I Giocatori's successful debut on Phaedra made the top ten of Flemish classical radio. On this album, I Giocatori presents themselves in more classical repertoire, with works by Mendelssohn and the Clara and Robert Schumann couple. They entitled this album "Songs Without Words for Piano Trio" to refer to the subtle poetry, warmth, tenderness and suggestive power that are so characteristic of Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte and which all works on this album share. This is music that makes you dream happy dreams and that floods your heart and soul with light and joy.
The purpose of this CD, with it's wonderful historic recordings, is to keep alive the memory of the golden voice of Belgian contralto Ria Bollen (b. 1942). The CD gathers a large selection of live recordings, made both at home and abroad, that takes into account both the quality and diversity of her recorded performances.
Renowned opera houses in Europe regularly cast bass-baritone Werner van Mechelen, including Opera Vlaanderen, La Monnaie, Opéra de Wallonie, La Fenice, and many more. He has sung under the baton of Jeffrey Tate, Antonio Pappano, Marc Minkowski, and Hartmut Haenchen. In lieder, his repertoire is inexhaustible; it includes all major composers of lied and all major cycles, as well as works by lesser-known composers both past and present. Among his accompanists are Jozef de Beenhouwer, Eric Schneider, Lucas Blondeel, Inge Spinette, and Peter Vanhove, who is featured on this new CD.
Charles Louis Hanssens was born into a family of Ghent musicians. His father was the director of the Ghent Opera and his uncle, a composer for many years. In 1828, Hanssens took an exam in composition, which was judged to Luigi Cherubini and Antonin Reicha. This led to his being appointed as a teacher of harmony and composition at the Brussels Royal School of Music. After the Belgian Revolution, Hanssens was suspected or "organgism" and left to work in Amsterdam and Paris. After the successful creation of the Requiem, he composed in 1837 to commemorate the victims of the Belgian Revolution, he was rehabilitated so that he was able to again settle in his native Ghent. Hanssens left an impressive body of work, including choral works, operas, cantatas, oratorios, masses, a Requiem, numerous works for chamber orchestra and much more.
Eclogue is the name of a pastoral poem that is part of bucolic poetry. The Ancient Greek word ekloge originally signified ‘choice,’ or ‘selection.’ Both meanings are appropriate for this release. It not only contains all of the chamber music written by August De Boeck for oboe and piano, but also a selection of unpretentious gems from 19th and 20th century Flemish and Belgian chamber music. Oboist Bram Nolf studied in Ghent, Rotterdam, and Paris. He is a professor at the Lemmensinstituut and the soloist of the National Orchestra of Belgium. Pianist Hans Ryckelynch studied with Johann Duijck in Ghent and with Abdel Rahman El Bacha in Paris. He is a professor at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Mons.
Wilke te Brummelstroete, Peter Gijsbertsen, Jozef de Beehouwer and the Antverpia String Ensemble join together, lead by Ivo Venkov to showcase the Flemish composer, Jef Van Hoof. Van Hoof was a prolific composer of choral music, symphonies, songs, piano music and operas. His works were incredibly important to the struggling Flemish culture of his time.
