Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 10 LES HEURES DU JOUR

 

LES HEURES DU JOUR

 

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 9 L'ADDIO

 

HAYDN 2032 - No. 9 L'ADDIO

 

Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini HAYDN Die Schöpfung

DIE SCHÖPFUNG

 

Patricia Kopatchinskaja / Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico WHAT'S NEXT VIVALDI?

WHAT'S NEXT VIVALDI?

Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini LA MORTE DELLA RAGIONE

LA MORTE DELLA RAGIONE

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 8 LA ROXOLANA

HAYDN 2032 - No. 8 LA ROXOLANA

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico VIVALDI Concerti per Flauto

                                                       CONCERTI PER FLAUTO

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No.8 - LA ROXOLANA

                                                HAYDN 2032 - No.8 - LA ROXOLANA

Cecilia Bartoli / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini FARINELLI

Renowned for portraying the music of the baroque like no one else, Cecilia Bartoli presents her new recording of arias famously performed by legendary castrato, Farinelli.

Exploring the complex gender roles of the world of baroque opera, and highlighting the phenomenon of the castrati, a horrifying practice which led to some of the most celebrated work of the period.

Featuring works by Farinelli’s brother, Riccardo Broschi, and his mentor, Nicola Porpora, as well as Hasse, Caldara and Giacomelli. Including two new world premiere recordings, from Porpora’s Polifemo and Broschi’s La Merope.

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 4 IL DISTRATTO

The fourth volume of the Haydn 2032 project thrusts into the limelight one of the most important stock characters in the theatre of sounds and words, the Kapellmeister, and explores some glamorous and (in)glorious moments in the career of Maestro Haydn. It features three symphonies by the ‘Shakespeare of Music’ – one of which is even associated with an actual play. This bears the title ‘Sinfonia in C. per la commedia intitolata Il distratto’ (the name of the play soon became the symphony’s nickname) and consists of an overture, four entr’actes, and a finale to be played at the end of the performance. Also on this disc is a large-scale buffo scene by his colleague Cimarosa. Il maestro di cappella is a witty and ironic parody, in which a member of the ‘old school’ of musicians tries to improve the ensemble playing of his orchestra. To his chagrin, the players do react, but in extremely undisciplined fashion: they are distracted, make false entries and disagree musically...

(from a text by Christian Moritz-Bauer)

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 3 SOLO E PENSOSO

Looking ahead to the 300th anniversary of the birth of Haydn in 2032, the Joseph Haydn Foundation of Basel has joined forces with the Alpha Classics label to record all of the composer’s 107 symphonies. This ambitious project is placed under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini, who now presents the third volume, after two previous issues that attracted great attention and received numerous awards, including the Echo Klassik Prize 2015 for the ‘best orchestral recording’ of the year.

Since he sees the music of Haydn as ‘a kaleidoscope of human emotions’, Giovanni Antonini has decided to approach the symphonies not chronologically, but thematically; the theme here is Haydn the philosopher. The Italian conductor has chosen in each of the programmes to make connections between the symphonies and other works. For this volume, he calls on the magnificent soprano Francesca Aspromonte to perform a number of arias including the famous ‘Solo e pensoso’. (Outhere Music)

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 2 IL FILOSOFO

For this second volume in the Haydn 2032 project, the complete recording of his symphonies, Giovanni Antonini has chosen to put forward the Symphony Der Philosoph. He associates with it a symphony by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, eldest son of the Kantor of Leipzig, who is generally considered the most gifted of his sons. Different reasons brought these two great composers the originality and sometimes eccentricity that characterize their works, one suffering from the fame of his father, the other from his own genius. Whereas Haydn’s symphonies differentiate themselves by form, orchestration and keys, W. F. Bach’s begins in the style of a Baroque overture, gradually turning into a tempestuous piece and perhaps already reflecting the transition from a ‘Golden Age’ to the more tormented world that will follow the Age of Enlightenment. (Outhere Music)

Giovanni Antonini / Il Giardino Armonico HAYDN 2032 - No. 1 LA PASSIONE

Alpha & Giovanni Antonini embark on a new major project! 

Under the musical direction of Giovanni Antonini, the music project "Haydn2032" was created to realize a vision: to record and perform – in a unique cycle featuring concerts across Europe – all of Joseph Haydn's 107 symphonies by 2032, the 300th anniversary of the composer's birth. 

‘Symphony No. 49 is of dramatic inspiration, as is the finale of the 39th (with four horns!) in a fairly “Gluckist” style. We are at the beginnings of Sturm und Drang.

‘The first performance of Gluck’s ballet Don Juan, in Vienna in 1761, was an outstanding event in the development of dramatic expression in music. This was the first “modern” ballet, featuring dancers illustrating the story, not through a pre-established dance form (minuet, gavotte, etc.) but through free expression of their bodies.

