EMD Festival 2023

Naples in the early 18th century was a melting pot of theatrical and musical ideas where the impossible was experimented and real armies of musicians trained to conquer the demanding international market were formed. Composers who will determine taste and teach an infallible system of writing invade the streets of art in a golden but also risky and sometimes fruitless migration, there is no country that is not reached by this harmonic host and conquered by it. A myriad of musicians are trained in their magisterium and many will learn the extraordinary alchemy indirectly, masters not only of composition but also of song and instrument, indeed instruments.
The strategies implemented by the authors of the Neapolitan School - Nicola Porpora, Leonardo Vinci, Leonardo Leo, Domenico Sarro - emerge in all their originality in a system that, although subjected to strict representational requirements, manages to corroborate itself incessantly, creating paths of unusual authenticity.
Performing this gallery of arias, selected through a team effort assisted by the research carried out by Paologiovanni Maione, is the ductile voice of Teresa Iervolino, accompanied by the Talenti Vulcanici led for the occasion by Maestro Christophe Rousset, harpsichordist and director of the Ensemble Les Talens Lyrique.

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Teresa Iervolino mezzosoprano
Christophe Rousset conductor
Ensemble Talenti Vulcanici
Simone Pirri, Isabel Soteras Valenti, Karolina Habalo violins I
Katarzyna Solecka, Andrea Beatriz Lizarraga, Ulrike Slowik violins II
Filippo Bergo first viola
Clelia Gozzo viola
Marcello Scandelli first cello
Anna Camporini cello
Davide Nava double bass
Elisa La Marca theorbo
Marco Crosetto harpsichord

Paologiovanni Maione musicological consultancy
Enrico Gramigna and Guido Olivieri transcriptions

April 2022
Directed by Duilio Meucci
Video production Caméra Musique
Audio Renato Grieco
Production Fondazione Pietà de' Turchini

Voces Suaves, an ensemble based in Basel, invites you on a musical and spiritual journey into the afterlife described by Dante Alighieri in his Divina Commedia. In this paranormal vision, three worlds are offered to the deceased: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Through madrigals musically underlining the poet's verses, but also religious pieces from the Renaissance to today, the vocal ensemble plunges you into this universe that is both poetic and apocalyptic, where humans rediscover their condition of being subjected to the transience of existence.

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Voces Suaves
Lia Andres, Christina Boner, Mirjam Wernli sopranos
Jan Thomer counter-tenor
Raphael Höhn, Dan Dunkelblum tenors
Tobias Wicky baritone
Davide Benetti bass
Aki Noda-Meurice organ
Orí Harmelin lute and theorbo

October 2020
Directed by Victor Toussaint
Production Valentine Wurtz, Libelo Productions

Dancing the challenge of peace and unrest.

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Concerto Copenhagen
Lars Ulrik Mortensen musical direction
Emma Farnell-Watson dancer

April 2022
Video production company Bread and Butter, Copenhagen
Choreography and dancer Emma Farnell-Watson
The video has won a prize at Aarhus Film Festival as Best Experimental Video.

The concert will feature the finer intricacies of chamber music playing alongside the virtuosity of both the violin and flute. The most distinguished violin virtuosos of the late Baroque period came from Italy. They were celebrated both at home and abroad and were no strangers to Prague on their travels.

Pietro Locatelli (1695–1764)
Sonata in G major Op. 5, No. 1
Andante, Largo-Andante, Allegro, Vivace

Francesco Antonio Bonporti (1672–1749)
Invenzione in G minor Op. 10, No. 4
Largo, Balletto-Allegro, Aria-Adagio, Corrente-Presto.

Francesco Maria Veracini (1690–1768)
Sonata in G minor No. 2
Largo, Allegro, Largo, Allegro

Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770)
Sonata in G minor „Didone abbandonata“ Op. 1, No. 10
Affettuoso, Presto, Allegro

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741)
Sonata in D major, RV 84
Allegro, Andante, Allegro

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Collegium Marianum

November 2020
recorded in Rytířský sál Velkopřevorského paláce, Prague
Sound engineering and sound direction Filip Beneš
Camera and video direction Tokpa Korlo

