Matthias Goerne, Freiburger Barockorchester, Gottfried von der Goltz – Bach: Cantatas for Bass (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:39 minutes | 1005 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Here’s a repertoire that everybody knows about yet is completely neglected: the Bach cantatas. Granted a few have gained some importance, mostly thanks to the vocal qualities of singers who have seized it for a few decades – Fischer-Dieskau and Elly Ameling to name a few – while some complete works adorn aficionados’ collections. There is however enough content in these cantatas to “make up” about a dozen Passions or Oratorios on par with some of those we already know. Bach himself didn’t refrain from drawing from them to recycle arias, ensembles, choirs and sinfonias. Among some of the most famous, honoured in the 1950s by Fischer-Dieskau, are two cantatas for baritone: Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen (1726) and Ich habe genug (1727), both written with oboe and string accompaniment. It’s precisely with this roster in mind that the Freiburger Barockorchester serves Matthias Goerne, a disciple of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and… Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, him again! The German baritone, a regular on the world’s most prestigious scenes, doesn’t refrain from lending his immense voice to this almost-chamber music by giving it a character far removed from the lyrical style required by Berg, Wagner or Strauss. In addition, still with the oboe in mind, the recording includes the Concerto in A Major for Oboe d’amore BWV1055R, a modern reconstruction from a keyboard concerto in A major, which there is every reason to believe was itself recycled by Bach from an older concerto for oboe d’amore. The remarkable Katharina Arfken plays the oboe for the cantatas and the oboe d’amore for the concerto.
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Gottfried von der Goltz – J.S. Bach: Sonatas & Partitas for solo violin (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:17:00 minutes | 2,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Aparté
In his turn the conductor and first violin of the Freiburger Barockorchester engraved these emblematic pages for violin. On his instrument by the Milanese lutenist Paolo Antonio Testore (1690-1767), Gottfried von der Goltz tackles without any display this corpus for solo violin. He plays them in an authentic, personal and sober (a little too reserved?) way with a constant concern to put forward their rich architecture and polyphony always in a deep understanding of the writing.
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Freiburger Barockorchester & Gottfried von der Goltz – Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 – Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:43:13 minutes | 2,00 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
In the words of Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s Seventh is a true “apotheosis of the dance”. It has enjoyed perennial popularity ever since it’s premiere, unlike his sole ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus, of which only the overture has remained (more or less) familiar to us. The musicians of the Freiburger Barockorchester, under the direction of their Konzertmeister Gottfried von der Goltz, offer a brillant new version of this key work in Beethoven’s corpus while reviving the complete version of one of his most unjustly forgotten masterpieces.
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Gottfried von der Goltz, Freiburger Barockorchester, Kristian Bezuidenhout – Mozart: Violin Concertos Nos. 3-5 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:26 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
After Mozart’s youth symphonies, the Freiburger Barockorchester returns to the composer with a ‘portrait of the artist as a young man’: concertante music this time, with the last three violin concertos, composed when he was twenty years old.
Melodically inventive, structurally rich, and showing complexity in the dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra, these works represent important milestones, not only in Mozart’s output, but also in the concerto genre in general.
Often recorded, these concertos are presented here in a new version: in accordance with practices of the time, Kristian Bezuidenhout improvises a pianoforte part, while conducting the orchestra, over which the violin of Gottfried von der Goltz, an artist at the height of his powers, soars with great finesse. A totally new and exciting approach to these works.
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Gottfried von der Goltz – Telemann: Frankfurt Violin Sonatas (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:59 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
Gottfried von der Goltz, first violin and conductor of the first-rate Freiburger Barockorchester comes back with a new album dedicated to the violin sonatas of a young – and already brilliant – Telemann. Rarely recorded, these works show a very surprising form as they allow the musician total freedom of expression and ornamentation. These features demonstrate also the unique creative inventiveness already in germ in Telemann’s music.
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Kristian Bezuidenhout, Freiburger Barockorchester, Gottfried von der Goltz – Mozart: Piano Concertos, K. 413, 414 & 415 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:29 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
In January 1783 Mozart advertised in the Wiener Zeitung ‘the publication of three new, recently completed piano concertos’, which could even be played with quartet accompaniment – thus enabling him to reach a wider public. In similar vein, he told his father that they were ‘very brilliant and pleasing to the ear . . . Here and there only connoisseurs will derive satisfaction from them – yet in such a way that the non-connoisseur will also be pleased, without knowing why.’ It’s a fair bet that these dazzling performances by Kristian Bezuidenhout and the Freiburger Barockorchester will meet with the same unanimous approval!
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Gottfried von der Goltz – Geminiani: The Art of Playing on the Violin (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:55 minutes | 1017 MB | Genre: Classical, Violin
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
Geminiani’s The Art of Playing on the Violin, op. 9 (published in English in 1751) give us a very precious glimpse of what was musical practice in the first half of the 18th century, then considerably in the grip of the Italian influence. The publication began with some 28 exercises, aimed at perfecting technical skills such as double stops, special bowing, arpeggios, chords, ornamentation, shakes, swelling and softening, staccato, scales galore etc., and finished with twelve “examples”, “twelve pieces in different styles for violin and cello with basso continuo for the harpsichord”. What he meant by different styles are dances (courante: no. IV, gavotte: no. VIII, gigue: no. XI), fugues in the style of Corelli’s sonatas (nos. I, II, VII; while nos. IX-XI could be considered a full-fledged sonata da chiesa) as well as slow pieces in the “pathetic” style. These last, full of affectation, are particularly evocative of opera arias. Violonist Gottfried von der Goltz plays these twelve examplesusing several ornamentation techniques as pinpointed by the composer himself in the exercises – according to the liner notes, this would even be a recording premiere, and quite astonishingly it seems this is really the case. The interpreter begins the recording with a free improvisation, like a kind of offhand praeludium, reminding us that Geminiani was known amongst his student as Il Furibondo. So as not to wary the listener, the recording makes use of various continuo combinations, what with harpsichord, theorbo or organ. Von der Goltz completes the album with two of the Twelve Sonatas op. 4 for violin and basso continuo, composed 1739, two pieces which stylistically make the link between the Italian style (Corelli, Vivaldi) and the French (Leclair, Boismortier), several years before the Quarrel of the Buffoons broke out – that moronic Parisian controversy concerning the relative merits of French and Italian music in general, opera in particular.
