Quartetto Bernardini AROUND MOZART

 

AROUND MOZART

Controcorrente Orchestra BACH SONS

BACH SONS

 

Emma Black THE ART OF THE OBOE - THE CLASSICAL AGE

THE ART OF THE OBOE - THE CLASSICAL AGE

Maarten Engeltjes / PRJCT Amsterdam / Andreas Wolf NICHT MEHR HIER

NICHT MEHR HIER

Jean Rondeau BACH DYNASTIE

                                                                BACH DYNASTIE

Charlotte Schäfer / Concerto con Anima / Michael Preiser DOLCI AFFETTI

The second solo CD of the young soprano Charlotte Schäfer, together with Concerto con Anima under Michael Preiser, contains true gems of virtuoso coloratura art, which all use texts from the libretto Demofoonte by Pietro Metastasio. Her debut album (ARS38187 - Sol nascente - Italian Arias) received great reviews: "....the young ... soprano Charlotte Schäfer introduces herself with sophisticated coloratura...." Opernglas "She's technically accomplished with superb coloratura and a trill worth the name . " Musicweb International.

Among the composers of the works recorded here for the first time in the world are Johann Christian Bach, Pasquale Anfossi and Giuseppe Sarti.

Lea Desandre / Natalie Pérez / Chantal Santon-Jeffery / Opera Fuoco / David Stern BERENICE, CHE FAI?

Berenice, que fai… Or frantic Berenice. Metastasio’s heroin, facing a dilemma of love versus duty, inspired the great operatic composers such as Hasse, Haydn, Mozart such as one of their female peers, still unknown today, Marianna Martinez, contemporary and even neighboring some of them.

To interpret this colorful character, three singers and an orchestra: the mezzo Léa Desandre, rewarded at the Victoires de la Musique in 2017, the sopranos Natalie Perez and Chantal Santon-Jeffery, and the impetuous conductor David Stern at the head of his period instruments-ensemble, Opera Fuoco.

True actors, these musicians restore the theatrical dimension of these scores without sacrificing the sensitive and fragile aspect of the character. An emotional complexity, between exhilarating madness and more tragic pages, that we find in Hasse’s Sinfonia, from his opera Antigono and of which Opera Fuoco gives us a full version of panache.

Le Concert de la Loge / Julien Chauvin / Sandrine Piau HAYDN La Reine

It was in 2015 that Julien Chauvin decided to bring back to life one of the most famous orchestras of the late 18th century, Le Concert de la Loge Olympique. Founded in 1783 and owing its lasting famous for having commissioned Joseph Haydn’s ‘Paris’ Symphonies, it gave its first concerts under the high patronage of Marie-Antoinette, hence the subtitle of the fourth ‘Paris’ Symphony: ‘La Reine’. 

Although the name has been slightly changed today, now called Le Concert de la Loge, this ensemble of a variable number of musicians perpetuates the same tradition of excellence as its illustrious namesake. On the programme, of course, the recording of the cycle of these ‘Paris’ Symphonies and, to get the series off to a start, the recording of this famous ‘Reine‘. Taking up the purest tradition of concerts of the ensemble at the time, for each programme, Julien Chauvin combines not only instrumental works by various composers but also vocal pieces (in general, opera arias). 

Thus the fabulous Sandrine Piau, a distinguished guest of this first recording, ideally portrays the gentle Sélène in the world premiere recording of an aria from Giuseppe Sarti’s Didone abbandonata (1762) and offers dazzling virtuosity in Diane’s spectacular aria from Johann Christian Bach’s serenade Endimione. The listener will also (re)discover a little gem by Henri-Joseph Rigel, violist in Le Concert de la Loge Olympique: the Symphony Op. 12 no.4 (1774). With this first release, Julien Chauvin already proves that his orchestra will quickly establish itself and regain its past glory.

Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen BACH Magnificats

Three Magnificats, by the three most famous members of the Bach family, make for a delectable triptych from a 40-year span, with each strikingly promoting their distinctive musical priorities. If Johann Sebastian’s first Leipzig Christmas in 1723 impelled him to display all his high-Baroque wares in a canticle of mesmerising variety, then both his cosmopolitan sons accept the subsequent challenge with alacrity in their colourful settings – with the more substantial CPE score now beginning to enter the canon.

For their father’s perennial masterpiece, Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo snap into their festive sparklers with grand authority and lithe ebullience, sweeping effortlessly from verse to verse with considerable purpose. There’s something attractively straightforward about ‘Quia fecit’ with the characterful Thomas Bauer agreeably supported by Cohen’s present harpsichord, not least because it has a delicious effect on the languid curves of Iestyn Davies’s and Thomas Walker’s ‘Et misericordia’, which follows. One is struck throughout by the exceptional balance of the voices and instruments yet without forgoing Cohen’s animated and imaginative way with text. Indeed, when one reaches the ‘Gloria Patri’ at the close, the music seems to have evolved imperceptibly in a generous seam of exquisitely judged verses.

Arcangelo’s voyage into the sons’ Magnificats is no less well paced or astutely textured. As we move into Johann Christian’s third setting (thought to be for Milan Cathedral in 1760), the new idiom becomes decidedly operatic, riven with self-conscious conceits and reeking of galant suavity. But it goes down very nicely in around 10 minutes, especially the expectant choral interpolations in ‘Fecit potentiam’ and even the slightly perfunctory doffing of the cap to dad with a decent enough fugue to end.

