“Something new every moment.” If we are to believe Shunske Sato, leader of Concerto Koln and soloist on this sparkling new release of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” what is at the heart of this recording is the idea of freedom. Freedom, too, in more ways than one. True to the principles of historical performance practice, the ensemble delivers the vitality of spontaneous playing in Vivaldi’s music. Founded in Cologne in 1985 and at home on the great international concert platforms of the world ever since, Concerto Koln has developed a quite unique sound of its own, which is known and admired around the world. A major music magazine once wrote that the ensemble played antique rock and roll- “rousing, raw, and jovial.” The “Four Seasons,” are joined here by two other Vivaldi works, showing other aspects of the composer and rounding out our picture of him: the sad and sorrowful Good Friday music “Al Santo sepolcro” and the Concerto RV 156, which may be the most beautiful concerto Vivaldi ever wrote. This audiophile recording was made in the Paterskirche in Kempen, celebrated for its acoustics. There were no cuts, no stopping and starting, just one take, no compressors or artificial resonance. This recording simply documents an end-to-end performance by musicians at the highest level of concentration. This music sounds so natural and immediate, it’s as if one were hearing it live at a concert.
With its new album 'Concertos 4 Violins', the specialist ensemble for early music, Concerto Koln, takes a look at the unique repertoire niche of concertos written for four solo violins. 'It must have been a challenge to bring together four solo violins, four virtuosos with four different personalities, four egos.' In this programme, devised by bassoonist Lorenzo Alpert, Concerto Koln gathers together the creme de la creme of baroque violin specialists. The orchestra already maintains a longstanding artistic partnership with each of them: Mayumi Hirasaki, who was concertmaster e.g. for Concerto Koln's most recent recording of Geminiani's works, Shunske Sato, who grew up in the USA and is extensively involved in the Netherlands Bach Society, Evgeny Sviridov from St. Petersburg and the Spaniard Jesús Merino Ruiz. They were all shaped differently by their various cultural backgrounds and pursued different educational paths. This makes the combination of the four all the more compelling. At the same time it demonstrates that any barriers in thought and in musical language can be overcome.
Played by specialized Early Music Groups, including L’Arte Dell’arco, Musica Amphion, Violini Capricciosi, Musica ad Rhenum, and many others.
The 17th and 18th centuries marked the era of Enlightenment, overseas exploration, unprecedented European economic expansion and a flourishing of art and culture, not to mention the birth of the greatest composers in history. From concertos to fantasias, suites to sonatas, Brilliant Classics presents a comprehensive and concise overview of this innovative and groundbreaking period in musical history, the Baroque era. The set opens with Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni and his famous Concerti a5, in which he was the first Italian composer to use the oboe as the solo instrument in a concerto. He influenced J.S. Bach, who is fittingly the next composer to feature. Bach pioneered the Concerto Grosso form, with several soloists plus accompaniment, as opposed to just one. There is no better example of this than the famous Brandenburg Concertos, where solos are shared between a group of instruments and the various timbres of the different instruments make for varied and interesting pieces. In the first concerto, Bach employs horns, then mainly used as open-air hunting instruments, a twist on the refined concert piece performed in an elegant chamber setting. Bach also admired the work of Alessandro Marcello. Although Marcello’s work is lesser known, his music is notable for its forward-looking nature. Far from copying the styles and structures of his contemporaries, Marcello’s music is unique in its emotional impact; it’s dark and tempestuous, inflicted with a romantic streak. Passing via selected works by Purcell, Corelli and Telemann, Alessandro Stradella’s string sinfonias are found towards the end of the set. Stradella lived only to the age of 38 and yet he wrote over 300 works. He also found time to conduct a string of love affairs leading to his untimely demise at the hands of an assassin hired by a rival.
The Concerto Koln goes on a journey of discovery and contrasts the famous Johann Sebastian Bach with the now unknown Johann Adolf Scheibe?. The ensemble is accompanied by the excellent soprano Marie Sophie Pollak. Together they present the two rivaling composers in a way, where instrumental and vocal composition by Bach and Scheibe alternate on the album?.
