Cantatas Volume 1
$18.00
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HASSE
Cantatas Volume 1
Lia Serafini (soprano) & Gabriella Martellacci (contralto) / Accademia del Ricercare, Pietro Busca (director)
[ Brilliant Classics / CD ]
Release Date: Thursday 1 April 2010
This item is currently out of stock. We expect to be able to supply it to you within 2 - 4 weeks from when you place your order.
"Outstanding performances of some heretofore lost gems for voices lovingly coupled with instrumental works that are sure to please!"
(MusicWeb April 2010)
It has been said of Johann Adolf Hasse that few composers have been as famous in their time as Hasse, and yet as quickly forgotten. In Italy he had been called the 'Padre della musica', yet upon his death only one musical work was written in his honour by J.A Hiller, a friend of Hasse. So what happened to one of the most successful opera composers of the 18th century after Handel and Gluck, to bring about such a fall from favour? A composer who knew Frederick the Great and performed with the monarch? First, he simply became out of date after a very long career, and secondly, he lost his considerable wealth due to the collapse of the Venetian financial system in the early 1780s. He died in Venice aged 84, his funeral attended by his daughter and a few others. His gravestone wasn't erected until 1820 - a sad story indeed.
In his pomp Hasse was the epitome of a modern composer. Traveling widely, especially to Italy, he spoke only Italian (he was German by birth), set only Italian texts, and married one of the stars of Italian opera. Although he spent 30 years as Kapellmeister in Dresden, and a decade at the Imperial Court in Vienna, he never severed his ties with Italy.
The music on this disc, the first volume of a Brilliant Classics edition of Hasse, dates from early in his career and just predates his meteoric rise to fame. His style straddles the late Baroque of Alessandro Scarlatti and the emerging Classical style of Gluck, the young Joseph Haydn and the Stamitz brothers.
His music and reputation deserve reassessment. It was after all Mozart who wrote that he hoped to 'become immortal, like Handel and Hasse'.
New recording, made in 2008
Comprehensive booklet note and sung texts
Important project of an unjustly neglected master who was a major influence on composers such as Mozart and Haydn
Period instrument performances
Disc also contains two trio sonatas, Op.3 Nos. 2 & 3
Tracks:
Come l'ape di fiore in fiore per soprano, due violini e basso continuo
Il nome (Scrivo in te l'amato nome), per contralto, flauto e basso continuo
Sonata a tre in mi minore Op. 3, No. 2 per due flauti e basso continuo
Chieggio ai gigli ed alle rose, per soprano e basso continuo
Sonata a tre in re maggiore Op. 3, No. 3 per due flauti e basso continuo
È ver, mia Fille, è vero per contralto, due violini, viola e basso continuo
Sì, vezzosetti rai
Muta è l'imago dell'idolo amato per soprano, due violini e basso continuo
