![RIAS Kammerchor, Justin Doyle, Angela Gassenhuber, Philip Mayers - Brahms Complete Liebeslieder Walzer, Op. 52 & 65, Hungarian Dances (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/12/18/fi1mbeamlfwta_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
RIAS Kammerchor, Justin Doyle, Angela Gassenhuber, Philip Mayers – Brahms Complete Liebeslieder Walzer, Op. 52 & 65, Hungarian Dances (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 56:04 minutes | 495 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
In these love songs in waltz style for chorus or solo voices accompanied by piano four hands, Brahms freely indulged his taste for Viennese folk music. The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin instils a wonderful inner life in these musical landscapes, sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, punctuated here by a selection from the Hungarian Dances – also eminently popular in their inspiration.
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![RIAS Kammerchor, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Justin Doyle - Handel: Coronation Anthems (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2023/05/31/favafch6s068a_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
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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Rias Kammerchor – J. S. Bach: The Motets (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:25:24 minutes | 803 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © EuroArts Music International
Under the baton of the new chief conductor Hans-Christoph Rademann, the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin are performing famous Motets by Johann Sebastian Bach, interspersed with some fine instrumental works of the composer. Founded in 1948, the choir enjoys today a worldwide reputation as one of the best ensembles of its kind.
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RIAS Kammerchor, Capella de la Torre & Katharina Bäuml – Praetorius and Italy (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:16:09 minutes | 684 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi
Michael Praetorius in the Context of his Italian Contemporaries: Michael Praetorius was anything but a cosmopolitan, rather he lived and worked within a manageable radius of the German-speaking area. And yet he had access to scores from French, English, and above all Italian sources, which he studied with great zeal. A detailed description of the different national styles can be found in the third volume of his “Syntagma musicum”. If you take a closer look at the works of Praetorius‘, you will find Italian influences, role models or dialogue with contemporary composers from the south almost everywhere. There is no evidence that Praetorius ever traveled to Italy, the sources known today speak against it – and yet it seems as if the composer had a lifelong longing for Italy, perhaps even a dream? On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of Michael Praetorius, the RIAS Chamber Choir and the Capella de la Torre are putting together a program that will follow this Italian trail that will run like a red thread through the concert: Which composers does Michael Praetorius particularly appreciate, and in what way have stylistic features from Italy been incorporated into his own works? The program will juxtapose works by Praetorius with works by Agostino Agazzari, Antorio Cifra and others. In the concert, all facets of composing from this time should be linked with one another. Large-scale, multi-choir works alternate with intimate forms such as the sacred concert for solo voices and paint a wide-ranging picture of the musical diversity of the early 17th century. In addition to the vocal timbres, the Capella de la Torre under its director Katharina Bäuml uses the entire palette of instrumental colors from reed instruments (shawm, pomeranian, dulcian to large bass pommeric), brass (trombones, cornetti), string instruments (violins, viols) as well as organs and Present lutes for basso continuo.
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RIAS Kammerchor, Freiburger Barockorchester, Rene Jacobs – W.A. Mozart: Don Giovanni (2007)
3x SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 170:33 minutes | Scans + PDF Booklet | 8,26 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans + PDF | 3,01 GB
The playful drama in two acts | Features Stereo and Multichannel surround sound
If there is one thing that marks out René Jacobs’s approach to Mozart, it is the way he constantly asks himself questions – and the specifically musical brilliance of the answers he comes up with. The success of his recent version of La clemenza di Tito is proof of that! After Così fan tutte and Le nozze di Figaro, his recording of this centrepiece of the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy offers us the latest fruits of his reflections on Classical opera. Premiered at the 2006 Innsbruck Festival and recorded shortly afterwards, this production is nourished by his thoughts on Don Giovanni as taboo-breaker and on a ‘physiology of roles’ that respects Mo art’s intentions as nearly as possible. This SACD set contains the arias of both versions created by Mozart (Prague 1787, Vienna 1788).
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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 & Justin Doyle – Britten: Choral Works (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:00 minutes | 546 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Having dazzled the critics (Choc de Classica, the German Record Critics’Award) some 16 years earlier with its label debut featuringbest-loved twentieth-century English a capella works, the members of RIASKammerchor revisitone of their favourite composers, Benjamin Britten –this time,under the direction of the choir’s new chief conductor, Justin Doyle. A perfect occasion to discover his new reading of the composer’s enchanting setting of poems written in honour of the patron saint of musicians by W. H.Auden (he would later rename them ‘Anthem for St. Cecilia’s Day [for Benjamin Britten]’), alongside other choral settings comprising this glorious album entirely devoted to Britain’s greatest twentieth-century composer.
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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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RIAS Kammerchor, Münchener Kammerorchester & Alexander Liebreich – Mansurian: Requiem (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 45:23 minutes | 772 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Tigran Mansurian has created a Requiem dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide that occurred in Turkey from 1915 to 1917 – which affected members of the composer’s own family in the most direct way.
