Wilke te Brummelstroete, Peter Gijsbertsen, Jozef de Beehouwer and the Antverpia String Ensemble join together, lead by Ivo Venkov to showcase the Flemish composer, Jef Van Hoof. Van Hoof was a prolific composer of choral music, symphonies, songs, piano music and operas. His works were incredibly important to the struggling Flemish culture of his time.

Renowned opera houses in Europe regularly cast bass-baritone Werner van Mechelen, including Opera Vlaanderen, La Monnaie, Op�ra de Wallonie, La Fenice, and many more. He has sung under the baton of Jeffrey Tate, Antonio Pappano, Marc Minkowski, and Hartmut Haenchen. In lieder, his repertoire is inexhaustible; it includes all major composers of lied and all major cycles, as well as works by lesser-known composers both past and present. Among his accompanists are Jozef de Beenhouwer, Eric Schneider, Lucas Blondeel, Inge Spinette, and Peter Vanhove, who is featured on this new CD.

V79: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

V81: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

V86: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

In the words of leader Mathias Coppens: "All music is today's music, even if it was noted down in the past by somebody, the composer, who made specific choices in an exclusive context and with personal intentions; otherwise all music would sound the same. What remains in the end is the personal experience of the person listening to the music."

V82: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

This release is centered around fragments of the “lyrical drama” (i.e. opera) The Children of the Sea by Lodewijk Mortelmans (libretto by Raf Verhulst) and the grand orchestral song Ellen, long lost but recently rediscovered. In 2018 we’ll celebrate the 150th anniversary of Mortelmans’s birth, so that the year will be a Mortelmans Year. It is amazing how many interesting and indeed beautiful works of this major composer have never been explored. Mortelmans worked on this opera between 1900 and 1915. It was premiered at the Antwerp Flemish Opera in 1920, but was never performed since. The essence of The Children of the Sea is featured on this album. Because Mortelmans’s orchestral finale contains just about all the important themes of the entire work, the artists decided to present it as a kind of overture on the album. In addition, the album contains a first recording of a true concert aria for tenor and orchestra: ‘Ellen: A Song of Woe.’

V75: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

V74: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

This release intends to present a kaleidoscopic survey of over eighty years of orchestral music in Flanders, ranging from music for chamber orchestra via concertante music to the overture of an opera. The historical opera Le carilloneur de Bruges is an outlier in the operatic production of Albert Grisar, who was quite successful in Paris around the middle of the 19th century, especially as a composer of opera bouffe. The subject may have been Flemish, but the libretto was by Jules-Henry Vernoy de Saint-Georges, a French author who dominated theatrical life in Paris in the 1830s, together with Eugene Scribe. The plot of Le carillonneur de Bruges, a three-acter, takes place in Bruges in 1566, during the Spanish rule of the Low Countries. The principal part is that of the old carilloneur Matheus Claes and his bells. Both Grisar and his librettist appeal to Flemish nationalism as well as Belgian patriotism. The opera ends in an anachronistic tribute to the Flemish flag, and is dedicated to Leopold I, King of the Belgians. It was premiered on February 10, 1852, in the Paris Opera-Comique, and no expense was spared. Like Beethoven did in his Egmont overture, Grisar’s overture outlines the plot, starting with a slow, ominous introduction and ending in an enthusiastic transformation of what would have been a tragedy into a triumphant finale, with the tribute to the Flemish flag. Grisar reveals his gift for striking melodies and uses “Rossini crescendos” effectively.

V78: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

V73: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

V65: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

V72: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS