La Morra, Theatro dei Cervelli, Francesco Corti – Music in Golden-Age Florence 1250-1750 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:41:29 minutes | 2,65 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée
This double album accompanies the eponymous book by Anthony M. Cummings, Music in Golden-Age Florence, 1250-1750 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London 2023). They are designed to enable readers and listeners to enter the sound world of late-medieval and early-modern Florence.Despite the enviable place Florence occupies in the historical imagination, its music-historical importance is not as well-understood as it should be. Yet if Florence was the city of Dante Alighieri, Niccolo Machiavelli, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and Galileo Galilei, it was also the birthplace of the Renaissance madrigal, opera, and the piano. Our goal in assembling this set of recordings, which survey the principal surviving genres of music in Florence in the half-millennium between c. 1250 and c. 1750, was to provide a “virtual” evocation of the extraordinary musical culture of golden-age Florence, one of unsurpassed importance. Through the integration of the contents of the book and the CDs, and leveraging text, image, musical notation, and sound, we offer our listeners the possibility of a fascinating metaphoric time travel.
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Francesco Corti – Frescobaldi and the South. Intendomi chi può che m’intend’io (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:34 minutes | 1,71 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Arcana
In 1594 Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, arrived in Ferrara for his marriage to Donna Eleonora d’Este. His meeting with the musical circles of Ferrara, and in particular with Luzzasco Luzzaschi, was to make an important impact on the musical development of the young Girolamo Frescobaldi. In his maturity Frescobaldi arrived at a deeply personal fusion between the musical forms of North Italian (and more specifically Venetian) derivation and the musical experimentation of the southern school. The aim of this recording project is to explore the reciprocal influences between great keyboard master from Ferrara and his colleagues from the Kingdom of Naples. Represented here in a dialogue with Frescobaldi’s works are not only the great experimental figures from the years bridging the 16th and 17th centuries (J. De Macque, Rodio, Stella), but also the composers from the following generation who absorbed and built on Frescobaldi’s example (Storace, Salvatore, L. Rossi), as well as contemporaries who adopted a parallel course (M. Rossi). This fertile musical exchange, which culminated in the profoundly distinctive innovations of Frescobaldi himself, fully exemplifies the spirit of experimentation and musical innovation typical of the early 17th century, a period that, like few others, sought out and celebrated aesthetic renewal.
Read more![Raffaele La Ragione, Il Pomo d'Oro, Francesco Corti - Mandolin on Stage (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/04/24/rwxwnrv152csa_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Raffaele La Ragione, Il Pomo d’Oro, Francesco Corti – Mandolin on Stage (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:54 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Arcana
Two years after the great acclaim aroused by “Beethoven and his Contemporaries”, his first recording for Arcana, Raffaele La Ragione returns with an album containing the four best-known mandolin concertos, which appear in a new light here thanks to the use of three different period mandolins. For this ambitious project he is joined by the brilliant orchestra Il pomo d’oro, universally renowned for its lively, dynamic interpretations of instrumental and vocal music from the Baroque and Classical periods (with Joyce DiDonato, Franco Fagioli, Jakub Józef Orliński) and directed here by its principal guest conductor Francesco Corti, a harpsichordist of international repute.
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Michael Spyres, Il Pomo D’oro, Francesco Corti – Contra-Tenor (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:12:54 minutes | 2,71 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Michael’s vision is to bridge the gap between ‘early music’ and ‘classical music’, directing fans of both eras to each other’s territory through these unique and distinct album concepts.
Read more![Kathryn Lewek, John Chest, Il Pomo d'Oro, Francesco Corti - Handel: Apollo e Dafne, HWV 122 & Armida abbandonata, HWV 105 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/02/28/d7vdo9g64f5nc_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Kathryn Lewek, John Chest, Il Pomo d’Oro, Francesco Corti – Handel: Apollo e Dafne, HWV 122 & Armida abbandonata, HWV 105 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:25 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © PentaTone
Compact cantatas with expressive depth. Il Pomo d’Oro and Francesco Corti present Handel’s Apollo e Dafne and Armida abbandonata, together with two outstanding vocalists: soprano Kathryn Lewek (Armida and Dafne) and baritone John Chest (Apollo). Handel composed these two cantatas shortly after his Italian sojourn (1706-1709), and they demonstrate his acquaintance with and aptitude for Italian operatic music. Compared to opera, supporting roles are left out of these relatively compact cantatas, increasing the focus on the main characters, and heightening the expressive depth of their music. Il Pomo d’Oro performs these pieces with historically-informed ears, lively and colourful. The cantatas alternate with several delightful orchestral pieces by Handel, including several movements from his Almira-Suite.
