Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Sol Gabetta, Francisco Coll, Camerata Bern PLAISIRS ILLUMINÉS

 

PLAISIRS ILLUMINÉS

 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Camerata Bern TIME & ETERNITY

Time and Eternity. Always in search of powerful musical experiences, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Camerata Bern – of which she has just taken over the artistic direction – here juxtapose Hartmann’s Concerto funebre, composed in 1939 to express his indignation at the Nazis’ terror, and the Polyptyque for violin and orchestra that Frank Martin wrote in 1973 for Yehudi Menuhin, a work inspired by six scenes from the Passion of Christ painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna around 1310. The Kyrie from Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame, composed half a century after the altarpiece and heard here in an arrangement for strings, is interspersed between the movements, along with Bach chorales, ‘as an invocation of eternal consolation’. A Polish folksinger interprets the Jewish song ‘Eliyahu hanavi’, which expresses the hope of salvation and which Hartmann quotes in his concerto. Six hundred years of music to ‘make the victims’ voices heard’, says Patricia Kopatchinskaja. The album opens with Kol Nidrei by John Zorn (born 1953), in response to the eponymous prayer spoken by a representative of the Jewish community. A Catholic priest and an Orthodox priest also say a short prayer.

Viviane Chassot / Camerata Bern MOZART Keyboard Concertos

I’ve taken an intense interest in Mozart in recent years and asked myself many critical questions. What has his music to do with our own day and age? Why on an accordion? For me, Mozart’s music is timeless and not linked to any specific instrument. It communicates a sense of pure joy, a lightness based on depth, a feeling of unbridled singing. It evokes images of an exuberant child dancing across a meadow. The real answer came to me at a wonderful moment when my little niece stuck a raspberry over her little finger, looked at it affectionately and said “Hello” with the genuine curiosity of one who suddenly discovers a new friend. That’s Mozart’s spirit for me: an unconditional devotion to life, a love for reality, acceptance and ultimately reconciliation. (Viviane Chassot)

Antje Weithaas / Camerata Bern JOHANNES BRAHMS Violin Concerto - String Quintet op. 111

Founded in 1962, the CAMERATA BERN is a highly-acclaimed chamber orchestra uniting top level musicians inspired by the idea of performing within a flexible, self-conducted ensemble.

Its members are gifted soloists and chamber musicians. Under its artistic director, the violinist ANTJE WEITHAAS, as well as guest concertmasters Erich Höbarth, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Pekka Kuusisto, Amandine Beyer, Enrico Onofri and others, CAMERATA BERN performs a broad repertoire ranging from early Baroque to today’s composers. The orchestra stands out for its subtle and perfectly homogeneous sound, its freshness and mastery of style. With charisma and spontaneity adding to its ability to thrill its public, CAMERATA BERN is now renowned as one of the prime ensembles among chamber orchestras in Europe.

The ensemble’s outstanding qualities has led it to perform with such eminent artists as Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Vadim Repin, Alexander Lonquich, Jörg Widmann, Sabine Meyer, Tabea Zimmermann, Vessilina Kasarova, Bernd Glemser, Christian Gerhaher, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Maurice André, Bruno Canino, Radu Lupu, Peter Serkin, Gidon Kremer, Nathan Milstein, Boris Pergamenshikov, Narciso Yepes, Pepe Romero, Barbara Hendricks, Peter Schreier, Jan Vogler, Reinhold Friedrich, Leonidas Kavakos, Angelika Kirchschlager and others.

The ensemble has toured extensively in Europe, South- and North-America, as well as in South-East Asia, the Far East, Australia and Japan. Its recordings on Sony, Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv, Decca, Denon, ERATO, Berlin Classics, Novalis, ECM, Claves and Philips have won several international awards, such as the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the Grand Prix International du Disque, the International Record Critics Award, the Record Academy Prize, and the Prize Echo Klassik ‘97 of the Deutsche Phono-Akademie. The latest CD-releases feature Antje Weithaas in a Beethoven programme (CAVI, September 2012). The next CD will be released in September 2015 with Antje Weithaas as soloist in Brahms’ Violin Concerto.

Lately, CAMERATA BERN has performed at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova, Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato/Mexico, Morelia Festival in Mexico, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, in the Sala Sao Paulo, at the Teatro Solis in Montevideo, at Geneva’s Victoria Hall, at deSingel in Antwerp.

