![Riccardo Minasi, Maxim Emelyanychev - Mozart: Violin Sonatas, K. 306, 376 & 454 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/10/07/0886445571684_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Riccardo Minasi, Maxim Emelyanychev – Mozart: Violin Sonatas, K. 306, 376 & 454 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:37 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi
Bis etwa 1770 war die Sonate für Geige und Klavier – mit wenigen Ausnahmen – vor allem eine Klaviersonate mit Violinbegleitung. Mit Mozart hat sich das geändert. Er hat die Gattung zu einer der kunstvollsten Formen der Kammermusik entwickelt. Der Geiger und Dirigent Riccardo Minasi (Grammy-Award, BBC Music Magazine Award für ‘Stella di Napoli’ mit Joyce DiDonato) hat sich für sein neues Album drei der prägnantesten Werke ausgesucht: die Sonaten D-Dur KV 306, F-Dur-Sonate KV 376 und B-Dur-Sonate KV 454. Das letzt genannte Werk wurde für die berühmte Geigerin Regina Strinasacchi geschrieben, weist konzerthafte Züge auf und und führt den Prozess der Verschmelzung von Violin- und Klavierstimme auf eine neue Stufe der Meisterschaft. Der Geiger Riccardo Minasi gehört zu den besten Geigern auf historischen Instrumenten. Als Leiter des Ensembles ‘Il Pomo d’Oro’ hat er zahlreiche Aufnahmen realisiert, die weltweit erfolgreich waren und hervorragende Rezensionen der Fachpresse erhielten. Am Fortepiano begleitet Maxim Emelyanychev, der u.a. als Gestalter der Rezitative in den Da-Ponte-Opernaufnahmen mit Teodor Currentzis für Erstaunen, Bewunderung und Aufsehen gesorgt hat.
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Mozarteumorchester Salzburg & Riccardo Minasi – Strauss: Metamorphosen & Wind Sonatina No. 1 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:00 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics
“Strauss: Metamorphoses & Wind Sonatina No. 1” is the second album in a series of six that the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg will release on the Berlin Classics label until 2025. For this album, the orchestra has chosen the internationally renowned conductor Riccardo Minasi. Originally, a concert under his baton was to take place at Salzburg’s “Großes Festspielhaus” in the 2020/21 season, but like so many events, it had to be canceled. Instead, the decision was made to record with repertoire whose instrumentation sizes were appropriate to the conditions: Richard Strauss “Metamorphosen” for 23 solo strings and the first Sonatina for 16 wind instruments. The repertoire thus selected highlights the individual sections of the orchestra, strings and winds, and illustrates the orchestra’s flexibility in seemingly effortlessly realigning itself for the repertoire at hand. It further demonstrates that the orchestra’s constant preoccupation with its core repertoire informs its approach to the music of later eras – impressively heard on the current album of High Romantic music by the late Richard Stauss.
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Ensemble Resonanz & Riccardo Minasi – Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 36 “Linz” & 38 “Prague” (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:54 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
After an album devoted to the final trilogy, Riccardo Minasi and Ensemble Resonanz continue their exploration of Mozart’s symphonies. These formidably expressive, incandescent interpretations give us the impression we are discovering the works for the first time. “Minasi and his expert 35-strong band (modern instruments, period ethos) play up the music’s disruptive aspects for all their worth. With lean, vibrato-light strings and assertive wind and brass, tutti textures have an abrasive clarity.”
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Riccardo Minasi – Haydn: Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:03:54 minutes | 563 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Following a disc of cello concertos and symphonies by CPE Bach (Diapason d’Or, ffff Télérama), the musicians of the Ensemble Resonanz continue their very personal exploration of Eighteenth Century orchestral music.
For several years now, under the direction of inspired conductor Maestro Riccardo Minasi, the ensemble has taken up the challenge of playing instruments with a ‘modern’ setup (violins, violas and basses with metal strings) with complete mastery of historically informed performance practice.
Forty years after what has been called ‘the Baroque revolution’, it’s a pleasure to rediscover these nine orchestral movements literally inhabited by the divine words of Christ on the cross – and displaying that rhetorical skill of which Joseph Haydn was a peerless exponent.
