Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – What’s Next Vivaldi? (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini - What's Next Vivaldi? (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – What’s Next Vivaldi? (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:10:54 minutes | 2,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Giovanni Antonini and his ensemble Il Giardino Armonico celebrate the composer who made them famous: Antonio Vivaldi. Their recordings of the Four Seasons and Cecilia Bartoli’s famous first Vivaldi recital left an indelible mark on the discography of the Red-haired Priest! Their musical fireworks display continues with a programme of concertos that is bound to provoke strong reactions, since it is the result of a meeting with a musician who is equally adept at shifting boundaries, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Together they have devised a programme which interweaves ultra-virtuosic concertos by Vivaldi (“Il Grosso Mogul” RV 208, “La Tempesta di Mare” RV 253, and RV 157, 191, 550 among others) with, between each concerto, short pieces written by much more recent composers, Luca Francesconi, Simone Movio, Giacinto Scelsi, Aureliano Cattaneo and Giovanni Sollima, and mostly commissioned by Patricia Kopatchinskaja especially for this programme. © Alpha Classics

Details of original recording : Recorded in November 2018 at Stadttheater Greif, Wels (Austria)
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Avi Avital, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Concertos (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Avi Avital, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Concertos (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:28 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

With his album ‘Concertos’ the charismatic mandolinist Avi Avital fulfills a dream and collaborates with the renowned ensemble for historical instruments ‘Il Giardino Armonico’ and its conductor and founder Giovanni Antonini. Together they interpret three concertos for mandolin by Emanuele Barbella, Giovanni Paisiello and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, as well as Avital’s own arrangements of concertos by J. S. Bach and Vivaldi.

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Kammerorchester Basel & Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 14: L’impériale (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Kammerorchester Basel & Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 14: L’impériale (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:17:05 minutes | 2,63 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

The fourteenth volume of the Haydn2032 edition is entitled L’Imperiale , after the nickname given to Symphony no.53 in the nineteenth century. This was perhaps Haydn’s most famous symphony during his lifetime. Premiered in the theatre at Eszterháza Palace in 1778, it was published in London around 1781, and its melodious Andante was arranged more than thirty times for various instruments between 1783 and 1820. It made a decisive contribution to Haydn’s success, opening the way for him to perform in England. Symphony no.54 , whose entertaining, theatrical style is a perfectly match for the atmosphere of the legendary court festivities given at Eszterháza around 1775, completes this programme along with no.33, one of his first festive works with trumpets, composed c.1761. In his introductory text, Giovanni Antonini revels in the ‘capricious’, whimsical character of certain passages in the last movement of Symphony No. 53 ; he also offers an alternative finale of the work at the end of the album.

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Isabelle Faust, Il giardino armonico & Giovanni Antonini – Locatelli: il virtuoso, il poeta (Violin Concertos & Concerti Grossi) (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/176,4kHz]

Isabelle Faust, Il giardino armonico & Giovanni Antonini – Locatelli: il virtuoso, il poeta (Violin Concertos & Concerti Grossi) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/176,4 kHz | Time – 01:08:20 minutes | 2,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Locatelli was one of the most impressive violin virtuosos of the first half of the eighteenth century. Considered today as a sort of Baroque Paganini, he left picturesque, colourful, strikingly modern pieces for his instrument. A few years after a Mozart collaboration that earned them worldwide acclaim, Isabelle Faust and the musicians of Il Giardino Armonico bring out the full narrative intensity of these concertos, worthy of the operatic stage!

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Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 7: Gli impresari (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 7: Gli impresari (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:13:02 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

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. Christian Moritz-Bauer (extr.)

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Kammerorchester Basel and Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 6: Lamentatione (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Kammerorchester Basel and Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 6: Lamentatione (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:07:05 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

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.

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Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 5: L’homme de génie (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 5: L’homme de génie (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:23 minutes | 1,39 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

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.

