Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Born in Venice around 1670, Caldara gave Barcelona the first opera ever heard in Catalonia, Il pi� bel nome (1708), commissioned by his patron, the future Emperor Charles VI, before eventually settling in Vienna in the latter's service in 1716. A prolific composer with three thousand works to his credit, Caldara died in the Austrian capital in 1736 - in the K�rtnerstrasse, like Vivaldi five years later, and in a similar state of destitution. The genre, born in the wake of the Counter-Reformation and illustrated notably by the Roman composers Carissimi and Landi, was initially sung in Latin and performed in pious confraternities. But La Maddalena is an oratorio volgare, that is, sung in Italian. The protagonists of La Maddalena, six in number, are split between Earth and Heaven. They are Martha, Mary Magdalene and a Pharisee on the one hand; Jesus, Earthly Love and Divine Love on the other. They divide among them thirty-three arias and ensembles, in a sequence alternating recitative and aria.

After releasing two recordings - the first devoted to Chopin and the second to Ravel and Scriabin - and winning First Prize at the G�za Anda Competition in 2015, which gave his career a powerful momentum, the young American pianist Andrew Tyson has conceived a new tailor-made programme of music by Domenico Scarlatti, Schubert, Mompou and Alb�niz. His programme focuses on landscapes, starting out from Federico Mompou's piece of that name (Paisajes) and taking us on a journey elsewhere in Spain (sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, Book of Iberia by Isaac Alb�niz), the Austrian countryside (where Franz Schubert composed the Sonata in A Major D664).

The young German baritone Konstantin Krimmel won the prestigious Preis des Deutschen Musikwettbewerbs in 2019, in addition to the Helmut Deutsch Prize. He joins Alpha for a number of recordings, starting with this programme of lieder conceived with his longstanding partner, the pianist Doriana Tchakarova. This lover of words, a particularly expressive performer in concert, wanted to 'tell a story' for his first album: he chose to record a selection of ballads, because 'they are genuine operas in just a few minutes... mini-sagas that permit great interpretative freedom'. Among the great poets present here are Schiller, Goethe and Heinrich Heine. As to the composers, alongside the indispensable Schubert and Schumann, this programme presents a great master of the genre, Carl Loewe, who wrote several hundred ballads: the works recorded here, inspired by Scots poems or Danish legends, are especially eloquent. There is also a chance to discover the much more rarely recorded Adolf Jensen, a great admirer of Wagner, whom he met in 1861: 'To translate Wagner's ideas of Beauty and Truth to smaller forms has been my aim in all my later compositions.'

Classical Music

Classical Music

In Holland in the 1720s the transverse flute enjoyed considerable popularity among amateur musicians. Aware of that keen interest, the publisher Michel Le Cene decided in 1729 to present his customers with the very first collection of concertos for flute and orchestra. Vivaldi responded to his request by refurbishing several older works. Only one of them was already in the modern concerto form: the Concerto in F major for recorder and strings. Another four pieces were hybrid in form and still close to chamber works. The predominant role of the recorder or flute in those four concertos made them ideal for adaptation. The odd man out of the collection is the short Concerto in G major RV 435. No earlier version is known and it's style, more modern than it's five companions in the set, leads us to suppose that Vivaldi wrote it specifically for Le Cene's publication. The decade following the publication of op. 10 saw the appearance of a fair number of new flute concertos. Among them, the Concerto in A minor RV 440 is a splendid example of Vivaldi's maturity. Studying the manuscript of this concerto reveals different stages in it's composition, as well as shedding light on it's destination. In the case of RV 438 and RV 400, Vivaldi simplified many passages, probably making such sacrifices for a flautist of very limited virtuosity. Since these revisions had no musical justification, we chose to restore the original text.

After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories - recordings that are an integral part of Alpha's identity and history. This series' reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features Georg Philipp Telemann's Overture and Concerti pour Darmstadt, performed by Alexis Kossenko, Zefira Valova, and Les Ambassadeurs.

Classical Music

The Faust Symphony undoubtedly constitutes one of the principal works of Liszt’s Weimar period, if not indeed his orchestral masterpiece. Liszt had become acquainted with Goethe’s poem Faust in 1830, in the French translation of Gérard de Nerval. He began composing the work in the 1840s, after a visit to the Goethe House in Weimar. Its first performance was arranged for September 1857, to mark the centenary of Grand Duke Carl August and the erection of a statue to Goethe and Schiller. On this occasion Liszt rounded the work off by adding a tenor solo and chorus at the end. The premiere took place on 5 September. This musical transposition of the poem is performed here by Orchester Wiener Akademie under Martin Haselböck, and follows their recording of Liszt’s transcriptions of works by Schubert, released in 2015 (Alpha 471). In parallel with this, the Viennese period-instrument orchestra is also continuing its Resound Beethoven project, the recording of the complete symphonies at the venues of their first performances.

After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories - recordings that are an integral part of Alpha's identity and history. This series' reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Vespers for Saint Louis, performed by Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles and Olivier Schneebeli.

After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories - recordings that are an integral part of Alpha's identity and history. This series' reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features Nicola Matteis's Fanse Consonances of Melancholy performed by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti.

Classical Music