Orfeo Shaman

The opera L’incontro improvviso (The Unexpected Encounter), a work set in Egypt’s Cairo when it was under Ottoman dominion, was the main musical attraction during the four days of festivities held at Esterház Castle, near Süttör, at the end of August 1775 and hosted by Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy. The occasion was a visit from the Viennese imperial court led by Ferdinand Karl, Empress Maria Theresia’s second youngest son, the later Governor of Lombardy and the founder of the House of Austria-Este.

Jean-Marie Leclair's Scylla et Glaucus (Tragédie en un prologue et cinq actes, Paris, 1746) provides an excellent opportunity for György Vashegyi, a luxury cast and music scholars at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles to revisit the French Baroque operatic canon and emerge with a fresh new take on this established work, the violin virtuoso and composer's single offering for the Paris Opéra.

The golden age of string orchestra repertoire must certainly be the period spanning the final decades of the 19th century to the early 20th century. The density of sound, great dynamic range, long phrases and virtuosity that are uniquely possible with this combination of instruments saw it become a particularly cherished ensemble for many of the greatest composers of the day. This same era also witnessed the birth of the Great National Schools and the influence of composers’ native folk melodies on their compositional output.

The French tenor, Cyrille Dubois, returns to his favourite period in music: Baroque. Pursuing his mission as a trailblazer, he has teamed up with the Hungarian conductor György Vashegyi and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles to create a recital aimed at reviving little-known treasures of the Eighteenth Century French operatic repertoire - several of the pieces are recorded here for the first time.

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,

Contralto Nathalie Stutzmann shines a light on the deep-voiced female singers of the Baroque era, often overshadowed by the extravagant talents and reputations of castrato singers like Farinelli and Caffarelli. Her programme of Handel, Vivaldi, Porpora, Bononcini, Caldara and Gasparini displays the variety of operatic roles – both female and male – assumed by contraltos like Vittoria Tesi and Anna Marchesini. “We must remember that the opera composers of the early 18th century saw the female contralto and the male castrato as vocally interchangeable,” says Stutzmann, “and that the voice most closely resembling a castrato is not the countertenor – produced using a falsetto technique – but the contralto, which is a natural voice.” Stutzmann both sings and conducts Orfeo 55, the instrumental ensemble she founded a decade ago

Glossa continues its major contribution to the recording of the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau with a further ballet héroïque, Les Fêtes de Polymnie, directed by György Vashegyi and featuring accomplished ramistes such as Aurélia Legay, Emöke Barath or Mathias Vidal, and led by the incomparable Véronique Gens in the various vocal roles that appear in the Prologue and the three Entrées of this work.

The orchestral suites on this enchanting new disc of Telemann are beautiful works, considered by some as the most difficult pieces Telemann wrote for recorder and oboe. The music fascinates from the first to the last note with its originality and this is due to its Polish inflection. Telemann once wrote "a Polish tune makes the whole world jig."
South African soloist Carin van Heerden is a founding member of the Austrian L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra and performs with this orchestra regularly. Various CD's with this orchestra have been released on CPO and have brought international acclaim.