Complete Chamber Music by Ton Koopman

Ton Koopman

Complete Chamber Music

Price: € 29.95
Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917289022
Catnr: CC 72890
Release date: 06 August 2021
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Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917289022

Catalogue number
CC 72890

Release date
06 August 2021

"Dieterich Buxtehude - Opera Omnia, a sensational project of the Dutch label Challenge Classics started in 2005, has helped to place the work of Dietrich Buxtehude, a composer who influenced the consolidation of the counterpoint development of the Baroque, in a privileged place."

Sonograma, 29-9-2021

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

Dieterich Buxtehude’s chamber works today counts among the least known of his compositions. They were already forgotten soon after 1700, and this despite the fact that two third of Buxtehude’s chamber sonatas, unlike any other category in the composers creative output, were published during his lifetime. The publication of sonatas indicates that there was a market for this repertoire in the later 17th century. Moreover, the publication of two sets of such works suggests that the fame of the Lübeck master and the success of the first set must have created the demand for a second. However, the primary reason for these works getting out of fashion by the time of Buxtehude’s death was their unconventional instrumental scoring and, more importantly, the triumphant rise of the modern Italian trio sonata by Corelli, Albinoni, and others in the early 18th century.

Buxtehude’s chamber music repertoire consists of altogether twenty-two works. All of Buxtehude’s chamber works present highly sophisticated compositions that belong among the most attractive and technically most demanding examples of the genre of ensemble sonata, then still in its infancy. They resemble in many ways the six sonatas of the Hortus musicus (Hamburg, 1688) by Buxtehude’s colleague and friend, Johann Adam Reinken, organist at St. Catherine’s Church in Hamburg. But like Reinken’s pieces, they were influenced by Italian models, especially the instrumental sonatas by the Venetian composer Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690), which were circulating widely also in Northern Europe. At the same time, they deeply reflect the improvisational, fanciful, expressive and colorful mannerisms of Buxtehude and his school, which the writer Johann Mattheson in 1739 referred to as “stylus fantasticus”.

Ton Koopman speelt Buxtehude's vergeten kamermuziek
Opera Omnia deel XII is het eerste deel in de serie met kamermuziek van Dieterich (Dietrich, Diderich) Buxtehude, uitgevoerd door Ton Koopman. De kamermuziek van Buxtehude is het minst bekend, maar vormt een klasse apart. Het is geavanceerde en technisch veeleisende muziek van een grote schoonheid. 'Violisten Catherine Manson en David Rabinovich vormen een uitstekend duo in de drie sonates voor twee violen, gamba en basso continuo, waaruit bewonderenswaardig samenspel en interactie blijkt.' Robin Stowell, The Strad.

Buxtehude was een Deens-Duitse organist en door velen bewonderde componist uit de barokperiode. Hij componeerde vocale en instrumentale muziek. Zijn orgelwerken omvatten een aanzienlijk deel van het standaard orgelrepertoire van onze hedendaagse kerkdiensten. Buxtehude wordt beschouwd als de belangrijkste Duitse componist in de periode tussen Heinrich Schütz en Bach. Zijn stijl heeft veel componisten sterk beïnvloed. Hij was één van de grote voorbeelden van Johann Sebastian Bach. Het verhaal gaat dat Bach, toen 20 jaar, in 1705 helemaal naar Lübeck liep - 400 km - om Dieterich Buxtehude daar in de Marienkirche te horen spelen.

Wellicht dat die anekdote Ton Koopman inspireerde tot zijn project Opera Omnia om het gehele bewaard gebleven oeuvre van Buxtehude uit te voeren en op te nemen. Er was hem veel aan gelegen Buxtehude als het brein achter de vocale muziek van Bach te erkennen. Koopman is een van de meest vooraanstaande uitvoerders van oude muziek en voorzittter van het Internationale Buxtehude Gesellschaft.

