L’Arte Del Mondo

L’arte del mondo, Werner Ehrhardt – Giuseppe Gazzaniga: L’isola d’Alcina (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 24, 2023 · Comments off

One of the trademarks of the early music orchestra l’arte del mondo since 2004 has been sensational rediscoveries also in the field of opera. Now the orchestra and its artistic director Werner Ehrhardt are adding another spectacular operatic rarity to their award-winning discography. It is the opera satire “L’isola d’Alcina”, with which the Italian and Mozart contemporary Giuseppe Gazzaniga verballhorned the countless “Alcina” operas of the Baroque. Gazzaniga’s comic opera premiered in Venice in 1772 and was soon performed throughout Europe. Now the l’arte del mondo orchestra, conducted by Werner Ehrhardt, together with a first-rate ensemble of soloists, presents this opera rediscovery in a live recording from 2022, in co-production with WDR. The role of Alcina, the enchantress who ensnares all men, is played by soprano Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli.

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L’arte del mondo – Schmittbaur: Symphonies (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 10, 2023 · Comments off

“Inexhaustible for every kind of music, with a special peculiar beauty, dignity, and truth,” is how Carl Ludwig Juncker expressed himself enthusiastically in 1776 about the music of Joseph Aloys Schmittbaur (1718-1809). The fact that this unjustly forgotten composer has written great music is proved by the new recording by Werner Erhardt and his ensemble Larte del mondo with selected symphonies by Schmittbaur, all but one of which were composed in Cologne. Schmittbaur, who was born in Bamberg, received his education from the Würzburg organ builder Johann Seuffert, and he was also a pupil of Niccolo Jacomelli in Bologna. in 1754 he got a job in the Rastatt Court Chapel, in 1766 he became its Kapellmeister. After the dissolution of the Rastatt Chapel, he was concertmaster in the Karlsruhe Hofkapelle. From January 1775, Schmittbaur was appointed to the position of cathedral Kapellmeister in Cologne, where he had a lasting impact on musical life through the concerts of the “Musical Academies”. In 1777 he became court Kapellmeister in Karlsruhe, where he helped the local chapel to a high reputation. After Schmittbaur’s death, his music fell into oblivion for a long time. But wrongly, as this recording of l’arte del mondo under the direction of the conductor Werner Ehrhardt shows. Three symphonies Op. 2 (1776) can be heard, which originate from Schmittbaur’s Cologne time as cathedral Kapellmeister and have a consistently cheerful, sometimes even humorous character. The fourth symphony has the title “bey opportunity of the Highest Marriage” and was composed by Schmittbaur in 1797 for the wedding of the daughter of the Baden hereditary Prince Carl Ludwig. This late work also proves to be a colorfully instrumented and high-contrast piece. Werner Erhardt is enthusiastic about the discoveries that appeared as the first recording with deutsche harmonia mundi: “Schmittbaur possessed unbroken creative power and great ingenuity until old age. One can see very well from the symphonies how very individually he developed his very own formal concepts and at the same time composed in an incredibly creative, funny, surprising and humorous way. Rarely have my musicians been in such a good mood as when recording his music. The guy from Cologne would say: ‘Von nix kütt nix’, and that’s the biggest praise, so to speak!“

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L’arte del mondo & Werner Ehrhardt – Anton Zimmermann: Symphonies (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 18, 2023 · Comments off

First world premiere on disc for these three Symphonies from Anton Zimmermann (1741-1781), a contemporary composer of Haydn, who unfortunately passed away at 39—because when listening to those gems, we wonder where he would have stopped had he lived up until, let’s say, 1810 for example… We notice straightaway that Zimmermann thumbs his nose at every standard: in the use of keys (in 1771, a symphony in E-minor was kind of a rarity: Haydn himself, a great experimenter, has only one under his belt), in the architecture—the order and type of movements are somewhat knocked over—and in the instrumentality too. Reckon that the Symphony in B-flat major uses wood instruments as well as as many soloists independent of the string instruments; and that in the splendid Symphony in C minor, beginning with a singular adagissimo, he doesn’t hesitate to include trombones. In 1770! An era when, at best, trombones were used for special effects at the opera, or to increase the solemnity of a piece of sacred music, but never in the symphonic field. Additionally, he doesn’t hesitate to finish two of these symphonies on an appeased pianissimo tone, where usually people end resoundingly. We eagerly await to discover the thirty-six other symphonies from this strange character. Icing on the cake, many of his works were long attributed to Haydn, because we couldn’t imagine so much bravery and genius being issued from a simple Zimmermann… The Arte del mondo performs in an exemplary way, conducted by Werner Ehrhardt.

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L’arte del mondo – Salieri: La scuola de’ gelosi (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 18, 2023 · Comments off

In its day La scuola de’ gelosi (1778) was one of the best-known comic operas by Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), remaining a box-office hit for decades. All the more astonishing is the fact that it could sink into obscurity. Even Goethe was excited by this masterpiece: “The opera is the audience’s favourite, and the audience is right. It contains an astonishing richness and variety, and the subject is treated with the most exquisite taste. I was moved by every aria.” In the wake of its world premiere in Venice in 1778, La scuola de’ gelosi was performed in opera houses all over Europe, from Dresden, Vienna, Prague and Paris to cities as far away as London and St Petersburg, before it passed into near-oblivion. Not until well over two centuries later did Werner Ehrhardt and his ensemble, l’arte del mondo, rediscover this musical treasure. Their world-premiere recording affords impressive proof of Salieri’s abilities and explores his shrewd delineation of character, whereby jealousy repeatedly rears its head in ever-new guises.

