Marc Collet - Berio & Rens: Folk Songs - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Anna Besson is a flautist with a passion for traditional music, who has already made an album of Irish folk music, The Dubhlinn Gardens (ALPHA447). For this new recording, she teams up with the Russian fortepianist Olga Pashchenko, an eminent specialist of Beethoven's music, to which she has already devoted three albums on Alpha. Together they explore his interest in the popular melodies and the various folklores that make up the mosaic of European music by performing four of his ten 'National Airs' op. 107 and two 'themes with variations' from op. 105, which will take the listener from one end of the Old Continent to the other, from Scotland to Russia via Austria. The selection of works by Romantic composers that completes the programme shows how they shared the interest in folk material pioneered by Beethoven and his teacher Haydn- Swedish tunes for Kuhlau, Hungarian for Doppler, Auvergnese for Walckiers.

For their new production, the renowned Aurelius Sängerknaben Calw have made InchVölkerverständigungInch (international understanding) their mission From Europe to Asia to Africa and America, the programme of folk songs is a true celebration. Particularly well-known and catchy melodies were chosen. The Mannheimer Harfenquartett provides foundation and rhythmic stability, but also sets brilliant accents. The Aurelius Sängerknaben Calw are a German boys' choir, founded in 1983 by Hans-Jörg Kalmbach in Calw. The choir is today one of the most important boys choirs in Germany. The repertoire of the Aurelius Sängerknaben Calw includes sacred and secular choir music in a very broad spectrum. As a mixed choir, the singers perform regularly with oratorios and a cappella programs. The choir has often been under the direction of renowned conductors, such as Claudio Abbado, Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez, Sylvain Cambreling, Carl St. Clair, Michael Gielen or Krzysztof Penderecki. Among the major orchestras the choir has worked with include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Staatskapelle Berlin.

A musical journey through Renaissance Europe via pieces that were highly popular and whose melodies were reused and varied by some of the best composers of the time.