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René Jacobs, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – Bach: Mass in B Minor, BWV 232 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:43:56 minutes | 1,72 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
A composition as brilliant as it is protean – the earliest sections date back to 1724, others were written in 1733 in the hope of obtaining a post in Dresden – the Mass in B minor occupied Bach until the end of his life. The work, which is more ecumenical than strictly Catholic, offers a digest of his art at its expressive peak: a world in itself. It is an understatement to say that the performers on this recording were eager to revisit it, following their acclaimed interpretations of the two Passions and the Christmas Oratorio.
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RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Justin Doyle – Handel: Coronation Anthems (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:17 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
In 1727, having just become a naturalised British subject, Handel was commissioned to write a set of anthems for the coronation of George II. Since he could hardly have expected ever to see a more majestic occasion, the composer took full advantage of it to put on a musical firework display of unprecedented splendour. The RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin give thrilling accounts of these flamboyant works – some of which are still used today at each new coronation!
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RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin & Justin Doyle – Handel: Dixit Dominus, Laudate pueri, Nisi Dominus (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:04 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
It was in Rome, where he resided between 1707 and 1710, that the young Handel composed these three dazzling sacred works. The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the RIAS Kammerchor give us an extremely lively and colourful reading of these pieces in which the composer showcased his talent: allegiance to the forms of the past, total mastery of counterpoint and, already, a unique feeling for storytelling. Everything here announces musical genius.
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Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – C.P.E. Bach Symphonies -From Berlin to Hamburg (2024) [24Bit-96kHz] FLAC [PMEDIA] ⭐️
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:42 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classique, Musique symphonique, Symphonies
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – C.P.E. Bach: Symphonies – From Berlin to Hamburg (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:42 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
This new album rounds off the complete recording of the symphonies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach that the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin began over two decades ago. The final batch offers the quintessence of his art, revealing the full originality of Johann Sebastian’s inspired son, whose freedom and inventiveness paved the way for Haydn and Mozart.
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Christina Landshamer, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Bernhard Forck – Telemann: Ino & Late Works (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:11:06 minutes | 735 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PENTATONE
The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and soprano Christina Landshamer present a Telemann monography, consisting of his cantata Ino and instrumental works composed in the same period. Despite, or perhaps actually thanks to, Telemann’s use of just one singer, Ino is highly dramatic, depicting a desperate woman trying to save herself and her son from her husband turned mad, eventually throwing herself off a cliff and then transformed into a goddess. Telemann composed it two years before his death, and the score is exceptionally rich and colourful. The cantata is combined with his Overture in D Major, Divertimento in E-flat Major and Sinfonia melodica, each underlining the exceptional liveliness of this composer well into the ninth decade of his prolific life.
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Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – Telemann: Concerti per molti stromenti (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:18 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin perform a selection of Telemann’s Concerti per molti stromenti – works that feature many unusual and wonderful instrumental combination, and an amazing variety of styles. If you ever wondered where Bach got the idea for the Brandenburg Concertos, look no further than the concertos of Telemann.
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Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Xenia Löffler & Bernhard Forck – Mozart: Paris & Haffner Symphonies & Oboe Concerto (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:04:48 minutes | 651 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin launches a series of Mozart symphonies to appear on Pentatone, starting with the composer’s “Paris” and “Haffner” symphonies. On this first album, the works are coupled with his enchanting Oboe Concerto – performed by the ensemble’s first oboeist Xenia Löffler – and the bold overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail in Mozart’s own woodwind arrangement. Taken together, these pieces demon-strate the rich palette and expressive power of Mozart’s music in the period between 1777 and 1783, during which he finally managed to spread his wings and leave his hometown of Salzburg.
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RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Hans-Christoph Rademann – C.P.E. Bach: Magnificat, Wq. 215 (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 55:38 minutes | 664 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
On 9 April 1786, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach conducted a charity concert in Hamburg featuring three of his finest and most representative works: the Symphony Wq 183/1 (1780), the Magnificat written in 1749 in the hope of succeeding his father as Kantor in Leipzig, and finally the stupendous Heilig (1776) for double choir, of which he wrote: ‘It will be my swansong of this kind, and will serve to ensure that I shall not soon be forgotten after my death.’ He was right: 300 years after his birth, this album with the same programme proves as much.
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RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, René Jacobs – Mozart : Die Entführung aus dem Serail (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:40:06 minutes | 2,79 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Astounding modernity The 1782 premiere in Vienna of Die Entführung aus dem Serail brought Mozart unprecedented public and professional success. This dazzling triumph did not come by chance: with music placing the accent on exoticism and a libretto celebrating the ideas of the Enlightenment, the opera ran counter to contemporary prejudices concerning the Ottoman Empire. In championing a German national opera, Mozart gave an important place to the spoken dialogue, often severely cut, but fully restored and brought to life here to underline the astounding modernity of the text.
“Mari Eriksmoen was an charming and malicious Blonde with a light and elegant soprano well-suited to the fiery English maid. As Konstanze, Robin Johannssen’s soprano boasted a middle range with silvery tones. The male side of the cast was just perfect. As Pedrillo, Julian Prégardien allied both appealing singing and jubilatory acting. Maximilian Schmitt’s Belmonte impressed by his powerful and manly lyric sound and with aptly executed fioriturain “Ich baue ganz auf deine Stärke”… The strongest performance however came from Dimitry Ivaschenko. The Russian bass, combining splendid deep tone with extreme flexibility, managed to convey the comical side of his character, without reducing it to the buffoonery that often mars other interpretations.
