Il Giardino Armonico

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)
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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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)
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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Il Giardino Armonico & Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 13 Horn Signal (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:27:01 minutes | 3,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

The Esterházy princes’ love of hunting prompted their ‘house composer’ Joseph Haydn to make extensive use of the horn. At the time, this was still the hand horn (Waldhorn), limited to ‘natural’ harmonics, since it did not yet have valves. Between 1761 and 1790 there were a total eighteen horn players in princely service, but no trumpeters! So, in his Symphony no.48 of 1769, for example, Haydn used the horns as ‘replacement trumpets’, instructing them to play an octave higher than usual. The horns strike a flamboyant note in Haydn’s symphonies, which is probably why an anonymous copyist of no.59 dubbed it the ‘Fire’ Symphony. The Symphony no.31 ‘Horn Signal’ (1765) gives its name to this thirteenth volume in the Haydn2032 Edition. The four horns ring out majestically and the musicians of Il Giardino Armonico perform this music in their characteristically impetuous style, under the fiery direction of Giovanni Antonini.

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