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Francesco Corti & Il Pomo d’Oro – J.S. Bach: Harpsichord Concertos (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:06 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Bach’s harpsichord concertos are arguably the first in the history of music designed specifically for this instrument. Composing them, Bach aimed to adapt the string writing of Italian instrumental concertos to a keyboard instrument, while simultaneously enriching this style with typically-German traits such as counterpoint and motivic development.
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Il Pomo d’Oro, Francesco Corti – Bach – Harpsichord Concertos, Vol. 2 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:01:34 minutes | 2,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Bach’s harpsichord concertos are arguably the first in the history of music designed specifically for this instrument. Composing them, Bach aimed to adapt the string writing of Italian instrumental concertos to a keyboard instrument, while simultaneously enriching this style with typically-German traits such as counterpoint and motivic development. Francesco Corti and il pomo d’oro present concertos BWV 1052, 1053, 1055 and 1058 as the first volume of what should become a cycle spanning four albums. Corti has chosen to combine these four concertos for the full orchestral sound they call for, while later recordings in this series will have a chamber setting in comparison. For tempo choices and melodic variations, Corti has been inspired by treatises from Bach’s time, as well as the composer’s own written-out ornamentations.
Francesco Corti belongs to the most established harpsichordists of his generation. He makes his PENTATONE debut together with the multi-award-winning ensemble il pomo d’oro, who recorded two vocal recital albums with the label: Carnevale 1729 with Ann Hallenberg (2017), as well as Prologue with Francesca Aspromonte (2018).
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Francesco Corti – Haydn: Harpsichord Sonatas (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:21:56 minutes | 2,87 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Evidence
Haydn, Heidn, Hayden… the man beneath the score is often elusive. Yet, his presence is constant and vivid in his music, as his scores speak to us personally and freshly.
Haydn’s music is the bright reflection of the enlightened century, of the Kantian faith in the understandable. e human intellect is held as the highest ideal, the role of the creator is to enrich it in order to elevate us. Take the simplest minuet: it must obey to a rigid structure and to small dimensions, therefore the message must be condensed. Still, Haydn’s discourse is never simplified, leaving always room to formal complexity, tricks and clins d’œil.
After all, if something emerges with full clarity from his music – and his life – it is the man’s ability to create under external restrictions.
As a performer, one always gets the impression of dealing with a singularly human composer. His pieces are indeed a man-to-man dialogue, a very sophisticated and demanding one perhaps, but sincere nevertheless. And Haydn doesn’t shy away from it! His presence and his spirit – better said, his Laune – stand always before his performers. …
Read more![Francesco Corti - Handel: Winged Hands. The Eight Great Suites & Overtures (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/04/07/kjvbgk6fkz0ia_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Francesco Corti – Handel: Winged Hands. The Eight Great Suites & Overtures (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:27:02 minutes | 3,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Arcana
After the album Bach, Little Books , harpsichordist Francesco Corti continues his collaboration with Arcana with a 2-CD recording entirely dedicated to George Frideric Handel. At the center of the project are the eight “Great” suites. These masterpieces were the composer’s first published set, and are a clear testimony to his virtuosity at the keyboard. Their characteristically diversified styles reflect not only the mélange of national traditions assimilated by the young composer, but also his phenomenal improvisatory talent. Moreover, the attraction of these pieces lies in their melodic and rhythmic affinity to the world of singing and orchestral writing, Händel’s strongest interests.
Arrangements of Handel’s operatic overtures and arias started circulating early in his career in England, and in his later years he was known to perform his overtures on the keyboard himself. Corti designs a program showcasing the composer’s brilliant treatment of the instrument, choosing to complement the “Great” Suites with a selection of transcriptions from Händel’s own hand and from his close musical circle.
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Francesco Corti – J.S. Bach: Harpsichord Concertos, Vol. 3 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:54 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Francesco Corti was born in 1984 in Arezzo, Italy, to a musical family. He studied organ in Perugia, then harpsichord in Geneva and in Amsterdam.
He was awarded at the International “Johann Sebastian Bach” Competition in Leipzig (2006) and at the Bruges Harpsichord Competition (2007).
As a soloist, he has appeared in recitals and concerts all over Europe, in the USA and Canada, in Latin America, in Asia and in New Zealand. He has been invited by festivals such as Mozart Woche and the Salzburger Festpiele, BachFest Leipzig, MusikFest Bremen, Utrecht Early Music Festival, Festival Radio France Montpellier. He has performed in halls such as Salle Pleyel (Paris), Bozar (Bruxelles), Konzerthaus (Vienna), Tonhalle (Zürich), Mozarteum and Haus für Mozart (Salzburg) and Concertgebouw (Amsterdam).
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