Regula Mühlemann / Kammerorchester Basel / Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli MOZART ARIAS II

MOZART ARIAS II

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini BEETHOVEN The 9 Symphonies

THE 9 SYMPHONIES

Viviane Chassot / Kammerorchester Basel HAYDN Keyboard Concertos

What could be the possible reason for recording Haydn’s keyboard concertos on an accordion? In this case, the easy answer is that it’s the virtuosity of the Swiss accordionist Viviane Chassot. And, frankly, you could play this music on the swanee whistle and kazoo and it would lose not an iota, not one whit of its playfulness and charm.

Chassot is unfazed by the fingery demands of Haydn’s fast movements; and if her scalic runs are perhaps a little lumpier than, say, the crystalline evenness of Leif Ove Andsnes (EMI/Warner, 4/00), it’s because of the properties of the instrument, and it really doesn’t detract from the music at all. You also hear a little of the button action, which suggests that Chassot’s accordion might have been spotlit a touch in the microphone set-up.

The disc opens with the most famous of these works, the D major Concerto No 11, offering Chassot ample opportunity to show off her technique, especially in the Hungarianisms of the finale. A change of perspective compensates for the absence of oboes and horns in the earlier G major (No 4) and F major (No 3) works, thereby enriching the strings (4.4.2.2.1) in the sound picture. The F major Organ Concerto (No 7) is considered almost certainly not to be by Haydn but it too displays all the harmonic and melodic mores of the 1760s.

You may feel that the mood drifts from Enlightenment Vienna to French café culture in the cadenzas but Haydn left none of his own, and Chassot makes ingenious use of the prevailing motifs in her creations. I’m glad to have heard this; and if hearing Haydn’s concertos on the squeezebox would make your life complete, you’ll not find a better disc. (Gramophone)

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini HAYDN 2032 - NO. 7 GLI IMPRESARI

Under the title Gli impresari, The Impresarios – i.e. the directors of the theatre troupes that Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy engaged to perform in his opera houses – this CD gathers together some of the orchestral works by Joseph Haydn linked by their origin and their reception; they were originally conceived as theatre music, before their metamorphosis into symphonies(…). The period from 1772 onwards, when Karl Wahr was responsible for for the summer theatre programme at Esterháza, saw the peak of the multidisciplinary collaboration taking place between the court music directed by Haydn and companies engaged from outside. (…) At the end of 1775 and the beginning of 1776, while Joseph Haydn was occupied in transforming his music for Collé’s comedy into a symphony for concert performance, Karl Wahr was enjoying enormous success with his theatrical entertainments in the ballroom at the theatre in Salzburg. It was there, on 3 January 1776, that Thamos, King of Egypt was staged, a heroic drama whose choruses, musicologists now believe, were composed by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; for this Salzburg performance he also composed four instrumental entractes (recorded for this disc) as well as a melodrama and a Don Giovanni-esque descent into hell.

Sol Gabetta / Bertrand Chamayou / Giovanni Antonini / Kammerorchester Basel SCHUMANN

Schumann is the new album from the critically acclaimed, Grammy nominated cellist Sol Gabetta. This recording features a recording of Schumann’s cello concerto with the renowned Kammerorchester Basel under the direction of Giovanni Antonini. Sol Gabetta also teams up with the wonderful French pianist, Bertrand Chamayou to record Fantasy Pieces op. 73, the Adagio and Allegro op. 70 and the Five Pieces in Folk Style op. 102. 

Sol Gabetta has performed at many prestigious venues across the globe including Wigmore Hall in London, Lucerne, Verbier, Schwetzingen and Rheingau festivals, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg and Beethovenfest Bonn. Gabetta has received many awards including the Herbert von Karajan prize awarded at the Salzburg Easter Festival and the Gramophone Young Artist of the Year Award in 2010.

