Classical Music

Classical Music

“Him alone did they call the Father of all musicians, to whom the Germans were indebted for enabling them now to bring music to a standard equal to that of the Italians, if not even higher”. So wrote Johann Mattheson in 1740 in praise of Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), the most revered German musician of his generation. On this release the ensemble inAlto presents works by Schütz himself, but also by some of his students, which show why Schütz was such a good teacher, who handed on his talent to the following generation. Some of these puils include David Pohle, Johann Theile, Matthias Weckmann, Christoph Bernhard, Johann Vierdanck, Vincenzo Albrici, and others. Schutz no doubt left an indelible mark upon the German composition tradition.

The musical styles of Europe always arrive a bit later in Spain, but with the advantage that they are transformed to full maturity. This album shows a unique version of how a symphony by Haydn was transformed for a performance in the Cahedral of Sevilla. But the real interests here are the until now unrecorded masterpieces by Antonio Ripa and Joseph Barrera. As always, Enrico Onofri ensures a top performance with the great baroque Orchestra of Sevilla. Enrico Onofri was born in Ravenna, Italy. His career began with an invitation from Jordi Savall to be the concertmaster of La Capella Real. Very soon he found himself working with groups such as Concentus Musicus Wien, Ensemble Mosaiques and Concerto Italiano. From 1987 to 2010 he was the concertmaster and soloist of Il Giardino Armonico. He founded the chamber group Imaginarium Ensemble to perform the Italian baroque repertoire. Enrico Onofri has been the professor of baroque violin and interpretation of baroque music at the Conservatorio Bellini in Palermo since 2000.

If, as a composer, you were not only allowed to enjoy the esteem of the famous music theorist and Mozart teacher Padre Giovanni Battista Martini, but you were also represented by a portrait in his picture gallery of musicians, then you can not have been some completely insignificant little composer. Nonetheless, the composer, organist and priest Ignazio Cirri (1711-1787), born in Forli, is today perhaps only known by music lovers. The reason is relatively simple: Hardly any of his works are available in modern editions. Because of their stylistic pioneering role in Viennese classical music, the sonatas op. 2, first performed here by Sezione Aurea, make curious about the other works by the composer. Sezione aurea is Italian for "Golden Mean," which is defined as "the part of a line segment which represents the mean proportion between the entire segment and the remaining part." The ensemble was created in 2013 following Luca Giardini's idea of reuniting some of the finest European baroque musicians active on the concert platform and on album. The aim of the group is to study and play the instrumental and vocal Italian repertoire of the 17th and 18th century. Since many of the pieces performed are still virtually unknown today, the ensemble relies on a musicological team who assist them at the start of each project.

Enrico Onofri plays sonatas that brim with complicated trills, difficult double stops, polyphonic phrases, picchettato bowing, long slurs, fast semiquavers passages, arpeggios and so forth. He proves that he is one of the leading Baroque violinists of our time, his musicality is in no way inferior to his technical virtuosity.

Classical Music

On April 14th, 300 years ago, Emanuele Barbella was born in Naples. He was a celebrated violinist and creative composer during his lifetime, whose works spread throughout Europe. On the occasion of the anniversary, Stefano Marcocchi and Simone Laghi recorded six viola duets by the Neapolitan, honoring the charming, gallant style of the almost forgotten composer. A native of Parma, Italian violist Stefano Marcocchi studied at the Conservatorio A. Boito, graduating cum laude. There he developed an interest in early music and playing on historic instruments. He has been principal violist of Europa Galante since 2001, playing extensively in Europe, America, Asia, and Australia, and taking part in twenty recording projects. Simone Laghi graduated in modern viola and violin from the Conservatorio "B. Maderna," in Cesena, Italy. He mainly studies baroque viola music, and regularly performs alongside Stefano Marcocchi.

The early English Baroque composers Henry Lawes (1595-1662) and John Wilson (1595-1674) were friends and colleagues in Oxford; both were members of King's Musick and employed at the Chapel Royal, where they worked in the immediate vicinity of King Charles I. Under the atmospheric title 'How the rose did first grow red' songs by Lawes and lute works by Wilson are presented here. American born Swiss tenor David Munderloh completed three years as a Fulbright Fellow earning a Masters Diploma in early music performance and theory at the renowned Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. David Munderloh has studied with Hans-Joachim Beyer (Leipzig) and Gerd T�rk (Basel). Invaluable has been his close work with Anthony Rooley; work which continues to guide his interpretation of English Lute Songs. Julian Behr first earned a degree in classical guitar and lute with Prof. Dr. Mario Sicca and Robert Barto at the State University of Music and the Performing Arts Stuttgart. After graduate studies in lute with Joachim Held at the Hamburg Conservatory, Julian studied early music and lute instruments at the Schola Cantorum in Basel with Hopkinson Smith. He has performed in festivals in nearly every European country and in South America. Silvia Tecardi is an expert on viol as well as historical performance practices. She regularly collaborates with Baroque chamber ensembles, and has worked on several critically acclaimed albums.

