Barock

L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) is often described as the first true opera, with good reason: it is made up of five acts, has a large gallery of characters, a detailed orchestral score specifying some forty instruments and, like so many later operas, its libretto is based on a classical myth. Monteverdi’s work thus becomes a sort of matrix for the entire genre – with one exception: the narrative of this ‘tale in music’ is direct, succinct and to the point.

Barock Project is the name of an Italian Progressive rock band, made of young but very experienced musicians. They are led by keyboardist virtuoso Luca Zabbini, who composed a concerto for piano and saxophone, a true sign of excellent musical abilities ! Their project is described by themselves, "To spread the finest and perfect structure of classic music (Mainly baroque music) with a rock style, and a little bit of jazz harmony, all supported by a pop song structure".
"Misteriose Voci" ("Misteriosevoci"), published in the year 2007 on the Musea label, fits this sentence well. Here are eleven symphonic songs, with dominating keyboards but also fine guitar parts, without mentioning a powerful rhythm section and a good singer, expressive but not too much. The influences of Emerson, Lake & Palmer is quite evident, especially in the opening track, but Barock Project has found a true identity of its own, based on strong melodies, and keyboards parts full of sensibility…

Every generation creates its own forms of expression. Often, this happens in abrupt rejection of what has gone before. And not infrequently, the provocative gestures in which a new attitude to life is articulated disappear again just as quickly as they appeared. Such thoughts may also have moved Johann Sebastian Bach when, in the early 1740s, his two eldest sons took up the genre of the symphony, which had come from Italy and was accompanied by a novel treatment of the orchestra and compositional technique. Together with their generational peers, they created an independent line of tradition that was later referred to by music historians as the "symphony of the North German school." The fact that the symphony did not remain a short-lived fashion, favored by a handful of young savages, but advanced to become a genre that was soon considered the "acknowledged paramount form of instrumental music", was one of the most significant and momentous musical achievements of the 18th century.

Barock Project is the name of an Italian Progressive rock band, made of young but very experienced musicians. They are led by keyboardist virtuoso Luca Zabbini, who composed a concerto for piano and saxophone, a true sign of excellent musical abilities! Their project is described by themselves, "To spread the finest and perfect structure of classic music (Mainly baroque music) with a rock style, and a little bit of jazz harmony, all supported by a pop song structure".
Barock Project's 5th album is called Vivo. It's a live celebration of 10 years of composing and recording activity. Vivo is released as a digifile double CD, featuring the band's 2015 full live show setlist, recorded in 2015, plus one previously unreleased "studio" song, for a total of 120 minutes of music…

The Italian quartet Barock Project have been making musical waves lately through their outstanding studio album Skyline, released in 2015, which they followed up last year with the live double album Vivo.
In a nutshell, Detachment further enhances them as one of Europe's current finest and most innovative bands, whose distinctive classically-led sound should attract a much wider appeal among serious prog listeners.
If you like your progressive rock to be open, inviting and with a keen focus on melodies and harmonies, without loosing track of being sophisticated on a structural level, Detachment is an album with your name written on it.

When in December 1812 the French violinist Pierre Rode (1774–1830) first visited Vienna, Beethoven wrote a work for Rode’s appearance before the “Associated Cavaliers” in the Palais Lobkowitz, his Violin Sonata op. 96, which received its premiere with Archduke Rudolph at the clavier: Beethoven, lover of humanity and advocate of peace among all nations, chose to stay at home and sulk, presumably so as not to have to offer his hand to a famous colleague. In the Great Hall of the Redoute, in which the public debut took place a little later, Rode for his part played works of his own.

Michael Rische belongs to the small group of musicians, even internationally, who consistently enrich musical life with authoritative discoveries. After Michael Rische presented a recording of compositions on the notes b-a-c-h by Johann Sebastian Bach up to the present in the Bach Year 2000, he is working with growing success to re-establish the almost forgotten piano concertos of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel in musical life. With his recordings to date, he has received extensive international attention right from the start. Leipzig 1733: a significant date for a musical genre that has been an integral part of our musical life for more than two hundred years - the piano concerto. In this year Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his great Concerto in D minor BWV 1052 and his second eldest son Carl Philipp Emanuel, at the age of 19, his first piano concerto, the Concerto Wq 1 in A minor. If one listens to the concertos in direct comparison, one hardly wants to believe that both were composed at the same time and in the same place. The Concerto in D major Wq 45 was written in Hamburg in 1778, with two horns added to the orchestral sound. Of all his piano concertos, the Concerto in E minor Wq 15 (1745) is by far the most experimental.

Was sophisticated music-making possible at the court of a minor German prince in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries? Yes, indeed! It happened in the Thuringian city of Rudolstadt where Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, the Kappellmeister to the High Count of Schwarzburg and Hohnstein, incorporated mainstream European music in his works even though he rarely travelled beyond his relatively small area in all those 35 years and never once did he venture beyond the German- speaking world. Come and learn and listen to this little known yet amazing composer who learned his craft from travelling musicians.

Following the album Arias, her much-acclaimed debut album on Sony Classical, the German soprano returns to Bach with three famous cantatas she has never recorded before. Regardless of their extraordinary musical beauty all of these cantatas are concerned with religious considerations of grief, guilt and farewell. Based on the Italian model of solo cantata which reached its peak in the extensive output of Alessandro Scarlatti, these melodious and touching pieces highlight Schäfer´s outstanding vocal abilities and musical taste. The arias offer most delightful duets with various instrumental solo parts such as flute, oboe and violin. Christine Schäfer is accompanied by the Berliner Barocksolisten, a first-class ensemble of players from the Berlin Philharmonic who perform on modern instruments in historically informed style.

Standard repertoire doesn’t get any more “standard” than Bach’s concertos for violin in A minor and E major–and every violinist from minor to major has recorded them. Which means that there are about a zillion versions available, many of them first rate. Well, here’s another to add to the list, excellent performances in fine sound–sturdy, stylish, reliable, lustrous, with lively tempos and some nifty, well-integrated ornaments–all the components needed to confirm this as a worthy staple of any library. And for good measure, the program includes two concertos not usually presented as violin works but in their later incarnations as keyboard concertos.