Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, Johann Sebastian Bach, Remo Giazotto, Antonio Vivaldi, Alessandro Marcello, Georg Philipp Telemann, George Frideric Handel, Johann Pachelbel, Arcangelo Corelli
Artist:
Bela Banfalvi, Idil Biret, Milan Brunner, Anthony Camden, Jozef Cejka, Hae Won Chang, Emilia Csanky, Julia Girdwood, Harald Hoeren, Anna Holbling, Christian Hommel, Alexander Jablokov, Jeno Jando, Ludovit Kanta, Jozsef Kiss, Jozsef Mukk, Takako Nishizaki, Christine Pichlmeier, Daniela Ruso, Stefan Schilli, Lisa Stewart, Jiri Stivin, Pavel Bogacz, Quido Holbling, Daniel Rothert, Laszlo Kecskemeti, John Constable, John Abberger, Emma Kirkby, Alexei Ogrintchouk, Lajos Lencses, Clas Pehrsson, Jonathan Rees, Lionel Handy, Ian Watson, Celia Nicklin, Rachel Ingleton, Peter Thalheimer, Michala Petri, Pablo Casals, Roland Straumer, Anders Ohrwall, Iona Brown, Julius Baker, Nicole Trotier, Burkhard Glaetzner, Heinz-Dieter Richter, Joachim Bischof, Hans Pischner, Alina Ibragimova, Reinut Tepp
Conductor:
Bela Banfalvi, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Masaaki Suzuki, Alexei Ogrintchouk, Jaroslav Krcek, Richard Hayman, Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, Willem Mengelberg, Jozef Kopelman, Laszlo Kovacs, Harry Christophers, Kurt Sanderling, Jean Lamon, Oliver Dohnanyi, Jaroslav Dvorak, Richard Edlinger, John Georgiadis, Helmut Muller-Bruhl, Charles Medlam, Robert Stankovsky, Bohdan Warchal, Jeanne Lamon, Iona Brown, Barry Wordsworth, Helmuth Rilling, Wilhelm Furtwangler, John Eliot Gardiner, Gerard Schwarz, Bernard Labadie, Maria Lindal, Max Pommer, Helmut Winschermann, Ludwig Guttler, Michael Erxleben, Burkhard Glaetzner, Rudiger Lotter, Helmut Koch
Choir:
Philharmonic Symphony Chorus
Ensemble:
Camerata Cassovia, London Baroque, Budapest Strings, Violons du Roy, Les, Kremerata Baltica, Camerata Budapest, Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble, Ensemble 415, Virtuosi Saxoniae, New Bach Collegium Musicum Leipzig
Orchestra:
English Baroque Soloists, New Berlin Chamber Orchestra, French National Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia, Camerata Cassovia, Cologne Chamber Orchestra, Budapest Ferenc Erkel Chamber Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Sixteen Orchestra, The, Capella Istropolitana, NBC Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Swiss Baroque Soloists, London Virtuosi, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Bach Collegium Japan, Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra, Stuttgart Collegium Musica Rara, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Concerto Koln, Studio orchestra, Stockholm Baroque Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski Symphony Orchestra, German Bach Soloists, Berlin Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Akademie fur Alte Musik, Oregon Bach Festival Chamber Orchestra, Hofkapelle Munchen
The first half of the eighteenth century saw the culmination
of a musical synthesis between elements predominant in three major musical
countries in Europe. From Italy came, above all, song, from France dance and
from Germany the more academic procedures that could weld these into a
whole.
Instrumental music had developed notably in the seventeenth
century, as forms that were to predominate were developed. The later part of
the century brought the career of the South German organist Johann Pachelbel
(1653-1706), a prolific composer who had drawn much from his experience of
Italian music. Pachelbel served as an organist in Erfurt, where he had
connections with the Bach family and taught Johann Sebastian Bach’s elder
brother, Johann Christoph, with whom the former lived after the early death of
his parents. Pachelbel was able to spend his final years as organist at St
Sebald’s in his native Nuremberg. While his other work may be known principally
to organists, his Canon and Gigue, an ingenious composition originally for
three violins and continuo, has enjoyed very wide popularity, appearing in a
variety of arrangements [10].
The Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) spent his
later life in Rome, where he established himself as a violinist and composer,
serving there the Catholic Swedish Queen Christina, Cardinal Pamphili and
Cardinal Ottoboni. Contemporaries and later composers were strongly influenced,
in particular, by his Concerti grossi, orchestral compositions in which a small
group of solo players (two violins and continuo in Corelli’s work) are
contrasted with the full string orchestra. His so-called Christmas Concerto,
designed for performance on Christmas Eve, includes a pastoral movement
suggesting the shepherds at Bethlehem in a musical form that was much imitated [5].
Georg Frideric Handel (1685-1759) had met Corelli in Rome
during the earlier years of the eighteenth century. Born in Halle, he had
worked first at the opera in Hamburg, before travelling to Italy. Recruited as
director of music to the court at Hanover, he soon found a way to move to
London, where he was at first primarily occupied in the provision of Italian
opera. Handel’s melodic facility and the form his musical language took suggest
a different balance in the developing baroque synthesis. Nevertheless Corelli,
leading an orchestra for Handel in Italy, claimed he could not grasp the
latter’s ‘French’ style.While
continuing an intermittent connection with Italian opera, by 1740 Handel had
found a new musical compromise in a new form, that of English oratorio. The
present collection is introduced by the familiar Arrival of the Queen of Sheba,
an instrumental movement from the oratorio Solomon, first heard at Covent
Garden in 1749 [1]. Equally familiar is the Largo from Handel’s 1738 opera
Serse, originally an aria in which Xerxes is overheard expressing his
admiration for the plant life around him [7].