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Riccardo Minasi, Maxim Emelyanychev, Federico Toffano – Haydn: Piano Trios (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:43 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi
Joseph Haydn’s piano trios are among the most harmonically adventurous of his works in any genre, often reaching into remote keys via enharmonic modulation. This album presents a selection both from the composer’s early trios and later efforts, which reflect the composer’s full musical maturity and are greatly admired by critics.
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Kammerorchester Basel & Riccardo Minasi – Porpora: Il verbo in carne (Christmas Oratorio) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:06:55 minutes | 708 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical
A new album based on the work of Neapolitan composer Nicola Porpora, so rarely recorded, is an exceptional event: here is the 1747 Christmas oratorio Il Verbo in carne (“Verb in the flesh”). One of the unique aspects here is how the birth of Christ is presented philosophically and allegorically, far removed from traditional nativity oratorios’ texts that borrow almost exactly from the Bible. Instead, four virtues are introduced in turn: humanity, justice, peace, and truth. The form remains rooted in the genre’s tradition, alternating between recitatives (dry for some, accompanied by an orchestra for others), arias and choruses. As always with Porpora, each number is particularly demanding, both in terms of expressivity and vocal virtuosity, breathtaking at times! The pre-classic orchestra relies on chords, a few wind instruments (flutes, bassoons, horns, the norm at the time, but the absence of the oboe, the trumpets and the timpani for the most striking moments is worth noting; maybe they weren’t available to Porpora at the time) and of course the continuous bass. The Basel Chamber Orchestra, led by Riccardo Minasi, lays a perfect foundation for the excellent panel of singers.
Read more![Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi - C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concertos (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2023/04/12/e6yiooj686dfb_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi – C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concertos (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:04 minutes | 548 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
After two albums which met with unanimous critical acclaim all over the world, the Resonanz Ensemble, based in Hamburg, is offering a recording dedicated to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: the Cello Concertos wq. 170 and Wq. 172, respectively from 1750 and 1753, and the Symphonie Wq. 173 of 1741. The listener will immediately note the radical difference in language between the two concertos, written after the death of Bach Senior, and the Symphony, written while he was still alive: the concertos keep their eyes firmly fixed on the nascent classical era, including the “Sturm und Drang” which still lay ahead (in this regard, the Concerto in A Minor which opens the album, full of force and melodic power, is an excellent example), whereas the Symphony takes the final throes of baroque as its point of departure. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Resonanz Ensemble offer a crystal-clear reading, conducted by their new musical director in residence, violinist Riccardo Minasi: and coolly resist the vogue – which can be quite intrusive, or even dictatorial or exclusive – for period instruments, which seems to hold that any music before Mozart (and even sometimes Mozart too) may not be played on modern instruments. Queyras, Resonanz and Minasi are all able to make use of stylistic elements gleaned from the fashion for baroque. This is a very fine album, superbly played, which really brings out all the originality of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
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![Joyce DiDonato, Orchestre de l'Opéra National de Lyon, Riccardo Minasi - Stella di Napoli (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2023/04/01/0825646365548_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Joyce DiDonato, Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Lyon, Riccardo Minasi – Stella di Napoli (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:12 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics
On Stella di Napoli (Star of Naples), the American mezzo-soprano’s creamy tone and dramatic prowess breathe new life into little-known arias by Mercadante, Michele Carafa (a student of Cherubini and close friend of Rossini), Carlo Valentini and the prolific opera composer Giovanni Pacini, whose Stella di Napoli (1845) gives the album its title. Joyce worked closely with Italian conductor Riccardo Minasi (whose previous projects include Bellini’s Norma with Cecilia Bartoli) to bring three unjustly neglected arias to light in new editions and world premiere recordings. Alongside these little-known gems, Joyce presents a sumptuous Bel Canto banquet with music by the three greats — Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti — including the latter’s Maria Stuarda: a tour-de-force signature role for Joyce, recently screened in cinemas and released on DVD from the New York Metropolitan Opera.
