Cristina Curti & Aldo Vianello - Giuliani: Opere per voce e chitarra (2012)

Mauro Giuliani was a star guitarist at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the instigator of something of a craze for this instrument. His success derived in part from his ability as a composer for his chosen instrument: he could produce music that pleased hearers wherever he went. This release of Giuliani songs is noteworthy for this inclusion of the six rarely heard Lieder for soprano and guitar, Op. 89. No date for these is given, but the late 1810s would be a reasonable guess. Giuliani wrote them in Vienna, where Schubert at this juncture was still known only to observers who were paying very close attention to the scene -- but it would seem that Giuliani somehow smoked him out. The melody lines of these songs are strikingly evocative of Schubert. The Cavatine, Op. 39, and Ariette, Op. 95, that bookend the album are in a different style but done equally skillfully. Set to texts by Pietro Metastasio (at least some of them are -- the hastily done notes are unclear on this point), they boil down the Italian operatic melody of the day to chamber dimensions with admirable ingenuity and pleasing results. The historically appropriate guitar played by Aldo Vianello is very nice, with nowhere near the resonance of a modern classical guitar but a heightened precision in its quiet tones. The question mark here for the listener is the tremulous, birdlike voice of Renaissance and Baroque specialist Cristina Curti, one of those that will be either loved or hated. Fortunately the advent of Internet sampling allows individual decisions in these cases. The lack of song texts is an irritant, especially in the case of the unusual Italian pieces (the German songs, with text by Goethe, Schiller, and their ilk would at least turn up online), but this is an offbeat pick worth considering for the guitar enthusiast.