Classical Music

Classical Music

The Enchanted Forest is very interesting late-Baroque material. It has a rather atmospheric opening followed by a series of movements, many of which have a dance-like feel, reminding us of the work’s ballet origins.

After taking London by storm, not only as a violinist with a dazzling technique, but also as a composer of immensely popular concerti grossi and violin sonatas, Francesco Geminiani began to see his fortunes wane. As one of Corelli’s students who adopted a style very much in line with his, Geminiani was assured a warm welcome and many open doors. Eventually, the public’s tastes began to change and so did Geminiani’s style. The public and composer’s changes didn’t necessarily follow the same directions; consequently, Geminiani’s later works were not as well received. Musical styles deemed modern in the 18th century can be re-evaluated 200-plus years later using different criteria. They no longer sound alarmingly different to our ears. In his op. 7 concerti grossi Geminiani clearly had begun to develop his own musical voice and show a departure from Corelli’s style. The roles played by the middle voices are expanded, and Geminiani espoused the use of brilliant ornamentation. The inclusion of winds (optional) in op. 7/6 is noteworthy, as is the rather unorthodox structure of several of the numbers. It’s been suggested that Geminiani may have had a program in mind when composing op. 7/6, as there are six sections with a variety of tempos, but efforts to confirm this have not been successful.

He did have a program in mind for his orchestral concert, The Enchanted Forest (an alternative spelling: The Inchanted Forrest); it is the closest he came to writing for the theater. The music was originally composed for a ballet pantomime performed in Paris at the Grand Theatre du Palais des Tuileries; however, it has come down to us as a Concerto for Orchestra after Tasso. (The story was derived from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberate, which also served as the basis for the Rinaldo, Armida, and Tancredi operas.) Compared to most of Geminiani’s other compositions, The Enchanted Forest is richly orchestrated: trumpet, two flutes, two horns, two bassoons, concertino (two violins, viola, cello), strings and basso continuo. The liner notes detail the plot; however, the music is not particularly descriptive so matching music to story is conjectural at best.

As a strictly musical entity, The Enchanted Forest is very interesting late-Baroque material. It has a rather atmospheric opening followed by a series of movements, many of which have a dance-like feel, reminding us of the work’s ballet origins. La Stagione Frankfurt, a period-instrument group under Michael Schneider, has sandwiched this concert (in two parts and a finale) between the concerto grosso op. 7/6 and op. 7/4. The orchestration of the two concerti grossi includes the optional woodwinds (bassoon in No. 6, two flutes and bassoon in No. 4), which unites the material—unlike a recording released several years ago by the CBC Vancouver Orchestra under John Eliot Gardiner that rather jarringly paired The Enchanted Forest with the Vivaldi Concerto in D for two violins, RV 513.

This is a very nice recording of Geminiani’s works. The La Stagione Frankurt’s playing is lively and clean; the recorded sound is clear, letting us hear the inner voices. As indicated in the headnote, the album is titled and marketed with the title in German.

David L. Kirk, FANFARE

Christine Schornsheim has enthralled an enthusiastic audience for many years with an almost inexhaustible variety of sounds by different period keyboard instruments with which she feels at ease and with sheer unending musical imagination. Her passion and her intuition for rare repertoire presents us also on this album two composers who mostly worked and lived in Denmark: The German composer Johann Abraham Peter Schulz, who worked for many years in Copenhagen and became almost famous with his Folk Songs, and his Danish born pupil Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse. These are virtuosic piano compositions in the style, tradition and continuation of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Since 1985 Christine Schornsheim has been active as a freelance harpsichordist. She has appeared under world-renowned conductors and has increasingly performed as a guest soloist at festivals all over the globe.

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Lajos Lencsés.

"Once upon a time there was a young woman who was more courageous than all the men in her mountain village".
Given the era, what sounds like a fictitious story really happened. Anna Stainer-Knittel's (b. 1841) life was novelized and serialized with filtered in motifs from Tyrolean legend in a Milan paper by Wilhelmine von Hillern, where the Italian composer Alfredo Catalani became aware of it.
It's first staging at La Scala in Milan, 1892 met with great approval.

