Nicolò Balducci, Dolci Affetti, Dan Laurin, Anna Paradiso – Castrapolis: Neapolitan Cantatas and Arias (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:21:14 minutes | 1,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Naples’ fame as a musical centre attracted travellers, composers, instrumentalists and virtuoso singers alike. Among the aspiring musicians, the most highly-trained and sought-after were the castrati, promising boys aged between 8 and 12 who were subjected to an operation intended to preserve the exceptionally pure timbre of their treble voice. Forever virginal beings whose superhuman voices mesmerized their listeners they were nicknamed angiolilli, ‘little angels’, and sang in the most important churches and theatres of ‘Castrapolis’, a term coined to describe the southern capital and its high concentration of castrato sopranos.
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Dan Laurin – Telemann: Recorder Sonatas (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:59 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Over the past decades, Dan Laurin has established himself as one of the most interesting recorder players of our time. His more than 30 critically acclaimed releases on BIS range from a seminal set of van Eyck’s Der Fluyten Lust-hof to contemporary concertos. The first recordings Laurin made for the label were of duets by Georg Philipp Telemann, and since then he has returned to the composer several times, recording chamber music and concertos. It is only now that he has set the complete sonatas, however – works that he describes in his liner notes as forming part of most recorder players’ “musical DNA”.
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