It reconciles the sound and sensibility of his country’s traditions with the Latin Requiem text in a profoundly moving contemporary composition, illuminated by the “glow of Armenian modality”, as Paul Griffiths puts it in his booklet essay. The work is a milestone for Mansurian, widely acknowledged as Armenia’s greatest composer. The Los Angeles Times has described his music as that “in which deep cultural pain is quieted through an eerily calm, heart-wrenching beauty”.
The Requiem was co-commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and RIAS Chamber Choir Berlin and first performed by them in Berlin and Munich in 2011 and receives its premiere recording here.
This album is the sixth to appear in ECM’s documentation of Mansurian’s work, a series that began with the scene-setting ‘Hayren: Music of Komitas And Tigran Mansurian’ in 2003 and includes recordings by violinists Leonidas Kavakos and Patricia Kopatchinskaja, cellist Anja Lechner and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble, and the Armenian Chamber Choir.
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Rias Kammerchor, Hans-Christoph Rademann – Christmas! Noël! Weinachten! (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:10:09 minutes | 651 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
The great painters have always known how to combine the different perspectives of the Nativity into a single picture. Here the RIAS Kammerchor tells the Christmas Story in music: Mendelssohn frames the painting, to which the darkness and the promise of promise of heavenly light form the background. The Virgin Mary leads us to the heart of Christmas Night and to rejoicing at the Savior’s birth. We come full circle with the Four Motets of Poulenc, which sum up all the facets of Christmas and its emotions.
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Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin & RIAS Kammerchor – Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos. 1-5 (Live) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:20:13 minutes | 3,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the European Reformation, started by Martin Luther in 1517. To honor this occasion, Deutsche Grammophon is releasing a new interpretation of the complete Mendelssohn symphonies, crowned by a recording of the Reformation Symphony No. 5.
The symphonies were recorded in February 2016 during a celebrated Mendelssohn festival over the course of two days at the Philharmonie de Paris – all under the baton of young, exciting conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Music Director Designate of the Metropolitan Opera New York.
This release is the first complete symphonic cycle to be recorded at the new Philharmonie de Paris, which opened in January 2015!
For this recording, Christopher Hogwood’s editions of the symphonies were chosen because of their particular importance for the Reformation symphony:
Mendelssohn, the often self-critical (and self-revising!) composer, who “in the process of trying to reduce the work to a length suitable for its celebratory function, [he] cut out one entire movement preceding the Finale, a passage that expands on the flute cadenza and prepares the arrival of the chorale theme with more engaging musical drama”. (Christopher Hogwood)
The original version of the work may now be listened to in its entirety!
This release underlines a strong ongoing collaboration with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe that already culminated in a successful release of the complete Schumann symphonies (March 2014) and the continuing Mozart Opera Cycle. Two instalments of the latter have been nominated for a Grammy: Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
Read more![RIAS Kammerchor, Hans-Christoph Rademann - Schnittke: Penitential Psalms (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/06/09/tho3dxs65yuqa_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
RIAS Kammerchor, Hans-Christoph Rademann – Schnittke: Penitential Psalms (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 54:35 minutes | 514 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Alfred Schnittke’s Penitential Psalms are not settings of biblical psalms, but of a set of Old Russian texts published not long before Schnittke wrote these a cappella pieces in 1988. They are less eclectic in style than many of this composer’s other works, drawing on the tradition of Russian Orthodox church music, with its dense harmonies, that matches the text. The work was composed for an event marking the 1,000th anniversary of the advent of Christianity in Russia, and it has a nifty double structure. Its central text is that of the sixth psalm (sample track 6), describing the martyrdom of Boris and Gleb, the sons of the baptized founder Grand Prince Vladimir during the Kievan Rus. The other texts are gloomy meditations circling around this event, but also gaining in inner intensity. The second trajectory emerges at the end in mostly hummed Pslam No. 12, as if the spiritual experience involved has transcended language. The performances by the RIAS Kammerchor under Hans-Christoph Rademann are wonderful throughout, but in this demanding piece, with high notes sustained at very low volumes, they’re sublime. The simpler Three Spiritual Songs at the end of the album bring down the considerable tension effectively, and Harmonia Mundi’s engineering at Berlin’s Jesus-Christus-Kirche is impressive indeed. Schnittke fans have an added attraction here: Rademann contributes a note explaining how the performers have revised the commonly used score in favor of dynamics they believe more closely match Schnittke’s own intentions. But this is a worthwhile Schnittke album for anyone interested in the composer or in contemporary choral music in general. ~~ AllMusic Review by James Manheim
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Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, RIAS Kammerchor and Justin Doyle – Haydn: Missa Cellensis, Hob. XXII:5 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:05:41 minutes | 659 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
It was when the young Haydn was appointed Kapellmeister to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy that he composed his Missa Cellensis, a work of vast proportions, whose popularity is demonstrated by the many surviving copies.
In this interpretation full of vivid contrasts, the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik confirm their extraordinary ability to reveal every subtlety of a composition that possesses almost operatic energy.
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