An incredibly alive project, published in 2018 by Alpha Classic, which IL SUONAR PARLANTE ORCHESTRA brought in Philharmonie Berlin, Graz Styriarte, Milano MiTo, Antwerpen Amuz, Rotterdam De Doelen etc., always sold out. In the XVIII century musical bands of gypsies were active all over the eastern border of Europe playing indifferently for the Turkish or for the Habsburg nobles. Some of them became very appreciated virtuosos: as the beautiful violin player Panna Cinska (1711-72) or the famous Janos Bihari and had a strong influence on “cultivated” composers as Telemann, Mozart or Listz. Vittorio Ghielmi, Graciela Gibelli and IL SUONAR PARLANTE ORCHESTRA present this fascinating and “unheard” repertoire, working on very rare manuscript sources (from Hungary to Poland and Transylvania). An extremely fresh and virtuoso project joining the research with a new and creative style of playing and composing, inspired by the many traditional players with whom Ghielmi worked during his career, as the Gypsy-Moldovian cymbalon virtuoso and improviser Marcel Comendant or the Slovak violinist and composer Stano Palúch.

 

The '700 was the century of the instrumental and vocal virtuosity, but also the period of creation of new musical colors. Composers like Telemann, Vivaldi, Hasse, Abel, Graun and later Boccherini, left a wonderful repetoire of arias for voice, concertante instrument and orchestra, as well as interesting concertos for "rare" instruments as the viola d'amore or for the soprano viola da gamba. Johan Gottlieb Graun, first violin of Friedrich the Great's orchestra in Berlin, wrote extremely virtuoso  gamba concertos and cantatas for soprano, gamba and orchestra. Carl Friedrich Abel, in London together with J.C.Bach, left the breathtaking aria “Frena le belle lagrime” for the same setting. Vivaldi left the intimate and quasi oriental concertos per viola d'amore and Boccherini the famous aria "Se di un Amor tiranno" with the virtuoso cello concertante.

A fresh and special repertoire here presented by the soloist of IL SUONAR PARLANTE.

In 1764 the eight years old Mozart with the father arrived to London lodgings at 20 Frith Street in Soho. In the same quarter two of the most important german musicians were also living: Johan Christian Bach (Lipsia, 1735 – London, 1782) and Carl Friedrich Abel (Köthen, 1723 – London, 1787). The musical influences the young Mozart had in this period were life lasting, as the inspiration and extimation he had from and toward J.C.Bach. This program presents on one side some of the Mozart’s pieces directly inspired from the music of J.C.Bach, as the piano concertos K107 written after Bach’s piano sonatas or the Symphony K.183/173dB conceived after Bach’s symphony Opus 6 No. 6 . On the other side the music Mozart heard in the Londoner salotti or at the Bach-Abel concerts society. The symphony in g moll by Bach, the only he wrote in minor key is a master piece of Sturm und Drang. K.F. Abel, descending from a family of musicians already related with J.S.Bach’s family, was the last European famous gamba player and improviser. Some of his Symphonies were attributed to Mozart in the past. J.C. BACH

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Sinfonia in g minor Opus 6 No. 6 MOZART Concerto for pianoforte and orchestra (K107) C.F. ABEL Solo manuscripts improvisations for gamba, “Frena le belle lagrime” aria for soprano viola da gamba and orchestra J.C. BACH Quartet with oboe and gamba. MOZART

This project is dedicated to the music heard and played by Mozart in his 3 travels in Paris.

Mozart was only seven years old when his father Leopold decided to take his family on travels that were to last three years, in order to present him to the aristocracy and courts of Europe. Arriving in Paris on 18 November 1763, the Mozarts were taken in hand by Friedrich Melchior Grimm, who opened the doors of aristocratic houses to them. The main goal of the journey was achieved at the end of December, when they were presented at Court at Versailles. The Mozart children gave a concert before Louis XV’s daughters, Princesses Adélaïde and Victoire, who were both excellent musicians, in their private sitting room. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's first printed music, two sonatas for harpsichord and violin (KV 6 and 7), was published in Paris in 1764 and dedicated to Victoire, one of the mesdames. It is very possible that Victoire and her sisters played these sonatas on the pardessus de viole in their private rooms, where music-making was a common pastime for the princesses.

Leopold, however, was especially proud of the honour of being admitted to the Grand Couvert (the royal dining room) by Louis XV and Queen Marie Leszczyńska on New Year’s Eve 1764. Shortly afterwards, four sonatas dedicated to Madame Victoire were printed in Paris, the first time the young prodigy’s works were published.
After these eventful weeks, the Mozart family set off for England and then visited Holland before returning to Paris on 18 May 1766. During their short stay there, Wolfgang, who was now ten years old, gave a concert at Prince de Conti’s residence alongside other famous musicians, like the violonist Vachon, the famous gamba virtuoso Jean-Baptiste Forqueray, the cello player Cupis.

