Musica Rilassante

Following in the footsteps of his elders (Chausson, Bizet, Gounod…), Gabriel Fauré perpetuated the tradition of incidental music to enhance plays and reinforce their dramaturgy. He left behind him several major works that are among the most beautiful pages of this repertoire, sometimes unfairly considered as old-fashioned by some of today's artists. Yet music for the stage is of major interest, especially from the golden age of French music, stretching from the mid-19th to the early 20th century, when live music was very much an integral part of the theatrical creation process. Today, not only do very few authors call upon composers to write music for the stage, but live music has also long since been replaced by the more convenient and, alas, undeniably more economical recording.

The next-to-last volume in the CPO complete recording of Johann Kuhnau’s cantatas once again presents outstanding examples of German Lutheran church music. "They reinforce the positive impression created by the previous volumes. The singers very much know their way around Kuhnau, and this knowledge is rendered audible. The instrumental parts are perfectly executed" (musicweb international of Vol. 6).

Ensemble Villa Musica - Portrait
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 213 MB | Full Artwork: 144 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG # P 3491 | Country/Year: Germany 1993
Genre: Classical | Style: Artist Portrait, Chamber Music, Contemporary

The Ensemble Villa Musica has established an outstanding reputation for itself in the music world. Its members number among the leading instrumentalists currently active in Germany. Today these former concertmasters and principal soloists of great orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra devote their time and effort exclusively to solo and chamber performance…

From neighbouring Spain to the Orient, passing by eastern lands, the second big wave of exoticism which reached its summit between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, unquestionably stimulated by numerous universal exhibitions organised in Europe, greatly influenced the writing of occidental composers in search of a new language, including many french composers, thirsty for new sonorities and looking to leave the academism of the past behind them. For Maurice Ravel who, excepting his one and only tour to the United States, had never undertaken a long journey to a far-away country, preferring to stay at home surrounded by small trinkets, most of which only held any value for their owner, finding inspiration in music from other countries or in literature which evoked unknown lands in a new aesthetic was not only a way of escaping the real world but also of creating his own universe, inhabited by imaginary characters where the "swiss clockmaker" could control everything, as he did with the cut-out stars in the shutters at his house in Monfort-L'Amaury which served to recreate a starlit night when the master, a victim of insomnia, managed to catch a few minutes of sleep in the middle of the day…

Ensemble Villa Musica - Portrait
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 213 MB | Full Artwork: 144 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG # P 3491 | Country/Year: Germany 1993
Genre: Classical | Style: Artist Portrait, Chamber Music, Contemporary

The Ensemble Villa Musica has established an outstanding reputation for itself in the music world. Its members number among the leading instrumentalists currently active in Germany. Today these former concertmasters and principal soloists of great orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra devote their time and effort exclusively to solo and chamber performance…

Musica Alta Ripa was founded in 1984. The recorder player Danya Segal, two violinists Anne Röhrig and Ursula Bundies, cellist Juris Teichmanis, and harpsichordist Bernward Lohr, all outstanding, sought-after musicians in their fields, joined forces to form an ensemble that owes its special aura to the commingling of their individual personalities.

Antonín Dvořák's Stabat Mater, Op. 58 (B. 71), is an extended setting for vocal soloists, choir and orchestra of the 20 stanzas of the Stabat Mater sequence. Dvořák sketched the composition in 1876 and completed it in 1877. It has been characterized as a sacred cantata and as an oratorio, and consists of ten movements of which only the first and the last are thematically connected.