Trio Sonatas by Musica Antiqua Köln

Musica Antiqua Köln

Trio Sonatas

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917212228
Catnr: CC 72122
Release date: 01 January 2004

1 CD

Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917212228

Catalogue number
CC 72122

Release date
01 January 2004

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Outstanding composers of vocal music are not always equally pre-eminent in the field of instrumental music, and vice versa. Handel and Mozart in the 18th century may have proved the gifted exceptions to this rule, but it would certainly be a mistake to mention Bach's name in the same breath, as most of his contemporaries considered his vocal works as paradigms of instrumentally conceived non-vocality. Indeed, Bach himself remarked to his childhood friend Georg Erdmann in the 1730s that his transition from Capellmeister to Kantor - i.e. from his Cöthen to his Leipzig job - was an indignity; perhaps we should consider this description as more than just an irrational self-assessment. The style of the sonatas inclines in the direction of Sammartini, a favourite of the English opera scene at that time. Gluck operates as it were in a free space, keenly searching, creating many beautiful moments but almost no self-contained musical forms or definite musical events. And why should it be otherwise? With this cd, Challenge Classics launches a world premiere recording.

De faam van Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-1787) is onlosmakelijk verbonden met zijn opera's en de controverses die deze destijds losmaakten, met name in Frankrijk. Voor instrumentale muziek had Gluck weinig belangstelling, maar dat hij ook daarin uit de voeten kon bewijst de in 1746 te Londen gepubliceerde collectie van Zes triosonates. Het zijn korte driedelige stukken die onmiskenbaar gericht zijn op de eisen van het publiek, dat graag welluidende, niet al te gecompliceerde en speeltechnisch makkelijke muziek kocht. Bijna allemaal openen ze met een langzaam deel dat gevolgd wordt door een snel deel, waarna een galant menuet het werk besluit. Deze onbekende werken van Gluck worden hier uitgevoerd door Musica Antiqua Köln. Merkwaardig is dat de leider van het ensemble het nodig gevonden heeft in het boekje voornamelijk uiteen te zetten hoe tweederangs en oninteressant deze muziek eigenlijk is, vergeleken met de triosonate uit Bachs Ein musikalisches Opfer. Als hij zijn eigen opname eens had beluisterd, zou hij wellicht meer aandacht hebben voor de innemende driestemmige charme die hier tot klinken komt. (JvG)

Artist(s)

Musica Antiqua Köln

For now 25 years, Musica Antiqua Köln and Reinhard Goebel have been associated with virtually every important musical centre and festival at which early music is performed. The ensemble is renowned for their lively interpretations of 17th- and 18th-century works and for their virtuoso and imaginative historical performance practice.
Founded in 1973 by Reinhard Goebel and fellow students from the Cologne Conservatory, Musica Antiqua Köln initially devoted itself to the performance of Baroque chamber and sacred music. Musica Antiqua Köln’s international breakthrough came in 1979, when the ensemble made its debut at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall during the annual English Bach Festival and gave five concerts at the Holland Festival. On the occasion of their 10th anniversary, Reinhard Goebel augmented the ensemble’s chamber-group nucleus with additional string and wind players to allow the performance of orchestral music as well - both in the concert hall and in the recording studio. Since 1981, Musica Antiqua Köln and Reinhard Goebel have made regular tours of the USA, visiting Australia and South America several times and touring China in The Bach Year 1985. Musica Antiqua Köln received the Buxtehude Prize from the City of Lübeck and has also received awards from Siemens and the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen. In 1981 the ensemble was named Artist of the Year by the Deutsche Phonoakademie.
Reinhard Goebel was born in Siegen (Westfalen) in 1952. After leaving school, he took up his studies at the Cologne Conservatory with Franzjosef Maier, then with Saschko Gawriloff at the Folkwangschule in Essen, followed by an intensive course of study with Eduard Melkus and several years under the guidance of Marie Leonhardt. In addition, Reinhard Goebel studied musicology for several years at Cologne University. It was here that he laid the foundations of his immense knowledge of early music, a knowledge that is amply reflected in his ensemble’s concerts and recordings. In the meantime, Reinhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Köln have played an unprecedented role in increasing general awareness and knowledge of Baroque music.
For their recordings Musica Antiqua Köln and Reinhard Goebel have received many prizes, a.o. the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis 1981, Grand Prix International du Disque 1987, Grand Prix National du Disque 1984, Gramophone Award 1984, and CD Compact Award 1990.

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Stephan Schardt

Reinhard Goebel

Klaus-Dieter Brandt

Leon Berben

Composer(s)

Christoph Willibald von Gluck

Christopj Willibald Gluck was born in 1714 in Erasbach, Bavaria. At a young, he was already determined to become a professional musician, but his father, a forester, was against this. So much even that Gluck decided to run away from home to move to Prague. There, he immersed himself into the local music scene and advanced as a self-educated chamber musician to work for the nobility.
His first opera Artaserse (1741) was a major success, which allowed Gluck to travel throughout Europe to work as an independent musician and composer of Italian opera seria. He married to the daughter of a well-established salesman en settled in Vienna in 1752 where he foumd himself in a circle of poets, composers and choreographers led by Count Giacomo Durazzo.
During this period, Gluck started to focus on French opéra comique and ballet. He wrote the music for the revolutionary Don Juan and in 1762, he composed his Orfeo ed Euridice, the first of three operas in which he broke with the conventions of Italian opera seria: the music had to be in the service of the drama, and not of the vain singers. Finally, Gluck was able to give a new impulse to the French tragédie lyrique in Paris (with operas such as his Iphigénie and Tauride). Gluck died in 1787 in Vienna of a stroke. He wasn't a great revolutionary composer, but he surely influenced Mozart, and later even Berlioz and Wagner.

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