Flutes & Frets travels around Europe with music from the Renaissance and Baroque. From the 16th to the 18th century, there was a rich repertoire for different types of flutes and plucked instruments.The Mad Lover is a popular English play by John Fletcher from 1647 that exists in many adaptations. John Eccles and Daniel Purcell were commissioned to write music for the adaptation by librettist Peter Anthony Motteux, including this Air. This adaptation was first performed in the 1703-1704 theatre season.
The German Michael Praetorius, a pastor’s son, was a multitalented man. He composed many Protestant hymns, penned an important treatise on music in the form of the Syntagma Musicum and also wrote instrumental music. The collection Terpsichore from 1612, named after the muse of dance, contains more than three hundred instrumental dances. A few generations later, Georg Friedrich Telemann also composed instrumental music. His Sonata for flute in G major, TWV 41:G9 is one of the many works dating from 1725-1740, a period in which he was obliged to publish many compositions to save him from the bankruptcy that his wife’s gambling addiction almost caused.
Marin Marais represents French music, although his Couplets de folies (1701) are also inspired by Spanish music. The folia was a shepherds’ dance with a recognisable, repetitive motif in the bass. Marais composed his ‘folies’ for the viol, but anonymous adaptations were also made for the flute.
Famous composers were not the only ones who wrote flute music. Collections of anonymous folk tunes from the 17th century have also survived. Some of them come from Finland.

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Beth Stone historical flutes
Danny Murphy lute

August 2022
Production International Young Artist's Presentation 2022 (Musica & AMUZ)

Pietro Nardini (1722-1793) was a well-known violinist and composer in his lifetime and a pupil of the famous Giuseppe Tartini in Padua. Nardini himself trained influential students who spread his reputation and stylistic influence across Europe.

For the 300th year anniversary of his birth, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Freunde Alter Musik Basel (FAMB) seized the chance to look more deeply at this European repertoire of the 1760s and 1770s. Nardini left only a few compositions, but he cultivated many contacts. This was also the case with the Mozart family. Father Leopold heard him in Ludwigsburg and expressly praised his art; Wolfgang played music with him during a stay in Florence in 1770. In the juxtaposition of the three works in our programme, quite different musical languages become audible, displaying the broad musical and emotional spectrum in which European music of that time moved. Both the Nardini Sinfonia, from a Basel inventory, and the Tartini Concerto are modern premieres.

The orchestra of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis is made up of current students of the institute for early music and is directed by Leila Schayegh, who also leads a violin class at the school.

Programme:

Pietro Nardini (1722-1793)
Sinfonia in D major for horns, strings and basso
Allegro, Andante, Allegro

Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770)
Concerto in D major (GT. D.29) for violin, strings and basso
Allegro, Largo, Allegro assai

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Symphony in A major (KV 201)
Allegro moderato, Andante, Menuetto, Allegro con spirito

Orchestra ad astra of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis
Leila Schayegh, direction and soloist
Vojtech Jakl, Lorenzo Rosato, Noam Lelior Gal, Maya Webne-Behrman violins I
Léna Ruisz, Sophia Mücke, Sepideh Nikoukar, Beatriz Arias Milán violins II
Zora Janská, Marguerite Wassermann, Loïc Simonet violas
Giulio Sanna, Karin Hannisdal cellos
Joachim Pedarnig double bass
Anke Bernardy, Mei Kamikawa oboes
Andres Sánchez Trejos, Olivier Mourault horns
Pablo Montes Guedez bassoon
Eliot Xaquin Dios Martinez harpsichord

October 2022
recorded in the Peterskirche Basel, Switzerland
Sound engineering and video direction Oren Kirschenbaum
Production Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and Freunde Alter Music Basel 

American Cellist, Steuart Pincombe, is one of the high-profile artist of his generation: He is committed both to Early music on the Baroque cello and contemporary music on an electric instrument and performs regularly in the USA and in all over Europe. As an interpreter of the popular Bach suites, Steuart was invited to the Thuringia Bach Festival in 2020 and 2021, but both had to be cancelled due to the pandemic. No reason to depair: Instead of a performance in Thuringia, Steuart is inviting us to a concert in his American homeland, in the breathtaking nature of Fairgrove, Missouri.

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Steuart Pincombe cellist

May 2021
Production Blend Creative LLC
produced for digital platform BACHFROMHOME.live (hosted by Thüringer Bachwochen)