Kammerorchester Basel / Giovanni Antonini BEETHOVEN Symphony 9

It was astonishing, Debussy wrote in La Revue blanche on 1 May 1901, that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony had not been buried beneath the mass of prose that it had provoked: Debussy’s comment on Beethoven’s symphony is almost as famous as the work with which it deals. The tumultuous applause at the end of the first performance had barely died away before critics were already laying into the composer and his music. 

The final movement in particular gave rise to a debate that continues to reverberate to the present day. Is the deployment of the human voice a liberating blow struck in the name of the purely instrumental symphony? Is this final movement brilliantly inspired? Or was it a “blunder”, as the bold composer himself is reported to have said about this fourth and final movement?

Giovanni Antonini / Kammerorchester Basel HAYDN 2032 - No. 5 L'HOMME DE GÉNIE

Haydn2032, the ambitious project of recording the complete symphonies of Haydn, has been placed from the start under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini, with two ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico, which made the first four volumes, and the Kammerochester Basel, to which this fifth volume and the next two are assigned. Another characteristic of the edition is that each time Haydn is set in perspective with another composer; here it is Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-92): ‘Kraus was the first man of genius that I met. Why did he have to die? It is an irreparable loss for our art. The Symphony in C minor he wrote in Vienna specially for me is a work which will be considered a masterpiece in every century’, said Haydn in 1797. Though he long remained forgotten after his death, Kraus made an active contribution to the movement of poetic renewal called ‘Sturm und Drang’ or ‘Geniezeit’ (time of genius) because such artists as the young Goethe broke free of all tradition to follow their hearts alone. When Haydn called Kraus homme de génie, in French, he probably had this context in mind. The two composers had met in Vienna in 1783.

Giovanni Antonini / Kammerorchester Basel HAYDN 2032 - No. 6 LAMENTATIONE

The year 2017 was a vintage one for Giovanni Antonini: he was awarded an Echo Klassik, two Gramophone Awards and a Diapason d’Or of the Year for his recent releases. Two of these prizes distinguished Il Distratto, volume 4 of the complete recording of the Haydn symphonies on which he embarked for Alpha in 2014. For the sixth volume, released in 2018, the Milanese conductor is again joined by the Kammerorchester Basel, which shares the project with Il Giardino Armonico and which he knows very well, since he conducts it regularly and they have made many recordings together, including volume 5 of the Haydn series. This volume focuses on symphonies with a ‘sacred’ inspiration: the Symphony No.26, ‘Lamentatione’, was composed in 1768 for Holy Week, and no.30 was nicknamed ‘Alleluja’ after the plainchant melody Haydn uses in it. Symphony No.41 was written in 1769.

Nuria Rial / Maurice Steger / Kammerorchester Basel BAROQUE TWITTER

During his travels in Italy in 1739–40, the French scholar Charles de Brosses wrote the following: “The Italians want arias of all kinds imaginable, to con- vey all the many and varied images that music can portray.” There was so- mething in what he said – the Baroque aria is the ideal place to find the most emblematic images of the age. Birdsong was the most perfect form of sin- ging, so why not try to mirror it in music for the human voice? The poetic and musical vocabulary of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century arias was rich in avian life: eagles, swans, turtle-doves and nightingales – among other birds or winged divinities – were used as messengers of love or unutterable tor- ment, or as a metaphors for every possible state of mind (in so-called “simi- le arias”). Another characteristic of ornithologically influenced arias was the presence of a solo instrument whose role was on a par with that of the sin- ger. The selection of birdsong-inspired works included here, for flautino or flauto dolce (sopranino and descant recorders) and soprano, conjure a range of emotions conveyed by a variety of winged messengers. Arias from operas and serenatas, composed between around 1700 and 1740, are interleaved with a selection of instrumental works for the same forces.

Baroque Twitter offers listeners an exiting journey into the world of early 18th -century Baroque poetry and music, a world filled with musical variety and soloistic brilliance.

Together with the Kammerorchester Basel, Nuria Rial and Maurice Steger have recorded an album of Baroque arias and concertos inspired by birdsong and Twitter. In their search for works they have discovered some dazzling jewels, some well known, others previously unrecorded: dreamily playful arias about love, infatuation and the beauties of nature.