Alfredo Catalani
LA WALLY

Stromminger – Marc Kugel
Wally – Susanna von der Burg
Giuseppe Hagenbach – Paulo Ferreira
Vincenzo Gellner – Bernd Valentin
Walter – Susanne Langbein
Afra – Kristina Cosumano
Il Pedone – Johannes Wimmer

Tiroler Landestheater Chorus
(chorus master: Michel Roberge)
Innsbruck Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Rumpf, conductor

Johannes Reitmeier, stage director
Thomas Dörfler, set designer
Michael D. Zimmermann, costume designer
Johann Kleinhein, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Tiroler Landestheater, Innsbruck, 2012

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Stereo 2.0 / Surround 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, German, English
Running time: 119 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

REVIEW:

After the already magnificent 5 CD release of the label Capriccio with religious choral music by Telemann (C7215), the label continues with the recording of impressive cantatas and oratorios by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach conducted by Hermann Max. For three decades, Hermann Max has made a very important contribution to historical performance practice.

Highlights in the box are the Magnificat and “Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu”. Although there is no conclusive evidence, it seems likely that in the summer of 1749 Bach composed his Magnificat as a calling card, with a view to succeeding his ill father as Thomaskantor in Leipzig. He went to the post after the death of Johann Sebastian in 1750, and again in 1755, but without success. Three decades later, as music director in Hamburg, Philipp Emanuel revised his Magnificat for a performance in 1779, adding trumpets and timpani, expanding horn parts and composing a new “Et misericordia”.

This recording follows the revised version but retains the poignant “Et misericordia” from the 1749 version. On one level, Emanuel's masterpiece pays homage to his father's Magnificat, in the euphoria of the radiant opening, the muscular arpeggio motif illustrating “Fecit potentiam”, and the almost literal quote on “Deposuit potentes”, for which he, like his father, composed a torrent of tumbling scales. In the gigantic, last movement, starting as an old-style fugue on “Sicut erat in principio”, but expanding into a majestic double fugue with a new counter subject to the word “Amen”, Emanuel unfolded, just like his father, his handsome, contrapuntal mastery.

– Stretto

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Georg Philipp Telemann wrote a series of Passions between 1716 and 1767. All of these works were written to be performed in German churches in the days leading up to Easter. He wrote over 40 passions for the churches of Hamburg, 22 of which have survived. One of the most popular is his 1746 St. Matthew’s Passion. Here, the work is performed by Hermann Max and the Rheinische Kantorei and Das Kleine Konzert. This release is part of the Capriccio Encore series, which is a series of re-releases of the most famous recordings from Capriccio’s back catalogue, fully re-mastered and competitively priced. The legendary recordings of artists such as Sandor Végh, Ton Koopman, Sir Neville Marriner and the Vienna Boys’ Choir also contain repertoire highlights that have a particularly special appeal, from the baroque to the present day.

Gregorian Chants for Advent and Christmas sung by the CantArte Regensburg directed by Hubert Velten.

Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) was applauded as a pioneering representative of New Music. Leading conductors such as Hans Pfitzner, Ernst von Schuch, Bruno Walter, Arthur Nikisch and Wilhelm Furtwängler performed his orchestral works in major cities. But following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, as a 'half-Jew', even Braunfels lost all of his positions and was banned from either performing or having his works performed; his name was systematically deleted from musical literature and reference works. Written in a classicromantic style, Braunfels' 7-movement phantasmagoria “Don Juan” incorporates variations on themes and motifs from Mozart's opera “Don Giovanni”, which was premièred in 1787. He thus deliberately placed himself in the German classical-romantic traditions, which he sought to transfer to his 20th-century resources in compositional style. The work was premièred in 1924, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. - Naxos

Classical Music