The Secret of Mr. MARAIS

This project, enterely devoted to Marais's music, alternate the most beautiful viol pièceswith orchestral interventions, in a theatrical dialogue between the solo pièces de violeand the Tutti.All pieces clarified at the light of the new discovery of the secret “codes” of Marin Marais.

The music of Marin Marais (1656-1728), masterpiece of a musician who never travelled out of Paris, represents together with the works of Lully and Rameau, the most important musical heritage left by the France to Europe for the XVII and XVIII centuries.

Marais was one of the preferred musician by Louis XIV, and besides his work as virtuosoand composer, Marais has been during his all life a very engaged teacher and editor of his own compositions. At this aim he invented some special signes for the ornamentation of his compositions. 

Vittorio Ghielmi has recently discovered some documents which are unique in the history of music: some new scores by Marais, bringing an enormous quantity of special signs in code, added at hand by Marais himself or his pupils to each note. These marks describe in minimal details how to execute the written music, and bring us to a new insight to the French baroque music, extremely different from the interpretation commonly in use nowadays. The signs are not a static description (as in treatises) but dynamic explanations written directly on each note, a kind of video ante litteram. This new insight affects not only the gamba repertorie, but also the style of the singing or of the orchestral playing for baroque music.

Vittorio Ghielmi plays on a very rare viola da gamba of Michel Colichon (Paris 1688). Colichon was the “inventor”of the French seven string viola da gamba, and worked together with Ms. de St. Colombe, the teacher of Marais. Marais brought the repertoire of the French viol to perfection, from his first book Premier livre de pièces de viole(1686) and his fifth book (1728). In the same period he wrote some of the most famous French Opéras (Alcyone etc.) and lot of chamber music.

An oniric dialogue with the music of Lulli, Marais, Rebel, Forqueray and Rameau. 

Vittorio Ghielmi and his musicians tell a story made of natural elements, characters, moods ... through the most beautiful pieces of the French Baroque. The thunder, the chaos, the tempest played by the orchestra and the response of “the dreamer”, the weather vane, the badinageplayed on the famous Colichon 1688 viola da gamba. A baroque picture of sentiments, on which shines the famous rondeau piece dedicated by Forqueray to the King Sun: Jupiter!

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The lament par excellence, the moan of Our Lady under the cross, is presented here in three versions of the strongest expressivity. 

The ancient tradition of the four throat-voice singing, preserved in Sardinia in an original and pure form, has been proclaimed “Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Humanity” by UNESCO. The singers of Orosei present their traditional “Stabat Mater” bringing us back to the origins of the chant.

Josquin Desprez, the most famous of the flemish composer of the Renaissance, left a Stabat Mater for 5 voice. As proved by many textes and painting of the period, the voices were frequently accompanied or substituted by the instruments, playing the vocal line or improvising upon it. 

The search for the expressivity of the sound is the basis of the inspiration of Arvo Pärt. His famous Stabat Mater for three voices and three strings instruments is presented in a version authorized by him for the Ensemble Il Suonar Parlante, with three violas da gamba.

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The defence of the bass viol against the cello

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A musical comedy presenting in a semi-staged version, the duel between the “aristocratic instruments” of the Ancien Régime (viola da gamba and lute) and the “parvenus” of the XVIII century: the violin and the violoncello, using the wonderful text written by the French lawyer Hubert le Blanc, “La Défense de la basse de viole contre les entréprises du violon et les preténsions du violoncel”, published in Amsterdam in 1740. The hilarious text of Le Blanc, organized as the quarrel of a process, is read during the spectacle and the instruments answer back alternating the most beautiful pages of music in Italian and French style and ending with a theatrical setting of "Folia variations" by the different composers. MUSIC: Marin Marais (1656-1728), Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762), G.B.Somis (1686-1763), Antoine Forqueray (1672-1745), Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764), Antonio Vivaldi and Arcangelo Corelli.

The program was first presented in a successful tour in Italian theaters in 2018.

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Realized as a documentary for BFImages (Hollywood-Salzburg see trailer in this site), the concert project is built around a “sound which come from very far, in space and in time”: the ancient tradition of the four throat-voice singing, preserved in Sardinia and proclaimed “Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Humanity” by UNESCO. The meeting of the Sardinian “Cuncordu de Orosei” with IL SUONAR PARLANTE and the modal improviser of the “Ensemble Kabul” is happening around the early European Renaissance repertoire. 

Don’t worry about saving these songs!

And if one of our instruments breaks,

it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place

where everything is music.

RUMI

Based on early renaissance music and the poetry of the Sufi poet RUMI (XIII cent.) put in music by the Afghani rubab player and composer Khaled Arman. A travel in unknown sonorities with the presence of the singer Graciela Gibelli and the guttural singers of Sardinia.

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Echo Klassik Prize 2015 with the Sony’s Cd, this program is devoted to the Irish and Scottish music of the XVII century, and its influences between folk and cultivated musicians. With the help of some traditional players (Bagpipe and Bodhran) Vittorio Ghielmi and Dorothee Oberlinger offers a creative landscape based on anonymous Irish sources of the XVII century as well as music of Purcell, Mattheis, Playford, Locke and many others.