Nuria Rial / Valer Sabadus / Kammerorchester Basel SACRED DUETS

Sony Classical present Italian duets and arias with baroque stars Nuria Rial and Valer Sabadus. The Spanish soprano Nuria Rial and the countertenor Valer Sabadus are both stars of the booming baroque music scene. Nuria Rial is a bright soprano with her “addictive timbre“ and Valer Sabadus's velvety "dramatic, crystal clear and lyric voice" (Süddeutsche Zeitung) are for the first time united in one recording. With the excellent Kammerorchester Basel they send the listener on a voyage of discovery to Italy, to lesser known music by Alessandro Scarlatti, Giovanni Paolo Colonna, Giovanni Gabrieli, Antonio Lotti, Giovanni Battista Bononcini, Bernardo Pasquini and Antonio Caldara. The arias and duets are mainly from oratorios, which have already fascinated many listeners. (Presto Classical)

Regula Mühlemann / Kammerorchester Basel / Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli MOZART Arias

Regula Mühlemann was born in Lucerne, Switzerland where she currently resides. She completed her studies at the Conservatory of Lucerne in 2010 graduating with distinction. In June 2012 she completed her master studies «Solo Performance» - again with distinction and top marks.

2013 has proved to be a pivotal year for the young artist and Regula is now emerging as a leading soprano of her generation. She began the year with her debut at the Theater an der Wien singing Isolier in Rossini's Le Comte Ory. Regula then returned to the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in a new production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte for their first Easter Festival, led by Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The 2012/13 season began in Berlin with Regula singing Serpetta in Hans Neuenfels's new production of La finta giardiniera at the Berlin Staatsoper with great success. Further highlights of the 13/14 season were her house debuts with the Grand Théâtre de Genève, singing the role of Waldvogel in Wagner’s Siegfried, under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher, the Opéra de Paris as Papagena, her debut as Elisa in Mozart’s Il Re pastore alongside Rolando Villazón at the Verbier Festival as well as her debut at the Festival Aix-En-Provence (Papagena). She also returned to the Lucerne Festival, singing Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle with the Bayerische Rundfunk.

Regula Mühlemann made her operatic debut at the Theater Luzern. In past seasons, Regula has sung at the Zurich Opera House performing Giannetta in L' Elisir d'Amore, and as Despina in Così fan tutte at the Teatro la Fenice, Venice. In May 2012 she performed L’Elisir d’amore at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, alongside Rolando Villazón who both sang in and directed a highly acclaimed production. This production was broadcast on TV on December 2012. In summer 2012 she also made her debut at the Salzburg Festival, singing the young Papagena in P. v. Winter’s opera Das Labyrinth.
Regula Mühlemann is also a sought-after concert singer. She has already performed in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. She has also completed a successful concert tour of South America and made her concert debut in Berlin singing Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. In September 2013 she gave a recital at the Lucerne Festival’s series “Debut”. The recital was broadcast by the Swiss Radio. She also sang Mozart’s Requiem and Händel's Messiah in Lucerne. Regula Mühlemann works with renowned conductors such as Nello Santi, Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, Enoch zu Guttenberg, Pablo Heras-Casado, Ivor Bolton, and Howard Arman.
Regula made her movie debut singing Ännchen in the feature film ‘Hunter’s Bride’. The critically acclaimed movie was directed by Jens Neubert and featured Daniel Harding conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. She was hailed by the critics; the Neue Züricher Zeitung called her a “first class discovery”. Regula Mühlemann was also one of the young talents featured on the TV show “Stars von morgen”, broadcast on ZDF and Arte in Germany and France. Regula made her next movie appearance starring alongside Bejun Mehta in an exciting new movie production.

Daniel Hope MY TRIBUTE TO YEHUDI MENUHIN

Yehudi Menuhin is the reason I became a violinist. As he used to say, I fell into his lap as a baby of two.

