Fragility is not usually a characteristic associated with improvised music, but the sounds on this new recording seem at times to be as delicate as fine porcelein. Il Pergolese is a highly original interpretation of works by the 18th Century Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. [...] The nine tracks are inspired by Pergolesi works including the celebrated ‘Stabat Mater’, with Maria Pia De Vito’s rich and warm voice floating exquisitely over the gentle piano chords, the long, yearning cello notes, and the subtle whispers of percussion. One of the most effective tracks is ‘Chi Disse Ca la Femmena’, from Pergolesi’s musical portrait of women, ‘Lo Frate ‘nnamorato’. The theme is stated simply, but then the group doubles the tempo – the effect is almost startling – and De Vito’s voice begins a delightful sequence of punchy scatting over the lively pulse of the instruments. An absorbing album, well worth exploring.
John Watson, Jazz Camera
For five minutes or so, this dedication to 18th-century Italian opera and sacred-music composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi sounds like a respectfully operatic and relatively straight tribute to its subject – then Italian drummer Michele Rabbia's muffled-hoofbeat drumming begins to edge in. Though the music regularly returns to Pergolesi's arias and passages from his Stabat Mater (handled by the classically schooled Neopolitan vocalist de Vito with understated aplomb), the early material is used as a jumping-off point for various improvisations – from the unobtrusive melodic twists of French pianist Francois Couturier and German cellist Anja Lechner, to de Vito's whoops, gasps, and scat-like squirmings. Watery sounds and ghostly cello swirls usher in Amen/Fac ut Portem; Sinfonia for Violoncello is a showcase for Lechner; Chi Disse ca la Femmena is given a suitably playful treatment by de Vito at first, before becoming an exciting uptempo chase for cello and voice. [..] both opera and improv listeners may find much to enjoy in it.
John Fordham, The Guardian
Maria Pia de Vito, Anja Lechner, Francois Couturier und Michele Rabbia gehen auf dieser CD ganz klar in Extreme. Ihre Experimente klingen mal nach Jazz, mal nach traditioneller Volksmusik, mal nach Luciano Berio. Das macht dieses Album zu einer Herausforderung für den Hörer: Mit Nebenbeihören ist es nicht getan, um wirklich etwas von 'Il Pergolese' zu haben, muss man sich in die CD verbeißen und ihre musikalische Strukturen verfolgen. Wer das tut, merkt ziemlich schnell, dass nichts auf 'Il Pergolese' willkürlich ist, keine Klangfarbe, keine tonale Abweichung und kein Stück Improvisation. Und dann ist es plötzlich doch möglich, sich in diese Musik einfach fallen zu lassen, denn wenn die Hürden einmal überwunden sind, wird klar: Die vier Musiker begegnen den technischen Herausforderungen von Pergolesis Musik nicht nur mit Selbstbewusstsein und absoluter Perfektion, vor allem zelebrieren sie ihren Einfallsreichtum und ihre Schönheit.
Desiree Löffler, WDR
The musicians participating in this experiment bring together a relatively unconventional set of resources. On the one hand there are pianist François Couturier and cellist Anja Lechner, who have background in performing chamber music together (and recording their performances on ECM New Series). They are joined by percussionist Michele Rabbia, who also controls electronics, primarily in the form of samples of ‘concrete’ sound, and Neapolitan vocalist Maria Pia De Vito, who sings in Neapolitan, rather than the published source text. Much of the music on this album is the product of improvisations by these four musicians. [...] These pieces are decidedly not performances of Pergolesi refracted through a jazzy rhetoric, in the manner, for example, of past efforts by The Swingle Singers. Indeed, they are not so much performances of Pergolesi at all as they are the exploration of fragments of his music through the improvisatory skills provided by each of the performers. One might say that these improvisations allow one to listen to Pergolesi as he might be examined through the auditory version of a kaleidoscope.
Stephen Smoliar, Examiner.com
Entstanden ist ein grandioses Album, das Grenzgänge zwischen Barock und Jazz präsentiert, wie sie in dieser Homogenität selten zuvor zu hören waren. Das Quartett erweist dem Komponisten mit viel improvisatorischem Freiraum, aber auch respektvoller Sensibilität seine Reverenz. Anja Lechners sehnsuchtsvollem Cello-Ton und Maria Pia De Vitos hingebungsvollem Gesang zu lauschen, ist Labsal für die Seele. Couturiers perlende Pianoläufe und Rabbias raffinierte Rhythmen fügen sich wunderbar in die fein gewebten Klangtexturen ein.
Georg Spindler, Mannheimer Morgen
Neapolitan singer Maria Pia de Vito’s first recording for ECM sees her joining forces with three of the label’s regulars, and the results are imaginative, varied and wholly satisfying. Pergolesi is never far away – his thumbprint is there in recognisable fragments from the ‘Stabat Mater’ and ‘Pulcinella’, as well as less predictably in a batch of less well-known opera arias – but the quality of these four musicians is such that they can take his distinctive melodic energy and carry it into an improvisatory world very much of their own making.
De Vito sings it relatively straight some of the time, her voice tending more towards a sweet folk-like sound than a jazz one, but at other times she reels off into an expressive spectrum of riffs, scats and virtuoso extended vocal techniques; Anja Lechner, formerly of the Rosamunde Quartet, improvises with extraordinary lyrical beauty; François Couturier contributes cool wisdom and gentility; and Michele Rabbia’s ‘concrète’ and transformative electronics add atmospheric magic. This isn’t ‘jazzed-up’ baroque but high-class contemporary improv that draws on those styles to create a fascinating range of sounds and textures that constantly develops within a certain emotional framework of restrained intensity. [...] This is one of the most creative projects of its kind that I have come across.
Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone
Paying tribute to the short-lived 18th century Italian composer Giovanni Batista Pergolesi (1710-1736), this ECM debut from Italian vocalist, composer and arranger Maria Pia de Vito scores highly for its daring and its judicious reshaping of the source material. Joining the singer are three terrific musicians, all of whom have previously recorded on ECM [...] Of the three group improvisations, ‘In compagnia d’amore I’, with its juxtapositions of acoustic and electronic sounds, is especially striking.
Peter Quinn, Jazzwise