By popular demand, this Berlin Classics recording will be reissued on Vinyl. Handel's famous Suite"Watermusic" is one of the most well know and loved pieces of classical music from the baroque period. This historically informed interpretation stands out through ist clear articulation and historically accurate interpretation. This recording is a must-have for every classical music record collection.
When Capriccio started out in 1982, still producing LPs and tapes, it was the first digital Beethoven Symphony cycle with the Dresden Philharmonic and Herbert Kegel that first turned heads. Several other key projects were pivotal to the label quickly establishing a reputation as a source of quality music and performances. Foremost among them, never out of the catalogue and still loved today, are the recordings with Sandor Végh. Then, in the mid-nineties those of Sir Neville Marriner’s, who, after long being synonymous with the Philips label, recorded widely for Capriccio, both with his Academy Of St Martin in the Fields and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. Contemporaries of Mozart’s that have emerged on Capriccio include Joseph Martin Kraus, François-Joseph Gossec, and Jan Ladislav Dussek. They are performed by early music and classical period Capriccio-favorites such as Concerto Köln or the CPE Bach Chamber Orchestra. This box set features the label’s most important ensembles, orchestras, and conductors, from the classical period to the 20th century, when, in 2005, Capriccio released the first complete Shostakovich Cycle with the Gürzenich Orchestra and Dmitrji Kitajenko.
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro / Pisaroni, Jacobs, Concerto Koln [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques
Blu-Ray
$36.99Jan 19, 2018
Recorded at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in June 2004, this Le nozze di Figaro was unanimously acclaimed by public and critics alike as a Mozart opera landmark. Director Jean-Louis Martinoty brings an elegantly intelligent narrative sense to an interpretation in which the protagonists, against a backdrop of magnificent canvases of 18th-century inspiration, are dressed by Sylvie de Segonzac in a palette in which every shade is perfect. Hans Schavernoch’s set suggests an elitist society that is coming apart at the seams. René Jacobs’s conducting of Concerto Köln is meticulous and perfectly balanced, offering a ravishing use of tonal colour and orchestral dynamics. A veteran Almaviva, the excellent Pitero Spagnoli plays opposite Annette Dasch’s beauteous Countess. As Figaro and Susanna, Luca Pisaroni and Rosemary Joshua are a truly sparkling couple, while mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager embodies the most divinely troubling of Cherubino. The exceptional quality of this production, and the great success encountered by its first edition, inevitably led to the remastering in high-definition of this program, now and for the first time also available on Blu-ray.
To follow the Christmas Oratorio, the Bavarian Radio Choir under its artistic director Peter Dijkstra again present a major work by J.S. Bach, in a live recording on CD and DVD: the St. Matthew Passion. The choir's partner is the renowned period instrument group Concerto Köln, already heard together with the choir on several BR-KLASSIK CDs. Julian Prégardien sings the part of the Evangelist. The DVD edition of this live recording features highly atmospheric lighting effect
Bach: Magnificat; Handel: Dixit Dominus / Dijkstra, Concerto Koln
BR Klassik
CD
$19.99Jan 29, 2013
HANDEL Dixit Dominus. BACH Magnificat • Peter Dijkstra (cond); Christina Landshamer (sop); Diana Haller (mez); Maarten Engeltjes (ct); Maximilian Schmitt (ten); Konstantin Wolf (bs); Bayerischen Rundfunks Ch; Concerto Köln (period instruments) • BR 900504 (56:07 Text and Translation)
Handel composed his Dixit Dominus in 1707, the same year that Bach composed his first cantata, Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir (BWV 131). Both men were 22 years old and presumably intent on announcing to the world that they were ready to take it on—which both emphatically were. It’s interesting to compare the two works, both harbingers of things to come. Bach’s cantata is appropriately serious and introspective, given its somber text (“Out of the depths…”), whereas Handel’s Psalm, mirroring its text, is rife with fireworks, vocal and choral. Like many another emerging artist he obviously set out to toss everything he knew into the project. There’s nothing wrong with fireworks, as long as they are as skillfully executed as they are here. Peter Dijkstra fans the flame in this high-energy realization. The Gloria Patri, which ends the work, is done at break-neck speed and then some. To call it exhilarating is perhaps an understatement. Yet it’s sung with remarkable precision and gusto by the Bavarian Radio Choir. And it’s not all flash; the duet in the penultimate movement is especially touching, with Christina Landshamer’s soprano soaring ethereally over Diana Haller’s lovely mezzo.