Violoncello is a word that names the bass instrument of the violin family, an instrument of which the origin dates back to the beginning of the sixteenth century. However, the first document that contains this term is in a collection of sonatas by Giulio Cesare Arresti published in 1665. From a musicological point, this fact is of big importance because of it's philological use to standardize the word in the future as a fix term to name the instrument. Based on this background, the ensemble decided to choose a specific repertoire taking into account the historical context of the cello's use as a solo instrument. The main part of this instrumental journey is dedicated to the first collection of music for violoncello, the Ricercate sopra il Violoncello o clavicembalo, Opera Prima by Giovanni Battista degli Antonii, published in Bologna in 1687. Giovanni Battista degli Antonii, born in Bologna himself, was an organist and member of the Concerto Palatino as a trombonist and cornettist from 1650 to 1675. From 1684 he was member of the Accademia Filarmonica, as specified on the front cover of his Ricercate, along with the dedication of the composition to the duke Francesco Il d'Este.

It was back in 1777 when Mozart spent a few months in Mannheim, where he came in contact with the Dutch physicist Ferdinand Dejean, who, as an ardent music-lover, commissioned from the young composer "a few short, simple concertinos, as well as a few flute quartets". At first Mozart set to work with enthusiasm, and soon after, the first flute quartet was finished. But shortly after having penned the double bar at the end of his first quartet, he met the young soprano Aloysia Weber, with whom he fell in love. Very quickly, Dejean's commission became a millstone around his neck and it took him several years to fulfill it. Although the quartets in G, in C and in A do not have the breadth and, for some commentators, the quality of the quartet in D, they provide as a group a most comprehensive portrait of Mozart - the composer and the man. The charming 'galant' style of the quartets in G and in C recall Johann Christian Bach, one of Mozart's models; it is well and truly in these works that Mozart surprises by his elegant simplicity, which contrasts with the exuberance of the Quartet in D. Oxalys was founded in 1993 by a group of ambitious young students from the Brussels Conservatory of Music. Since then the ensemble has developed into one of the most esteemed professional chamber music groups in Flanders. The composition of this ensemble remains open to new musicians in order to complete an original string quintet, a flute player, a clarinet player and a harp player, which permits to interpret a broader repertoire and to realize uncommon projects.

A new dynamic Italian Baroque Orchestra makes its debut with symphonies that aren’t mainstream. As they name indicates, they choose to swim against the current and explore hidden gems of the repertoire. But not only are they original, young and full of dynamic energy, the result is simply stunningly good and makes this music come alive as if those pieces were presented here for the first time. The group has chosen four of Bach’s sons, all born between 1710 and 1735 and programmed their exploration of the then new genre between c.1755 and c.1770, when the five Sinfonie recorded here were composed. Three keywords are essential: Galant Italian style, German Empfindsamer style and the European Sturm und Drang movement. It’s all about cantabile and sensitivity in the first two cases and about unbridled emotions announcing the romantic era in the third one… In conclusion, with these five rarely-heard symphonies by four of Bach’s sons, the Controcorrente Orchestra offers a captivating insight into the mid-eighteenth-century symphony repertoire across Northern Germany and England, which is quite representative of a genre that we too often know only through its later and most famous Viennese protagonists, Haydn and Mozart.

A concert cellist, composer, scholarly collector and instrument maker, Auguste Tolbecque left his mark on the histories of performing early music, collecting, and of reconstituting historical musical instruments. Whilst several studies have been devoted to his life as instrument maker and collector, the least explored aspect of his life remains his work as composer. Up until this moment, no recordings have been made of his works. The release of this album is not only a commemoration of the centenary of his death but is also a testimony to the many-sided career of one of the most singular characters of French musical life during the second half of the 19th century.

This recording presents 5 violin sonatas by Vivaldi that Pisendel took with him to Dresden after his stay in Venice. We know that Vivaldi wrote these extremely virtuoso sonatas for himself around 1710. The recording also presents a world premi�re recording of a chamber concerto for violin and two movements for violin and basso continuo with cello concertato (RV 252 and RV 7a) which are also world premi�re recordings. All these refreshing sonatas are brilliantly performed by Isabella Bison, violin, Francesco Corti, harpsichord and Marco Frezzato, cello.

Despite the fact that Jommelli owed his fame almost exclusively to his operas during his lifetime, the Requiem became his most famous work after his death; the almost one hundred handwritten and printed copies of the entire work or fragments of it that have survived in some seventy libraries throughout Europe, some also in the USA, bear witness to this. Whilst the score and parts of the first performance have been lost, we can still form a reasonably good idea of the original instrumentation thanks to a surviving list of payments made to the musicians. We know that there were eight singers (one female and seven male) in addition to Jommelli. We also know that soon after Jommelli’s death the work was performed with ensembles of very different sizes But Peter Van Heyghen and Il Gardellino opted for the version that was close to the first performance and based its own edition on the manuscript that is considered to be the primary source for the work. Van Heyghen and il Gardellino choose to constitute a vocal ensemble with the state-of-the-art singers of the moment, and the result is stunningly convincing and beautiful.