Adoration – Nicholas Spanos (counter-tenor)

Contents

Sances: Stabat Mater (arr. J. Sajka for voice and 2 violas da braccio)

Schwartzkopff: Pièces à tre viola da gamba – Chaconne

Szarzynski: Ave regina

Cavalli: Calisto Act II: Lucidissima face (arr. N. Spanos for voice, 2 violins, viola da braccio and basso continuo)

Szarzynski: Sonata a 2

Szarzynski: Iesu spes mea

Bononcini, G B: Xerse, Act I: Fondi Tenere … Ombra mai fu (arr. N. Spanos for voice and chamber ensemble)

Monteverdi: Si dolce è’l tormento (from Libro Nono di Magrigali e Canzonette) (arr. J. Sajka for voice, 2 violas da braccio and basso continuo)

Schmelzer: Sonata Variata in D minor

Zelenka: Christe eleison in E Minor, ZWV 29

Bach, J S: St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244, Pt. II: Erbarme dich, mein Gott

From Claudio Monteverdi to J. S. Bach, the album Adoration by Pandolfis Consort with counter tenor Nicholas Spanos spans one century of baroque music history. Despite the stylistic developments that took place over this period there are still mand aspects that these pieces have in common: the calm steps taken by the basso ostinato, the delicate, polyphonic weaving of the instruments and the melancholic, touchingly clear vocal part. Historical instruments and intense study of historical performance practice provide for exciting soundscapes. Besides Monteverdi and Bach, the Arias, Madrigals, Motets and instrumental Sonatas were composed also by lesser known composers from Italy, Germany/Austria and Poland like Giovanni Felice Sances, Giovanni Battista Bononcini, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Theodor Schwartzkopff, Stanislaw Sylwester Szarzynski, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and Francesco Cavalli. Nicholas Spanos initially studied in Greece with Aris Christofellis. He subsequently continued his studies at the music faculty of the University of Maryland (USA) in the song studio of Linda Mabbs as a scholarship student of the Athens Society of the Friends of Music; at the same time he also worked there as an assistant and took his master’s degree in voice and opera performance. In 2013 Nicholas Spanos took a post-graduate course in Lied and oratorio (class of Charles Spencer) at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. He has taken part in numerous master courses given by prominent teachers such as Kurt Equiluz, Delores Ziegler, Anna Tomowa-Sintow and Michael Chance. He has regularly worked together with ensembles such as the Venice Baroque Orchestra, Les Talens Lyriques, the Camerata Stuttgart, the Clemencic Consort, the Orchestra 1756 Salzburg, the National Opera of Greece, Megaron the Athens Concert Hall, the State Orchestras of Athens and Thessaloniki, the Greek National Theatre and the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Pandolfis Consort was founded in 2004 by Elzbieta Sajka-Bachler, viola player und graduate of Kraków Music Academy to bring rarely performed works by famous or forgotten composers to a wider public. The ensemble has in the intervening period established itself and is regularly invited to perform at international festivals in Poland, Austria, Finland, Spain, Italy, Holland and Slovakia. The performance of Bach’s St John Passion in the Radiokulturhaus Vienna and the appearance at the Ö1 festival Italia mia with a live broadcast in ORF (Austrian radio) attracted international interest. From 2007 to 2013 the Pandolfis Consort organized a cycle «Music in the Deutschordenskirche» in Vienna and since 2013 has been host of the International Heinrich Ignaz Biber Festival in Vienna. The ensemble’s repertoire extends from early Baroque to Classic to modern music and also includes contemporary compositions written for the Consort. The ensemble’s period instruments set composers the interesting task of adapting their modern tonal language and in this way finding new sounds. In 2012 the ensemble gave the first performances of commissioned compositions by Johanna Doderer (Austria) and Stanley Grill (USA) and, in Innsbruck in 2014, of two works by Tyrolean composer, Franz Baur. The Pandolfis Consort generally gives concerts in its standard formation of four musicians but also performs with well-known singers or additional instrumentalists. The use of theorbo and cello in the continuo contributes to the special sound of the Consort.