Totally at one with the theatrical approach to the performance, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin followed the maestro’s contrasted tempi and played superbly…this performance at the Concertgebouw took place a few days after Mr. Jacobs recorded the work in the studio with the same team of soloists and orchestra. Without the visual support, that recording will be a very different experience but I’d certainly be keen to see if it matches up to my memories.” Nicolas Nguyen, 21 September 2014, bachtrack.com
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René Jacobs, RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – J.S. Bach: St Matthew Passion, BWV 244 (Matthäus-Passion) {5.1 Edition} (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:39:02 minutes | 6,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
It has haunted René Jacobs since childhood: first as a boy soprano in Ghent, then as a countertenor, he has constantly frequented the supreme masterpiece that is the ‘St Matthew Passion’. Jacobs uses the layout of the Good Friday Vesper service from Bach’s time, with choirs front and back, rather than side-by-side. He also gives us extra soloists to complete the bi-choral effect. For Bach, the two halves were 28 metres apart. At that distance, coordination difficulties begin to appear between the speed of light, and the speed of sound, and we cannot determine how Bach dealt with this problem. However the wonders of SACD multichannel surround sound can at last give an impression of what Bach intended for St Thomas’ Church in Leipzig.
As ever, harmonia mundi’s production values are such that we are given several essays on the concept of the layout in Bach’s time, reflections on the new recording by René Jacobs, full texts and biographies in a 176 page booklet, with sumptuous packaging. This is, somewhat surprisingly, René Jacobs’ first recording of ‘St Matthew’.
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Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – Mozart: Adagios & Fugues (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:16 minutes | 972 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Early in the 1780s, Mozart began attending soirees at the home of music patron Baron van Swieten, who owned an extensive collection of Bach and Handel manuscripts. Mozart began copying Bach’s fugues for his own studies and made arrangements of Handel oratorios for performance — both would provide much of the stimulus for the counterpoint in several of his latest works. This CD gives a glimpse, though only a narrow one, into Mozart’s Bach studies.
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Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – Bach, J S: The Art of Fugue, BWV1080 (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:17:39 minutes | 774 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Bach’s unfinished Art of Fugue, published for still-debated reasons in open score, has been performed and recorded in dozens of different instrumental versions. But this one, by the veteran Akademie für alte Musik, founded in the former East Berlin, is unique; few others have differentiated the fugues by instrumental forces deployed, and perhaps in none has the overall effect been quite so kaleidoscopic as this one. The rationale for this remains a bit uncertain after perusal of the booklet notes (in German and English); the group members write that, as with other instrumental versions, they aim to “achieve transparent and legible textures,” but their “real motivation in tackling the work was the pleasure of plunging together into the structures, harmonic language, and chromatic content of this music, in which an ensemble can make extraordinary discoveries through musical and instrumental confrontations.” The Akademie für alte Musik is not a historical instrument group, and there are no claims of any kind for authentic performance. Instead there is a shifting set of forces with a few recurring groups or individual players: a string quartet, a solo keyboardist, small wind groups, various pairs of strings in the canons, and tuttis including the entire ensemble of strings, three oboes in different ranges, bassoon, trombone, and keyboard (either harpsichord or organ). The shifts in instrumentation do not correspond to the work’s broad sections (simple fugues, fugues in augmentation, double and triple fugues, and the awesomely complex mirror fugues), and it’s hard to find a pattern of any kind. The motivation is murky, but the effect is pleasing if the listener approaches the music in the same sort of freewheeling spirit that the performers seem to have; the incredible concentration demanded by the Art of Fugue, which may or may not have been intended as a work to be performed from start to finish, is replaced by a light sense of anticipation that is extrinsic to the work but not fundamentally alien to it. This is the kind of recording for which sampling will reliably place the potential buyer into the pro or anti group. The sound engineering, a product of Berlin’s Teldex Studio, is a major strong point. – James Manheim
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Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin – Handel: Water Music HWV 348-50 (1717) (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:34 minutes | 913 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Music for a royal excursion. On 17 July 1717, King George I of England went up by Water to Chelsea, and was entertain d with an excellent Consort of Musick…composed specially by the famous Handel . The fifty musicians cost the…princely sum of £150 but their hunting horns, trumpets, flutes and the rest so delighted the company that the concert was repeated three times in the course of the evening. No doubt the matchless virtuosos of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin will repeat that feat in your living room!
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Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin & Howard Arman – Mozart: Messe in C-Moll, K. 427
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:03:40 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BR-Klassik
Written in 1782, Mozart’s Mass in C minor – although incomplete – ranks as one of the outstanding Mass settings in European music history. The very recent reconstruction/completion of the Mass by Clemens Kemme in the spring of 2018 confines itself to the original sources, avoiding any arbitrary additions. The work was recorded in this critically acclaimed version for the Bayerischer Rundfunk during the summer of 2018, and conducted by Howard Arman. This album is thus the first recording of the definitive version of this new and intelligently edited reconstruction of Mozart’s Mass in C minor. An introduction to the work is also included, enabling this masterpiece to be approached from new perspectives. In Vienna in the summer of 1782, Mozart started writing a new Mass despite having apparently received no commission to do so. On August 4, 1782 he married Constanze Mozart, and from his correspondence it appears that he had made himself a promise to “have a newly-composed mass performed in Salzburg if he brought her there as his wife.” The work may have been performed on October 26, 1783 in St. Peter’s Church in Salzburg, with Constanze as the soprano soloist; concrete evidence of such a performance is however lacking. Nevertheless, the Mass can probably be seen as a kind of votive offering for Constanze. The fact that the work was not completed may be due to the church music reforms implemented by the Emperor Joseph II, who preferred sacred music to be performed on a smaller scale. In 1785, Mozart eventually reworked the “Kyrie” and “Gloria” from the mass for his cantata Davide penitente.
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