Here is the third and last instalment in the ‘Live at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées’ series of Mozart operas conducted by Jérémie Rhorer. After Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail and La clemenza di Tito comes Don Giovanni, recorded in 2016. On the occasion of the performances (directed by Stéphane Braunschweig) during which Radio France recorded the present discs, Le Figaro wrote: ‘Jérémie Rhorer expertly conducted his orchestra “Le Cercle de l’Harmonie”. On the stage, Jean-Sébastien Bou sang and acted the title role impeccably. He was seconded by his valet Leporello, superbly played by the Canadian Robert Gleadow. A thrilling production both musically and intellectually.’ The cast is completed by the ardent Myrtò Papatanasiu in the role of Donna Anna, the lovely voice of Julie Boulianne as Donna Elvira and the elegant timbre of Julien Behr as Don Ottavio, not forgetting the magnificent Commendatore of Steven Humes and the lively Zerlina and Masetto of Anna Grevelius and Marc Scoffoni.

George Gershwin composed his "Rhapsody in Blue" in 1924. His masterpieces, such as An American in Paris and the opera Porgy and Bess, greatly enriched the American musical heritage. Jos van Immerseel has always been fascinated by Gershwin, and he and his companions in Anima Eterna have got closer than ever before to the composer’s intentions with this recording, making use of the appropriate instruments. (Alpha)

Vittorio Ghielmi, one of today’s most admired viola da gamba soloists, comes from a family of musicians (his brother founded Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini). In parallel with his erudite and virtuoso readings of Marais or Graun, Vittorio Ghielmi is an artist who enjoys crossing borders. With his ensemble, Il Suonar Parlante, he seeks new musical languages and collaborates with leading figures of jazz (Uri Caine) and the masters of traditional music (Khaled Arman, Dhruba Ghosh). With Gypsy Baroque, he and his gypsy friends present a dazzling album bubbling over with life. He has gone to Transylvania in search of the gypsy music of the eighteenth century that was played on the frontiers of the Ottoman and Austrian Empires – music that influenced composers like Mozart and Haydn for their famous ‘Janissary’ pieces. For this recording, he places these gypsy tunes (only the melody is written) in perspective with orchestrations of the period. The Baroque specialists of his ensemble are joined by longstanding guest artists (the soprano Graciela Gibelli and the recorder player Dorothee Oberlinger) and traditional musicians like the Slovak violinist Stanislav Palúch and Marcel Comendant, a virtuoso exponent of the cimbalom and of improvisation. Going beyond the ‘documentary’ aspect, already fascinating, here is a genuine musical recreation!

After making several albums of chamber music by Brahms and Schubert, the cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker now records a large-scale concerto, showing the full range of her talent. Composed between 1918 and 1919, Elgar’s Concerto op.85 was poorly received at its first performance but has since become established as one of the key works in the cello repertoire. To complete the programme, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker rejoins her chamber music partners, the violinists Carolin Widmann and David McCarroll, the violist Pauline Sachse and the pianist Martin Helmchen, in Elgar’s Piano Quintet, composed at the same time as the Concerto and premiered in London in 1919.

Freddy Eichelberger writes of this release: “The idea for this recording came to us after reading Anne Cuneo’s novel Le Trajet d’une riviere, in which the charming, valiant, chivalrous and Catholic Francis Tregian travels the length and breadth of Europe sword in hand, regarded as a spy by some, a messenger by others. He meets the greatest musicians of his time and copies out their music. Taking the three ‘compilations’ by Tregian that have come down to us, one of which is the famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, we find ourselves faced with hundreds of vocal and instrumental pieces, fantasies, madrigals and other pieces. In attempting to revive in part the musical world of Sir Francis Tregian, our aim was to explore the elements of dream and travel through time and space. The five Witches were joined by five guest Witches: two voices for the music of words, two viols enabling us to form a homogeneous consort, and the bandora which enabled us to achieve one of our aims- to recreate a genuine English broken consort.”

Throughout his life, Bach showed exceptional talent as a pedagogue. As an orphan who had been obliged to learn everything by himself, he retained the deep-rooted urge to teach and pass on his knowledge. His cantatas are spiritual lessons, just as his keyboard works constitute a tutor in the instrument. It was with his children, first and foremost, that he exercised this talent as a born teacher, and particularly with his prodigiously gifted eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. For him he wrote the Two-part Inventions and Three-part Sinfonias; for him too The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Orgel-Buchlein (Little organ book); and this extraordinary method culminated in the Trio Sonatas for organ. The cantata Geist und Seele wird verwirret (Spirit and soul are dumbfounded) BWV 35 is one of the three written for solo alto without choral participation and with reduced instrumental forces. The work comprises two parts, for performance before and after the sermon. Soloist and organ engage in a dialogue charged with the elation of trust in God, brimming with coloratura passages and runs. Also for alto solo, the cantata Vergnugte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust (Contented repose, beloved heart’s desire) BWV 170 dates from just six weeks before Geist und Seele. It too features a solo organ part, later transcribed by Bach for flute and continuo. The cantata is based on a passage from the Sermon on the Mount in which Christ urges his listeners to live in peace with others.

In Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s catalogue, the music for solo keyboard and the chamber music occupy central positions. In his youth, Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was left-handed, did not play string instruments such as the violin or viola, but rather the harpsichord and organ (not to overlook the flute). It was as a harpsichordist that, in 1738, he joined the entourage of the future King of Prussia, Frederick II, before following him to Berlin upon his accession two years later and then formally entering his service. In 1767, he was offered the succession of his godfather, Telemann, as director of music in Hamburg. He arrived in the Hanseatic city in March 1768, and for the last twenty years of his life, it was church music that occupied much of his time and effort. The symphonies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach are all in three movements, quite often linked without a break. Highly original and typical of north Germany, the symphonies turn their back on the style gallant, on Johann Stamitz, founder of the Mannheim School, and on the Viennese style. The Concerto in A major was originally written for harpsichord and strings, but was later transcribed for cello by the composer, likely for the cellist Christian Friedrich Schale, who hosted a Musikalische Assemblee in his Berlin home every week.

In 1680, Francois Chaperon, maître de musique of the Sainte-Chapelle, entrusted the setting of some verses from the Lamentations of Jeremiah to Michel Richard de Lalande and Jean-Fery Rebel, Lalande’s brother in law. The Lecons de Tenebres of 1680, now lost, probably provided material for the Tenebrae compositions that have come down to us. Although Lalande had written his Lecons and his Miserere for solo voice for the nuns of the convent of the Assumption, they were actually sung- like many of his works for female voices- by his daughters. The Lecons de Tenebres and Miserere must have therefore been composed some time before 1711, for that year Jeanne and Marie Anne de Lalande died in the smallpox epidemic. For this interpretation of the Miserere, the musicians have chosen the version presented in Brossard’s autograph manuscript of 1711, in which the alternate verses are sung by three voices in faux-bourdon, a practice that was still in vogue at that time in France. Fragmentary notation for a treble instrument is found throughout this manuscript version, thus attesting the practice, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of improvising the countermelody at sight.

Guillaume de Machaut was born around 1300 in the environs of Reims, which at that time was a flourishing royal city with a population of almost 20,000, famous throughout Europe for its textile workshops and trade fairs. Like most cathedrals of Western Europe, Reims is built on the site of an earlier edifice. The Rouelle altar, on the left in the nave, adjacent to the choir screen, was dedicated to the Holy Spirit. But in 1343 a magnificent statue of the Virgin Mary was placed there. In 1341 Archbishop Jean de Vienne established a plainchant Votive Mass for the Virgin, to be performed each week before the Rouelle altar. The Marian Mass was introduced by Guillaume de Machaut and his younger brother Jean as a perpetuation of the archbishop’s wish, and it was for that particular liturgy, which was sung every Saturday throughout the year, that Guillaume wrote his famous polyphonic mass. The Messe de Nostre Dame, as it is called in only one of the five surviving manuscripts, is the first complete preserved polyphonic mass known to be by a single hand. It includes the five movements of the Ordinary plus the four-voice Ite missa est. The Mass is not strictly speaking a unified cycle, but there is nevertheless great coherence in its rhythmic and harmonic languages. The succession of movements shows a broad construction and a harmonious and carefully established stylistic progression, from the Kyrie with its strong harmonic structure to the Agnus Dei with its melodic lyricism.

Although Giuseppe Tartini was taught the first rudiments of music at the College of the Padri dell Scuole Pie in Capodistria, and may have received lessons in counterpoint from the Franciscan Bohuslav Cernohorsky in Assisi, many elements give the impression that the boy had an education that was anything but ‘academic,’ and that the future ‘maestro delle nazioni’ largely taught himself. However, there does exist a declared model for the music of Tartini, at least for a certain period: that of Corelli. His output seems dominated initially by the influence of his great predecessor in terms of both language and structure. The reference to folk music in his music is also obvious. Another interesting element in the sonatas presented on this release is the presence of mottoes of varying length placed next to the incipits of certain movements, and often written in a ciphered cuneiform alphabet invented by the composer. These are poetic quotations, mostly drawn from the works of Metastasio, although not all of them have been identified. At the end of this recording is one of Tartini’s very rare vocal pieces, the last composition copied into MS 1888/1. The poem Solitario bosco ombroso, based on a clearly Petrarchan model and on the classical antecedents of Tibullus and Propertius, was published for the first time by the poet Paolo Rolli in London in 1727, in a musical setting by Rolli himself.

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.