Lully - Ballets & récits italiens
Galli; Fernández; True; La Risonanza / Bonizzoni
Glossa GCD921509

Release date August 2009

Founded in 1995, and focusing specifically on Italian music of the 17th and 18th centuries, La Risonanza (resonance) is fast becoming one of Europe’s most important period instrument ensembles. The Italian assimilation is clear from the title of this, their most recent recording, which focuses on Lully’s earliest dramatic works. CDs of early Lully works are relatively rare, so I was immediately intrigued when this item arrived in the shop. I was also a little apprehensive as 17th century French music is quite a difficult idiom to portray accurately, and I’m becoming increasingly irritated by compilation discs which jolt the listener from excerpt to excerpt in much the same fashion as an A-level music examination. Happily, this was not the case and the disc serves as a pleasant introduction to the music of Lully through the choice of several works which were later included (performed by much larger instrumental forces) in his mature operas. The solo, duet and trio vocal works featured on this disc are performed by contrasting soprano voices. There is something for all tastes - the warm and full tone of Emauela Galli, who in the air Di rigori armata il seno uses perhaps a little too much vibrato for me, through to the cleaner, pure tones of Yetzabel Arias Fernández and Stephanie True - the latter of whom really uses the voice to capture the overwhelmingly bleak sense of the solo lament, Cede al vostro valore (a personal favourite). Some of the very best movements are the duets and trios in which the voices all combine to create something really special, never over-complicated but truly delectable. The vocal works are interspersed with instrumental ballets, several of which are chaconnes and actually turn into vocal movements at the half-way point (a pleasant surprise if like me you don’t study the liner notes whilst listening to the CD). Whilst the instrumental forces are stylistically ‘chamber-sized’ (solo strings, theorbo and harpsichord), this does not at all detract from the music. Even the more complex instances of ornamentation (rarely, if ever, written into the score) sound natural, effortless and unmistakably French. In this disc (a mere off-shoot from their 7-CD project of early Handel Italian Cantatas) Bonizzoni and La Risonanza seem to get it all right. I look forward to their next release.

Reviewed by Wayne Weaver