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Karina Gauvin, Philippe Jaroussky, Emöke Baráth, John Mark Ainsley, Teresa Iervolino, Luca Tittoto, Il Pomo D’oro, Riccardo Minasi – Handel: Partenope (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:23:24 minutes | 3,80 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erato – Warner Classics
Handel’s sparkling opera Partenope reunites Erato’ star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the captivating Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin, who both made such an impact in the Erato recording of Steffani’s rediscovered opera Niobe, released in early 2015 and welcomed as a “landmark event” by Gramophone.
Jaroussky’s Erato catalogue is rich, varied and extensive – and this summer he appeared as Ruggiero in Handel’s Alcina in a spectacular new production at the Aix-en-Provence Festival – but it is some time since he last recorded a complete Handel opera for the label: Faramondo, which was released in 2009. If Faramondo remains something of a rarity on the world’s stages, Partenope – which offers plenty of comedy as Queen Partenope juggles an array of suitors – is a popular work, and in recent years has even enjoyed productions in such large theatres as the San Francisco Opera and English National Opera.
Jaroussky takes the role of Arsace, Prince of Corinth, while Karina Gauvin is Queen Partenope herself. She has superb credentials as a Handelian and has recorded Ariodante (with Joyce DiDonato and the late Alan Curtis) and Giove in Argo (with Ann Hallenberg and Curtis) for Erato. Gramophone has spoken of her “ideal Handelian mix of grace and profound emotional truth,” while the Sunday Times has praised her “glinting soprano, bright-edged yet deliciously rounded and sensual … used with rare understanding for character” and the “sculptural beauty” of her phrasing.
The conductor is Riccardo Minasi, who, with his ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro, also appears on Joyce DiDonato’s bel canto collection, Stella di Napoli and Edgar Moreau’s new Erato album Giovincello. Praising conductor and orchestra for their command of Handel’s operatic style, Forum Opéra has written: “A real drama unfolds from the overture onwards … The conductor brings true brio as he engages with Handel’s rhetoric … The players of Il Pomo d’Oro can switch in a moment from the role of interlocutor to commentator … Add to this a perfect mastery of the way the recitatives lead into the arias, and you have the formula for an approach that remains constantly fresh.”
The rich-voiced Italian mezzo-soprano takes the role of Rosmira – Arsace’s former lover, who is disguised as a man, Prince Eurimene – while the diamantine Hungarian soprano Emőke Baráth takes the role of a real man, Prince Armindo, who is in love with Partenope. “Supremely stylish” were the words used by the Telegraph to describe John Mark Ainsley when he sang Emilio (yet another prince seeking Partenope’s hand) at English National Opera, and the distinguished Italian bass Luca Tittoto brings authority to the role of Partenope’s advisor Ormonte.
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Giulia Semenzato, Lucile Richardot, Ensemble Resonanz & Riccardo Minasi – Pergolesi: Stabat Mater – Rossell: Salve Regina (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:22 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Here is the work of a genius who died at the age of twenty-six: Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is one of the miracles of eighteenth-century sacred music. Nourished by their experience of ‘setting in resonance’ early and contemporary repertories, Riccardo Minasi and the Hamburg musicians shed an astonishingly modern light on these moving pieces, in which the voices of Giulia Semenzato and Lucile Richardot intertwine in the most sublime of communions. The Stabat is echoed by Joan Rossell’s poignant Salve Regina, long attributed to Pergolesi himself.
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Ensemble Resonanz & Riccardo Minasi – Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 39, 40 & 41 “Jupiter” (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:46:23 minutes | 1,89 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
After the widespread acclaim for their previous recordings of C. P. E Bach and Haydn, the musicians of the Resonanz Ensemble of Hamburg pursue their explorations on modern instruments. Here they tackle Mozart’s last three symphonies, which, it is generally agreed, ‘require no introduction’. And yet Riccardo Minasi does much more than introduce them: he reintroduces them to us. The rhetorical, if not theatrical, dimension of the celebrated trilogy comes into full focus here and the result is irresistible.
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Edgar Moreau, Il Pomo d’Oro & Riccardo Minasi – Giovincello (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:55 minutes | 1,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Though the title Giovincello seems to make a specific musical reference, it is simply an affectionate Italian term meaning ‘young man’. Only 20 years old when he recorded this album, Edgar Moreau ‘has already found his place in the great tradition of French cello-playing’ (Diapason). Here he brings his youthful energy and virtuosic thrills to 18th-century cello concertos by Haydn, Vivaldi, Boccherini, Platti, and the world-premiere recording of a Baroque concerto by Carlo Graziani.
