Leo, Pergolesi, Porpora - Salve Regina | Brilliant Classics 96092

Leo, Pergolesi, Porpora - Salve Regina

£9.45

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Label: Brilliant Classics

Cat No: 96092

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 13th March 2020

Contents

Artists

Federica Napoletani (soprano)
Ensemble Imaginaire

Conductor

Cristina Corrieri

Works

Leo, Leonardo

Salve Regina in C minor
Salve Regina in F major

Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista

Salve Regina in G minor

Porpora, Nicola

Salve Regina

Artists

Federica Napoletani (soprano)
Ensemble Imaginaire

Conductor

Cristina Corrieri

About

Four sensuous settings of the Marian antiphon by a trio of Neapolitan masters, sung with native affinity by a young Italian soprano, and including a pair of world-premiere recordings.

The four Salve Regina recordings presented on this uniquely compiled new album cross the boundary between opera house and church – a boundary that in 18th-century Naples was never very forbidding to begin with. In fact Leo, Pergolesi and Porpora are all fine examples of composers who moved with unselfconscious facility between sacred and secular genres, between old counterpoint and the Monteverdian stile concertato that caressed each word with sensuous melismas and velvet harmonies.

Porpora was a noted singing teacher of his day, intimately familiar with everything that a voice can do, and possessing a melodic skill that spins long and ornate vocal phrases of almost instrumental effect. The Salve Regina by Pergolesi presented here is in G minor, and is a different work from his much more familiar settings of the text in F major and A minor, with a grave and restrained vocal line that evokes a meditative aura far removed from Porpora’s fireworks.

Extreme versions of these contrasting tendencies also characterise the two settings by Leonardo Leo. The F major Salve Regina is bright and extrovert, only darkening for a minor-key setting of ‘Ad te suspiramus’, with an agile vocal line full of operatic flourishes. In the C minor Salve Regina, however, Leo evokes a mood of intense lamentation with a style so restrained that it would seem almost archaic were it not for the expressive harmonies not so distant from Pergolesi’s world.

Federica Napoletani studied piano and singing at the conservatoire in Parma before joining Luisa Castellani’s class for a Masters at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in Lugano. She specialises in new and early music and has performed with many distinguished early-music groups including Vox Altera, Odhecaton and Ensemble Imaginaire. The album is accompanied by an illuminating booklet essay authored by the director of Ensemble Imaginaire, Cristina Corrieri.

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