A major figure in early 20th century French music, Satie continues to inspire many artists today and remains fascinating for his nonconformity. “Satie shows us a blank road where everyone is free to leave their footprints. […] He likes to live where life is bustling; he has an instinct for good inns; he enjoys the climate.” With these two sentences, Cocteau accurately evokes the atmosphere of this album. Airs à faire fuir, Danses de travers, Préludes flasques, Profondeur, Effronterie, and Désespoir agréable, among others, are very much in the vein of the “white road.” Allons-y Chochotte, Je te veux, La Diva de l’Empire with guest star Claron McFadden (soprano) and Gambades allow us to warmly enjoy the bustling life of the cabarets of Montmartre. To unexpectedly round off this album, the booklet reveals an unpublished text by the exceptional author Caroline Lamarche dedicated to Monsieur Satie.

Booklet: EN, FR

Vivaldi: LA COSTANZA TRIONFANTE

After more than forty years devoted to the study of Antonio Vivaldi’s sources and the reconstruction of his catalogue (RV), conductor and musicologist Federico Maria Sardelli presents a major rediscovery: La Costanza trionfante degl’amori, e de gl’odii (RV 706-A), a long-lost opera now partially restored and recorded with Modo Antiquo for Passacaille.

Through years of archival investigation and philological work, Sardelli has traced, identified and reconstructed eighteen arias from the score, representing approximately half of the original opera. This painstaking effort sheds new light on Vivaldi’s theatrical production at the height of his creative maturity and restores to the repertoire a work considered lost for more than three centuries.

A leading authority on Vivaldi, Sardelli has played a central role in redefining modern understanding of the composer’s operatic output. His long-term engagement with the sources—combining scholarship, performance practice and editorial work—forms the foundation of this project, which stands as both a musicological achievement and a living artistic reconstruction.

Recorded in July 2025 at the Oratorio di San Francesco in Florence, the album brings together the period ensemble Modo Antiquo and an international cast including Cecilia Molinari (mezzo-soprano), Valeria La Grotta (soprano), Valentino Buzza (tenor) and Biagio Pizzuti (bass), under Sardelli’s direction. The recording offers the first modern performance of this substantial fragment, built largely from unpublished arias, and opens a new perspective on Vivaldi’s dramatic language and expressive range.

Originally staged at the Teatro San Moisè in Venice as the final opera of the 1715–1716 Carnival season—most likely towards the end of January 1716—La Costanza trionfante degl’amori, e de gl’odii quickly established itself as one of the most successful works associated with Vivaldi’s early operatic career. The libretto by Antonio Marchi, resident poet at several Venetian theatres from 1692 onwards, became one of his most celebrated texts, its dissemination closely tied to the circulation of Vivaldi’s music.

The opera’s success led to numerous revivals and adaptations across Europe well into the 1730s, including productions in Munich, Venice, Vicenza, Hamburg, Mantua and Prague under various titles and reworkings. This widespread circulation attests to the work’s enduring theatrical appeal and cultural impact far beyond its Venetian origins.

This new release represents the culmination of Sardelli’s lifelong engagement with Vivaldi: a project that bridges scholarship and performance, and that allows modern audiences to encounter, for the first time, a substantial fragment of a once-celebrated opera now returned to the sound world for which it was conceived.

Booklet: EN, IT

Between the tenth and twelfth centuries, Horace’s carmina were sung in monasteries, preserving the voice of classical poetry within medieval culture.

In this recording, Stefano Albarello revives fourteen of those odes, reconstructed from ancient neumatic notation, together with a unique melody from Terence’s Eunuchus.

“Vocem cum cithara dedit” reveals a forgotten world where Latin verse, rhythm, and melody merged — the living echo of antiquity resonating through the Middle Ages.

Booklet: EN, IT

In Le Nuove Musiche, Furio Zanasi’s richly expressive voice and Xavier Díaz-Latorre’s masterful theorbo playing bring new depth to the groundbreaking music of Giulio Caccini and Heinrich Kapsberger. Caccini’s radical aesthetic—placing the intelligibility of the text at the center, allowing melody to carry expressive meaning, and reducing the accompaniment to a discreet yet powerful basso continuo—emerges here with remarkable clarity.

Zanasi and Díaz-Latorre reveal how innovative Caccini’s nobile sprezzatura di canto truly was: a free, speech-like, rhetorically shaped way of singing in which the emotional power of the text directly guides the musical gesture. In their hands, poetry and melody intertwine as a single expressive line, exactly as Caccini and the Florentine Camerata envisioned.

Each track draws the listener into a vivid sonic world where the timeless beauty and bold innovation of the early Baroque come alive, offering a fresh and deeply felt perspective on a pivotal moment in music history—an compelling listening experience for all lovers of early music.

