Pino de Vittorio - Siciliane: The Songs of an Island (2013)

"When I began researching the Siciliane a few years ago, I never imagined the surprises, the treasures and the wonders that these settings of texts in the language spoken mainly on the island of Sicily held in store for me. Famous historians, enquiring musicians, obscure typographers, learned and enlightened ethnographers led me by the hand through a series of secret doors, some small, some large, into rooms lined with thousands of documents of poetry and music connected with the traditional culture of one of the most extraordinary of Mediterranean regions."

These are the words of Franco Pavan, director of the ensemble Laboratorio '600 and the driving force behind this unique project, whose vocal role has been entrusted to the tremendous singer Pino De Vittorio (a regular on the many Neapolitan programmes from Antonio Florio and I Turchini). Providing a fascinating experience from the outset, this disc entices with music drawn principally from the 17th and 18th centuries, and with roots in both popular and learned cultures. Whilst many of these works come from collections published in Venice in the first half of the 17th century, today a significant proportion of this repertory is in existence as a result of the labours carried out by Giacomo Meyerbeer, Giuseppe Pitré and Alberto Favara during their journeys to Sicily in the 19th century. This recital has been exquisitely captured on record by Rino Trasi, permitting the enjoyment of all its beauty, as well as its relaxed, poetic and tender nature; its traditional flavour is combined with a cultured and learned awareness by a group of performers who have been expressing their love for early Italian music for a number of decades now.