Giuliano Carmignola, Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone – Vivaldi: con moto (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Giuliano Carmignola, Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone – Vivaldi: con moto (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:19 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Archiv Produktion

Despite the popularity of works such as The Four Seasons and La Stravaganza, many of Vivaldi’s 250 concertos for violin remain largely unknown. The new recordings of the concertos RV 187 and 281 are based on Vivaldi’s original manuscript scores and capture the thrilling spontaneity of his compositional style. The concerto RV283 also includes a previously unpublished cadenza from the notebook of Vivaldi’s protégé Anna Maria. Very much a man of the 21st Century, Giuliano Carmignola combines his passion for the baroque with his love of motorcycling, which he calls, “Vivaldi con moto – motion and emotion from a MOTOcyclist-musician.”

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Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri – Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri - Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri – Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 02:40:46 minutes | 2,86 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Hdb Sonus

The vigour and richness of the Concerto grossi, Op. 6, which Handel based on Corelli’s model, seems to have dictated this full-bodied and highly structured performance by the Accademia Bizantina (directed by Ottavio Dantone). Their vision isn’t some long, quiet road; rather, the listener is taken on a journey, discovering varied landscapes as they travel an often arid and meandering path.
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Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri – Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 3 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri - Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 3 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri – Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 3 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:39 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Hdb Sonus

First of all, we can see that the form of the “Concerto Grosso” is almost absent in this collection, with a succession of movements more often reminiscent of the Dance Suite, the Overture or even the Concerto for several instruments. The featured soloists range from Violins, Cellos, Oboes, Bassoons, Flutes and even the Organ. But what most disconcerts and bewilders the scholar is the compositional technique.
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Delphine Galou, Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone – Vivaldi: Musica sacra per alto (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Delphine Galou, Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone – Vivaldi: Musica sacra per alto (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:45 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © naïve classique

When it comes to posterity, Vivaldi has been quite lucky. Thanks to a series of happy accidents, his personal manuscript collection has survived through the centuries, allowing his music to be preserved and later played and recorded. Contralto Delphine Galou and Ottavio Dantone, the director of the Accademia Bizantina, drew from this invaluable batch of nearly 450 compositions to develop this album’s program of sacred music dedicated to the alto voice.

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Delphine Galou, Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone – Agitata (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Delphine Galou, Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone – Agitata (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:10 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Delphine Galou is renowned and admired for her musicality and her appealing timbre. She has taken part in many productions of Baroque music and recordings of operas (notably by Vivaldi), but this is her first recital. It is a programme of sacred music, motets, cantatas and excerpts from oratorios, which in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were influenced by the increasingly fashionable genre of opera. From the famous ‘Agitata infido flatu’ from Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha triumphans, here counterpointed by an aria from another setting of the story of Judith composed by Jommelli, to Stradella’s Lamentations and Porpora’s magnificent motet ‘In procella sine stella’, Delphine Galou covers a wide range of spiritual emotions. She is accompanied by the excellent Accademia Bizantina under its director and harpsichordist Ottavio Dantone. A concerto by Gregori and a sinfonia by Caldara complete this release, which includes several world premiere recordings.

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Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri, Accademia Bizantina – Concerti per archi III e concerti per viola d’amore (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri, Accademia Bizantina - Concerti per archi III e concerti per viola d'amore (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Ottavio Dantone, Alessandro Tampieri, Accademia Bizantina – Concerti per archi III e concerti per viola d’amore (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:54:43 minutes | 2,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © naïve classique

Concertos for viola d’amore represent a fairly atypical part of Vivaldi’s work, and he was probably the first composer to write pieces for this work in the solo concerto format. The viola d’amore was certainly well-liked for its soft, suggestive sound, which evoked the moods and climes of the orient thanks, in particular to its sympathetic strings which vibrate with those strings the player bows. But it was little-used because of its complex tuning and objective difficulties involved in playing it. In fact, the instrument would be tuned in different ways to fit the tonality of the piece being played – the famous scordatura, so finicky for the musicians – and it is believed that Vivaldi wrote these specifically for one of the musicians at Venice’s Pietá: the famous Anna-Maria. Another characteristic of these concertos for viola d’amore, the rapid movements are also much longer and fuller than in most of Vivaldi’s writing, for example in the seven string concertos which figure at the start of the album, or in the miniatures which were intended as showcases for the talent of the greatest possible number of soloists in the public concerts at the Pietá. A little curiosity is offered up here in the shape of the original concerto La ConcaRV163, whose themes mimic the sound of the “conca”, a kind of large marine conch used as an instrument since prehistoric times. The recording includes a conch being sounded at the start of the first movement by way of explanation.
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Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina, Delphine Galou, Emőke Baráth, Silke Gäng – Vivaldi: Il Giustino (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina, Delphine Galou, Emőke Baráth, Silke Gäng - Vivaldi: Il Giustino (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina, Delphine Galou, Emőke Baráth, Silke Gäng – Vivaldi: Il Giustino (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:07:32 minutes | 3,50 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © naïve classique

With this new recording, the madly epic and romantic opera, Il Giustino, finally receives its place in the spotlight, something that the history of music has denied it up until now. The fifty-eighth recording and eighteenth opera in the Vivaldi Edition, which began in 2000, solidifies the status of Vivaldi as the greatest of opera composers – and of composers full stop.

It needed the talent, charisma and poetic energy of a great conductor to bring back to life this gem and it is Ottavio Dantone who assumes this mantle.

With an Accademia Bizantina even more virtuosic and passionate than ever, a cast of high-flying soloists (Emőke Baráth, Delphine Galou, Verónica Cangemi, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Silke Gäng) and instruments as rare as they are precious (such as the dreamlike psaltery that accompanies the breathtaking air by Anastasio), Maestro Dantone brilliantly reincarnates, through this legendary Giustino, the human passions of yesterday and today.
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Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina – Bach: The Art of Fugue (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina - Bach: The Art of Fugue (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina – Bach: The Art of Fugue (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:54 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.

Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone present a refreshing new interpretation of Bach’s The Art of Fugue.
Performed on period instruments, Dantone and a reduced ensemble bring new life to this great masterpiece.
“The superb Accademia Bizantina makes the music live and breathe” (Daily Telegraph, on Bach: Sinfonia)
“The Accademia Bizantina, under the sure and sensitive guidance of Ottavio Dantone, plays with faultless tenderness” (Daily Express, on Bach: Sinfonia)
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Delphine Galou, Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina – Vivaldi: Arie e cantate per contralto (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Delphine Galou, Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina – Vivaldi: Arie e cantate per contralto (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:35 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © naïve classique

When it comes to prosperity, Vivaldi got pretty lucky. Thanks to a succession of happy accidents, his personal collection of manuscripts has survived through the centuries, allowing his music to be preserved, then later played and recorded. The contralto Delphine Galou and Ottavio Dantone, the director of the Accademia Bizantina, drew from this priceless batch of nearly 450 compositions to develop the program for this album of sacred music pieces dedicated to the alto voice.

This new recording of the Vivaldi Edition, begun by NAÏVE many years ago, offers cantatas and arias for viola, functioning as perfect companions for the album of works sung by the same Delphine Galou. The lyrics, often by unknown authors, do not have a strong literary interest. Here, we find a pastoral world populated by shepherds in need of love as well as cruel and fickle nymphs, obeying the cannon of the time.

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