Le Concert de la Loge - Concerti Per Violino - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This Brooklyn-based band evolved out of a miasma of folk, punk, and psychedelic elements. Here, they make sounds removed from the contemporary musical main street that defied past categorization. InchFolk rock is the tag closest to Company's sound, but their rock references are more Clash, Joy Division, and Meat Puppets than 60's CaliforniaInch - Index magazine. They wander and improvise through traditional and innovative musical styles, but remain grounded and unified by the songwriter's original vision. The results are songs that fill the room like intoxicated party conversation - loud and soft, wildly silly, then suddenly private and sincere. Staying true to the spirit of the band's name, Company's live shows are all about a community of friends and fans having a good time together.

More than 300 years after Antonio Vivaldi composed The Four Seasons, the most famous work in the history of music is still as lively and invigorating as ever. Now Le Concert de la Loge has recorded this Baroque treasure with it's founder and director, the violinist Julien Chauvin, as soloist. For the occasion, the Chateau de Versailles has loaned him an exceptional instrument a Neapolitan violin by Nicola Gagliano, adorned with fleur-de-lys and inlaid decorations. This instrument, which was played by Yehudi Menuhin in the 1970s, comes from the 'collection de Madame Adelaïde', named after one of Louis XV's daughters. It has not left the Chateau for almost a century and is in a perfect state of preservation. The main work is complemented by Vivaldi's no less celebrated 'La Follia' and an aria that is now famous in it's own right, 'Sovvente il sole' from Andromeda liberata, the score of which was discovered in Venice in 2002. It is performed here by the countertenor Paul-Antoine Benos-Djian.

Julien Chauvin meets up with one of the great harpsichordists and fortepianists of our time, Andreas Staier, who is a leading interpreter of the Mozart concertos. He presents us with his vision of the Piano Concerto no.23 and it's famous Adagio, 'one of the most heart-rending slow movements ever written by Mozart. Performers often tend to take it too slowly, certainly thinking that this will accentuate the tragic side, but Julien Chauvin and I spontaneously agreed on a slightly faster tempo, which respects the basic pulse of this movement in Siciliana rhythm. When you start with the right tempo, it's amazing how the whole discourse comes together perfectly, in a very logical and simple manner', says Staier, who plays a magnificent instrument by Christoph Kern after a 1790 fortepiano by Anton Walter, the great maker of Mozart's time. Also on the program is the Symphony no.40, in which, says Julien Chauvin, 'Mozart explores types of writing that he pushes to their most extreme limits. This is the case in the finale, where we find a succession of dissonant disjunct intervals at the opening of the development which, on closer inspection, present us with the full chromatic scale (except for G natural, the symphony's tonic). And so the twelve-note series was born!'