Ton Koopman beginnt mit der nun vorliegenden 12. Folge seiner Buxtehude-Gesamteinspielung die Reihe mit Aufnahmen aller Kammermusikwerke. Dieterich Buxtehudes Kammermusik zählt heute zum am wenigsten bekannten Teil seines Schaffens. Die vorliegende CD enthält die handschriftlich überlieferten Sonaten. Ihre Besetzung variiert (im Gegensatz zu den gedruckten). Unter ihnen finden sich drei vierstimmige Werke für zwei Violinen, Viola da gamba und Basso continuo. Auch formal sind sie uneinheitlicher als die gedruckten. Möglicherweise war das der Grund, warum man sie nicht für die Veröffentlichung in einem Band geeignet hielt.

Artist(s)

Ton Koopman was born in Zwolle in 1944. After a classical education he studied organ, harpsichord and musicology in Amsterdam and was awarded the Prix d'Excellence for both instruments. Almost from the beginning of his musical studies he was fascinated with authentic instruments and a performance style based on sound scholarship.

Even before completing his studies he laid the foundations for a career as a conductor of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music and this fascination with the Baroque era led him in 1969, at age 25, to establish his first Baroque orchestra and, in 1979, to found The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra followed in 1993 by the Amsterdam Baroque Choir.

Koopman's extensive and impressive activities as a soloist, accompanist and conductor have been recorded on a large number of LP's and CD's for labels like Erato, Teldec, Sony, Philips and DGG. Recently Ton Koopman has created his own record label: 'Antoine Marchand', with which he will publish his future recordings.

Over the course of a forty-year career Ton Koopman has appeared at the most important concert halls and festivals of the five continents. As an organist he has performed on the most prestigious historical instruments of Europe, and as a harpsichord player and conductor of his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir he has been a regular guest at venues which include the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Theatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the Philharmonie in Munich, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Lincoln Center in New York, and leading concert halls in Vienna, London, Berlin, Brussels, Madrid, Rome, Salzburg, Tokyo and Osaka. Over the past ten years Ton Koopman has been engaged in 'the recording project of the '90's' (so described by 'The Guardian' in London). Between 1994 and 2004 he has conducted and recorded all the existing cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach, a massive work for which he has been awarded with the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis "Echo Klassik 1997", the Prix Hector Berlioz, and been nominated for both the Grammy Award (USA) and the Gramophone Award (UK). In March 2000 he received an Honorary Degree from the Utrecht University for his scholarly work on the Bach Cantatas and Passions and in February 2004 he was awarded both the prestigious Silver Phonograph by the Dutch recording industry and the VSCD Classical Music Award 2004 by the Directors of Theatres and Concert Halls of Holland. Ton Koopman is also very active as a guest conductor and he has worked with many prominent orchestras in Europe, the USA and Japan including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Boston Symphony, the Vienna Symphony, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Danish Radio Orchestra and many others. He has been for eight years principal conductor of the Radio Chamber Orchestra in Holland and he is principal guest conductor of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. In the coming season he will be working with the Chicago Symphony, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Helsinki Radio Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Ton Koopman publishes regularly and for a number of years he has been engaged in editing the complete Handel Organ Concerti for Breitkopf & Härtel. Pedagogy has been an important factor in Ton Koopman's life for many years and to that end he is professor of harpsichord at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Composer(s)

Dieterich Buxtehude

Press

Dieterich Buxtehude - Opera Omnia, a sensational project of the Dutch label Challenge Classics started in 2005, has helped to place the work of Dietrich Buxtehude, a composer who influenced the consolidation of the counterpoint development of the Baroque, in a privileged place.
Sonograma, 29-9-2021

Although the musical fabric privileges, as is usually the case, the acute parts, these scores do not allow the use of supporting actors, in fact Ton Koopman, the harpsichord and the organ, surrounds himself with a masterful ensemble that is able to run passing at any moment - as at the inlet of a movement as well as at the intersection of a counterpoint - the flamboyant witness of an eternal relay.
Classic Voice, 20-1-2022

Ostinato figures in passacaglia passages create opportunities for improvisation, which the musicians execute beautifully.
American Record Guide, 15-12-2021

The exhaustive work by Ton Koopman will be recorded in the annals of the history of phonography, leaving us a quality legacy difficult to match, with some really excellent performances.
Ritmo, 01-12-2021

...with high quality of performance and production there can hardly be any argument about these recordings being very fine indeed. (...) If you missed these recordings the first time around, grab them now in their box-set form for just a few pounds more than only one of the original volumes.
Musicweb International, 06-10-2021