Pasquini: L'ombra di solimano, Cantatas for Bass and Continuo Alexandra Nigito, Capella Tiberina, Lisandro Abadie, Domen Marincic & Sam Chapman

• Bernardo Pasquini (1637 - 1710):
• 1 Pasquini: Toccata in F Major 03:49
• 2 Pasquini: Il fulmine son io Cantata 07:44
• 3 Pasquini: Passagagli in D Minor 02:23
• 4 Pasquini: Che volete da Me 11:24
• 5 Pasquini: Alemanda-Correcte-Giga in G Minor 03:26
• 6 Pasquini: Era risorta invano "l'ombra di Solimano" 09:09
• 7 Pasquini: Partite del saltarello in G Major 03:02
• 8 Pasquini: Agrippina, compagni "Germanico" 06:43
• 9 Pasquini: Fantasia in E Minor 02:37
• 10 Pasquini: Misero cor, nascesti solo a Piangere 12:29
• 11 Pasquini: Versetto V in D Minor 00:59
• 12 Pasquini: Quei diroccati sassi "a bella Donna sopra le ruine di Castro" 05:02
• 13 Pasquini: Bizzarria-Variazione in D Minor 02:07
• Total Runtime 01:10:54

Info for Pasquini: L'ombra di solimano, Cantatas for Bass and Continuo

Renowned in his day as a virtuoso keyboard player, Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) was the most important Italian composer of keyboard music between Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti. In that capacity his output has output has been surveyed by Brilliant Classics with authoritative collections of his sonatas for harpsichord (94286) and for two organs (94347). However, Pasquini also composed more than 70 cantatas – most of them for one and two voices with continuo accompaniment, of the concise and dramatic kind written by the young Handel after he arrived in Rome in 1706.

By that late stage of his life, Pasquini had held one distinguished post after another in Roman musical life and become known as one of its celebrities, as celebrated for his abilities at the harpsichord as his contemporary Corelli was on the violin. Most of his vocal music remains unpublished, which makes the pioneering efforts of Capella Tiberina in this field especially welcome. This new recording forms a sequel to their 2013 album of two Passion Cantatas (94225) and makes a powerful case for Pasquini as Rome’s leading dramatic composer of his day.

Among Pasquini’s surviving cantatas, the six scored for solo bass stand out, for their keen sense of theatre and expressive rhetoric. They take Biblical history, tales of Roman history and pastoral-erotic tropes for their subjects, and they are imaginatively presented here as a cycle, interleaved with pieces for harpsichord, as though recreating a refined evening of music-making at a Roman palazzo around the turn of the 18th century.

Capella Tiberina is led in these stylish accounts by the harpsichordist Alessandra Nigito, who has made a particular study of Pasquini’s vocal music and edited several of his cantatas for modern publication (for the first time since they were composed). There is no more authoritative current exponent of this music, and she is joined here by other experienced performers on Italy’s rich early-music scene.

Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) was an Italian composer of opera and church music. A renowned virtuoso keyboard player in his day he was one of the most important Italian composers for harpsichord and organ between Frescobaldi and Scarlatti.

Among the more than seventy cantatas that have come down to us by Pasquini a small corpus of six cantatas for solo voice for bass and basso continuo stand out. Pasquini had entered the service of Giovanni Battista Borghese in 1667. He wrote these cantatas for the famous bass Francesco Verdone (ca. 1630-1694), who was also in the Borghese household. The cantata L’ombra di Solimano ('The Shadow of Suleiman') refers to the capitulation of the Turkish army besieged in Buda through the lament of the spectre of Sultan Suleiman I, who had conquered the city in 1541. In between the cantatas this recording presents shorter works for harpsichord solo, written in Italian style, with the emphasis on melody and cantilena.

The bass Lisandro Abadie was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he began his musical studies. He graduated at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Musikhochschule Luzern. He has sung under the direction of William Christie, Philippe Herreweghe, Tõnu Kaljuste, Jordi Savall, Paul Agnew, Paul Goodwin, Giovanni Antonini, Fabio Bonizzoni, Skip Sempé, Hervé Niquet, among others.

Capella Tiberina was founded by Alexandra Nigito in order to blend a passion for early music with a rigorous approach to musicological research. Capella Tiberina specializes in the Italian Baroque repertoire, with a special emphasis on music originating in Rome. Among its recordings for Brilliant Classics are Bernardo Pasquini’s Passion Cantatas, Francesco Mancini’s Recorder Concertos, Alessandro Scarlatti’s Sinfonie di concerto grosso, and Domenico Scarlatti’s Violin Sonatas. Capella Tiberina performs on historical instruments.

"There is no lack of drama in these performances, and that makes this disc an attractive proposition." (MusicWeb International)

Capella Tiberina
Alexandra Nigito, harpsichord
Lisandro Abadie, bass

Alexandra Nigito
graduated in Organ at the Conservatorio ‘P. Martini’ in Bologna with Lorenzo Ghielmi (1996) and in Harpsichord at the Conservatorio ‘B. Marcello’ in Venice with Andrea Marcon (2003). Her interests in historical performance and musical philology led her to specialize at the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan with Lorenzo Ghielmi and Laura Alvini, and at the Schola Canto­rumBasiliensis (Hochschule für Alte Musik, Basel) with Jean-Claude Zehnder, Andrea Marcon, Jörg-Andreas Bötticher, Jesper Christensen and Rudolf Lutz, where she graduated in Organ and Historical Keyboards (2001). She also studied singingi. She holds a position of organist in Switzerland, performs concerts as a soloist and in ensembles, and has recorded CD’s for Brilliant Classics, Tactus, Arcophone and Swiss Radio DRS2.

In counterpart to her practical studies, she has pursued theoretical studies, graduating 2000 summa cum laude from the Musicology Department in Cremona (University of Pavia) with Prof. Albert Dunning. In 2008 she obtained a PhD from the University of Zurich with the dissertation Alla corte dei Pamphilj: la musica a Roma tra Sei- e Settecento, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Laurenz Lütteken. She was a member of the Swiss Institute in Rome (2006-2007) and was awarded the Schweizerischer Nationalfondsscholarship (2006-2008). She has collaborated on the project Musikalische Profilbildung des römischen Adels im 17. Jahrhundert: Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna und Benedetto Pamphilj with Prof. Dr. Klaus Pietschmann and Prof. Dr. Laurenz Lütteken (Universities of Bern and Zurich), funded by the Schweizer National Fonds (2008-2010).

Booklet for Pasquini: L'ombra di solimano, Cantatas for Bass and Continuo