Great artists talk about their past recordings
This month: I MUSICI Ensemble
OUR FINEST MOMENT LUX3570
Sumi Jo (soprano); I Musici Decca 485 7161 (2021)
At the end of December we went on a tour of South Korea with our friend Sumi Jo, a real talent and a major artist with whom we have worked for several years. This one was an incredible experience and, as a matter of fact, we could say it was the crowning of a friendship and artistic relationship we are really proud of. We proposed very interesting repertoire for LUX3570 – the title due to a double anniversary: 35 years of Sumi Jo’s career and our 70 years. The album means a lot for our friendship and it draws a path linking our repertoire to hers. It was recorded at the wonderful Collegio Internazionale San Lorenzo da Brindisi at the edge of Rome. It belongs to the Capuchin friars and is surrounded by lots of greenery.
We are really happy with our relationship with Sumi, who is a friend, first of all. Our relationship was incredible from our very first meeting: she proposed Frascati, a small town near Rome, as the location to get to know each other and, as it happened, Francesca Vicari, one of the members who was arranging that meeting, came from Frascati and her parents lived there. Later we found out Sumi had a house there, too. An incredible sign of destiny!
OUR FONDEST MEMORY
Vivaldi String Concertos
I Musici Fonè 074 (2011)
This recording was released for our 60th anniversary, at the end of 2011. We recorded some concertos for strings by Antonio Vivaldi.
We decided to make this recording in Volterra, an ancient village in Tuscany, and we recorded in a small theatre there. Giulio Cesare Ricci, our friend and music industry executive at that time, came from Tuscany and knew several places with excellent characteristics to make a recording. He suggested this small theatre with a perfect acoustic. And it was perfect indeed. He loved using ambient microphones.
It was winter, and it was terribly cold. Moreover, it was a tough period for mankind. We just had the news that a huge tsunami arrived on the coast of Japan. A member of the group, Pasquale Pellegrino, had some relatives there and we were all really worried. So our memory of this experience is actually made up of many difficulties. It was so cold that our instruments, in fact, suffered a bit. However, it was tough mostly for the strings; we tried to keep them in their cases as much as possible, just taking them out when we had to play. The result, though, was really excellent despite all of these hard events and the recording was r
