Michala Petri, Hille Perl, Mahan Esfahani – Corellimania (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:15:43 minutes | 2,77 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © OUR Recordings
“As the progenitor of a style whose influence more or less came to define the in- strumental music of the High Baroque, Arcangelo Corelli (1653 – 1713) occupies a position in music history as unenviable as it is to his great credit. Just what made Corelli’s style seem strikingly novel to his contemporaries is a tricky question. To be sure, his standardization and popularization of certain formal tropes – most notably the succession of movement types in Sonate da Camera and Sonate da Chiesa – was a significant part of what his followers considered the ‘Corellian’ manner. But Corelli’s actual compositional style, his way of organizing musical thoughts into phrases and motives, is fundamentally derived from the expressive capabilities of his chosen instrument, the violin. Certain melodic patterns used to modulate and to effect sequences (e.g., chains of sevenths and fifths) basically derive from specificities of violin technique that amplify an instrument with origins primarily in dance music into one that in Corelli’s hands, could imitate the rise and fall of the sung and spoken human voice. This tension between idiomatically in- strumental techniques and the evocation of the voice is the defining characteristic of Corelli’s style throughout all his surviving works and would establish the “Roman School” as the supreme measure of musical taste for generations.
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Michala Petri – Territorial Songs (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:12:29 minutes | 2,50 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © OUR Recordings
Since his emergence on the musical scene in 2002 when his Symphony No. 1, “Oceanic Days” was the winner of The Nordic Council Music Prize, Faroese composer Sunleif Rasmussen has continued to make a name for himself and his island home on the world music scene. Among his many striking compositions is a growing corpus of works featuring the recorder. Beginning with his expansive concerto for recorders and large orchestra, Territorial Songs (2008-09), Rasmussen sought to expand the instrument’s persona and possibilities, freeing it from its historic associations with the music of the Renaissance and Baroque, pushing it into new territories. In this mission, the composer has been exceptionally fortunate to have as muse and musical partner one of the greatest recorder players ever, Michala Petri.
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Michala Petri, Mahan Esfahani – Arcangelo Corelli – La Follia: Six Sonatas, Op. 5, No. 7-12 (2015)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 01:06:22 minutes | 2,59 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet | © OUR Recordings
Fate blessed the Italian violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli with talent, modesty, wealthy patrons, faithful disciples and extraordinary riches.
Numerous original sources were consulted prior to the making of this disc during three inspired days of recording in Copenhagen’s Garnisons Kirke. But once the tape was rolling, Michala Petri and Mahan Esfahani let the excitement of superlative music making be their only guide, giving free rein to their boundless creativity and virtuosity and embracing the improvisational spirit that this music requires.
So widespread was Corelli’s appeal that copies of his works have been found as far afield as St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Constantinople, and even America (he was known to be a favourite composer of U.S.’s third president, Thomas Jefferson). It can be said without any exaggeration that Corelli was the first world-famous composer. Yet, for all his celebrity, only a handful of works have come down to us, with the Violin Sonatas op. 5 occupying pride of place. The sonatas presented here come from the second half of the op. 5 collection, referred to in the original 1700 publication as “Parte seconda: Preludii, Allemande, Correnti, Sarabande, Gavotte, e Follia.”
As the title suggests, the music was inspired by dance rhythms and their infectious melodiousness made them popular pieces with performers of all instruments; a couple of them even entered the English dance-tune repertory. The relatively simple nature of these movements provides scope for all sorts of ornamentation and improvisation.
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