Lively music from the Court of Emperor Joseph I

Part of the fun of Anna Beer's book Songs and Sweet Airs: the Forgotten Women of Classical Music comes after you're done: discovering the music of Beer's eight women composers (from Francesca Caccini to Elizabeth Maconchy), and then filling in the gaps with the music of composers like Grazyna Bacewicz and Chiquinha Gonzaga and Sofia Gubaidulina.

Here's a really interesting composer from early 18th century Vienna, someone who's one step away from being completely anonymous: Camilla de Rossi. We have no birth or death dates for de Rossi, but know that she was originally from Rome, and that she worked in Vienna in the early 18th century. There are five extant works for voices and orchestra, lively works with interesting vocal and instrumental parts (including the early use of the chalumeau, the predecessor of the clarinet). The music has an excellent and most amiable model: Arcangelo Corelli, and one can see why these works found favour at the Court of the Austrian Emperor.

This CD, due for release on June 24, 2016, is a nicely packaged re-issue of the Pan Classics disc originally released in 2002. Daniela Dolci conducts the excellent singers and instrumentalists of her Basel-based Musica Fiorita; the recording was made in April 2001 in the Reformierte Kirche Meiringen. I was interested to see that Johannes Strobl also plays harpsichord and organ in the ensemble; he is now the very successful director of the Cappella Murensis and Les Cornets Noirs.

I found the original Pan recording up on YouTube. I think you'll agree this is very listenable music.

New! Improved!

Though as far as I know 17th century Venetians didn't have cereal or soap boxes with "NEW!" labels, they were still big on novelty. Aficionados of music looked for the "Stil Moderno" tag when it came to new music:

Score from IMSLP.

And the thing is, this music can sound pretty novel even today. There's something fresh and unexpected about the way Dario Castello crafts his melodies, his dramatic recitatives, and even those nods to the past, his strict polyphonic sections. You'll notice that Castello is billed in the title page of the Sonate Concertante as "Musico Della Serenissima Signoria di Venetia in S. Marco, & Capo di Compagnia de Instrumenti", which puts him in St. Mark's Cathedral during the time that Claudio Monteverdi was in charge of the music there.  This is indeed in the "Modern Style", perhaps even "Bordo d'attacco", which Google Translate tells me is Italian for "Leading Edge".

Some of the freshness and verve I hear in the music must come from the musicians of Musica Fiata, and their conductor Roland Wilson. Wilson and his musicians would need to make decisions about orchestration and interpretation, since the score is sometimes a bit generic:

Though Musica Fiata have recorded Venetian music in the past, I know them best playing music from Germany and Austria: Fux, Schutz, Schein and Rosenmuller. Their 2013 Bach Luther Cantatas disc for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi was outstanding. But this new disc of Castello's amazing music demonstrates that nothing is lost in the transalpine journey. The CD will be released on April 8, 2016; pre-order or stand in line at Amazon.com early on the 8th (ha!) to get yours.