For my parents, life in 1970s South Africa had become intolerable, marked as it was by that tragedy mingled with farce, so characteristic of the appalling apartheid regime. We lived in Durban, where my father co-founded the literary magazine Bolt, publishing poems by writers of many races. From that moment on, his phone was tapped and my parents were placed under permanent surveillance. They had no option but to leave the country, but my father was only offered a so-called exit permit. This meant you could leave but never return.

My parents settled in London, where very soon their money ran out. We had nowhere to go.

At the eleventh hour, facing a calamity, we had some incredible luck: an employment agency offered my mother a compelling choice of jobs: secretary to either the Archbishop of Canterbury or to the violinist, Yehudi Menuhin. She chose Menuhin, and their association lasted 24 years until his death.

Our life changed immediately and forever. For the next years, I grew up in Menuhin’s house in Highgate, London, where my mother would take me every day to play, while she worked. Menuhin was a wonderfully spontaneous man. He’d leave his Guarneri del Gesù in an open violin case on the table, he never put it away. He picked it up and played it, almost as if he were drinking a glass of water. He once told me: “One has to play every day. One is like a bird, and can you imagine a bird saying ‘I’m tired today, I don’t feel like flying’?” The violin was a part of him. To this day, his sound remains in my ear, so unique and so fascinatingly beautiful.

Where does one even begin to summarize a unique career spanning seventy-five years by one of the greatest musicians in history? Perhaps Menuhin’s debut in 1924 in San Francisco at the age of seven; or his debut in Berlin in 1929, after which Albert Einstein exclaimed “Now I know there is a God in heaven!” Or his performance and legendary recording of the Elgar concerto under the composer’s baton in 1932; perhaps his visit to the liberated concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen with the composer Benjamin Britten in 1945; or his highly controversial decision to return to Germany in 1947 and to perform with Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic, the first Jewish artist after the war to do so. Only seven of Menuhin’s 82 years were not spent on the road.

Early on in my life, I had the chance to study and perform some of Bartok’s Duos with Menuhin. It was an incredible experience for me, and an introduction to Bartok’s extraordinary music. Many years later, with Menuhin in his role as conductor, we performed over 60 concerts around the world, including almost all of the standard violin concerti, as well as several contemporary works.

These included Mendelssohn’s early D minor Concerto, which he famously discovered in 1951, and also many works for two violins, such as the A minor Double Concerto by Vivaldi.

On 7th March 1999, I played Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto in Düsseldorf, conducted by Lord Menuhin. It was to be Yehudi’s final concert. After the Schnittke, Menuhin encouraged me to play an encore. I spontaneously chose Kaddish, Ravel’s musical version of the Jewish prayer for the dead. I had grown up on Menuhin’s interpretation of this work and wanted to dedicate it to him. Menuhin pushed me out onto the stage and sat amongst the orchestra listening to it. Perhaps it may have been in some way prophetic. Five days later, he passed away.

There’s hardly a passage in all of these great works where I don’t stop for a minute and think of Menuhin.

Yehudi called himself my “musical grandfather”. Now, in celebration of what would have been his centenary, my friends and I can finally pay our respects to this great man, in a manner I feel certain he would have loved. (Daniel Hope)

Emmanuel Pahud REVOLUTION

Flutist Emmanuel Pahud has a knack for bringing the 18th century alive, and with this quartet of flute concertos he attempts to follow up his successful earlier release The Flute King, which included flute concertos from the orbit of Prussia's King Frederick the Great. Even allowing for the fact that musical-social correspondences aren't always as easy to detect as when Beethoven dedicated his Symphony No. 3 to Napoleon and then retracted the dedication, this program is a bit more diffuse in its concept than the last one. Only two of the concertos, by Devienne and Gianella, actually date from the revolutionary period, and none of the four shows much impact of the big operatic style of Spontini that influenced Beethoven and other composers. Pahud in a note sets out the Flute Concerto in G major by (probably) Gluck as a representative of the ancien régime, but if anything with its sensuous slow movement it seems strikingly modern. None of this is to say that the individual pieces, all (even the disputed Gluck work) pretty much unknown, aren't a lot of fun. Jean-Pierre Rampal used to play several of these works in concert, and Pahud seems to have set his mind on being Rampal's successor. That's a worthy aim, and with the confident virtuosity and fine breath control in big lines he seems well on his way to achieving the goal. Check out especially the Flute Concerto No. 7 in E minor by François Devienne, known in his time as the French Mozart; the lively, alert accompaniment by the Kammerorchester Basel under Giovanni Antonini is a major enhancement to Pahud's work here. A worthwhile flute release reminiscent of the Rampal classics. (James Manheim)