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L’arte del mondo – Karl von Ordonez: Symphonies (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 18, 2023 · Comments off

Even during his own day Karl von Ordoñez (1734-1789; also written Karl Ordoniz) was never anything other than a star of the third magnitude, though this was due less to his undoubted gifts as a musician and more to the fact that for a member of the lower aristocracy a career in music was deemed unseemly. He was born in Vienna in 1734 and became an Austrian civil servant in 1758. Between then and his retirement twenty-five years later he was described first as a registrar with the Lower Austrian Regional Court and later as a Recorder. In between these times he is also referred to by the delightful honorary title of “supernumerary secretary”. Meanwhile he was also playing the violin in music ensembles at the Viennese court. In 1771, for example, he became the sixtieth member to join the recently formed Tonkünstler-Societät, Vienna’s oldest concert organisation, which had set itself the task of holding concerts in support of the widows and orphans of deceased musicians. Ordoñez is also listed as a violinist in the Vienna Court Orchestra in 1779, and so we may assume that he was also active as a musician in the Tonkünstler-Societät. If so, then this must say something about the standard of his playing, since the society normally accepted only professional musicians into its ranks – in keeping with its statues, they had to be “devoted to the free art of music”. What is beyond doubt is that the society performed a symphony by Ordoñez in 1777 – he had also been appearing in public as a composer since the late 1750s.

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L’Arte Del Mondo – Johannes Matthias Sperger: Symphonies (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 18, 2023 · Comments off

Johannes Matthias Sperger was born in Feldsberg in 1750 and trained in Vienna as a contrabassist and composer from 1767. He worked from 1777 in the Hofkapelle of the Archbishop of Pressburg. From 1778 he was also a member in the Wiener Tonkünstlersozietät, in whose concerts he appeared several times with his own works and as soloist. From 1783 to 1786, Sperger was a member of the Hofkapelle of count Ludwig von Erdödy in Kohfidisch. From 1789 he was employed as first contrabassist of the Mecklenburg Schwerin Hofkapelle in Ludwigslust.

He was an extremely productive composer who wrote more than forty-four symphonies, numerous instrumental concertos, among them eighteen contrabass concertos, sonatas, rondos and dances, cantatas, choral works, and airs. He died in Schwerin, aged 62.

The orchestra l’arte del mondo, which was founded by artistic director Werner Ehrhardt in 2004, stands in the tradition of historical performance practice. This is the origin of the orchestra which also presents outstanding performances on modern instruments and with repertoire up to 20th century composers.

The orchestra’s creation was soon followed by invitations to perform in renowned festivals and concert series – such as the Ludwigsburg Schlossfestspiele, Bonn’s Beethoven festival, Rheingau Musikfestival, Musikfestspielen Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, and the Cité de la musique in Paris – and to collaborate with the West German Broadcasting Company (WDR) and Deutschlandfunk.

This ensemble’s interesting oeuvre has been documented under the various cd labels. The recording list includes a number of world premiers and rediscovered orchestral works, operas, and oratorios. The recording of Nicolas Méhul’s comic opera L’Irato ou l’Emporté as well as the recording “Liaisons” with soprano Chen Reiss (2011) received the prestigious French award the “Diapason”

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L’arte del mondo – Goethe & Kayser: Scherz, List und Rache (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 18, 2023 · Comments off

Goethe as an opera librettist: in November 2019, an opera sensation was to be experienced at the Leverkusener Erholungshaus: 232 years after its creation, a comic opera was premiered with “Scherz, List und Rache”, to which none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had written the Libretto. The music was composed by Goethe’s childhood friend Philipp Christoph Kayser (1755-1823). Inspired by the Italian Buffo opera, Goethe and Kayser wanted to create a new kind of German opera with “Scherz, List und Rache”. The result was a turbulent three-person play about a young married couple who have been betrayed by an old money-hungry doctor for their inheritance.

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L’arte del mondo – Antonio Salieri: La Fiera di Venezia (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 18, 2023 · Comments off

In 2016, audiences and critics applauded Werner Ehrhardt and his ensemble L’Arte del Mondo, who, while residing at Bayer Kultur in Leverkusen, produced the world’s first recording of La Scuola de’ Gelosi by the young Salieri, a pleasantly contrary, elegant and comic trifle. And so it’s only natural that the German ensemble should have thrown themselves into La Fiera di Venezia, written by the same composer at the age of 21.

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Céline Moinet, l’arte del mondo & Werner Ehrhardt – Bach: Oboe Concertos (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 9, 2022 · Comments off

Céline Moinet is often asked why she decided to become an oboe player. She was adamant: she did not want to play a brass or stringed instrument or even a piano – it had to be woodwind. After having begun, as most children do, with the recorder, she turned at age 7 to the oboe, which had captivated her from the word go. On her new album she takes a look at Johann Sebastian Bach: “Here, the oboe becomes the narrator”.

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