Robert Schneider

Dix histoires d’amour et de pouvoir au cœur des grands événements de l’histoire contemporaine.
Aujourd’hui tombées dans l’oubli, les vies de Virginia de Castiglione, Sophie Dosne, Marguerite Baldensperger ou encore Thérèse Pereyra sont pourtant indissociables des destins de Napoléon III, Adolphe Thiers, Georges Clemenceau et Léon Blum. Elles ont été les amies, les conseillères, mais surtout les bien-aimées et les amantes de ces grands hommes. …

Pour faire un François Mitterrand il faut tout à la fois des lieux, des maisons, des traditions, une famille. C'est à Jarnac et à Touvent ou le long de la Charente qu'il a appris à connaître la France. Celle des cartes de géographie qu'il étudiait à la lampe Pigeon ; celle des bourgs de Saintonge, catholique et plutôt conservatrice ; celle, charnelle, d'un grand-père qui lui enseignait de toujours rester libre et d'une fratrie indissociable. Certes François Mitterrand s'est éloigné de ses racines, mais sans rompre. …

Une enquête sans précédent sur l'enfance et la jeunesse des sept présidents de la Ve République. …

Following collections of virtuosic German and Italian Baroque recorder concertos Michael Schneider now turns to Baroque England. In respect to number and quality of performers and superior instrument construction, London can be termed the world capital of the recorder in this epoch. Mr. Schneider endeavors for the greatest possible tonal variety and highest quality of the individual pieces within this repertoire. The concertos, based on anthologies by William Babell, Robert Woodcock, and John Baston, have in common the use of ‘small flutes’, that is, recorders in the descant register.

This unique anthology of Baroque flute concertos on six CDs contains not only sensational collections featuring virtuoso recorder concertos of the German, Italian, and English Baroque but also the complete solo recorder concertos of Scarlatti, Vivaldi, and Georg Philipp Telemann. Telemanns two very different Concertos in F major and C major, for example, number among the most outstanding Baroque compositions of all for the recorder in a concerto role. Michael Schneider currently has no real rivals worldwide on his instrument. In his hands the recorder loses what so often limits its expressive capacity and gains a voice articulating all the musical facets. The complete eighteenth-century repertoire of recorder concertos or most of it is now available in performances by Schneider.

I can remember watching a recording of this production and being somewhat put off by the staging, the light show during the opening prelude and the modern staging and dress. It made the star-struck lovers seem more like a frumpy middle-aged couple on a cruise than people passionately in love, especially in their apparent lack of intimacy. They seldom touched each other. It just did not sit well with me, but that was my personal point of view. Even so, I was quite taken with the sound of the production and by strong performances by all the protagonists.

In a scene where the recordings of young sopranos tend toward an extreme sameness, Austria's Anna Prohaska would deserve kudos simply for the ambition of this release of soldiers' songs. The idea, especially for a female singer, is original, and the music draws on a great variety of sources, from Scottish song to Wolfgang Rihm. Better still is the execution, which shows Prohaska's extreme versatility.