Carmignola / Gabetta / Lazic BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto

Cello superstar Sol Gabetta teams up with the celebrated musicians Giuliano Carmignola, violin, and Dejan Lazić, piano, to form a formidably talented ensemble for this new all-Beethoven recording. They will be joined by conductor Giovanni Antonini and the Kammerorchester Basel, a team who have great pedigree recording Beethoven’s works to critical acclaim.
The centrepiece of this album is Beethoven’s ‘Triple Concerto’, the Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano in C Major, Op. 56. The choice of the three solo instruments effectively makes this a concerto for piano trio, and it is the only concerto Beethoven ever completed for more than one solo instrument.
The album also includes a number of Beethoven’s most well-known overtures. The famous Coriolan Overture features alongside ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’ and the Egmont overtures.

Nuria Rial / Lawrence Zazzo G.F. HÄNDEL Duetti Amorosi

Spanish soprano Núria Rial and American counter tenor Lawrence Zazzo join forces in an outstanding selection of duets and scenes from Handel operas. For most of the operas, they have included recitatives, arias, and even overtures and instrumental interludes to provide the context for the duets. The result is wonderfully effective in giving the listener a deeper understanding of the drama and the characters, as well as marvelous additional music. Rial's and Zazzo's voices are ideally matched -- absolutely secure, natural, and unforced and tonally pure with flawless intonation and brilliant coloratura. Their voices are also powerful; there's no sweet sentimentality here, but genuine passion. With conductor Lawrence Cummings, they emphasize the varieties of emotions expressed in the duets, from the flashing anger of a lovers' quarrel in the scene from Serse to the melting tenderness of "Io t'abbracio," from Rodelinda, and, especially, "Addio! Mio caro bene" from Teseo. They are fully persuasive in conveying the varieties of passion the characters are experiencing, and the Kammerorchester Basel provides a nuanced accompaniment that matches the singers' expressiveness. Deutsche Harmonia Mundi's sound is vibrant, clean, and intimate. Strongly recommended for fans of Baroque opera, or any fans of opera who are susceptible to the beauty of the commingled sound of soprano and counter tenor. (Stephen Eddins)

'Duetti amorosi' is an imaginative and thoughtfully chosen programme of operatic duets (although the singers also get two arias each).

Nothing predictable is included here, except perhaps the two items from Rodelinda, but the lovely performance of 'Ritorna, o cara' and the pathos-laden 'Io t'abbraccio' more than justify their presence. Picking a diverse selection of repertoire that skilfully conveys the expressive and stylistic breath of Handel's writing is certainly one of the often-ignored secrets of planning a successful Handel recital programme, and the performers' enthusiasm for reviving numbers from Arminio (including its fine overture), Teseo, Muzio Scevola, Poro (the gorgeous 'Caro amico amplesso') and Admeto deserves high praise.

Rial and Zazzo sing well, both individually and together: in the duets they are obviously listening sympathetically to each other; they seem to know when to emphasise vocal contrasts or blend closely. Laurence Cummings provides expert musical direction from the harpsichord, ensuring that everything is paced to perfection, and that the musico-dramatic characteristics presented in each piece speak with transparency to the listener; none of these performances would feel out of place in context of their parent works. (The Gramophone Classical Music Guide / 2010)