Bach’s Magnificat, originally in E?, dates from 1723 but was later revised and transposed to D, probably some time between 1728 and 1731. Both Bach and Handel, in their early-40s, were at the height of their powers then. Bach was settling in at Leipzig. Handel, in London, was producing Italian operas for his English audiences: Ottone, Giulio Cesare, Rodelinda, Tolomeo. If anything, Bach’s Magnificat, with its high trumpets and kettle drums, is even more magnificent that Handel’s Dixit Dominus. Again maestro Dijkstra draws a vital performance from his talented forces. The choir, 33 strong by my count, is splendid throughout, as is their instrumental counterpart, Concerto Köln. The well-matched solo quintet, named above, is as near to flawless as one could reasonably expect: not a moment of weakness in either work. Overall, this is a deeply satisfying release. Competition for the Dixit Dominus is relatively sparse. Dijkstra’s would be hard to beat. There are many fine Magnificats out there. I’m currently carrying Richard Hickox’s version (Chandos) on my MP3 player. I may have to rethink that.
Although no stranger to repose the abiding impression left by this music is of flames licking at its heels. It looks back to late Mozart (40, 41) and forward to the wondrously gifted Méhul and beyond to Beethoven's Eroica and even Brahms and Berwald.
Rigel was born in Wertheim and studied in Germany with Jommelli and Richter. In 1767 he moved to Paris which he made his home. He was a well-loved figure in the French capital with symphonies, oratorios and concertos flowing in abundance. The French Revolution drew a number of politically suitable works from him. He was a leading teacher at the newly established Paris Conservatoire. The life story is nicely outlined by Benoît Dratwicki in the integral liner-note.
Rigel’s twenty-plus symphonies vied in Paris with those of Gossec and Leduc. The symphonies represented here range in duration from 10:03 to 15:33. The Fourth is full of enthralling detail. Rigel adopts the orchestral style familiar to us from early Beethoven and Mozart but there are many original touches. This is impetuous music - a child of the buffeting storm with gruff horns and a cauldron of classical conflict. The Seventh starts imperially emphatic. It is at times reminiscent of Beethoven's Seventh and the Great Ludwig’s bull-in-a-classical-china-shop manner. Even so this elbows-out approach is tempered by the kindly harpsichord continuo so noticeably absent from the Fourth. The Eighth is full of charming touches including seductive wind solos and surprisingly ear-tickling dynamic contrasts. Its central slow movement shows the mulch from which Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique grew. Number 14 has a startlingly inventive apple-pure pizzicato middle movement and a really Mozartean sense of peaceful repose. The gallant finale races along with chasseur horns. The Tenth Symphony combines dignity and exuberance which bridges the exhilaration of the Mozart K364 Sinfonia Concertante, the London Symphonies of Haydn and, in the finale, the Rossini overtures.
These outstanding performances are resonantly recorded, delightful in their range of physical impact and rippling with life. I hope there will be Rigel sequels.
Why Francesco Geminiani is not mentioned these days alongside other great masters of the era of Baroque music is a bit of a mystery. Together with Corelli and Handel he was one of the composers who made a great career for himself in eighteenth-century Great Britain. Concerto Koln has not forgotten him, on the contrary: the ensemble pays homage to him as one of the true greats. And now the musicians have chosen their favorite pieces from his entire oeuvre and called it Geminiani’s Quintessence. He was a composer, virtuoso violinist and itinerant artist, as well as being a dealer and collector of art, a musicographer and musicologist. Francesco Geminiani’s life, and in particular his travels, do not read like the typical story of a more or less sedentary Baroque composer. In comparison with Johann Sebastian Bach, who hardly went beyond a 200 km radius in his entire life, Geminiani was a globetrotter who journeyed to Rome and Paris and as far as Dublin. It would seem that this restlessness is reflected in his music. Things that are hard to imagine nowadays were common practice back then: works by other composers as well as composers’ own works were re-worked and arranged for other solo instruments or orchestra. In the case of Geminiani, however, the large number of arrangements of his own and other works led to a reputation of being unoriginal and lacking in imagination. As a result of his method of constantly composing and arranging, Geminiani’s entire output can be divided into four categories: his Concerti Grossi and arrangements of them, arrangements of his sonatas as Concerti Grossi, and arrangements of sonatas by other composers as Concerti Grossi. Concerto Koln has chosen works from all four categories for this project, with bassoonist Lorenzo Alpert taking a leading role in selecting those rare works “which we think are the loveliest and most accomplished of his compositions.”