Carl Philipp Emanuel’s Magnificat is a substantial homage to his father’s setting (there are some obvious quotes), especially in the successful combining of so many contrasting elements. If CPE is rather less succinct than Johann Sebastian, there’s no denying that there are some brilliant and affecting set pieces, especially when carried by Joélle Harvey’s uniformly dramatic and engaging singing – not to mention the supreme final double fugue when the choir and orchestra all but take off. It’s 40 years since King’s College Choir Cambridge under Philip Ledger recorded the work in what seemed a rather muddy and elusive idiom. Not here, where Cohen and Arcangelo bring us an illuminated Bachian constellation of three canticles colliding in captivating relief. (Jonathan Freeman-Attwood / Gramophone)

Nemanja Radulović BACH

Asked why he has chosen to tackle music by Bach for his new album, the violinist Nemanja Radulović might almost hesitate before answering, so self-evident does his reply appear to him and so natural is the affinity that he feels for Bach. For him, the present recording is the logical successor to his two previous releases: in the wake of Vivaldi and his project The Five Seasons, he continues his personal exploration of the Baroque repertory with his ensemble Double Sens; and, like Journey East, this recording, too, represents a reflection on his own particular roots – in this case, his musical roots. The three words that recur here with leitmotivic regularity are: roots, loyalties and families. 

Roots. It all started with Bach. As with so many other musicians, Bach remains bound up with Nemanja Radulović’s earliest musical memories as a violinist, for even as a boy in Belgrade, he was already working on this repertory, in particular the Sonatas and Partitas, movements from which he has included in the present CD. Here pride of place goes to the Chaconne, which is the piece he prefers above all – alongside the Beethoven Violin Concerto, he adds by way of an explanation. The concertos, too, were a part of Radulović ’s repertory before he moved with his family to France. On the present release he is partnered by Tijana Milošević in the Double Violin Concerto BWV 1043. She was already appearing with him in this work while they were students at the Belgrade Conservatory. Nemanja also worked on the Viola Concerto in C minor attributed for a time to Johann Christian Bach – he learnt to play both the viola and the cello while he was still living in Belgrade, but he had to put them to one side when he entered the Paris Conservatoire in order to concentrate on the violin. This is the first time that Nemanja Radulović has returned to the viola for the purposes of a recording.

Anastasia Injushina / Hamburger Camerata / Ralf Gothóni C.P.E. - J.C. - J.S. BACH Keyboard Concertos

Always full of surprises, CPE Bach sharply puts the brakes on in the first movement of his D major Concerto, halting the music’s helter-skelter sprint to accommodate a second subject in the shape of a minuet. As in the conventional way of things, he does it twice, so second time round in the recapitulation it is not quite so alarming. A third tug on the reins leads directly into a slow movement typical of CPE’s Empfindsamkeit (‘sensibility’), with lots of keyboard decoration embellishing the simple melody, and then we’re off again at full tilt for the finale. This music is an apt vehicle for Anastasia Injushina’s limpid pianistic facility and taste, but the touches of individuality in the writing and the work’s significance in the development of the keyboard concerto are outweighed by reams of stock, note-spinning gestures. For repeated listening? Probably not.

The two JC Bach concertos are neat products of their time (1770), elegantly shaped and, particularly in the E flat Concerto, Op 7 No 5, with a strength of idea that might not have shamed Haydn or Mozart. Injushina plays this one with grace and spirit, underpinned by spry orchestral support from Gothóni and the Hamburg Camerata. Bach père then has the last word with his E major Concerto, BWV1053, the unassailable masterpiece in a strangely uneven if historically interesting compendium of concertos by different generations of the Bach family. In all of them Injushina, on a modern Steinway, is discreetly expressive and rhythmically buoyant. (Gramophone 06/2013)

Bejun Mehta / Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin / René Jacobs CHE PURO CIEL The Rise Of Classical Opera

 Bejun Mehta possess a large operatic repertoire which comprises, among many others, most of the Händel protagonists for his Fach, including Orlando, Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, Andronico, Bertarido, Rinaldo and Guido, Farnace (Mozart Mitridate), Oberon (Britten A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and Masha (Peter Eötvös Three Sisters). In October 2008, Bejun Mehta added to his repertoire the role of Orfeo (Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice) under René Jacobs to cheering crowds at Theater an der Wien, where in the same season he also appeared in Claus Guth’s staging of Handel’s Messiah.

In concert, Bejun Mehta regularly appears with recital partner Julius Drake and performs with major orchestras and ensembles, including the Freiburger Baroque Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Les Talens Lyriques, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, under such conductors as René Jacobs, Ivor Bolton, Marc Minkowski, Sir Charles Mackerras, Harry Bicket, Christophe Rousset, and Zubin Mehta.

In the famous Preface to Alceste (1767), Christoph Willibald Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi posited a new direction for opera. They spoke of moving beyond Baroque forms, of striving for a new naturalism in opera. They wanted, in Calzabigi's lovely phrase, to liberate the language of the heart. Taken from the height of this Reform period, the arias on this disc reveal composers exploring and experimenting, at struggle and at play, as they create the new forms that bring to opera the noble simplicity of the Classical era.