Ciara Hendrick, Spiritato & Kinga Ujszaszi – The Taste of This Nation (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:24 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Delphian Records
Period ensemble Spiritato’s Delphian debut transports us back to a decisive juncture in the history of English music. “The Taste of this Nation” is a picture of the rapid arrival and astonishing success of Italian styles, genres and indeed musicians in London in the early 1700s, showing that a vibrant, cosmopolitan scene had arisen in the capital even before the arrival of Handel on British shores in 1710.
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Ciara Hendrick, Philippa Hyde, Richard Edgar-Wilson, The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen, Robert Rawson – Pepusch: Venus and Adonis (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:25:00 minutes | 942 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée
Johann Christoph Pepusch’s English-language masque Venus and Adonis premiered at London’s Theatre Royal on 12 March 1715. Inspired by the operas of composers like Giovanni Battista Bononcini and Alessandro Scarlatti, it was the most substantial effort of the period to ‘reconcile Musick to the English Tongue.’ As part of the battle for supremacy amongst London’s theatres, Pepusch recruited ‘a select Band of the best Masters of Instrumental Musick’ and two of the city’s leading singers, the ‘Italian lady’ Margarita de L’Epine en travesti as Adonis and the contralto Jane Barbier as Venus. The work bristles with Italian virtuosity and dynamism and unlike most English-language dramatic music at the time, Venus and Adonis makes ample use of dramatic recitative. A clear model for Handel’s later Acis and Galatea, this world-premiere recording of Pepusch’s wonderful masque reestablishes the work as a milestone in the history of English opera.
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