The centrepiece of Giovincello is Haydn’s Cello Concerto No 1 in C major, which is joined by Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor RV 419 and three concertos by somewhat lesser-known Italian composers of the 18th century who all made careers outside their native country: Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) – an important figure in the history of chamber music – who spent much of his life in Spain; Giovanni Platti (1697-1763), who lived for more than 40 years in Würzburg in Bavaria, and Carlo Graziani (.-1787), a somewhat shadowy figure who became cello teacher to Frederick Wilhelm II of Prussia and whose Cello Concerto in C Major is given its world-premiere recording here.
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Dmitry Sinkovsky, Riccardo Minasi, Il Pomo d’Oro – Vivaldi: Concerti per due violini e archi I (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:41 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © naïve classique
This is the 51st title in the Vivaldi Edition and the 6th volume, out of approximately 12, of the series dedicated to the violin concertos whose manuscripts are held in the National Library of Turin. Following two successful volumes of concertos for solo violin and orchestra recorded separately in the Vivaldi Edition, virtuosos Riccardo Minasi and Dmitry Sinkovsky now join forces to record pyrotechnic concertos for two violins and orchestra. This series of 6 concertos is an overview of the complete art of Vivaldi as a composer and violinist: large of musical scale, invention, expression, energy, and of course, virtuosity.
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Juan Sancho, Franco Fagioli, Max Cencic, Valer Sabadus, Martin Mitterrutzner, Vince Yi, Il Pomo d’Oro, Riccardo Minasi – Vinci, Leonardo: Catone in Utica (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:53:56 minutes | 4,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.
World premiere recording of an opera by a Neapolitan master fast gaining a first-rate modern reputation. Max Emanuel Cencic gathers around him an intoxicating mix of stratospheric countertenors, a top tenor, and an orchestra who sizzle with excitement for a performance of an opera that will appeal to all fans of Baroque music’s unsung heroes.
As March’s ‘Five Countertenors’ album showcased, the age of the countertenor is here. Max Emanuel Cencic has gathered around him, once again, a superb cast to bring Vinci’s “Catone In Utica” to vivid life.
“Vinci is the Lully of Italy: true, simple, natural, expressive”- for generations Leonardo Vinci was just another obscure Baroque composer: this first-rate recording will lift the veil from this forgotten genius of Italian opera, and from the mysterious all-male world of the 18th-century Roman stage.
With a libretto by Metastasio, Vinci’s opera was unveiled in Rome in 1728 with an all-male cast (women having been banned from the stage by the Pope): countertenors took the three heroic male roles as well as the female parts.
As well as Cencic (Arbace), the other superb countertenors are Franco Fagioli (Cesare), Valer Sabadus (Marzia), and Vince Yi (Emilia). Tenor Juan Sancho takes the title role (Catone) in this stage work about Julius Caesar’s defeat of the Republican forces led by Marcus Portius Cato in 46BC, and Riccardo Minasi, who enjoys a considerable reputation for his recordings of Baroque repertoire, conducts.
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Orchestra La Scintilla & Riccardo Minasi – Vivaldi/verdi: The four seasons (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/176,4 kHz | Time – 01:08:19 minutes | 2,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Philharmonia Records – Opernhaus Zürich
Internationally renowned violinist and conductor Riccardo Minasi and the Orchestra La Scintilla, based at Opernhaus Zürich, enjoy a close working relationship. Together with the ensemble’s superb musicians, who specialize in historically-informed performance, Minasi has recorded two very different compositions, both entitled «Vier Jahreszeiten» («Four Seasons»), for Philharmonia Records. In addition to the four famous concerti by Antonio Vivaldi, in which Minasi proves himself to be a brilliant soloist, the recording features ballet music by Giuseppe Verdi, written 125 years later. This pairing gives the ensemble the opportunity to showcase both the breadth of its repertoire and its considerable flexibility. Verdi on period instruments: a completely new aural experience!
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