Red Music

The latest release from Italy's Continuo Records' (now available - from 15 November 2015) features Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, plus Red Music by young Florentine composer Andrea Portera (born in 1973). Andrea Vitello conducts Ensemble Bios, and Anna Clementi is the reciter for Pierrot lunaire.

Along with Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Arnold Schoenberg's expressionistic Pierrot lunaire heralded the arrival of twentieth century music. Schoenberg, fascinated by numerology, set twenty-one poems by Albert Giraud, dividing them in to three parts, each containing seven poems. He uses seven-note motifs throughout, and there are seven performers (including the conductor). Each poem contains thirteen lines, and the numbers three and thirteen are also important. Pierrot lunaire's construction is very classical, using canon, fugue, rondo, passacaglia and counterpoint.

Prize-winning composer Andrea Portera, who studied at Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence, and with Salvatore Sciarrino, has written more than 120 theatrical, symphonic and chamber works. Red Music, in three movements, pays homage to three important Russian figures - Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rostropovich.

Continuo Records (the trading name of Contempoars SRL, Rome) is a youngish and passionate record company with some interesting ideas, working with a range of artists including Alessandra Ammara, Natalia Baginskaya, Michele Carreca, Mauro Conti, Alessandro Drago, Francesco Finotti, Elitza Harbova, Marika Lombardi, Daniel Matrone, Livia Mazzanti, Giorgia Milanesi, Roberto Prosseda, Hugo Reyne, Cipriana Smarandescu, Alessandro Stella, Giorgia Tomassi, Furio Zanasi and La Simphonie du Marais.

Information: www.continuorecords.com

Posted: 23 November 2015

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