Nuria Rial

Nuria Rial – Vocalise (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:20 minutes | 943 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

If the soprano Nuria Rial and the composer Bernat Vivancos feel an affinity with the legendary violoncellist Pablo Casals, it is not just because all three hail from Catalonia. Casals, who was obliged to flee his native country following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, ended each of the concerts that he gave in exile by playing El Cant dels Ocells (The Song of the Birds). Bernat Vivancos has arranged it especially for Nuria Rial and the eight cellists of the Sinfonie orchester Basel. In 2013 a violoncello octet was formed from the violoncello section of the Sinfonieorchester Basel that plays not only tangos and cinema classics but also commissioned works written specially for this unusual formation. Bernat Vivancos has dedicated Vocal Ice to Nuria Rial and the Cello Octet of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. Piazzolla’s suite The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires dates from 1970 and is scored for strings, piano, electric guitar and bandoneon. As its name implies, it is a counterpart to Vivaldi’s famous violin concertos here relocated to the southern hemisphere or, to be more exact, to Buenos Aires. Borrowings from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons extend beyond the work’s title, for Piazzolla ends his Latin American Summer with a quotation from Vivaldi’s Winter. To date there have been countless arrangements of The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, including one for eight violoncellos prepared by the British composer and violoncellist James Barralet in 2013. Piazzolla himself often performed the work with his various bands, rewriting it to suit the changing live conditions. Arguably the best-known composition by Villa-Lobos is the fifth Bachianas Brasileiras, which is notable for its use of dissonant suspensions reminiscent of Bach. In the first movement, written 1938, the soprano begins by performing a wordless vocalise to the accompaniment of four doubled violoncello lines. The emotionally charged middle section is a setting of a poem by Ruth Valadares Corrêa. At the end her humming suggests a senseof yearning. The second movement, with its hammering dance rythm, was not added until 1945.

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Nuria Rial – Sospiri d’amanti (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:10:21 minutes | 698 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Die Echo-Klassik-Preisträgerin Nuria Rial gehört zu den besten Sängerinnen der Alten Musik weltweit und begeistert mit ihrem warm leuchtenden und kristallklaren Sopran Kritiker und Publikum. ‘Nuria Rial ist eine Lichtgestalt der Alten Musik'(Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Für ihr neues Album erforscht sie mit den Barockspezialisten des Ensembles Artemandoline unter der Leitung von Juan Carlos Muñoz die prachtvolle Welt der österreichischen und italienischen Höfe zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts. Um 1750 hatte die italienische Oper bereits alle europäischen Hauptstädte erobert. Etwa zur gleichen Zeit entwickelte sich die Mandoline zu einem der populärsten höfischen Instrumente. Kein Wunder also, dass neben rein instrumentalen Werken wie den virtuosen Mandolinenkonzerten von C. Arrigoni (1697-1744) und J. A. Hasse (1699-1783) auch zahlreiche Komponisten wie J. J. Fux, G. F. Händel, T. Albinoni u.v.a. inspiriert wurden, die Mandoline in der reizvollen Verbindung mit Gesang in wunderschönen Kantaten, Opern und Oratorien einzusetzen.

Dieses Album enthält die schönsten dieser musikalischen Schätze größtenteils in Weltersteinspielungen.

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Núria Rial – Muera Cupido (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:04:09 minutes | 696 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

In 2016 we celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the Sebastian Duron’s death in his French exile – perhaps the most important Spanish composer of his time – accused by Padre Feijoo of the italianization of Spanish music, in certain way we might say of the modernization of the old Spanish style.

Fahmi Alqhai and the soprano Nuria Rial, one of the finest European voices in the world of historical music, unite their musical talents to breathe fresh air into a collection of selected arias from his stage works, dedicated to the subject and always inexhaustible exciting love.

Durón is accompanied by his Italian avant-garde style colleagues, and strictly contemporary, Alessandro Scarlatti and Bononcini.

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Núria Rial – Handel – Human love, Love divine (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:40 minutes | 1,45 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

“What a beautiful and tender, almost deliberately flowing and always somehow comforting soprano,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung enthusiastically describes the voice of the Catalan soprano Nuria rial. Her recordings for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi are highly praised all over the world. Her Album “Muera Cupido” with the ensemble Accademia del Piacere has just been nominated for the Opus Klassik. For her new Album, The Soprano, together with the Spanish Tenor Juan Sancho, has chosen Arias and duets from G. F. Handel’s operas, oratorios and cantatas that sing of human and divine love. The accompanying Capella Cracoviensis completes the Album with dance movements and overtures under the direction of Jan Tomasz Adamus. In the baroque opera it was customary for the duets to be sung by Sopranos and castrates. Handel has also successfully used this combination in his operas. At the same time, however, he also devoted himself to the then less widespread Duo line-up “soprano & Tenor”. Handel’s duet-art is reflected on this Album in the finest sound examples from the operas “Ariodante” and “Hercules , the oratorio “Esther”, secular cantata “Cecilia,volgi un sguardo” and the Ode “Acis and Galatea”. In addition, there are a total of eight Solo arias that describe different forms of human love: the traditional love of two lovers, for example by Aminta for Fillide (“se Vago rio”) or by Grimoaldo for Rodelinda (“Prigionera ho L’alma in pena”). There are also other forms of love, of affection. This includes the love of Judas Maccabeus for his son who fell in battle, whom he sings with an immortal elegy “with honour let desert be crown’d”. In “Let the bright, Seraphim” the Israelite pays homage to her victorious God. And in the ARIA “È un folle, è un vile affetto” the figure of Orontes shows himself extremely angry in the face of a despised love. The Album “Human Love, Love Divine “finally leads to a lively Happy ending – with the duet” Happy, happy we “from”Acis and Galatea”.

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Nuria Rial – Baroque Twitter (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:02 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Un « twitter » n’est pas seulement le réseau où les messages se limitèrent un temps durant à cent quarante caractères seulement, c’est aussi – surtout même, à la base – un gazouillis, plus particulièrement aviaire ; et d’innombrables compositeurs, bien avant Messiaen, se sont penchés sur la stylisation des chants d’oiseaux dans leurs œuvres. Bien sûr, la voix de soprano et la flûte à bec sont parmi les moyens le mieux à même d’évoquer le doux cui-cui des rossignols, des oiselets, des hirondelles, tels que mis en musique au cours de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle par Vivaldi, Albinoni, Dieupart, Vinci (Leonardo tout court, pas Leonardo da), Mancini (Francesco, pas Henry) et collègues. La soprano espagnole Nuria Rial, plutôt spécialisée dans le répertoire de la Renaissance et du baroque – Haendel, Monteverdi, ou encore Telemann qui lui a valu un Opera Recording of the Year en 2012 avec ce même Orchestre de chambre de Bâle qui officie sur cet album – est doublée par le flûtiste à bec Maurice Steger. Toutes les œuvres ici présentes ne sont pas chantées, toutes ne comportent pas de flûte, et certaines bénéficient des deux solistes, en particulier des airs d’opéras : « Bell’augelletto che vai scherzando » de Gasparini, « Usignolo che col volo » de Fioré, d’adorables moments de grâce dans lesquels se mêlent les aigus en tout genre.

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