Alessandro Scarlatti: Stabat Mater & Mottetti – Emmanuelle de Negri

Thibault Noally and his ensemble here reaffirm their love for and expertise in Alessandro Scarlatti’s music as they celebrate his anniversary year with his famous and yet mysterious Stabat mater, a work that displays Scarlatti’s more intimate side. In Noally’s own words, “this is an extreme example of his stylistic eclecticism. The piece juxtaposes duets in passionate counterpoint with arias in the Neapolitan style, echoes of what he heard around him, as if they formed part of a mosaic. There is no synthesis between the different musical languages; what is most mysterious is that the motets are the musical illustration of a text or an emotion, whilst the Stabat mater requires a completely different approach. The music is no longer directly related to the text. It’s as if it had become a world in itself.” Noally also presents two Mottetti sacri and a Sonata a quattro, all in the da chiesa style. His collaborators here are soprano Emmanuelle de Negri, a long-time colleague, and Paul Figuier, a highly promising countertenor.