Little Tobias Lilja

Weltersteinspielung einer unbekannten Händel-Oper. Bei ANIMATO erscheint nun als Weltersteinspielung Händels selten gespielte Oper ORESTE, das den bekannten Iphigenie-Stoff vertont. Gezielt setzt das Ludwigsburger Label auf ein junges Instrumental-Ensemble unter der Leitung von Tobias Horn, der Besigheimer Bezirkskantor, Dirigent der Kantorei der Karlshöhe Ludwigsburg und international tätiger Konzertorganist ist. Seine Sänger besetzt er mit jungen Ensemblemitgliedern u.a. der Stuttgarter Staatsoper und des Opernstudios des Staatstheaters Stuttgart.

Tobias Picker, hailed as “a genuine creator” by The New Yorker, has written extensively for the stage and for symphonic forces, and these two approaches are represented in this album. The Encantadas (an older name for the Galápagos Islands) derives from a novella by Herman Melville. Picker has set it as a melodrama, exploring the enchanted isles in all their quietly menacing and spectacular beauty. In a radical new form, Picker’s Opera Without Words is set to a libretto by Irene Dische that has now been removed, allowing the music alone to bear the expressive richness and intensity of this “secret opera.”

Violinist Inna Kogan and pianist Tobías Bigger bring us an exquisite program of music starting with the very famous “Old Vienna” in the Jascha Heifetz arrangement for violin and piano. “Lakodalmas OP.21b”, the Hungarian wedding dance by Leo Weiner and three “Spanish Dances” by Moritz Moszkowski follows in this program of really rare pieces. Not to miss the wonderful “Sonata Op.21” by Nikolai Medtner and the iconic “Cherry Ripe” by Cyril Scott.

Tobias Hume (c.1570-1645) was a professional soldier and a ‘gentleman’ (read amateur) composer, and virtuoso of the bass viol. His Musicall Humors (1605), a large collection of solo pieces, is the first publication devoted to the lyra viol, a style of playing that treated the instrument polyphonically, like a lute. Hume reveals himself as a distinct, even eccentric, personality, and an inventive composer, expanding the viol’s normal range with such unusual devices as col legno (‘Drum this with the backe of your Bow’). Jordi Savall’s cultivated, elegant style is very appropriate for much of the music; occasionally he adopts a more earthy manner to great effect – for example in A Souldiers Resolution, with its trumpet and drum imitations.

Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758), born 308 years ago today, was the son of a violinist in the Royal Opera Orchestra in Stockholm, and was employed there in the same capacity as his father. After a year or so, he was allowed to travel to complete his studies. He played in Handel's opera orchestra in London, earning the nickname 'the Swedish virtuoso' and worked for the Duke of Newcastle, before being summoned back to Stockholm, where he was swiftly promoted to vice concertmaster and later, in 1727, to concertmaster.

Following his Alpha recording of sonatas by Prokofiev, Ravel and Strauss, the violinist Tobias Feldmann now turns to the concerto form, performing the two major works of the Finnish repertoire for the instrument: the violin concertos of Jean Sibelius and Einojuhani Rautavaara. Premiered in Helsinki in 1904, the Sibelius Concerto proved to be exceptionally difficult technically for the soloist. Sibelius revised his score, but subsequently composed for violin and orchestra only in shorter forms, the serenade and the humoresque. It was not until nearly seventy years later that a Finnish composer wrote another large-scale work for violin and orchestra, with the Concerto of Rautavaara, which in all respects equals the degree of virtuosity demanded by the earlier work.

Sublime musical expression does not necessarily proceed from serene spirits whose philosophical loftiness leaves them unmoved by the push and shove of the marketplace. Prefaces to printed editions of music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seldom reveal much of the personality behind the writer's effusive urge to prostrate himself before the dedicatee and his invocations to the muses to make worthy his humble efforts. Robert Jones, Tobias Hume and John Dowland were exceptions in this regard and often used their printed prefaces as a platform for polemics, self-defence and bile. In so doing they illumine the contemporary pressures of public opinion and changing fashions, as well as highly individual — not to say curmudgeonly — natures.

Gioachino Rossini was summoned to Paris in 1824 to breathe new life into its opera culture, and one of his most exciting innovations in this period was the creation of an entirely new genre of opera comedy. The risqué tale of Le Comte Ory had its origins in vaudeville theatre and is based on the story of a villainous Count who attempts the seduction of Countess Adele as she awaits the return of her husband from the Crusades. Le Comte Ory is the last of Rossini s comic operas, making full use of the libretto s farcical disguises and humor in one of his most colorfully orchestrated scores. This production, staged by Linda Mallik, features the Malmo Opera Orchestra and Chorus with world renowned soloists Leonardo Ferrando as Count Ory and Erika Miklosa as Countess Adele.

Violinist Inna Kogan and pianist Tobías Bigger bring us an exquisite program of music starting with the very famous “Old Vienna” in the Jascha Heifetz arrangement for violin and piano. “Lakodalmas OP.21b”, the Hungarian wedding dance by Leo Weiner and three “Spanish Dances” by Moritz Moszkowski follows in this program of really rare pieces. Not to miss the wonderful “Sonata Op.21” by Nikolai Medtner and the iconic “Cherry Ripe” by Cyril Scott.