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Gottfried von der Goltz, Annekatrin Beller, Torsten Johann – Bach: Sonatas for Violin and Continuo (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:18 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Aparté
Johann Sebastian Bach appears to have had a lifelong interest in chamber music. He was the son of a musician and the father of a large family: playing together was part of everyday life for the Bach family.
He is known to have composed many works for this repertoire, some of them scattered to the winds. Various attempts to locate these missing chamber music works have brought to light many uncertain pieces, and it is often difficult to separate authentic works from others that are not.
Here Gottfried von der Goltz directs our gaze towards these compositions that are in part hardly known and sometimes atypical: three sonatas (BWV 1021, 1023 and 1024) and a fugue (BWV 1026), which we are delighted to rediscover.
Also on the programme: the Sonata in A major, long attributed to J. S. Bach but now recognised as a composition by Telemann, and an anonymous sonata in C minor dating from the 1720s.
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Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans & Gottfried von der Goltz – Handel: Concerti a due cori (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:44 minutes | 927 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
It was for the occasion of the Covent Garden premiere of his oratorio Joshua in 1748, that Handel composed – or rather arranged – the first of his three Concerti a due cori (« Cori » does not mean here a vocal group, but two instrumental groups – two oboes, two horns, and one bassoon each, a total of ten soloists – answering to each other on the playing grounds provided by the strings), namely the HWV 332. At that time, it was customary to lighten up performances of the largest compositions, especially oratorios, with a sprinkling of instrumental pieces. But as Handel was a busy man and a businessman, and producing so much music so fast was no easy feat. This accounts for the fact that so many of his instrumental pieces are in fact recyclings – transcriptions, reorchestrations, transcriptions, according to what was available and requested – of earlier works, mostly his own, sometimes that of fellow composers – who would not necessarily be informed of the pillage. In the case of Concerto a due cori No. 1, Handel plundered a handful of his own operas and oratorios.
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Freiburger Barockorchester & Gottfried von der Goltz – Telemann, Platti, Vivaldi & Geminiani: Concerti all’arrabbiata (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 49:25 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
Italy. Home to the spicy arrabiata pasta sauce made with tomatoes and dried chillis, and also home to fierily explosive baroque music. I’m not entirely convinced we needed that link in order to best appreciate or understand these five works presented by the Freiburger Barockorchester, but there’s no question that this programme fulfils its aim to showcase the blazing, virtuosic concerto style of eighteenth century Italy, while highlighting the influence it had on German composers, represented here by Telemann.
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Freiburger Barockorchester, Gottfried von der Goltz – Telemann: Seliges Erwägen – Passion-Oratorium (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:52:27 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
From the start of the 18th century, Lutheran Germany has kept the tradition of performing an oratorio for the Passion in Holy Week. In Hamburg, where Telemann is said to have spent 46 years as musical director, he would have overseen as many Passions. But if we include his previous jobs, that would take the number of works by Telemann for this theme alone to over sixty! These Passions could be strictly liturgical, that is, they could closely follow the text of one of the Gospels; but they could also liberally paraphrase the story of the Passion, following a version by a contemporary author; or they could represent a meditation on the events. And so Seliges Erwägen by Telemann, whose full title leaves no doubt as to the content: Oratorio of the Passion, or Spiritual Contemplation on the bitter suffering and death of Jesus Christ, to inspire prayer, in several meditations taken from the account of the Passion. Not a linear account of the Passion, as with Bach: but a series of individual meditations set to music. The work was first composed in 1719, and then reviewed and completed three years later for Hamburg, where the first performance took place on 19 March 1722 the success was considerable, and the work was performed again and again many times throughout the following decades. This was probably the most-performed work on the Passion in the 18th century, out ahead even of Telemann’s Brockes Passion… There is no evangelist here, nor storyteller, but rather an evocation of the main events of the Passion. That is why there are only two main “roles” here: Christ, with six airs and six recitations, and the allegory of the Devotion (soprano or tenor) as the mouthpiece for the thoughts of the faithful, with eight airs and eight recitations. The sole narrator is Peter, with his denial and despair, and Caiaphas, the high priest who condemns Jesus, comes on for a single, very violent, air. This is very much a series of individual devotional meditations. The instrumentation in particular is extraordinarily rich. Alongside the strings, the continuo and the standard woodwind, a dash of colour is added by two horns, two chalumeaux, ancestors of the clarinet – what a pity that Bach never made the most of this sound – echoing recorders, a magnificent bassoon solo that intermingles with the soprano’s voice; in short, once again, Teleman proves to us that far from being a mill for middle-of-the-road baroque, he is in fact one of the most imposing musical minds of his age. The Freiburger Barockorchester and a lovely soloists come together to perform this work..
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