Within its large scale educational project for children since 2010, the CAMERATA BERN performs concerts in schools across the Canton of Bern. The project developed in the frame of the Education Department’s “Education and culture” programme has reached over 10’000 children up to now, mainly in the canton’s rural areas.

The CAMERATA BERN also focuses on historically informed performance and performs an early music concert series in Bern. (Squire Artists)

Thomas Zehetmair / Camerata Bern SCHÖNBERG - VERESS - BARTÓK Verklärte Nacht

It’s difficult to believe that the first performance of Arnold Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) in 1901 incited a riot, prompting one critic to report, “It sounds as if someone had smudged the score of Tristan while it was still wet.” Structured as it is around the eponymous poem by Richard Dehmel, in which two lovers test their resolve while wandering in moonlight, the gossamer threads of night are its makeup. Along with The Book of the Hanging Gardens, it is one of the composer’s most visceral works. Not easy listening, to be sure, but nothing worth coming to blows over, either. Its lyrical chromaticism is lush yet opaque and descriptive to the core. Its contours slowly come into focus like a whale from a dark sea, Zehetmair’s violin waiting along with the seagulls for any morsels to escape from its yawning food trap. The Camerata Bern pays strictest attention to rhythm, caressing the physiognomy of every beat with its strings. Though branded as a nocturnal affair, the piece also resounds with light. Certain sections sound like a magnified string quartet, while others breathe with the lung capacity of a full orchestra, but always with characteristic insulation. Like Wagner at his most self-effacing, Schönberg emotes with high narrative volume, as though a ballet and an opera had been stripped of words and collapsed into this one glorious whole.

After a glassy stillness that leaves us transfigured ourselves, the Four Transylvanian Dances of Sándor Veress pull us to our marionetted feet with spirited urgency. The second of these, with its finely wrought pizzicato beads, is notably heartwarming, while the fourth contrasts processional ceremony with outright exuberance. I can hardly imagine a better segue into Béla Bartók’s famed Divertimento (1939), of which the opening is perhaps the Hungarian’s most recognizable motif. Lower strings emerge as a major consonant force against the more adventurous uppers, which dance their way into the Adagio with infectious verve. The musicians’ dynamic control is on full alert here, as quiet restraint carries over into a cyclical swell of emotive power. The third and final movement is played to perfection. Its accentuating fingerboard slaps, solo cello, and open-stringed double stops stand out with scintillating clarity, all wrung through an imitative filter before ending with a pizzicato-friendly “micro-ballet.” The Divertimento, a more precise rendering of which I cannot recall, was the result of a commission by patron Paul Sacher, whose importance one can gauge further in ECM’s kaleidoscopic tribute album. (ECM Reviews)

Heinz Holliger / Erich Höbarth / Camerata Bern JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis

Heinz Holliger soars through Bach’s music for oboe in his first ECM recital of core classical repertoire since his 1997 account of Zelenka’s Trio Sonatas. Recorded at Radio Studio Zürich in December 2010, “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis”, draws upon Holliger’s long artistic relationship with Camerata Bern and leader Eric Höbarth, the production rendering every detail in the music, the elegance of Holliger’s phrasing, the tactile sound of baroque bows on gut strings, crystal clear. Holliger dedicates this very special recording to the memory of his brother, theatre director Erich Holliger, and Gabriel Bürgin, pianist, friend and colleague.
Johann Sebastian Bach relied on the oboe to voice some of the most exquisite instrumental passages in his cantatas and orchestral works, these solo parts adding up to what Heinz Holliger terms a "miraculous wealth" of music for the oboe. Holliger, one of the world's consummate oboists for five decades now, as well as a prize-winning composer and conductor –presents a collection of this music drawn from the sinfonia introductions to several sacred cantatas, the sinfonia from the Easter Oratorio and versions of three Bach concertos made for oboe, strings and continuo. These include the sublime Double Concerto for Violin and Oboe, with the solo violin part played by Erich Höbarth, who also directs the Camerata Bern throughout the album. Also included is Alessandro Marcello's Oboe Concerto in D minor, a piece Bach appreciated enough to rework for solo harpsichord.