Una Utopia Argentina / Monteverdi-piazzolla

Capella Mediterranea; Alarcon, Leonardo Garcia

Composed by: Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo García Alarcón

This innovative programme, created at Ambronay Festival in 2009 by the Argentine Leonardo García Alarcón chief sees musicians alternate between baroque and modern instruments to interpret the most beautiful pages of Piazzolla (Milonga del Angel, Ballada para un loco) and Monteverdi (Lamento della ninfa, Orfeo). During the extensive live tour of this project in 2009, members of the audience pointed out that in the end they didn't know where Monteverdi stopped and Piazzolla began. This is what the principal musicians had to say: "When I meet up with my musician friends, Argentinians of Europe like myself, we often start improvising and I discover we have a musical colour in common: the tango is never far away...The madrigal and the tango are affetti (emotions) that dictate the musical form. That's also why it seemed such an obvious idea to me to associate them, quite apart from the fact that the energy of Monteverdi's music is similar to that of Piazzolla's. You can interpret them with the same freedom, allowing yourself to be guided by your emotions. The other aspect of mingling the two approaches, very liberating from the standpoint of the professional skills of a "classical" musician, is the realisation of the way music evolves from one generation to another. My grandfather used to sing tangos, my father's generation were rock enthusiasts, and I play early music having inherited all of that."

Price: $22.98