Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori
Nahuel Di Pierro bass, Ensemble Diderot, directed by Johannes Pramsohler
74:02
Audax Records ADX 11210

This CD traces music written for the solo bass voice from the compositions of Monteverdi to Handel. While the obvious stars of the Baroque opera scene were mainly the sopranos and castrati, as the CD notes concede, in selecting the music for this programme cleverly, conductor Johannes Pramsohler and bass Nahuel Di Pierro bring the Baroque bass convincingly out of the shadows. Di Pierro has a beautifully rich voice and sings with technical authority, dramatising the music extremely effectively. As we proceed through history, the instrumental ensemble expands appropriately from the string ensembles needed for Rossi, Monteverdi, Cavalli and Sartorio, acquiring brass, woodwind and percussion supplements for Marc’Antonio Ziani, Antonio Giannettini, Giovanni Bononcini, Alessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Vivaldi before we get to Handel. While several arias are striking for their flamboyant martial flavours, what emerges is the huge range of moods the Baroque bass singer is asked to represent. He is as often a lover or a lamentable victim as he is a hero, and Di Pierro captures this full kaleidoscope of moods in his marvellously varied vocal tones. The singing of three supplementary vocalists (Nicholas Scott, Guillaume Gutierrez and Nicolas Brooymans) in the ensemble “Amici, è giunta l’hora” from Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea is superlative, and the orchestral playing throughout is beautifully concise and supportive. Incidentally, in addition to directing, Johannes Pramsohler joins Roldán Bernabé in some stunning obbligato violin duetting, particularly in the magnificent aria “Occhi belli”, occhi possenti from Bononcini’s Il ritorno di Giulio Cesare, one of the many highlights of this excellent disc.

D. James Ross