Innerload 2024 Mater Tenebrarum

En 2025 pour sa 31ème édition, La Folle Journée s’intéresse à des villes qui ont joué à un moment de leur histoire un rôle capital dans l’évolution de la musique. Force est de constater en effet que l’histoire de la musique s’est construite autour de quelques grandes cités devenues d’extraordinaires centres de culture et de création. Telles des phares éclairant le monde, ces villes particulières ont à un moment donné attiré les plus grands génies et concentré l’essentiel de la vie artistique et musicale, marquant à jamais l’histoire de la civilisation par leur influence et leur rayonnement.

Agostino Steffani gehört zu den bemerkenswertesten Gestalten des europäischen Barock, war nicht nur Komponist, sondern auch Priester und Diplomat.

Agostino Steffani is one of the most remarkable figures of the European Baroque period. He was not only a composer, but also a priest and diplomat. He directed the Hanover Opera and influenced some of the most important musicians of his time with his work. This recording combines his Psalmodia vespertina (1674) with the posthumously published Stabat Mater. The psalms are notated for double choir and organ, but are presented here in a richer instrumentation with strings and wind instruments as well as alternations between solos and tutti.

Originally from northern California, Tyler Futrell is an eclectic Oslo-based composer. His music attempts to synthesise almost contradictory historical branches yet his goal remains to write coherent music combining intellectual interest and perceptual fascination.

Simon-Pierre Bestion has chosen to mirror two Stabat Mater that are more than 150 years apart: "in these two works I can feel the same tonal language, the same expression of sorrow" says the founder of La Tempête… "I have decided to ‘augment’ Scarlatti’s orchestration and ‘diminish’ Dvořák’s, so they can meet on even ground. To the Scarlatti I have added string parts sometimes doubling the vocal lines, colla parte , as was often done at the period: this not only allows the sound to be amplified, but adds an extra timbre to the voice.

The highlight is a work long associated with Scholl, Vivaldi’s restlessly melancholic Stabat Mater. The spiky strings in the Eia Mater, fons amoris, the quicker speeds and subtly different quality of Scholl’s mature voice make this as worthwhile as his original recording of 1995 with Ensemble 415 on Harmonia Mundi. If anything, the urgency here heightens the mood of suffering.

For the first time on naive, countertenor Andreas Scholl presents a Neapolitan program centered on the Virgin Mary with the Accademia Bizantina and Alessandro Tampieri.

Over the last several decades, one of the pleasures of attending the San Francisco Symphony has been its music directors’ commitment to performing semistaged operas, some of which have been rarities or works that were otherwise underperformed. On June 8, the orchestra presented the latest in this series, the great Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s second opera, Adriana Mater, in its first West Coast production.

For five decades Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) held a central position in the musical world. That centrality was reflected in a series of top orchestral and operatic posts and in his interpretations, free of self-regarding eccentricities. His modest but highly effective conducting technique also made him the ideal recording artist. Sawallisch was a Bavarian born in Munich, city of orchestras and a great opera company, which he headed for 21 years. He started his career as an outstanding pianist and remained a sought-after accompanist to great Lieder singers and instrumentalists. Volume 1 of a complete conspectus of his Warner Classics recordings (made for Electrola and EMI Classics between 1954 to 1997) includes wonderful Lieder and song collaborations, as well as famous concerto accompaniments for eminent soloists and a heartwarming traversal of Schubert's secular vocal and sacred choral music with Bavarian Radio colleagues. But the main focus among the 65 discs is on his symphonic achievements: Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner and Dvorák - the latter's Eighth Symphony was his first published recording, from 1954. Richard Strauss, an early influence, is strongly represented. This 65CD-box brings together all the non-operatic recordings that the German conductor and pianist Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) made in the years from 1954 to 1997 for EMI Classics and Electrola (now Warner Classics).