Kraus: Amphitryon; Cantatas; Symphonies; Chamber Music
Capriccio
CD
$33.99May 17, 2019
Joseph Martin Kraus, also named as the "Swedish Mozart", has been many years a shadowy existence in music history. Gluck and even Joseph Haydn saw "a real genius" in his virtuosic and nearly early-romantic works. His position as composer at the Swedish court under Gustav III made it possible to have a fixed income and a blithe creativity. This new release gives us an overall musical impression of his compositions in all genres: Beginning with the incidental music to Amphitryon, the high virtuosic Italian Cantatas, his Symphonies from different life periods, till the early String Quartets- it is clear that Gluck and Haydn were not mistaken in their assessment of his skill and prowess.
In conjunction with the Martin Luther Decade and in preparation for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, cpo presents the two-part oratorio Luther in Worms by Ludwig Meinardus (1827-96) in a recording from the 22nd Knechtsteden Festival. After harsh judgments pronounced upon him by Schumann and Mendelssohn, Meinardus joined a pietistic, nationalist and Protestant-combined revival movement. Nevertheless, his principal work does not go over into empty bombast and heroic posing but holds in store many musical refinements, cast in an operatic design.
The Ensemble Concerto Köln embark on a journey into the Baroque era and present Violin Concertos by Corelli, Somis, Valentini, Mascitti, and Vivaldi. For the recording, they are accompanied by the excellent Russian violinist Evgeni Sviridov. Arcangelo Corelli, who lived and died in Rome, is considered a typical representative of classical Italian violin music and, as such, had a strong influence on all his younger contemporaries, whose works can be heard on this album.
Her life reads like the classic Baroque success story: brought up motherless in a Venetian orphanage, maturing into an "unparalleled violin virtuosa", treated as an equal by Antonio Vivaldi: Anna Maria dal Violin. Midori Seiler and Concerto Köln depict the life of this exceptional woman in La Venezia di Anna Maria. All her life long, Anna Maria (born 1696, died 1782) lived and worked in the Ospedal della Pietà. The Venetian orphanage for girls did more than just offer a home and a refuge to girls abandoned by their mothers. It was a school, a musical conservatory and a tourist attraction at the same time. As maestro di concerto of the Ospedale, Antonio Vivaldi took Anna Maria under his wing. Starting out as her mentor and teacher, he eventually wrote over two dozen Concerti per Anna Maria. She brilliantly mastered the violin and a host of other instruments, and was praised as the "veritable embodiment of all that is good and beautiful", as a creature "ascending into Paradise". Before long everyone was demanding to hear her and it is largely thanks to her that Vivaldi's instrumental concertos blossomed as they did. Baroque specialist Midori Seiler and her congenial partner Concerto Köln offer a virtuoso portrayal of this artistic teamwork between Anna Maria and Vivaldi.
A leading ensemble of period performance practice, Concerto Koln has been acknowledged for their rediscovery of musical rarities. Regardless, the ensemble still views the Baroque as being shaped by two driving forces- Bach and Handel. For this release, parts of three masterpieces have been coupled for the first time: Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto,” No. 5 and No. 1 of his Orchestral Suites along with Handel’s “Water Music.” Artistic Director Lorenzo Alpert explains the symbiotic nature of this release: “Our intensive engagement over the last 30 years with composers, music theorists and contemporaries from the time of Bach and Handel… opens up new vistas for us as we approach the works of these two great masters… What a joy to recreate a sound that seemed lost forever!”
