J rgen Gro - Undercover Bach: Orchestral Suites & Concertos - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Florence, May 2nd, 1589 on occasion of the wedding of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christina of Lorraine an impressive celebration apparatus was put up to display the magnificence of the Medici household. Behind this official event lay an ambitious project which involved an incredible team of the most important poets and musicians of the time, such as Cristofano Malvezzi, Luca Marenzio, Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri, Emilio De' Cavalieri as well as Count Giovanni De' Bardi, who was engaged to compose the Intermedi for Girolamo Bargagli's play La Pellegrina. Renaissance intermediums were sumptuous musical interludes inserted between the acts of a theatrical show on allegorical and moral themes with eclectic references to classical mythology. They are considered as the forerunners of musical opera. The spectacular show, which was performed using a complex stage machinery set up in Palazzo Pitti's Boboli gardens, was an immediate success, so much that the intermediums were performed in the days to follow during another two plays. The Six intermediums in La Pellegrina provide for choral madrigals, double and triple choirs, solo accompanied numbers and instrumental pieces, inserted into the impressive and sumptuous staging by Bernando Buontalenti. 430 years later, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in collaboration with Galleria Degli Uffizi produces the first staging in modern times of the Intermedi della Pellegrina through an itinerant show in Palazzo Pitti's Boboli Gardens. Stage director Valentino Villa's approach was to Inchattempt at an ironic historical reconstruction, [where] imageries blur together, classical mythology is grafted onto contemporary iconographyInch. Conductor Federico Maria Sardelli leads Modo Antiquo and Chorus Master Alberto Allegrezza is at the head of Coro Ricercare Ensemble and Compagnia Dramatodìa.

J.S. Bach - Norwegian Baroque Orchestra Plays Bach [COMPACT DISCS] date 05/07/2002

Johann Bernhard Bach's four Orchestral Suites, composed for the court orchestra of the cultured duke of Saxony-Eisenach, are amongst the most varied and sophisticated musical works of the high baroque period in Middle Germany. It was not by chance that Georg Philipp Telemann, a one-time Kapellmeister at Eisenach, commented retrospectively InchI have to praise this orchestra, arranged for the most part according to the French style, for it surpassed the very famous Parisian opera orchestra.Inch From 1703, Bernard Bach was engaged as harpsichordist in this noble orchestra. His Orchestral Suites provide the only surviving InchsoundtrackInch of the illustrious musical life at the Eisenach court during the 1710s and 20s. And what a soundtrack cosmopolitan, and truly European, with sparkling virtuosic brilliance, as if written by a fiery Italian, whilst displaying the elegant taste of a noble Frenchman. In other words, the Inchmixed tasteInch, for which the best German composers of the late baroque period were famous, in it's finest form. Little wonder then that Bernhard Bach's suites became core repertoire for Johann Sebastian Bach's Leipzig Collegium Musicum, also influencing his compositions. All this provides sufficient motivation for the Thuringian Bach Collegium to continue their exploration through the Middle German courts for their second recording and, with unbridled enthusiasm in their music-making, to bring these jewels of the early Thuringian orchestral music back to life. Bon Appetit!