Giardino Armonico Bach

With his album "Concertos" the charismatic mandolinist Avi Avital fulfills a dream and collaborates with the renowned ensemble for historical instruments "Il Giardino Armonico" and its conductor and founder Giovanni Antonini. Together they interpret three concertos for mandolin by Emanuele Barbella, Giovanni Paisiello and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, as well as Avital's own arrangements of concertos by J. S. Bach and Vivaldi. Of the three original works for mandolin, two are from Naples.

With his album "Concertos" the charismatic mandolinist Avi Avital fulfills a dream and collaborates with the renowned ensemble for historical instruments "Il Giardino Armonico" and its conductor and founder Giovanni Antonini. Together they interpret three concertos for mandolin by Emanuele Barbella, Giovanni Paisiello and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, as well as Avital's own arrangements of concertos by J. S. Bach and Vivaldi. Of the three original works for mandolin, two are from Naples.

“This is how I want to make music!” That was Avi Avital’s reaction when he first saw Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini play live in Jerusalem. He’s now joined by the ensemble and its conductor and co-founder on his latest album, entitled simply Concertos and featuring original concertos for mandolin by Barbella, Paisiello and Hummel alongside Avital’s own adaptations of concertos by J.S. Bach and Vivaldi. The album comes out on 17 November – pre-order it today and enjoy the new pre-release track ‘Paisiello: III. Allegretto’.

For fans of Il Giardino Armonico's flamboyant flourishes and exuberant expressiveness, it's like having all your birthdays at once, being presented with this great Warner Classics 11 CD set. My own feeling is that this "free" approach to Baroque music is at its best when applied to the theatrical music of disc 8 or the seventeenth century Italian music on disc 1. The showmanship and playfulness is an absolute joy in many of those pieces. I'm less satisfied with the interpretations of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, (on discs 10 and 11), which require a different approach, I feel. I like my Bach to be a little more measured and subtle, I suppose. It has no need of the Il Giardino Armonico treatment. On the whole, though, I do love this set and wouldn't be without it.

For this second volume in the Haydn 2032 project, the complete recording of his symphonies, Giovanni Antonini has chosen to put forward the Symphony Der Philosoph. He associates with it a symphony by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, eldest son of the Kantor of Leipzig, who is generally considered the most gifted of his sons. Different reasons brought these two great composers the originality and sometimes eccentricity that characterize their works, one suffering from the fame of his father, the other from his own genius. Whereas Haydn’s symphonies differentiate themselves by form, orchestration and keys, W. F. Bach’s begins in the style of a Baroque overture, gradually turning into a tempestuous piece and perhaps already reflecting the transition from a ‘Golden Age’ to the more tormented world that will follow the Age of Enlightenment.

Telemann - Suite, Sonata, Concerti - Il Giardino Armonico, Giovanni Antonini (2015) {Amadeus AM 313-2}
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© 2015 Amadeus | AM 313-2
Classical / Baroque

Born in Milan, Giovanni Antonini studied at the Civica Scuola di Musica and at the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva. He is a founder member of the Baroque ensemble “il Giardino Armonico”, which he has led since 1989. With this ensemble he has appeared as conductor and soloist on the recorder and Baroque transverse flute in Europe, United States, Canada, South America, Australia, Japan and Malaysia. He has performed with many prestigious artists including Cecilia Bartoli, Isabel Faust, Viktoria Mullova, Giuliano Carmignola, Giovanni Sollima, Sol Gabetta, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Kristian Bezuidenhout.

This reissue of a 1989 recording by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has a good claim for the title of "Best Buy Brandenburgs." These performances don't have the splashy extroversion of Il Giardino Armonico or the caffeine-pumped, high-velocity thrill of Musica Antiqua Köln, but they're not overly reserved or dull, as some English ensembles are accused of being. The OAE's instrumental playing is very skillful indeed, with particularly nice work from the horns in the third movement of the First Concerto, and from trumpeter Mark Bennett in the Second; and the tempos are moderately quick (which means that they would have been considered rather fast before 1980 or so), but without being breathless. The slow movements sing sweetly–the viola playing of Monica Huggett and Pavlo Besnosiuk in the slow movement of the Sixth Concerto is especially lovely–and the quick outer movements have an infectiously bouncy pulse.

–Matthew Westphal

The ultimate collection of the complete music of J.S. Bach. Having all of Bach's music at my fingertips is a dream come true. This astonishing collection of music is a historic event. Teldec has compiled an excellent collection of all the works of J.S. Bach, from well-known to the obscure, performed by a wide variety of highly respected musicians. There are many, many treasures included in this collection, for example: the cello suites performed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt now on cd for the first time. And the 4-cd set of chorales is stunning.