Jos van Immerseel PIANO WORKS OF THE YOUNG BEETHOVEN

PIANO WORKS OF THE YOUNG BEETHOVEN

Jos van Immerseel / Anima Eterna Brugge W.A. MOZART Complete Solo Clavier-Concerte

A reissue with the impact of a new release, that’s what we have in mind for this wonderful set of hailed recordings of Mozart’s Clavier-Concerte, recorded in 1990/91 on historical instruments and still sounding as fresh and beautiful as if we recorded them yesterday! 

Anima Eterna Brugge is under the permanent musical direction of Jos van Immerseel, who has led the orchestra through a carefully guided evolution from small chamber ensemble to full symphony orchestra. In 1985 he brought six string players together to study the works of Bach, and two years later the group was enlarged to a baroque ensemble of seventeen musicians. In 1989 the by now twenty-five musicians began to work on the Viennese classical repertoire. The success was expanding and in 1990 the Amsterdam Concertgebouw included Anima Eterna Brugge in its “World famous Baroque Orchestras” series. Mozart’s complete concertos for fortepiano formed the focal point of the next two years, with concert cycles in Kyoto and Tokyo, among other cities, and this set of 10 compact discs. These recordings received worldwide praise, of which it will suffice to quote the New York cd review: “No period orchestra has ever sounded better”.
CD 1 - CD 3
CD 4 - CD 6
CD 7 - CD 8
CD 9 - CD 10

Anima Eterna Brugge / Jos van Immerseel, BERLIOZ Symphonie Fantastique - Le Carnaval Romain

Without any prior information, the first thing listeners will notice about Jos van Immerseel's 2008 recording of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is the umistakable period instrumentation, with the sheen of the strings and the distinctive sound of early 19th century woodwinds and brass, obvious at the outset. The second thing discriminating listeners will notice is the great care Immerseel takes with connecting notes, not only in the straightforward handling of melodic phrases, but also in linking secondary figures in the accompaniment, so that this chord progression or that isolated pitch makes sense within the larger scheme of things. This is where the performance either rises or falls, depending on what one wants to get out of this work. To the extent that Berlioz created Symphonie fantastique to show off his innovative orchestration, this recording goes as far as any historically informed and scholarly version to make sure that everything is heard clearly, not merely as separate sounds, but as integral parts of the greater, kaleidoscopic whole. Where this rendition might be regarded as a failure is in its lack of visceral excitement, which seems to be the unintended result of producing an immaculate-sounding performance. Immerseel gets astonishing sonorities from the ensemble Anima Eterna Brugge, and the engineers of Zig Zag Territoires capture them to perfection, but no one remembered to make the music cook. If Symphonie fantastique is deprived of its passion, delirium, fury, violence, and horror, it is merely an exercise in futility. The point of this work and its bizarre program is to portray the extreme emotional life of its drug-addled protagonist. Yet because it is played here at somewhat slower tempos that feel plodding, and with a meticulous precision that seems overly fussy, it doesn't rush madly, it doesn't whirl feverishly, and it doesn't fly off its handle, but seems too self-conscious to really let things rip. The sole exception is the Dream of a Witches' Sabbath, which is almost as fiendish and hair-raising as one might wish, but comes much too late to save the performance. Conversely, Le Carnaval romain is the best selection on the album because it has a wonderful period sound and is played with the verve and energy missing in the Symphonie. At points, Immerseel seems to pull back slightly in his pacing, but these are minor adjustments for the sake of clarity that don't impede the vitality of the whole overture, least of all in the final stretch. So if clear performances of these classics are required, this CD will fill that need, but for wild and thrilling Romantic music, this recording of Symphonie fantastique is not a contender. (Blair Sanderson)

Anima Eterna Brugge / Jos van Immerseel DEBUSSY Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune - La Mer - Images

Debussy suddenly seems to be on the front line of the period-instrument movement's steady advance through music history. This disc from Jos van Immerseel and his Belgian orchestra arrives just a few months after Simon Rattle's London performances of La Mer and Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and John Eliot Gardiner's Proms account of Pelléas et Mélisande with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. For this recording, Anima Eterna Brugge's woodwind, brass, percussion and harps were French-made instruments of Debussy's time; they're generally more abrasive and pungent than their modern counterparts, and they combine with the gut strings to produce a more open sound than we are used to today.

