Antonio Pandolfi was born in Montepulciano (Tuscany), a place already famous at the time for its red wine. Shortly after, his family moved to Venice, where Antonio was later engaged into the service of the Princess de’ Medici in Innsbruck, like many other Tuscan composers. After that, he appeared in Messina (Sicily) as a violinist with the chapel of the cathedral, where he murdered the Roman castrato Giovanni Marquett. Pandolfi fled, embarking aboard a French ship, first sailing to France before reaching Madrid, where he managed to put himself at the service of the Spanish Habsburgs and remained to the end of his life.

Gunar Letzbor gives us a full-blooded performance of the second collection of "a composer caught between homicide and musical affects", to quote the title of the authoritative liner notes of Herbert Seifert.

"Our constant aim was to propose Mealli’s music in such a way as to seem new with every performance: we want not only to accept but also to favour the birth of a musica ‘nuova’. Music is reborn if it is full of the creative fantasy of inspired musicians who still manage to marvel at the essence of a work. It does not matter how old the notes of a composition are. A piece of music written just yesterday or even today can give the impression of being old if the musicians do not succeed in creating it freely deep down, with immediacy, feeling ecstasy and wonder, doing so precisely to be reborn." - Gunar Letzbor

Contents:
- Sonata Prima ‘La Bernabei’
- Sonata Seconda ‘La Viviana’
- Sonata Terza ‘La Monella. Romanesca’
- Sonata Quarta ‘La Biancuccia’
- Sonata Quinta ‘La Stella’
- Sonata Sesta ‘La Vinciolina’

Total playing time 55.33