himself. Aswell as the seldom-performed cantata for bass,Spande ancora a mio dispetto and Ah! Crudel,nel pianto mio scored for soprano solo,Bonizzoni also directs the Spanish-texted Nose emendará jamás.
In this latest outing Bonizzoni continues withhis policy of bringing forward accomplishedsingers with an intense and direct feel forHandel’s Italian output. Where the first twovolumes saw contributions from RobertaInvernizzi and Emanuela Galli, here, for this“Ottoboni” release, the spotlight falls onsoprano Raffaella Milanesi and bass SalvoVitale. As before, our understanding of thisneglected area of Handel’s genius is enhancedby the accompanying booklet notes. Here theyare provided by Livio Marcaletti, an expert onthe music of Antonio Bononcini as much ason that of Handel.
www.glossamusic.com
G. F. HandelItalian Cantatas, vol. IIILe Cantate per il Cardinal Ottoboni
Raffaella Milanesi, sopranoSalvo Vitale, bass
La RisonanzaMike Fentross, Andrea Mion, Rey Ishizaka,Nick Robinson, Carlo Lazzaroni,Barbara Altobello, Rossella Borsoni, Silvia Colli,Fabio Ravasi, Gianni De Rosa,Caterina Dell’Agnello, Olaf Reimers,Vanni MorettoFabio Bonizzoni, director
Glossa GCD 921523Full-price digipak
Programme
Georg Friedrich Haendel (1685-1759)Italian Cantatas
1-7 Ero e Leandro (Qual ti riveggio), HWV 150
8-10 No se emendará jamás, HWV 140
11-13 Spande ancora a mio dispetto, HWV 165
14-19 Ah! Crudel, nel pianto mio, HWV 78
Production details
Total playing time: 66’32
Recorded at the English Church, Den Haag,Holland, in January 2007Engineered by Adriaan VerstijnenProduced by Tini MathotExecutive producer: Carlos Céster
Design 00:03:00 oficina tresminutosBooklet essay by Livio MarcalettiEnglish Français Deutsch Español
Le Cantate Italiane di Handel, IIILa Risonanza & Fabio Bonizzoni
GCD 921523New release informationDecember 2007
8 424562 21523 8
www.glossamusic.com
Fabio Bonizzoni talks aboutthe third volume of Handel cantatas
In the third instalment in Fabio Bonizzoni’s surveyof the secular cantatas with instrumentalaccompaniment composed by Georg Frideric Handelduring his stay in Italy, come a quartet of worksassociated with the Venice-born maecenas PietroOttoboni – including the substantial Ero e Leandro,the libretto for which is plausibly considered tohave been written by the Cardinal Ottoboni himself.As well as the seldom-performed cantata for bass,Spande ancora a mio dispetto and Ah! Crudel, nelpianto mio scored for soprano solo, Bonizzoni alsodirects the Spanish-texted No se emendará jamás.
In this latest outing Bonizzoni continues with hispolicy of bringing forward accomplished singerswith an intense and direct feel for Handel’s Italianoutput. Where the first two volumes sawcontributions from Roberta Invernizzi and EmanuelaGalli, here, for this “Ottoboni” release, the spotlightfalls on soprano Raffaella Milanesi and bass SalvoVitale. As before, our understanding of this neglectedarea of Handel’s genius is enhanced by theaccompanying booklet notes. Here they are providedby Livio Marcaletti, an expert on the music ofAntonio Bononcini as much as on that of Handel.
The quality of the musical (and scholarly) resultsin these Handel Cantatas being accomplished byFabio Bonizzoni and his associates is happily beingrecognized in a number of very positive ways. Sincethe commencement of this series of recordingsmore and more audiences across Europe are havingthe opportunity to enjoy performances of theseCantatas in what is fast becoming a hectic butsatisfyingly creative schedule for Bonizzoni and hisensemble La Risonanza. Moreover, critics arewelcoming the series also. The first volume, LeCantate per il Cardinal Pamphili, with RobertaInvernizzi, has been awarded The Stanley SadieHandel Recording Prize for 2007, an achievementwhich prompted Fabio Bonizzoni to comment, “Weare delighted and honoured to receive this validationof our work on the Handel Cantatas. Starting inthis way is definitely encouraging for the wholeseries to come.”
With the fourth of the projected seven volumes inhis Handel series waiting in the wings, FabioBonizzoni is certainly not resting on his laurels. Heis currently directing performances of Handel’sMessiah, an opera is being prepared for performanceand his “additional career” as a keyboard recitalistis not being allowed to rest either.
of these works; positive discussions to add to theongoing work of our staff of musicologists whoassist me in preparing each new programme. Thusthere is a process of continuous developmentgoing on! That process is including us working onthe substantial dramatic cantata Clori, Tirsi eFileno (Cor fedel in vano speri). We are alsoreconsidering a number of issues involved withLa Resurrezione, the oratorio which we are dueto be recording in 2009.
La Resurrezione is not the only oratorio ofHandel that you are currently considering inthat you are also performing Messiah thisyear in various cities in Spain. What do youmake of this, substantially later, composition?