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Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 11: Au goût parisien (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini - Haydn 2032, Vol. 11: Au goût parisien (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download

Kammerorchester Basel, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 11: Au goût parisien (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:20:25 minutes | 2,85 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

The eleventh volume of the complete HAYDN2032 symphony cycle moves its focus to Paris: ‘Every day one perceives more clearly, and consequently admires more, the productions of this great genius, who, in every one of his works, knows so well how to draw rich and varied developments from a single subject’, wrote the Mercure de France in April 1788, adding that Haydn was ‘quite different from those sterile composers who constantly move from one idea to another’. The symphonies presented here are no.2 (the first to be published in France), no.24 (the first to be performed there) and the so-called ‘Paris’ symphonies nos. 87 and 82 ‘L’Ours’, with its references to fairground atmosphere and its famous contredanse finale.
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Julia Lezhneva, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Handel (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Julia Lezhneva, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Handel (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:03 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.

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.
Lezhneva has been praised for her unforgettable spiritual expression and perfect artistry in Handels music, whether in rapidfire coloratura passages or the gentle radiance that casts a tangible spell in slow music. –The Guardian
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.
„. . . a singer of uncommon ability . . . Her take on Handel s Saeviat Tellus Inter Rigores is marked by rare grace.“ –The Independent
„Julia Lezhneva is at her most accomplished here, providing spirited and focused vocalism, running up and down the scales with effortless abandon and to fine effect . . .“ –BBC Music Magazine

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Isabelle Faust, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Violin Concertos (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Isabelle Faust, Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Violin Concertos (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:09:15 minutes | 2,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Mozart: 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, humor and frivolity, all of which can be heard in this delightful first collaboration between Isabelle Faust and the musicians of Il Giardino Armonico conducted by Giovanni Antonini.

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Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – La morte della ragione (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/176,4kHz]

Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – La morte della ragione (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/176,4 kHz | Time – 01:13:05 minutes | 2,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

‘The senses reign, and Reason now is dead’ (Petrarch). Giovanni Antonini, flautist and founder of the legendary Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, enjoys musical voyages, the discursiveness of music. He begins with an anonymous 16th century pavane, La Morte della Ragione (“The Death of Reason”), which he believes refers to In Praise of Folly, in which its author Erasmus distinguishes between two forms of madness: ‘a sweet illusion of the spirit’, and a negative form, ‘one that the vengeful Furies conjure up from hell…’.

This succession of ‘musical pictures’ leads us to the threshold of the baroque era, starting out with the Puzzle Canon by John Dunstable (1390- ca.1453), whose manuscript is an enigma, via the ‘bizarre’ style of Alexander Agricola (1446- ca.1506) and his obsessive, ostinato rhythm – almost an anticipation of minimalist music… to the improvisatory freedom of the Galliard Battaglia de Scheidt (1587-1654), a battle piece involving a great many diminutions or ‘divisions’, a common technique of improvisation in the Renaissance…

This grand instrumental musical fresco of time and space is a kind of self-portrait of Giovanni Antonini and his longstanding musical colleagues. To accompany this recording, a richly-illustrated booklet presents a free-ranging iconographical tour combining pictures and contemporary photos.

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Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 3: Solo e pensoso (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 3: Solo e pensoso (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:55 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

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.

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Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Giovanni Antonini – Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066 (Live) (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Giovanni Antonini - Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066 (Live) (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Giovanni Antonini – Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066 (Live) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 24:06 minutes | 268 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BR-Klassik

With gravitas and grace: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: Since Johann Sebastian Bach came from an old family of musicians, there was no other way for him to earn his bread. Born in Eisenach, Thuringia, at the foot of the world-famous Wartburg Castle, he was orphaned at the age of ten, whereupon his eldest brother – also an organist – immediately took over his further education. The exceptionally talented Bach received a scholarship to the prestigious Michaelis School in the Hanseatic city of Lüneburg in Lower Saxony. After his time as a brilliant organist, court musician, and concertmaster in Thuringia (Arnstadt, Weimar, and Mühlhausen), he moved to the magnificent court in Köthen (Saxony-Anhalt) in 1717. From 1723 until his death in 1750, he famously served as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, Saxony, already a thriving university and trade fair city. In Bach’s day, by the way, it had one of the first street lighting systems in Germany, with over 700 lanterns. …
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Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 2: Il filosofo (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 2: Il filosofo (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:18 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

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.

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Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico – Haydn 2032, Vol. 1: La Passione (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico – Haydn 2032, Vol. 1: La Passione (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:49 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

‘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

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