Ars Antiqua Austria / Gunar Letzbor JOHANN JOSEPH FUX Gesú Cristo negato da Pietro

 

GESÚ CRISTO NEGATO DA PIETRO

 

Dorothee Mields / Stefan Temmingh TELEMANN

 

TELEMANN

 

FestspielOrchester Göttingen / Laurence Cummings HÄNDEL Saul

SAUL

Margret Köll / Il Furibondo THE HARP IN THE VIENNA OF MARIA THERESA

THE HARP IN THE VIENNA OF MARIA THERESA

Orfeo Orchestra / György Vashegyi JOSEPH HAYDN Symphonies Nos. 6 - 7- 8

SYMPHONIES Nos. 6 - 7 - 8

Les Traversées Baroque / Étienne Meyer BONAVENTURA ALIOTTI Il Trionfo della Morte

IL TRIONFO DELLA MORTE

Mónica Pustilnik ALESSANDRO PICCININI Lute Music

Alessandro Piccinini, a contemporary of Monteverdi and Frescobaldi, hailed from a Bolognese family of lutenists that made its mark on Italian musical life for over one and a half centuries. At the court of Ferrara, Alessandro became familiar with the development of a new kind of lute that would later be designated as the archiliuto. This instrument is notable for its second extended neck to accommodate drone strings and was enthusiastically taken up by contemporaries such as Carlo Gesualdo.

After a longer sojourn in Rome, Alessandro Piccinini returned in 1611 to Bologna, where he published his lute works in 1623 after a lengthy preparation. The preface to this (first) volume contains a fundamental introduction to playing the lute and chitarrone; then as now, it was a decisive source for lute technique. After Piccinini' death, his son Leonardo Maria published a second volume with lute pieces by his father in 1639. Stylistically, Piccinini's lute works are influenced by the emergent Italian instrumental music, but French and Spanish influences can also be clearly heard.

On the present recording, Mónica Pustilnik introduces a selection from both of Piccinini's lute books. The lutenist, from Buenos Aires, is much in demand as a soloist and chamber musician; alongside these activities, she can also be regularly heard in outstanding ensembles for historical performance practice such as Le Concert d’Astrée, Les Musiciens du Louvre and Les Talens Lyriques.

Julia Böhme / La Folia Barockorchester / Robin Peter Müller SECONDA DONNA

In all other respects, the primadonnas, the title figures and central heroines, stand at the centre of the spotlight. Handel and Vivaldi also had a special affection for the ‘women in the shadows’ – for the queens, the servants or the spurned lovers, mostly sung in female alto voice. They were given breathtakingly beautiful arias: full of lament, sensuality, vengefulness or fury.

In recent years, the German contralto Julia Böhme has developed into one of the most in-demand performers of 17th- and 18th-century music. Her vocal elegance and expressiveness, historically sourced style and unique timbre are just as characteristic of her as a performer as her dramatic intensity and versatility. Concerts and opera productions have taken her to the Dresden Music Festival, the Vienna Musikverein, Prague, Leipzig, Halle, Amsterdam, Brussels, Bruges, Versailles, the Laieszhalle Hamburg and the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

Xenia Löffler / Anna Prohaska / Collegium 1704 / Václav Luks JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Oboe Concertos & Cantatas

After the very successful album with the B minor Mass according to the Rheinische Post, the most beautiful recording of this work currently in existence Vaclav Luks and his Collegium 1704 ensemble return to Johann Sebastian Bach. Joined by Xenia Loffler, the solo oboist of AKAMUS Berlin, and the renowned soprano Anna Prohaska, Luks presents a deluxe setup for a programme of concertos and cantatas in which the oboe plays a prominent role. As a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician, Xenia Loffler has gained an outstanding reputation as a baroque oboist over the past several years. Working with ensembles such as the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, where she has been active as a member and soloist since 2001, she has toured throughout the world and has performed at some of the most important music festivals and concert halls.

Collegium 1704 / Collegium Vocale 1704 / Václav Luks JAN DISMAS ZELENKA Responsoria pro hebdomada sancta - Lamentatio Ieremiae Prophetae

The music here was written for performance during Holy Week at the splendid Catholic court of Dresden in 1722. The example of Dresden stirred Johann Sebastian Bach to some of his most Italianate flights of opera-like music, and the composer of the Holy Week responsories heard here, the Bohemian-born Jan Dismas Zelenka (whom Bach himself admired), had an experimental, progressive spirit in much of his music. All the more of a surprise, then, to find that these pieces are written in an almost antique style. Each of the three Matins services is divided into three Nocturns, each of which is provided with three pairs of readings or lessons (given in chant) and three responsories, polyphonically set for a small choir (the two-singers-to-a-part forces heard here were apparently typical), with orchestral strings mostly doubling the vocal lines. The first of these is replaced here by one of Zelenka's settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, ZWV 53, a magnificent solo cantata for bass. After that, the entire two CDs' worth of music consists of the alternation between chant and chorus. The interest of the music, low-key indeed compared with something like the St. Matthew Passion but still displaying considerable skill and emotion, lies in the variety Zelenka achieves within this rather strict framework. The choral sections consist of similar elements: homophonic declamation, slow free polyphony, fugal passages, perhaps a short passage for solo voices. But each one has its own structure and flavor, evolving along with the story they tell. The Czech historical-performance groups Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704 under Václav Luks do very well here, with a warmly blended yet precise sound from the singers that fits the music very well. This is not the place to start with Zelenka's choral music; one place might be the odd I Penitenti al Sepolchro del Redentore, ZWV 63. But it's a beautiful performance that will impress the composer's growing legion of fans. (James Manheim)

