Giulia Nuti, Chiara Zanisi – Bach: Sei suonate à cembalo certato è violino solo (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Giulia Nuti, Chiara Zanisi – Bach: Sei suonate à cembalo certato è violino solo (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:34:56 minutes | 1,86 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Arcana

The violinist Chiara Zanisi works with the finest early music ensembles, notably the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Ton Koopman, with whom she has just finished a long tour performing the Six Brandenburg Concertos. She now devotes her first solo recording to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Sonatas for Harpsichord and Violin. Alongside her is Giulia Nuti, among the most brilliant harpsichordists and scholars in Italy, whose solo CD Les Sauvages: Harpsichords in pre-Revolutionary Paris (DHM) won a Diapason d’Or, among other awards. The kernel from which this project grew is their strongly shared idea that, in addition to great stylistic richness and invention, Bach’s music possesses an aura of magic and an almost divine form. Thus, in this valuable and elegant reading, it is clearly their intention to underline in the simplest way the grandeur of the writing. Even the choice of sound aesthetic, beautifully realised under the supervision of Fabio Framba, opts for the ‘real’ with a ‘pure’, ‘speaking’ sound, warm and full of harmonics. The attractions of this precious version of the Six Sonatas, played on a G. Gagliano violin of 1761 and a harpsichord by K. Hill, are enhanced by a bonus track: the Cantabile, un poco Adagio from the early version of Sonata VI in G major.

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Chiara Zanisi, Stefano Barneschi – Suite Case: Violin Duos from Vivaldi to Sollima (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Chiara Zanisi, Stefano Barneschi – Suite Case: Violin Duos from Vivaldi to Sollima (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:01:19 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Arcana

As not indicated by its title, this album offers duos for two violins, a very wide repertoire that is however rarely recorded. “Suite Case” is simply the name of the first piece, penned by Giovanni Solima and precisely dedicated to our two soloists, Chiara Zanisi and Stefano Barneschi, followed by an impressive range of works written between the middle of the Baroque era and the present times with Bartók and Berio. It is worth noting that these pieces for two violins, a formation rather ill-suited for public concerts, had two distinct vocations: a pedagogic use, as is the case for Bartók’s 44 Duos (with a very pronounced insistence on Magyar folklore) and Haydn with his Three easy and progressive duos for two violins, whose name says it all; and a family use, like Telemann’s Canons mélodieux ou sonates en duo à flûtes traverses, ou violons, ou basses de viole (melodious canons or six duo-sonatas for traversos, or violins, or viola da gambas)—the composer, an excellent businessman, aimed at any and every possible buyer who wished to have small domestic concerts with any combination of two instruments. Only Vivaldi’s duo—at least for the repertoire of that era—seems to have been meant for a pair of virtuoso, a bit intrinsically: the language is neither for students nor for enlightened amateurs, given its difficulty. Curiously, the partition notes that the bass is optional… Even if it is not written, any harpsichordist could have improvised it in continuo. Solima’s piece acts as a guide for the album, opening and closing it.

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Chiara Zanisi & Giovanni Sollima – The Lady from the Sea: Duos for Violin and Cello from Vivaldi to Sollima (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Chiara Zanisi & Giovanni Sollima – The Lady from the Sea: Duos for Violin and Cello from Vivaldi to Sollima (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:20 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Arcana

After calling it ‘a wonderful album in all respects’, the magazine Diapason concluded its review of “Suite Case. Violin Duos from Vivaldi to Sollima” with the question, ‘When can we look forward to the second volume?’ In this new project, the violin of Stefano Barneschi gives way to the cello of Giovanni Sollima, the multi-talented musician from Palermo featured here not only as a composer. On this new journey, again beginning with Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Sollima and Chiara Zanisi travel between early and modern music, between classical and folk (the Old Scots Tunes of Francesco Barsanti), with two previously unrecorded gems by the Roman composer Giovanni Battista Costanzi. The entire recording is punctuated by tracks taken from Suite Case, a cycle composed especially by Sollima for this project.

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