Booklet: EN

Franz Liszt was a composer who constantly revisited and reimagined his own works, leaving behind multiple versions that reveal his evolving artistry. His 12 Grandes Études (S. 137), later transformed into the Études d’exécution transcendante (S. 139), exemplify this creative process. Originating from his earlier Étude en douze exercices (1826), these studies chart Liszt’s growth from prodigy to visionary, pushing pianistic and harmonic boundaries. Far beyond displays of technique, these Études embody a fusion of profound musical thought and extreme technical demands—one reason they remain rarely recorded. This new recording, the first ever on a historical instrument, brings fresh insight into one of Liszt’s most daring achievements.

Booklet: EN, DE, FR

Conversations and music lasting into the early morning hours: this is likely how one must imagine the evening of August 17, 1722, at the residence of Rudolf Franz Erwein von Schönborn in Wiesentheid Castle.

“They remained until five o’clock in the morning and then departed,” the count reported the next day to his brother, the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, who had sent him his court musicians. They came from Italy, and had among them the outstanding oboist Giovanni Benedetto Platti.

Together with Clara Blessing, her ensemble recreates this special evening of music-making among friends (Unter Freunden) with Italian-German masterworks of the eighteenth century

Booklet: EN, DE

Spiegelungen brings together Bach’s Musical Offering, Viktor Kalabis’ Canonic Inventions, and Isang Yun’s Royal Theme in a striking dialogue across time and culture. At the heart lies the canon: for Bach, a demonstration of contrapuntal mastery; for Kalabis, a modern exploration of invention and expressive freedom; for Yun, a meditation shaped by Taoist philosophy and Korean sonorities, refracted through the European tradition. NeoBarock performs on period instruments, creating a vibrant sound world where intellectual rigor meets poetic resonance. By placing them in dialogue, NeoBarock invites listeners to hear timeless ideas mirrored and transformed — a resonance between past and present that illuminates both.

Booklet: EN, DE, FR

Presenting the first complete recording of the Leuven Chansonnier!

In 2015 the Alamire Foundation, the International Centre for the Study of Music in the Low Countries, was approached by an art historian working on behalf of an art dealer, seeking musicological advice about a small music manuscript. Subsequent research quickly unveiled its significance: the manuscript was identified as a previously unknown fifteenth-century chansonnier. Since the original owner could not yet be ascertained, it was named the “Leuven Chansonnier”, reflecting its new location in the Library of Voices, one of the buildings that the Alamire Foundation occupies on the historic Park Abbey site in Leuven (BE). The songbook is of exceptional value. It transmits 50 compositions, consisting of one religious work and 49 French chansons, 12 of which survive in no other source. Although no composers’ names are mentioned, other sources identify the composers of 26 of its works; these include such leading fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish polyphonists such as Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Busnoys, and Firminus Caron. The creators of the other 24 chansons remain anonymous for the time being.

Sollazzo Ensemble is a critically acclaimed group dedicated to the performance of Medieval and Renaissance music. Founded in 2014 by Anna Danilevskaia, the ensemble is known for its highly expressive delivery and its distinctive sound and approach, shaped by the diverse musical backgrounds and personalities of its members. Drawing on historical repertoires and informed performance criteria, the group aims to convey emotions they have personally experienced or to express ideas that hold meaning for them. This process of appropriating historical artifacts through layers of rigorous creative work forms the basis of their communication with the public, as they seek to give each piece a voice that reflects the historical roots of the material as well as the ensemble’s unique vision

Booklet: EN, FR, NL

In 1729, nobleman and poet Annibale Marchese (1686–1753) published Tragedie Cristiane, a remarkable collection of ten Italian-language plays. Drawing on the influences of Racine, Corneille, Voltaire, and classical tradition, these innovative dramas are deeply rooted in Jesuit theatrical practices. To realise his vision, Marchese enlisted ten of the most accomplished composers of his time — masters of the so-called Neapolitan School. Their strophic arias, often featuring obbligato harpsichord, vividly reflect each composer’s unique style. This recording includes also previously unknown instrumental dances from contemporary Jesuit stage productions.

Stile Galante, directed by Stefano Aresi, is a Dutch-Italian cultural project devoted to Italian music of the 18th century, started in 2010. The project aims to merge academic research and performance, and focuses on vocal music. By devoting their attention to usually ignored or misunderstood repertoire the ensemble brings back pages of rare beauty and inspires musicians and audience alike to get in touch with musical languages and tastes today often forcibly adapted to unhistorical expectations.

Booklet: EN

In the 20th century, composers Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, and John Cage each created a pause in music—a caesura—by exploring life’s contrasts: the noise of the outside world and the quiet of inner reflection.

Satie balanced cabaret flair with meditative stillness. Poulenc exposed the cabaret’s charm and underlying despair before turning to sacred music. Cage broke with tradition, using experimental simplicity to draw listeners inward and awaken deeper listening.

A journey inward—a Room for Listening.

Booklet: EN, NL, FR