Christina Wodkte

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin returns to Pentatone together with soprano Christina Landshamer, presenting La Passione, a collection of dazzling concert arias on love, longing and loss by Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, paired with the latter’s “La Passione” Symphony. Ranging from pastoral simplicity to exuberant outrage, the programme offers some of the finest vocal writing around 1800, including some of Beethoven’s rare and little-known excursions to Italian bravura opera, as well as one of the most dramatic and expressive symphonies of the eighteenth-century.

Virtuoso duo Sándor Rigó and Christina Leeb-Grill have taken Jean Françaix’s description of his own work, ‘musique pour faire plaisir’, as the motto for this programme. Dance styles and rhythms are at the heart of his repertoire, from the spectacular Brazileira with which Milhaud concludes his theatrical Scaramouche, through Piazzolla’s refinement of tradition in his Tango-Études, to the Brazilian rhythms showcased in Villa-Lobos’s Fantasia. Paquito D’Rivera adapted his Invitación al Danzón especially for this recording, providing Sándor Rigó with space to demonstrate his brilliance in improvisation.