Baroque

Description

Decca Classics is delighted to announce a new baroque album from Grammy Award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti. This is the first album that Benedetti has released on a period setup including Gut Strings, and she is joined by a leading group of independent baroque musicians, forming the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra for the very first time. The album features a selection of Vivaldi concertos as well as Geminiani's incredible arrangement of Corelli's "La Folia," one of the oldest Western classical themes that has been arranged by many composers over time, especially during the baroque period. Geminiani was one of the greatest violinists of the time and Corelli was one of his teachers when he grew up in Italy. Later, when he moved to London, Geminiani reworked a number of Corelli's works for the local audience, including this arrangement of "La Folia." Nicola Benedetti commented: "This music is so deeply invigorating, energetic, liberating, grounded, and moving. I am so excited to release my first baroque album with this wonderful group of independent musicians and to have the opportunity to perform it for people in the enchanting beauty of the Battersea Arts Centre. I have long dreamed of presenting a project that brings together a recording, a live performance, and our educational work, and with 'Baroque,' we are finally achieving that. Emotionally and psychologically, the musicians are eager to make music together and play for people, live. As we hopefully emerge from this dark period of the pandemic, we want to bring hope and upliftment, and baroque music, especially Italian baroque with all its songs and dances, does that best. It expresses joy and drama in equal measure. It celebrates and embodies dance, community, and improvisation. It has rhythmic continuity and solidity, discernible harmonic sequences and patterns. This music should be introduced as you enter an opera. We, the musicians, all play, give and take demonstratively and fervently. It is full of stories to which we are all connected, and was meant to be understood and appreciated. However, the Venetian audience of the early 18th century was not an old audience. Everyone made music, whether at home, in the street, on or off stage. Amateur music was shared and inspired sharing. Music was part of people's lives; written, played, and sung for and by the people. But I also think for a long time that baroque music in general is an untapped secret for the world of collective and community musical creation and occupies a strange place in our formative years of learning instrumental music. We have so much more to learn from the energetic and revolutionary advances of baroque interpretation. We can approach these works in a way that inspires fun and pleasure, a greater sense of unity and community, a true abandonment of caution and an acceptance of scratches and scuffs. We can, through this music, connect more deeply to dance and rhythm, and modernize its relevance. And I absolutely cannot wait!"