New recordings made in 2009.

Extensive booklet notes and sung texts.

Already available on Brilliant: La Resurrezione (93805), and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (93665).

Handel’s cantatas represent an important but until recently little-known area of his work. Even now newly discovered works are found and performed to much excitement in the media and among lovers of Handel’s music. They were written during his time in Rome from 1707–8, and were intended for private use. They range from miniatures consisting of two arias, recitative and a basso continuo, to large-scale works with all the drama of his operas, complete with named characters, a plot and large orchestral forces. Marco Vitale will record the first ever complete cycle of these cantatas. He has returned both to Handel’s manuscripts, where they are extant, and to many of the intervening manuscripts. He has also taken decisions on the pitch of these recordings as a result of his research into the different tunings that were standard in Rome and Venice at the time of the works’ composition. This was showcased in his successful recording of Handel’s early Roman oratorio, La Resurrezione, which received a glowing review in Gramophone and many other specialist musical publications. Many of the cantatas have never been recorded before and this release is sure to generate considerable interest both in itself and as the first volume of a groundbreaking project.

February 2010