This recording is devoted to the works of a composer about whom we know practically nothing — meither his date of birth nor even his origins. All that we do know is that Giorgi held the position of maestro di cappella in San Giovanni Laterano in Rome in 1719 and that he ended his career in Lisbon, dying there in 1762. The discovery of his music was a life-changing experience for the young Argentine conductor Leonardo Garcia-Alarcon, music director of Clematis and the Cappella Mediterranea and now also of the Chœur de Chambre de Namur.

Giorgi’s music contains many characteristic traits of Renaissance polyphony such as the use of the polychoral style as well as madrigalesque effects, although these older techniques are nonetheless put at the service of a new style of richly imaginative music with new harmonic colours.
A concertante Mass with soloists and instrumental accompaniment forms the centrepiece of this recording, although several motets from Giorgi’s immense body of work are also included; one of these is the deeply moving Ave Maria that also provides the CD with its title.

    

  

      

Even though the astonishing Capriccio stravagante with all of its imitations of instruments and animals is well known to all lovers of baroque music, the other works by this virtuoso violinist are almost completely unknown. Born in Mantua, Farina was in the service of the court in Dresden. The Capriccio is the only example of such a work in the five volumes of music that he published in the 1620s, his remaining works consisting of polyphonic dances in the French style and of brilliant sonatas for violin; his employment of the violin was completely individual in music being composed at that time. This collection of works by Farina is a source not only of astonishment and wonder but also of tenderness as well as other emotions.