Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Otto Olsson was one of the greatest virtuoso organists of his time and displayed a particular affinity for the French organ. Georges Athanasiadès is organist titular for over sixty years in Saint-Maurice.

The general perception of Vivaldi- who wrote more than 500 concertos- is still that of a serene composer of the Italian Baroque, a great Perpetuum mobile- possibly even an endless Rondo Veneziano. And yet for connoisseurs, the “Prete rosso” left a unique, almost inconceivable output within which we can soon lose our bearings. Travelling in this musical paradise drove even a genius like Igor Stravinsky to his oft-quoted quip: “he wrote one concerto 400 times.” The chamber music, which has never met with the recognition it deserves, is even trickier. The cello sonatas are a particularly striking case in point. Superficially they all follow the same pattern-four movements in the same order (Largo-Allegro-Largo-Allegro), almost like the first minimal music. Yet each of the nine sonatas is an individual masterpiece. Here Vivaldi proves himself the composer of a virtuosic yet spiritualized music, whose wealth of melodies and deep earnestness are as beguiling as their elegant and dignified beauty, which blends vitality with poetry.

The virtuoso Czech pianist and composer Jan Ladislav Dussek lived a colorful life. Born in Bohemia, his career took him to Prague, Amsterdam, Den Haag, Hamburg, St. Petersburg, Berlin, London, and Paris. He knew Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, was a favorite of Marie-Antoinette and Catherine the Great, and a friend of Muzio Clementi and Joseph Haydn while in London. He then became the teacher and chamber music partner of prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia. His last employ was as music master to Talleyrand in Paris. A composer rooted in classicism, his harmonic daring and expressive melodies would gradually anticipate early romanticism. This is particularly evident in these two late sonatas, whose pianistic brilliance was doubtless inspired by the new English Broadwood pianos. "Le Retour a Paris" is a moving homage ot the French metropolis, with pioneering chromatic modulations. In the passionate intensity of "L'Invocation," a masterpiece written in 1811, we sense some of the melancholy that darkened his last years.

Classical Music