Flesh on Flesh [Hybrid SACD]

Flesh on Flesh [Hybrid SACD]

ASIN: B00009NHBI

Track Listings

1. Zona Desperata

2. Innamorata

3. Meninas

4. Flesh on Flesh

5. Fugata

6. Deep and Madly

7. Saffire Soleil

8. Señor Mouse

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Ever since he burst on the scene as a teenage member of the fusion group Return to Forever, Al Di Meola has reigned as a guitar god in jazz, flamenco, and world music circles. Those genres are well represented on this disc, with guests Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, flutist Alejandro Santos, and World Sinfonia members Gumbi Ortiz (percussion) and Mario Parmisano (keyboards). While Di Meola's lightning licks are still in effect, they are tempered by Old World, classically tinged settings with a dash of '70s-style fusion. Chick Corea's "Señor Mouse" is elegantly reworked, and "Fugata" by the Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla retains cool and complex contrapuntal lines. Di Meola plays a number of guitars on this date, from a 1958 Les Paul to an Ovation model, but it's all Al Di Meola and it's all good. --Eugene Holley Jr.

Customer Reviews:

The musical splendour of St Petersburg.......2005-07-25

St Petersburg is justly famous for the grand magnificence of its architecture, and this CD explores that splendour in musical terms. Tsar Peter the Great drove Russia into the modern world through his modernization program, without which Russia may have remained in the Middle Ages and certainly would have been no match against the onslaught of later Western European tyrants such as Napoleon and Hitler.

As part of his modernization drive, Peter the Great brought in Western composers - mainly from Italy, where the latest European musical fashions were being wrought at the time. Teachers of composition would likely have held up composers such as Palestrina, Lassus, Gabrielli and Josquin as examples to follow. The teachers must have been highly conservative for Vasily Titov often writes 12-part counterpoint late in the 1600's when this sort of multi-part polychoral writing was going right out fashion in Europe - clearly his Italian teachers had little time for the more avant garde trends set by the likes of Monteverdi - colorful madrigalian trends being thus noticeably absent. The results are an extraordinary mixture of Russian Orthodox stylistic tendencies noticeably in the melodic style, with the polyphonic compositional principles of the Seconda Prattica. Despite the importation of Western techniques, a strongly Russian compositional character comes through strongly. In fact Vasily Titov is arguably a good a composer as Russia has ever produced.

With later Russian composers represented here such as Bortniansky, there seems to be a greater awareness of the latest Western fashions, perhaps even those of the up-and-coming Viennese group of composers such as Haydn, although Italian composers such as Durante were still highly dominant amongst conservative circles at the time. There is certainly a hint of the gallant style entering into the writing, though fortunately the a capella nature of Orthodox liturgical writing (instruments are forbidden in church) lends it a necessary compensatory sobriety.

This is all very rewarding music, reminiscent of the magnificant architecture of St Petersburg - such as the Hermitage, and the Petershof, even if it leaves me wishing there were more works by Titov represented here. The importation of the Spirit of the Renaissance and the new Humanism had clearly ushered a new age for Russia.

The choral singing here is truly wonderful with fine tone and intonation throughout, as you would expect with Paul Hillier in charge. The recording is excellent - clean and clear with the usual enhanced refinement that you would expect from a DSD recording.

This is a highly recommendable SACD release.

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