Amodei / Zamboni / Storace: Vocal and Instrumental Works

Featuring

Jakob Lindberg
Dame Emma Kirkby
Lars Ulrik Mortensen
Cataldo Amodei
Giovanni Zamboni
Bernardo Storace

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Composer Biography

Giovanni Zamboni, a Roman composer and theorbo virtuoso, was also known as a jeweler, a seller of jewels, and a swordsman, even engaging in a duel with a musical colleague.

Performer Biography

Lars Ulrik Mortensen, the harpsichordist, was a professor of harpsichord and performance practice at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich but chose to leave teaching to focus on his performing career.

Composer Biography

Cataldo Amodei, born in Sicily in 1649, was described as a child prodigy whose singing talents were sought after by local nobility.

Performer Biography

Emma Kirkby, the soprano on this album, initially had no professional singing ambitions, studying classics at Oxford and working as a schoolteacher before joining choirs and early music groups.

Performer Biography

Jakob Lindberg, the theorbo and archlute player, developed his first musical interest through The Beatles before studying classical guitar and lute, eventually becoming the first lutenist to record John Dowland's complete solo lute music.

Compositional Technique

Amodei's cantatas feature a fluid and flexible formal expression, ranging from pure recitative to arioso and stanza-based arias, without the strict alternation that characterized later 18th-century cantatas.

Composition History

Cataldo Amodei's Opus 2, 'Cantate a voce sola', published in 1685, contains thirteen pieces for soprano and basso continuo, with ten secular and three moral/devotional cantatas.