Discover Bach includes some of this great Baroque composer’s best known works, such as Ave Maria, Air, Brandenburg Concerto, Cello Suites, Goldberg Variations, and many more.; The Discover Series from Berlin Classic aims to make classics popular, firing people up about the music presented, regardless of musical taste.; Rather than focusing on complete works, this series focuses on individual pieces that have rewritten our musical history.
Following the success of 100 Christmas Classics (Capriccio C7331) comes Christmas Meditation, featuring 100 choral and vocal works from across the centuries. The set encompasses sacred Renaissance treasures including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Bach/Gounod’s Ave Maria, Handel’s Baroque masterpiece Messiah (‘He shall feed his flock’) and classic Christmas carols such as It Came Upon A Midnight Clear by Richard Storrs Willis and Franz Xaver Gruber’s Stille Nacht (‘Silent Night’). Featuring some of the most renowned choral institutions, Christmas Meditation offers listeners a classical Christmas to remember.
REVIEWS:
A rather sumptuous collection of seasonal choral works, instrumental pieces and carols. --BBC Music Magazine
After the success of the 5 CD box “100 Christmas classics” (Capriccio C7331), the new 5 CD box “Christmas Meditation” contains 100 choral and instrumental works from past centuries. It contains works from 43(!) composers, including excerpts from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Bach/Gounod's Ave Maria, Handel's Baroque masterpiece Messiah, and traditional and classical carols such as "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" by American composer Richard Storrs Willis, and Franz Xaver Gruber's "Silent Night”. With some of the most renowned choirs, “Christmas Meditation” offers you an unforgettable Christmas.
In addition to world-famous Christmas music, in this box you will also discover previously unknown but no less beautiful work by Bruch, Rheinberger, Carl Neuner, Wagenseil, Robert Fuchs, Johann Philipp Reichert or Johann von Herbeck. Cannot be missed!
When Anton Diabelli, wishing to promote himself as a publisher, commissioned many of the best-known composers of his time to write a variation on a theme composed by himself in 1819 in order to publish a score with all of them, he couldn't possibly imagine that the greatest of them all, Ludwig van Beethoven, was going to write not one, but thirty-three variations, probably encouraged by his wish to keep his name apart from his minor colleagues or, who knows, by his eagerness to undertake an in-depth search of the possibilities of a theme that, initially, he scornfully mocked for it's 'Schusterfleck' ('cobbler's patch'). In the end, in his Diabelli Variations Beethoven turned the banal (that tiny waltzlet serving as the starting point) into transcendent. From hardly nothing he built a whole which overwhelms us with it's greatness. It's a work full of paradoxes, winks, double meanings, but it's also a contested work, not easily understandable, complex and experimental. Planned as a building with superimposed layers, seemingly heterogeneous and without an apparent connecting thread, it looks the perfect testing ground for a creative artist - like Uri Caine. In his hands you forget the quasi-monotonal character of the piece, and we remain drawn and surprised by it's continuous feinting.
There is hardly any other major work in the history of music where there are as many secrets about it's genesis as in Mozart's Requiem: from the ominous masked client to the repeated criticism of the completion of the fragment by Mozart's pupil Süßmayr (which has nevertheless established itself as a common version in concert life) to the speculation that the composer knew that he was writing his own requiem mass. The source situation is confusing, perhaps there were other "completers" besides Süßmayr working at the mass, which the widow Constanze wanted to publish as one of Mozart's alone. Some stylistic breaks in the common version that are untypical of Mozart reinforce the doubts. After a thorough study of sources and comparative stylistic analyses, Michael Ostrzyga now presents a carefully corrected version, which brings him closer to the "most probable compositional solutions for November/December 1791" that Mozart would probably have chosen. Chorwerk Ruhr presents a first reference recording.
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![Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro / Pisaroni, Jacobs, Concerto Koln [Blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3764224_6c697228-0692-473c-9fcf-83cf6cb5ea70.jpg?v=1786837193&width=400)
