Resound brings Beethoven’s symphonies and concertos back into the concert halls in which they were performed during the composer’s lifetime. Four of the six venues for the premieres of the nine symphonies still survive, as do the eight Viennese halls and theatres in which Beethoven’s orchestral works were played during his lifetime. The Orchester Wiener Akademie and its conductor Martin Haselböck continue the Resound Beethoven series, performed on period instruments and scrupulously respecting the orchestral layout of 200 years ago. Volume 7 is devoted to the Fourth Symphony, and the Piano Concerto No.4 in G major op.58, first performed in 1807. The recording took place in the Palais Lobkowitz in Vienna, in the venue of their premiere in March 1807. The concerto is performed by the Austrian pianist Gottlieb Wallisch, who was also heard on the previous volume.

Last disc of the complete works for piano and piano and chamber music, this recording comes as the peak of a series which confirmed Eric Lesage as THE specialist of the Schumann repertoire. The harvest of outstanding reviews, for his recordings as much as for his very numerous concerts (several world tours), promises a brilliant future for this latest reference. This ultimate recording of the complete works for and with the piano by Schumann, the pure Saxon of the East, ends by the alpha and omega of his pianistic creation, such as glimpsed and heard in the West, in Rhineland. It thus opens on the Rhine, in Mannheim, with the charming Variations on the name 'Abegg" of 1830 and closes in Düsseldorf with the mysterious variations, called Geistervariationen, composed and copied out in February 1854, just before and right after his attempted suicide in the Rhine, leading to his permanent internment in Endenich (Bonn), facing the sacred river of the Germans...

With this recording of chamber music composed by Beethoven at three key moments in his life, Alpha begins a collaboration with the WDR of Cologne and its various ensembles. Here a group of chamber musicians from the symphony orchestra presents the string quintets op.29 (1801) and op.104 (1817), thus linking Beethoven’s exuberant early period with that of the worry, discouragement and anguish caused by the conflict over custody of his nephew Karl. The album comes to a majestic conclusion with the Fugue, op.137 (1817).

Freddy Eichelberger writes of this release: “The idea for this recording came to us after reading Anne Cuneo’s novel Le Trajet d’une riviere, in which the charming, valiant, chivalrous and Catholic Francis Tregian travels the length and breadth of Europe sword in hand, regarded as a spy by some, a messenger by others. He meets the greatest musicians of his time and copies out their music. Taking the three ‘compilations’ by Tregian that have come down to us, one of which is the famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, we find ourselves faced with hundreds of vocal and instrumental pieces, fantasies, madrigals and other pieces. In attempting to revive in part the musical world of Sir Francis Tregian, our aim was to explore the elements of dream and travel through time and space. The five Witches were joined by five guest Witches: two voices for the music of words, two viols enabling us to form a homogeneous consort, and the bandora which enabled us to achieve one of our aims- to recreate a genuine English broken consort.”

The Italian pianist Filippo Gorini took advantage of the world health crisis to immerse himself in The Art of Fugue, Johann Sebastian Bach’s unfinished mystical masterpiece: ‘The view that it should be seen solely as a theoretical marvel is misguided: as the counterpoints and canons evolve in formal complexity, so does their emotional tension, until the heartbreaking mystery of the unfinished Fuga XIV’, says the young pianist, winner of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust prize in 2020, whose first two albums for Alpha have been very well received (Diapason d’Or, 5 Stars in BBC Music Magazine etc.). In parallel with the release of the disc, Filippo Gorini will launch a website (www.TheArtOfFugueExplored.com), with a documentary series featuring conversations with personalities, films about Bach’s work and more. The young pianist has even gone so far as to write poems and haikus about the work: ‘We pray in trepidation, / When the blessed night is here...’

Accompanied by his ensemble Le Banquet Céleste, the countertenor Damien Guillon places his voice at the service of a programme of vocal pieces by the German Baroque composer Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, a large part of whose output was destroyed in a fire at Rudolstadt Castle in 1735. Among the works that have come down to us are the two collections Harmonische Freude musikalischer Freunde, containing respectively fifty and twenty-five arias for one to four solo voices, instrumental ensemble and basso continuo. Most of the German texts of these pieces depict humankind at the mercy of an unpredictable and volatile destiny. Alongside natural phenomena such as storms, dark clouds and withered leaves, the poet also chooses the expression ‘bloody comets’ as a metaphor for torment and ‘the distress of the heart’. In fact, the biggest comet of the seventeenth century appeared in Europe in 1680: contemporaries feared these celestial bodies, seeing them as bad omens.

Shortlisted for the Gramophone Awards!

This programme marks the eagerly awaited return of Véronique Gens to Baroque music and Lully, in which she made a name for herself at the start of her career. It presents airs from Atys, Persée, Alceste, Proserpine, Le Triomphe de l’Amour and other works by Louis XIV’s famous composer, but also several by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Médée), Henry Desmarets and Pascal Collasse. Whether well known, rare or in some cases even unpublished, all of them present roles for powerful women whose love is unrequited: dark passions, bitter laments, jealousy, vengeance, the type of dramatic characters that Véronique Gens embodies with all the charisma that has made her reputation. This recording is also the result of an encounter with the youthful ensemble Les Surprises, founded and directed by Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas. Together they conceived this programme, which mingles airs, dances and choruses, in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.

REVIEW:

The voice remains in remarkable condition, as strongly radiant, firm and secure as ever with powerful chest notes. And of course the characteristics that have made her so prized in this repertoire, the perfect shaping of line and outstanding diction, remain, still more finely honed.

– Opera