Sirens & Soldiers

"As the worthy and skilful painter imitates all things created in nature through the variation of colors, so one can also imitate the expression of the human voice on a wind or string instrument". This concept, already explained in 1535 by Silvestro Ganassi in his opera intitulata La Fontegara, inspired Concerto Scirocco to seek the greatest possible expression in the interpretation of instrumental music from the 16th and 17th centuries. Hand in hand with the development of the instrumental repertoire, rhetoric became the link between instrument and voice, between imitation and reality. Where words were lacking, composers and instrumentalists used rhetoric to inspire the audience, just as singers did. In this fifth recording, Concerto Scirocco focuses on an early Baroque anthology of pieces and "paints in notes" a series of musical portraits full of contrasts: the pulsating rhythm of struggle in the symphony "A gran battaglia", the seductive mermaids in Marco Uccellini's Aria sopra "Questabella Sirena" or the operatic tension in the Sonata a tre by Francesco Cavalli.