With a contemporary reputation that rivalled that of Bach,
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) was from 1721 until his death established in
Hamburg as director of music for the five principal city churches. He wrote a
vast quantity of church music, and an equal amount of secular music, much of it
designed for amateur players. His compositions include a number of orchestral
suites or overtures, including sets of dance movements, examples of the now
fashionable ‘mixed taste’ of the period. His so-called Darmstadt Overtures
belong to an early part of his career, when he was employed in Frankfurt am
Main, and were written for the court at Darmstadt. Movement titles indicate the
character of the music, as in the Harlequinade included here [12].Another example of Telemann’s lightness
of touch is heard in his Recorder Suite, with its characteristic French
movements, of which two are here included [14] & [15].
Telemann had studied at Leipzig University, where he
established the Collegium musicum. In later years the direction of this
instrumental ensemble was taken over by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), who
had moved to Leipzig in 1723 as Cantor at the Choir-School of St Thomas. Bach
had served as an organist, principally at Weimar, before becoming director of
court music to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen in 1717. After 1723 he remained
in Leipzig until his death. Much of his instrumental music originated during
his years at Cöthen, including the first and fourth of his four orchestral
suites. French Bourrées from the Orchestral Suite No.4 are here included [8].
The second and third suites belong to Bach’s years in Leipzig. Orchestral Suite
No.2, scored for solo flute and strings, has been dated to the late 1730s. Its
best-known movement remains the playful Badinerie [3]. From Orchestral Suite
No.3, dated approximately to 1729-1731, comes the Air, known popularly as Air
on the G string, from an arrangement for that string of the violin by the
German violinist August Wilhelmj [2].
Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos take their name from the
composer’s 1721 dedication of them to the Margrave of Brandenburg, and were
written principally at Cöthen, although the third and sixth have been
conjecturally dated to the composer’s earlier years in Weimar.Brandenburg Concerto No.2 is scored for
solo trumpet, recorder, oboe and violin, with the strings and harpsichord of
the orchestra. In the third movement the solo instruments enter one after the
other, led by the trumpet 6. Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 is scored for solo
violin and two recorders, with strings and harpsichord. In the opening Allegro,
the recorders are heard first, one echoing the other, as the lively movement unwinds
[17].
The Cöthen court musical establishment provided scope for
the composition of instrumental music. From Bach’s time there are three violin
concertos surviving in their original form, including the fine Concerto for two
violins. The slow movement is one of particular beauty, the two solo violins in
dialogue above the gently lilting rhythm of the bass-line in the orchestra [4].
In Leipzig Bach arranged a number of his earlier concertos as concertos for
solo harpsichord or harpsichords. His Harpsichord Concerto in F minor derived
its outer movements from an oboe concerto that is now lost and its slow
movement, here included, from a church cantata. Accompanied by plucked strings,
the solo harpsichord offers a fine melody, gently elaborated [13].
Bach owed much to Vivaldi and other composers in Venice,
where the solo concerto had developed. He made his own solo harpsichord
arrangement of the Oboe Concerto by Alessandro Marcello (1684-1750), a Venetian
nobleman and dilettante. The slow movement of the Oboe Concerto is here
included ^. Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751) also made his prolific career as a
composer in Venice. His compositions include a number of fine oboe concertos,
from one of which an Adagio is included 9. His name is best known, however, for
an Adagio attributed to him by its true composer Remo Giazotto, who offered it
as an elaboration of a fragment by Albinoni [18].
The most important of the Venetian composers of the first
half of the eighteenth century was Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), priest,
virtuoso violinist and opera director, who for much of his life was involved
with one of the institutions in Venice for the education of orphaned or
indigent girls, an establishment with the strongest musical traditions. It was
principally for the Ospedale della Pietà that he wrote concerto after concerto,
many of them for the violin, but including a number for other instruments.
Although his Flautino Concertos have sometimes been played on other solo
instruments, they were originally designed for the tiny sopranino recorder. The
slow movements, as here, are generally in the form of an aria for the solo instrument
[11].
Keith Anderson
Track List
Solomon, HWV 67
1.
Solomon: Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
00:03:06
Overture (Suite) No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068
2.
Orchestral Suite No. 3: Air
00:04:58
Overture (Suite) No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067
3.
Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor: Badinerie
00:01:22
Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C minor, BWV 1060
4.
Concerto in D minor for Two Violins: Largo ma non tanto
00:06:27
Concerto Grosso in G minor, Op. 6, No. 8, "Christmas Concerto"
We use cookies to improve the use of our website, our products and services, and confirm your login authorization or initial creation of account. By clicking "Ok" or by continuing to use our website, you agree to cookies being set on your device as explained in our Privacy Policy. You may disable the use of cookies if you do not wish to accept them, however, this may limit the website's overall functionality.