Anima Eterna Brugge SCHUBERT - BERWALD Chamber Music

                                                                 CHAMBER MUSIC

Jos van Immerseel / Anima Eterna Brugge W.A. MOZART Complete Solo Clavier-Concerte

A reissue with the impact of a new release, that’s what we have in mind for this wonderful set of hailed recordings of Mozart’s Clavier-Concerte, recorded in 1990/91 on historical instruments and still sounding as fresh and beautiful as if we recorded them yesterday! 

Anima Eterna Brugge is under the permanent musical direction of Jos van Immerseel, who has led the orchestra through a carefully guided evolution from small chamber ensemble to full symphony orchestra. In 1985 he brought six string players together to study the works of Bach, and two years later the group was enlarged to a baroque ensemble of seventeen musicians. In 1989 the by now twenty-five musicians began to work on the Viennese classical repertoire. The success was expanding and in 1990 the Amsterdam Concertgebouw included Anima Eterna Brugge in its “World famous Baroque Orchestras” series. Mozart’s complete concertos for fortepiano formed the focal point of the next two years, with concert cycles in Kyoto and Tokyo, among other cities, and this set of 10 compact discs. These recordings received worldwide praise, of which it will suffice to quote the New York cd review: “No period orchestra has ever sounded better”.
CD 1 - CD 3
CD 4 - CD 6
CD 7 - CD 8
CD 9 - CD 10

Chouchane Siranossian / Anima Eterna Brugge / Jakob Lehmann IN TIME

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 keeps on “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…

Anima Eterna Brugge / Jos van Immerseel, BERLIOZ Symphonie Fantastique - Le Carnaval Romain

Without any prior information, the first thing listeners will notice about Jos van Immerseel's 2008 recording of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is the umistakable period instrumentation, with the sheen of the strings and the distinctive sound of early 19th century woodwinds and brass, obvious at the outset. The second thing discriminating listeners will notice is the great care Immerseel takes with connecting notes, not only in the straightforward handling of melodic phrases, but also in linking secondary figures in the accompaniment, so that this chord progression or that isolated pitch makes sense within the larger scheme of things. This is where the performance either rises or falls, depending on what one wants to get out of this work. To the extent that Berlioz created Symphonie fantastique to show off his innovative orchestration, this recording goes as far as any historically informed and scholarly version to make sure that everything is heard clearly, not merely as separate sounds, but as integral parts of the greater, kaleidoscopic whole. Where this rendition might be regarded as a failure is in its lack of visceral excitement, which seems to be the unintended result of producing an immaculate-sounding performance. Immerseel gets astonishing sonorities from the ensemble Anima Eterna Brugge, and the engineers of Zig Zag Territoires capture them to perfection, but no one remembered to make the music cook. If Symphonie fantastique is deprived of its passion, delirium, fury, violence, and horror, it is merely an exercise in futility. The point of this work and its bizarre program is to portray the extreme emotional life of its drug-addled protagonist. Yet because it is played here at somewhat slower tempos that feel plodding, and with a meticulous precision that seems overly fussy, it doesn't rush madly, it doesn't whirl feverishly, and it doesn't fly off its handle, but seems too self-conscious to really let things rip. The sole exception is the Dream of a Witches' Sabbath, which is almost as fiendish and hair-raising as one might wish, but comes much too late to save the performance. Conversely, Le Carnaval romain is the best selection on the album because it has a wonderful period sound and is played with the verve and energy missing in the Symphonie. At points, Immerseel seems to pull back slightly in his pacing, but these are minor adjustments for the sake of clarity that don't impede the vitality of the whole overture, least of all in the final stretch. So if clear performances of these classics are required, this CD will fill that need, but for wild and thrilling Romantic music, this recording of Symphonie fantastique is not a contender. (Blair Sanderson)

Anima Eterna Brugge / Jos van Immerseel DEBUSSY Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune - La Mer - Images

Debussy suddenly seems to be on the front line of the period-instrument movement's steady advance through music history. This disc from Jos van Immerseel and his Belgian orchestra arrives just a few months after Simon Rattle's London performances of La Mer and Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and John Eliot Gardiner's Proms account of Pelléas et Mélisande with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. For this recording, Anima Eterna Brugge's woodwind, brass, percussion and harps were French-made instruments of Debussy's time; they're generally more abrasive and pungent than their modern counterparts, and they combine with the gut strings to produce a more open sound than we are used to today.

Van Immerseel's approach can seem a bit too deliberate; there's something ponderous about Prélude à l'Après-Midi, while in La Mer he seems determined to emphasise the work's symphonic credentials. In fact, it's the orchestral Images that gains most from the brighter, rawer colours of this performance, with the myriad subtleties of Debussy's scoring more beguiling than ever. Where most conductors make the three-part Ibéria their centrepiece, with Gigues before it and Rondes de Printemps as the finale, Van Immerseel begins with Rondes and places Ibéria last, following the order adopted by Debussy's friend and assistant André Caplet for performances he conducted after the composer's death. There's logic to that ordering, for Ibéria is significantly longer than the other two movements put together, and makes a substantial finale to the whole sequence; Van Immerseel resists the temptation to turn it into a real orchestral showpiece, but there's enough flair and imagination to make his performance compelling. (Andrew Clements / The Guardian)