‘I am truly captivated by the very strong correspondence existing in Gluck’s score between the story of Don Juan (the dancers’ movements) and the music, like a sort of little dictionary of musical gestures, with elements that are to be found in purely instrumental music of the period, including Haydn’s.

‘Yet it was in the 1760s (thus after the first performance of Gluck’s Don Juan) that Haydn began his first “dramatic” symphonies. ‘So I find it very interesting to bring together this piece by Gluck and these symphonies.’ (Giovanni Antonini)

Isabelle Faust / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Violin Concertos

The five most brilliant concertos for violin, all penned before the age of 19! Mozart was not even 15 years old when he began composing violin concertos that would serve as a backdrop at Salzburg receptions. An insatiable drive for independence would however lead the young Konzertmeister to overtly challenge musical forms, innovate with genres, humour and frivolity, all of which can be heard in this delightful first collaboration between Isabelle Faust and the musicians of Il Giardino Armonico.

“These wonderful performances have the air of chamber music, of close listening between soloist, band and director. Faust isn’t spotlit…but seems part of the ensemble, her sound growing out of the corporate entity to glitter, coax, snarl and soar as required…[a] thought-provoking and eminently enjoyable cycle” (Gramophone)

“Faust and Il Giardino Armonico bring out the shades of colour in the music and revelling in the characteristic phrases, but never forcing the issue. It goes without saying that Faust's tone is just as sweet here as in her other recordings, and she puts just the right amount of playful rubato into the cadenzas without straying into self-indulgence.” (Presto Classical)

Anna Prohaska / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini SERPENT & FIRE

The German soprano Anna Prohaska joins Alpha Classics for several recording projects. Her first recital brings together two superb African queens - Dido and Cleopatra - and follows them all over Europe during the first century of opera, from the 1640s to 1740. A firework display of arias, virtuosic and tragic by turns, written by the leading personalities of Baroque music ( Cavalli, Handel, Purcell, Hasse) and composers still awaiting rediscovery such as Sartorio, Graupner and the Venetian Castrovillari. For this programme built like a tragedy around the queens of Egypt anda Carthage, whom she interprets with the passion and fervour that have made her reputation, Anna Prohaska is accompanied by one of today's finest Baroque ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico; under the inspired guidance of their director Giovanni Antonini (who is also a dazzling recorder soloist in some of the arias), they keep us on the edge of our seats from start to finish.

A top star in Germany, Anna Prohaska also sings on the world's leading opratic stages, from La Scala to Covent Garden by way of Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg.

Julia Lezhneva / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini HANDEL

The young Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva has been described as possessing an “angelic voice” (The New York Times) with “pure tone” (Opernwelt) and “flawless technique” (The Guardian). They are big claims, and she has been living up to them ever since she created a sensation at the Classical Brit awards at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2010, singing Rossini’s Fra il padre at the invitation of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. 

Born into a family of geophysicists on Sakhalin Island in 1989, she began playing the piano and singing at the age of five. She graduated from the Gretchaninov Music School and continued her vocal and piano studies at the Moscow Conservatory. At 17 she came to international attention winning the Elena Obraztsova International Competition, and at 18 shared the concert stage with Juan Diego Flórez at the opening of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. In 2008 she began studying with tenor Dennis O’Neill in Cardiff, completing her training under Yvonne Kenny at London’s Guildhall School. She has also attended masterclasses with Elena Obraztsova in St. Petersburg, Alberto Zedda in Pesaro and Thomas Quasthoff in Verbier. In 2009 she won first prize at the Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition in Helsinki and the following year she took first prize at the Paris International Opera Competition, the youngest entrant in each competition’s history. 

The emphasis for this album is very much on youth and prodigious talent: at 25, Julia Lezhneva is ideally suited to the soprano arias of the young Handel, who arrived in Italy from Germany as a 21 year old at the beginning of the 18th century.

She has the perfect partners in Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini whose recordings of music from the Italian baroque are celebrated for their “fizzing virtuosity” and “exquisite cushion of sound” (The Independent). For some tracks the orchestra is led by Dmitry Sinkovsky, the extraordinary Russian violinist and one of today’s most versatile Baroque musicians.

The music encompasses the best of Handel’s operatic and religious works from his years in Florence and Rome: the operas Rodrigo and Agrippina and the oratorios Il Trionfo and La Resurrezione as well as the complete Salve Regina and soprano solo from Dixit Dominus. Best known is the radiant “Lascia la spina” from Il Trionfo and its later incarnation as “Lascia ch'io pianga” from the opera Rinaldo.

The recording was made in the famously musical and historic Italian city of Cremona in the beautiful auditorium of the Museo del Violino.