Van Immerseel's approach can seem a bit too deliberate; there's something ponderous about Prélude à l'Après-Midi, while in La Mer he seems determined to emphasise the work's symphonic credentials. In fact, it's the orchestral Images that gains most from the brighter, rawer colours of this performance, with the myriad subtleties of Debussy's scoring more beguiling than ever. Where most conductors make the three-part Ibéria their centrepiece, with Gigues before it and Rondes de Printemps as the finale, Van Immerseel begins with Rondes and places Ibéria last, following the order adopted by Debussy's friend and assistant André Caplet for performances he conducted after the composer's death. There's logic to that ordering, for Ibéria is significantly longer than the other two movements put together, and makes a substantial finale to the whole sequence; Van Immerseel resists the temptation to turn it into a real orchestral showpiece, but there's enough flair and imagination to make his performance compelling. (Andrew Clements / The Guardian)

Chouchane Siranossian / Jos Van Immerseel L'ANGE & LE DIABLE

Jos Van Immerseel returns to chamber music and the accompaniment of young talents, two absolute priorities for him. In Chouchane Siranossian he has found a worthy partner, as gifted on the modern violin as she is on the Baroque instrument, a pupil of Tibor Varga, then of Zakhar Bron, as well as a disciple of Reinhard Goebel, whose first recording, on the Oehms label, attracted great attention (winning a ‘Diapason Découverte’). Here it is the Baroque violinist who engages in dialogue with the harpsichord of Jos Van Immerseel in a Franco-Italian program juxtaposing the music of the ‘Angel’ Leclair and the ‘Devil’ Locatelli, not forgetting Tartini’s famous ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata . . . Indeed, all this music is ‘devilishly’ difficult to play, but the Franco-Armenian violinist shows perfect mastery of it, combined with great inventiveness.

Claire Chevallier / Jos van Immerseel DVORÁK - GRIEG - BRAHMS Music for Piano Four Hands

Jos van Immerseel and Claire Chevallier have enjoyed a close collaboration for many years now. Like Jos van Immerseel, Claire Chevallier loves period pianos; like him, she is a researcher and possesses her own collection of keyboard instruments. After its recordings of works by Saint-Saëns for two pianos and works by Rachmaninoff for four hands, the duo devotes a programme to the dance with the famous Hungarian Dances of Johannes Brahms and the no less celebrated Slavonic Dances of Antonín Dvořák. The much more rarely played Norwegian Dances of Edvard Grieg complete this trip around Europe.

A recording made on an authentic Carl Bechstein piano built in Berlin in 1870, from the personal collection of Jos van Immerseel.

Anima Eterna / Jos van Immerseel LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphonies - Ouvertures

It's possible nowadays to get a cycle of the Beethoven symphonies to suit every musical taste - from the traditional big-band performances on the modern instruments of leading symphony orchestras, to the strictest of historically informed accounts from specialist period bands. Jos van Immerseel's accounts are close to the historically purist extreme of that spectrum; his Belgian orchestra Anima Eterna is modestly sized. There's much to admire in the performances too. His tempi are generally well judged, the playing is full of character and instinctive expressiveness, even if the pitch inflections in some of the woodwind solos are an acquired taste, and textures are unfailingly transparent. Yet there's something a bit too careful about it all, with a lack of sheer emotional clout in, for instance, the first movement of the Eroica, the finale of the Seventh Symphony, and through much of the Ninth. This is hardly Beethoven as a composer breaking free of the bounds of classicism, but much more someone with their feet still very much anchored in the 18th century. (Andrew Clements / The Guardian)