Barbara Abel Titolo Mother's Instinct

La Mort d’Abel (1810/1825) – halfway between opera and oratorio – presents, in a spectacular fashion, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain consumed by jealousy. Rodolphe Kreutzer deploys therein the grand art of the tragédie lyrique imagined by Gluck whilst adding his own personal touches, which identifies him as being more than the modest violinist dedicatee of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. As a top ensemble in Belgium and across Northern Europe, Les Agrémens and the Chœur de chambre de Namur have, for a long time, been exploring rare repertories with enthusiasm, creativity and to the highest standards. Assisted by singers from the rising generation (notably tenor Sébastien Droy and baritone Jean-Sébastien Bou), conductor Guy Van Waas ventures triumphantly into music which nobody before him had imagined there existing such quality.

In 1764 a couple of German musicians lodged together in London. They shared a sort of common background, for one was the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach, newly arrived in town to write opera, and the other, Carl Friedrich Abel, had been Bach’s student back in Leipzig more than a decade earlier. He was in town to make his living as a composer of instrumental works and as a performer on that now-anachronistic instrument the viola da gamba. The two apparently hit it off quite well, for they soon conspired to develop the famed Bach-Abel concert series that became a fixture in the city for more than a decade and a half. Given that they also contrived to perform as well, it is not surprising that both men created a wide variety of works for their instruments, Bach on the keyboard and Abel on his gamba.