Michi Marin Leaks

Anton Fils, dessen kurzes Leben mit nur 27 Jahren im Jahr 1760 als Cellist der Hofkapelle in Mannheim endete. Schon Zeitgenossen wie Schubarth haben den frühen Tod dieses hochbegabten und einfallsreichen Komponisten bedauert. Zum Glück für die Nachwelt hinterließ Fils eine stattliche Anzahl sinfonischer Kompositionen: So ist zu hoffen, daß das L’Orfeo Barockorchester und das Label cpo dieser ersten CD noch einige folgen lassen, um den überlieferten Schatz von etwa dreißig Sinfonien dieses Meisters den Musikfreunden zugänglich zu machen.

Miriways met with enthusiasm when rediscovered after 284 years in 2012. 'That the score of Miriways…is such a…delight to hear owes…to the Austrian conductor Michi Gaigg and her L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra…' (J. Gahre in Das Opernglas). Mir Wais was an Afghan tribal prince who led several revolts to liberate Kandahar from Persian rule, a very current political subject when staged in Hamburg in 1728, and now. Telemann's music is colorful, lavishly instrumented, and richly Oriental in color.

Georg Friedrich Händel wrote musical history with his operas. In his chosen domicile, London, he had to fight off italian competition, but having already studied their style in Rome he was well-equipped to mount the most important of the world's stages.

Mysliveček, il divino Boemo (the title seems to have been a fictional exaggeration) was particularly associated with opera. But his instrumental works outnumber the operatic by some margin and some of his best-known works, to us at least, are his concertos. The years of his greatest triumphs were between about 1767 and 1777, a decade that saw foreign successes, meetings with Mozart and considerable operatic esteem. His Six Symphonies of 1772 are indebted to the Italianate three-movement form, which they have absorbed with considerable vivacity, and they show individual touches – modulations, wind solos and the like – that give them an individual stamp.

In the Baroque and Classical periods, it seems like anyone who was famous in the world of opera did something with the story of Orpheus. Retrospectively, it is sometimes really hard to see why this appealed to so many. To be sure, the symbolism of the power of music, not to mention the tragic story of love lost, won again through hardship and devotion, and finally and irrevocably lost, seems ready-made for opera. Moreover, any composer would love to set the scenes of Orpheus in Hades. But the plot really seems to need something, like a happy ending, extra characters, or lots and lots of dances to pass the time. Georg Philipp Telemann’s excursion into this story certainly has its share of things.

Famous for his innovative operas – Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste, and Armide – Christoph Willibald Gluck is virtually unknown as a composer of instrumental music, and his attributed symphonies and overtures are among his most obscure works. Indeed, this 2011 release on CPO by Michi Gaigg and L'Orfeo Barockorchester almost stands alone in introducing these early symphonies, which show the fluidity of symphonic form as it developed out of the Baroque opera overture into the familiar Classical shape. With as few as two and as many as four movements,

Nach unserer erfolgreichen Erstveröffentlichung der Instrumentalkonzerte Georg Matthias Monns lassen wir nun noch eine CD des Komponisten mit sechs seiner Sinfonien folgen, nicht nur um dem Komponisten den ihm gebührenden Rang zu verschaffen, sondern auch, um Ihnen die Bekanntschaft mit diesen lebendigen Werken zu ermöglichen. Monn schrieb mehr als 20 Sinfonien, die leider nur noch zum Teil erhalten sind.

For more than 25 years Ignaz Holzbauer (1711-83) was the music director of the Court of Mannheim. Although his fame (and his appointment to his prestigious position) was the result of his operas, he also composed more than 205 symphonies and concertos of different kinds, most of which have been lost. The present release offers an interesting sampling of Holzbauer's large output. The Symphony in D major is in the style of early Haydn, yet features innovative compositional techniques–specifically tempo and key relationships–that anticipate Mozart's late symphonic works.

In the depth of its expression and richness of form Johann Sebastian Bach's music has no equal. This becomes especially clear in the famous cantatas for solo soprano, as can be heard in this recording, featuring Ich bin in mir vergnügt BWV 204 and Mein Herze schwimmt in Blut BWV 199 (Weimar version, 1714). The recording is rounded off by a performance of the famous soprano aria Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn BWV 1127. Once again Dorothee Mields shows that she is one of the leading interpreters of our time for the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Performed with LOrfeo Barockorchester, under the direction of Michi Gaigg, this is an exemplary interpretation of these seldom heard solo cantatas.