Buxtehude

Luca Guglielmi is an Italian conductor, keyboardist, and composer. He taught himself to conduct, and assisted Antoni Ros-Marbà, Victor Pablo Pérez, Giovanni Antonini, Gottfried von der Goltz, and Jordi Savall. He graduated from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin with degrees in composition, choral music, and choral conducting. He studied organ with Vittorio Bonotto, harpsichord with Patrizia Marisaldi, and piano accompaniment with Eros Cassardo.

The latest volume of Christopher Herrick’s acclaimed series of Buxtehude’s complete organ works comes from Paris and the admired organ of St-Louis-en-l’Île – formally opened in 2005, and based on the work of Zacharias Hildebrant (1688-1757). As with previous discs, it includes a selection of the composer’s praeludia, ostinato works, canzonettas and canzonas, interspersed with chorale preludes, chorale fantasias and variations.

À l'âge de vingt ans, Jean-Sébastien Bach se rend à Lubeck pour écouter le plus grand compositeur allemand de son temps, le vieux Dietrich Buxtehude. Ce voyage, il le fait à pied : quatre cents kilomètres aller, et autant au retour. Un pèlerinage. Parti pour trente jours, il est resté absent quatre mois. Que s'est-il passé à Lubeck ? …

Buxtehude’s Opus 1 and 2 Sonatas for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord belie the composer’s common image as austere and sober. They instead delight the listener with what Johann Mattheson, writing in 1739, called their « unfamilar progressions, hidden ornamentation, and ingenious colourations ». It comes as no surprise to learn that the sonatas were a great success when they were first published in Germany in the 1690s, in the midst of the fashion for the ‘stylus fantasticus’ (described by Athanasius Kircher in 1650 as “…especially suited to instruments. It is the most free and unrestrained method of composing, it is bound to nothing, neither to any words nor to a melodic subject. It was instituted to display genius, and to teach the hidden design of harmony and the ingenious composition of harmonic phrases and fugues.")

Founded in 2001 by tenor Benoît Haller, La Chapelle Rhénane is a musical ensemble of lyrical and instrumental soloists. The team is dedicated to the repertoire of great European vocal works. Its ambition is, through concerts and recordings, to reveal in these works the emotion, humanity and modernity that can seduce a wide contemporary audience. Just like the great European courts during the Baroque period who recruited their musicians across the continent – and to a lesser extent like the composers who never ceased to travel to complete their training and gain new experiences - la Chapelle Rhénane benefits from the central location of Strasbourg, attracting musicians from all over Europe.