Naturally I think that Messiah is a great work, onewhich was perfectly suited for the purposes it waswritten for. You can see how successful Handel wasin working in this way from the masterly controlthat he was able to give to his activities as animpresario in London. There is a substantial gapbetween the Italian cantatas and Messiah, not justin terms of the years that separate them but intheir projected audiences. The Italian cantataswere intended for a small but highly-cultivated andselect audience whilst Messiah is much more of a“popular” work. I am using “popular” in a positivesense here, the more so because Messiah isincredibly effective seen in this light. I considerthat the distance between the cantatas and Messiahis basically the same as that which separates thosesame cantatas from the works of, for example,Vivaldi. By this I mean that with the cantatas thereis what can be described as an incredibleoverabundance in the quantity of musical ideas,subtleties and colours whilst with Messiah Handelprovided “just” what was needed. This demonstrateshow at that later stage in his career he was craftingin a masterly way.
I am interested also in the way that Handel reusesmaterial from older pieces in new works to thepoint that I am currently studying this questionin relation to his opera Agrippina, which makessuch a lot of use of the music from the Italiancantatas. It represents a process which I think isespecially fascinating in Handel because most ofthe time he is focusing more on a single aspectof a certain aria or movement rather than exploitingseveral aspects of a musical idea. You can describethis as Handel presenting the essential substance(perhaps even the “highlights”!) of an earliermusical idea. This attitude of mine might becoming over as representing a rather too positiveapproach to Handel’s reworkings. In truth, I haveto admit that in some cases the original musicalmaterial embodied a greater and stronger link tothe texts and dramatic situations that Handel waswriting to than to what later turned up in someof these “reworkings”. That is why, once again,I want to underline the incredible quality of Handel’sItalian cantatas, because that is where thegenuineness of his inspiration is complete.
As a solo recitalist what is your opinion ofHandel as a composer for the keyboard?
To me the harpsichord music of Handel comesover very much as orchestral music, whilst beingscored for keyboard alone. Even when he is writingin the typical keyboard forms of the time (suchas suites) Handel is clearly trying to impose uponthe harpsichord the sound of his orchestra. Hiswriting is thus very different to that of Bach orDomenico Scarlatti, both of whom composed soidiomatically for the keyboard.
In addition to being associated with PietroOttoboni, do the cantatas on this new discreflect a unity of approach in Handel’scomposing at the time?
Rather than representing a unified set ofcharacteristics I feel that the three Italian-textedcantatas here demonstrate their own individuality.During these years in Italy Handel was provingto be extremely flexible in his approach towardscomposition; the better to adapt to – or indeedto build on – the librettos that he was presentedwith. Of the three works Ero e Leandro is perhapsthe most striking. The strength of the text seemsto have drawn a very deep response from Handel:the extreme sentiments within it inspired him toproduce matchingly extreme solutions in paintingthe despair of Ero in music. Two examples of thiscan be seen in the striking contrast between the“A” part of the first aria (which depicts Ero’stempestuous sentiments) and its corresponding“B” part (which, I would add, I believe is one ofthe most touching lamentos ever written), andsecondly, the incredible strong power encapsulatedin the last aria, a true marche funèbre, suffusedwith the dark colour of the violins and the unisonoboes. When one considers Spande ancora a miodispetto it seems to be the case that Handel hadaccess in Italy to bass singers with incredibly widetessituras: that is why his bass compositions ofthis time tend to be at the limit of vocalpossibilities. Although the writing in this cantatais not as intense as you find in the famous Polifemorole it is still very exacting and well-written forthe bass.
How did Handel come to write a cantata witha Spanish text in No se emendará jamás, thefourth of the works performed here?
Providing his compositions for the greatest nobilityin Rome, Handel was clearly in a position to writefor audiences who were very highly cultivatedand thus capable of handling more than onelanguage alone. I think that Handel wrotesuccessfully in Spanish, demonstrating that hewas well acquainted with the idiom. Of course,the largest part of his output is written to Italiantexts but it is worth noting that we have at leastone further non-Italian cantata in the sopranowork with French words in Sans y penser. AlthoughI still have much research to do on the repertoireof cantatas from Spain from around this time –composers such as José de Nebra or Joseph deTorres, for example – I can already appreciatethat there are many beautiful and hidden treasureswaiting to be uncovered.
Beyond the actual recording process thatyou are involved in with the Handel Cantatasproject your concert performances of theworks have been increasing recently. Inaddition, you recently took part in aninternational conference in Rome focusingon the cantatas. Has all this been assistingyour interpretations?
With the concerts the chance of performing infront of a live audience is always a marvellousone to have, especially as it allows you to balancethe dramatic elements in these works moresuccessfully. That balance then becomes so mucheasier to achieve in the recording. And even if weare now very experienced in the recording process,aiming always to achieve a CD which is “perfect”(from the recording point of view) and true andlively, it remains an enjoyable activity to performa programme before actually recording it. TheRome conference proved to be a splendidopportunity to meet a number of people anddiscuss relevant issues concerning the performance
by Mark Wiggins
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