Cecilia Bartoli and Sol Gabetta – two of the most captivating women in classical music – are joining together for a new album ‘Dolce Duello’ to be released on Decca Classics on 10th November. It is a collection of Baroque masterpieces which showcase the stunning combination of voice and cello in a series of dazzling duels and wondrous arias. To coincide with the release, Bartoli and Gabetta will be performing on a European tour with Cappella Gabetta and conductor and violinist Andrés Gabetta.

Active as a soloist and as a member of leading early music groups worldwide, Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann has appeared on a number of BIS releases, often being singled out in reviews for her performances as continuo player and soloist. For her first solo disc, she has devised a programme illustrating the rise of the cello – from its beginnings as a large-bodied, deep-voiced provider of accompaniments in church music to a glittering, flittering solo instrument of the Rococo. The programme begins with some of the earliest repertoire for the instrument – two unaccompanied pieces by Domenico Galli and Giovanni Battista degli Antonii, and a solo sonata by Domenico Gabrielli, all hailing from around 1690.

The cello came to prominence in the eighteenth century by supplanting the viol as both a solo instrument and a favored choice for continuo support. The cello's impressive range and wide variety of tonal colors has inspired composers ever since. Bruno Cocset leads the ensemble Les Basses Re?unies in a recording that takes us back to the origins of the cello and to the instrument's early repertoire.

The main theme of this work of the Ensemble Chiaroscuro follows closely that of the first disc (also produced by Concerto Classics, “Baroque Enchantment”): the proposal is to collect a series of pieces to form a sort of concert program, in order to tell a true story in music, hence the title “Cello Tales”. The listener will in fact be led, through the notes of Antonio Fantinuoli cello, in a journey of rediscovery of the great masters and pioneers of the leading instrument of this recording, unearthed by a careful research of ancient manuscripts done by the same artist.

Domenico Gabrielli, unrelated to the more famous Gabrielis (spelled with one "l"), was one of a group of composers specializing in oratorio in the city of Bologna in the second half of the seventeenth century. Though the oratorio tradition was nurtured by the church of Santa Maria di Galliera in that city, some of the music was apparently semi-secular; the work recorded here, S. Sigismondo re di Borgogna (St. Sigismund, King of Burgundy), though its protagonist was eventually canonized, has a blood-and-guts story involving armed conflict, decapitation, and the burial of an entire family in a well. Sigismund was a historical figure, who died in 524, and his story might have been (or might still be) suited to operatic treatment.

Composer and cellist Domenico Gabrielli, was born in Bologna on 15 April 1659. He only lived to be 31 and he is a composer probably only familiar to cellists, or rather Baroque cellists. His seven Ricercari for cello solo are indeed the first predecessors of Bach’s cello Suites, and his two cello sonatas and his Canon for two cellos are among the earliest examples of their genre. Much less well-known is the fact that Gabrielli was also a celebrated opera and oratorio composer and published several trio sonatas and (posthumously) a volume of secular cantatas for voice and basso continuo. The present release is completed by some works by Bartolomeo Monari (1662-1707). Emanuela Galli's ravishing voice leads us through these lesser known Baroque compositions revealing the beauty of that music.