Chouchane Siranossian is a rising star of the baroque and classical violin, Jakob Lehmann a virtuoso violinist and orchestral director who frequently conducts Anima Eterna. Together, they embody what the Bruges orchestra and its founder, Jos van Immerseel, have decided to call the ‘Next Generation Anima Eterna’… Today they are presenting Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in its original version. "We wanted to take a look into Mendelssohn’s workshop. He struggled with his self-diagnosed ‘revision disease’ and always strove to work hard on himself and his creations" says Jakob Lehmann. Chouchane Siranossian continues, "It was a fascinating experience for me to discover historical research and its implementation on period instruments in collaboration with Anima Eterna Brugge. In my interpretation, I used exclusively the fingerings, bowings and other performance markings of Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim, both of whom rehearsed the work with the composer." This recording is rounded off with the Octet, also in its original version, which is longer and has many alterations in instrumentation, harmony and articulation.

Happy birthday, Mister Jos! Jos van Immerseel is celebrating his 70th birthday with three important releases that will punctuate the end of the year at Alpha: a symphonic programme (Janácek, Dvorák), a chamber music programme (Schubert) and a set grouping the rereleases of his recordings of French music. These anthologies once again demonstrate everything the pianofortist brings to the interpretation of the symphonic and chamber repertoires.

4 CD’s, 17 musicians, 32 master pieces: these are the main ingredients of Schubertiade - a compilation of vocal and instrumental chamber music by Schubert, hand-picked and assembled by Jos van Immerseel to form the soundtrack to 4 imaginary Schubertian salons.
An ode to the master of Ständchen and Forellenquintett, this recording is also a celebration of Anima Eterna Brugge’s maestro, who, over the past 25 years, has led the orchestra to many happy encounters with his favorite composer.

Jos Van Immerseel celebrates his 70th birthday with three important releases punctuating the year's end at Alpha: a symphonic program (Janacek, Dvorak), a chamber music program (Schubert) and a set grouping re releases of his French music recordings. With his musicians and companions from Anima Eterna, he has created a veritable musical troupe, in turn students, orchestral players, soloists... Together, they seek the sound and style corresponding to their ideal, waiting months if necessary for the appropriate instrument to be ready before programming it. Happy Birthday, Mister Jos!

Although Beethoven's C Minor Symphony is probably the best-known piece of classical music ever written, it is veiled in myths and misunderstandings that are beginning to clear up thanks to research and performance efforts of musicians such as Jos van Immerseel.

During a scant ten weeks in the summer of 1788, Mozart wrote three outstanding symphonies, highly innovative in their complexity and length. He was thirty-two and living in Vienna, a city which had offered him numerous opportunities in the past. Musically, it had provided a platform combining excellent musicians and enthusiastic audiences. In more personal terms, it was the place where he had freed himself from the emotional pressure exerted by his father Leopold and his former employer, the Archbishop of Salzburg. However, Viennese audiences were no longer interested in his masterful modernist compositions. When Mozart composed these, his last three symphonies, he was thought of as a ‘dissonance hunter.’ In this symphonic ‘trilogy,’ Mozart illuminates all aspects of human expression, quite independently of his personal situation. Each work presents a different character. No. 39 in E flat major contains numerous elements reminiscent of chamber music, while no. 40 in G minor makes clear references to opera. No. 41 in C major includes formal elements from Baroque music (overture, concerto, fugue). Its synthesis of sonata form and fugue was, and still is, a tour de force that could only have been written by Mozart.

-----

REVIEW:

These are exciting, distinctive readings that don't make the music into something that it is not. Tempos, while decidedly brisk, do not seem rushed, even in the slow movements. The sense of excitement thus produced feels real, not artificially forced upon the music. The readings are full of ideas that seem inevitable.

– Fanfare

This economically priced box set of six CDs brings together all the previous releases of Mozart works performed by Jos van Immerseel. This impressive body of work perfectly encapsulates van Immerseel’s intimate relationship with Mozart’s music and shows his interpretations to be as inspired as they historically informed.

For their first collaboration on harmonia mundi, Pablo Heras-Casado and Anima Eterna explore the world of Bruckner. The first instalment in this series is his tremendous Symphony No.4. An apotheosis of architectural rigour and poetry, this cathedral in sound, thanks to the unique sonorities of the period instruments played by the Bruges orchestra, regains it's lightness and elegance in dazzling orchestral colors!

After a boxed set devoted to nineteenth-century French music (Alpha, 2015) and another containing Beethoven’s symphonies and overtures (Alpha, 2018), Jos Van Immerseel and his period-instrument ensemble Anima Eterna present an anthology of seven albums including recordings of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers of many nationalities. Whether it is Liszt with his symphonic poems, Orff with his Carmina Burana or Gershwin with his Rhapsody in Blue, all of them seem to be driven by a deep-seated urge to push back the formal limits of orchestral music by confronting it with other traditions and musical horizons, thus giving it a universal resonance.