Nuria Rial And Maurice Steger Baroque Twitter CD

Spanish soprano Nuria Rial and Swiss recorder virtuoso Maurice Steger are among the most successful artists in the field of early music. Both have already received Echo Klassik Awards.

Their first album together reveals how magnificently Nuria Rial’s bell-like soprano blends with the sound of Steger’s recorder. Together with the multi-award-winning Kammerorchester Basel they have recorded an album of Baroque arias and concertos inspired by birdsong.

In their search for works to include in their album they have discovered some dazzling jewels, some well known, others previously unrecorded: dreamily playful arias about love, infatuation and the beauties of nature. In the aria “Rondinella che dal nido” from the opera Ifigenia in Tauride by Leonardo Vinci (1696?–1730), the frantic arpeggios in the strings suggest the whirring wings of a swallow, while in the aria “Bell’augelletto che vai scherzando” from the opera L’oracolo del fato by Francesco Gasparini (1661–1727), dawn is greeted by birdsong imitated by recorder and soprano.

The Recorder Concerto in F major RV 442 by Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) is especially notable for the twittering of birds that the composer captures in his virtuosic third movement. It is the music of a nightingale that is heard in both “Quell’usignolo ch’al caro nido” from Vivaldi’s opera Arsilda regina di Ponto and in the aria “Usignolo che col volo” from the opera Engelberta by Andrea Stefano Fiorè (1686–1732). Other composers featured here include Francesco Mancini (1672–1737), Pietro Torri (c1650–1737), Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751), Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783) and Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725). In every case Baroque Twitter offers listeners an exciting journey into the world of early 18th-century Baroque poetry and music, a world filled with musical variety and soloistic brilliance.