Marie Friederike Schöder / Batzdorfer Hofkapelle G.F. HÄNDEL Neun Deutsche Arien

Whether on the opera stage or in concert: the lyric-coloratura soprano and Bach Prize winner Marie Friederike Schöder inspires both the press and audiences with her clear, colorful voice and her commanding presence and dramatic enthusiasm. The versatile singer masters with bravura not only baroque, classic and romantic concert and operatic repertoire but also that of the present day breathtakingly and passionately. Presto Classical recently described her as “a shooting star of the baroque scene” whose voice “reaches the stratosphere with ease”.

Marie Friedrike Schöder comes from a musical family and both mother and father are opera singers. The parents Juliane Claus and Olaf Schöder, who are both singing teachers as well, provided for the training of the soprano who was, after her studies in Halle, from 2009 until 2013 a member of the ensemble of the Oper Halle. Since then she has been active as a soloist in such houses as the Semperoper Dresden and on concert stages like the renowned Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Her repertoire includes important roles like: Blondchen in The Abduction from the Serglio, Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, Adele in Die Fledermaus, the title role in Martha, Angelica in Orlando, and Zerlina in Don Giovanni. Outside of opera the singer possesses a great love of church music. In 2008 she was the first soprano in the history of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig to win the first prize.

“The young coloratura soprano Marie Friederike Schöder, a shooting star in the baroque scene, whose voice convinces listeners with its extraordinary fluency and lightness in the stratosphere.” (Presto Classical)

Collegium Vocale 1704 / Collegium 1704 / Václav Luks JAN DISMAS ZELENKA Missa Divi Xaverii ZWV 12 - Litaniae de Sancto Xaverio ZWV 156

Václav Luks’s reconstruction of Zelenka’s Missa Divi Xaverii, edited painstakingly from the damaged autograph manuscript, has just been published by Bärenreiter. The Mass was performed at the court chapel in Dresden on December 3, 1729, on the feast day of St Francis Xavier, a 16th-century Jesuit missionary to India and Japan. It dates from exactly the time when Zelenka had futile hopes to succeed the recently deceased Heinichen as kapellmeister. He might have also had one eye on the fact that the feast of St Francis Xavier coincided with the nameday of the crown prince’s devout wife Maria Josepha, who particularly venerated the saint.

Collegium 1704’s blithe performance conveys a radiant mood in the opening strains of ‘Kyrie eleison’; the solo quartet’s plea for mercy carries through to a shapely choral response adorned by four relaxed trumpets. Hana Blažíková’s limpid singing produces a gorgeous dialogue with a violin and oboe d’amore in ‘Benedictus’, and her duet with Kamila Mazalová in ‘Domine Deus’ is a charming pastoral featuring two bubbling flutes. Lucile Richardot’s rapt ‘Agnus Dei’ is accompanied gently by delicate solo flute and pulsing strings. ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’ is a fluid quartet that seems closer to Mozart than to Bach, not least on account of its introductory ritornello juggling a trio of flutes and violas on the one hand, and another trio of oboes and bassoon on the other, while trumpets make surprisingly subtle interjections.

From the heartfelt piety of ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’ to the thrilling rising sequences at the climax of the Sanctus (‘Hosanna in excelsis’), the choral singing is immaculate. The marginally more compact Litaniae de Sancto Xaverio, also written for the 1729 festivities, has an unusually theatrical impact – especially when a pair of horns let rip in the flamboyant quartet ‘Tuba resonans’, and when the verses refer to the saint giving aid to the shipwrecked and expelling demons in the fantastic chorus ‘Auxiliator naufragantium’. (David Vickers / Gramophone)

Xenia Löffler / Batzdorfer Hofkapelle GRAUN Oboe Concertos

Johann Gottlieb Graun became a member of the small court orchestra of the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick in Ruppin in 1732, which Carl Heinrich also joined in 1735. With Friedrich's ascension to the throne in 1740, Johann Gottlieb was appointed concertmaster and Carl Heinrich kapellmeister of the royal court. Johann Gottlieb remained until the end of his life closely linked to Frederick the Great, as concertmaster and chamber musician. Whilst his brother Carl Heinrich became an important figure at the new Berlin Court Opera, Johann Gottlieb strongly influenced the musical life of Berlin and early classicism in general as a violinist and composer. One can no longer determine with any certainty which of the brothers wrote the oboe concertos recorded here the existing sources are too unclear and the differences in their personal styles are too slight. What is certain, however, is that the name "Graun" was a kind of seal of approval in those days for zestful music rich in ideas an estimation still valid today, as is readily apparent when listening to these concertos. The oboist Xenia Löffler has distinguished herself as a specialist for the North German repertoire of this period, as in her recordings with oboe concertos from the Dresden Court and with works from the Dresden Pisendel Collection (ACC 24202 and 24222). Alongside her teaching activities at the Academy of the Arts in Bremen, she is a member of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and in great international demand as a soloist.