Discovery of Passion

Dorothee Oberlinger's new recording shows the musical turn from the Renaissance to the Baroque through a kaleidoscope of newly conceived, experimental declamatory music by Italian masters expressing passions such as love and hate, sadness and joy, astonishment and desire in their music. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, music stood at a crossroads - in many places, but above all in the Italian cultural centers of Florence, Ferrara, Venice, Rome and Naples, artists and theoreticians worked on a fundamental renewal of the musical language, which was to be expressive in an immediate way: Passions no longer served merely as the intellectual starting point for musical composition.

This album features works by the most important composers of this musical avant-garde in Italy such as Claudio Monteverdi, Tarquinio Merula, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Michelangelo Rossi, Giovanni Bassano, Giovanni Battista Vitali and many more. For this recording, Oberlinger teamed with Dmitry Sinkovsky, who contributes to this album as violinist as well as countertenor. Thus, the repertoire is rounded by fascinating arias. Oberlinger and Sinkovsky are also accompanied by great instrumentalists from Oberlinger's own ensemble, Ensemble 1700.