Diapason magazine awards Naïve recordings

Diapason magazine has given ‘La fida ninfa’ and ‘Francesco da Milano’ Diapason de l’Année d’Or 2009 awards at a ceremony in Paris. ‘La fida ninfa’, part of the Vivaldi Edition, has been recognized as Opera Recording of the Year and Hopkinson Smith’s ‘Francesco Da Milano’ recording has been declared Early Music Recording of the Year. You can find more information on these releases by going to the Naïve website.

Fauré's Requiem disc is Christmas Critics' Choice in Gramophone

Christmas Critics' Choice

Accentus, Laurence Equilby- Fauré, Requiem

Christmas may not be the ideal time to think about death, and anybody receiving a Requiem Mass from me might think it more in the nature of an aspiration, but as soon as they hear Accentus’s unspeakably lovely recording of Fauré’s Requiem, I am sure the gift will be appreciated as something to be treasured at any season of the year.

Marc Rochester

Extract from the booklet notes for "Strauss - A Capella"

breadth, ‘flourishes à la rückert’, and spirituality
by christian goubault

A favourite source of inspiration of both Strauss and Gustav Mahler (the Rückert-Lieder and three of the Kindertotenlieder), the Bavarian poet Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) was also an orientalist,
translator of the Persian Hafez, and prolific author of ‘oriental’ poems, intimate elegies, and introverted lyrics. Strauss admitted to his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1911: ‘You probably know my predilection for hymns in Schiller’s manner and flourishes à la Rückert. Things like that inspire me to formal orgies ...’
These ‘flourishes’ made the writer smile. But they may indeed be found in the ‘Hymne’ from op. 34 and the following choruses, among them the ambitious masterpiece that is the Deutsche Motette, the peak of Straussian choral art.
Deutsche Motette (German Motet), op.62
Scored in twenty real parts (sixteen for the choir, plus SATB soloists), the Deutsche Motette was composed in the first half of 1913 (it was finished at Garmisch on 22 June) and premiered on 2 December at the Berlin Philharmonie by the Hofoper Chorus under its conductor Hugo Rüdel. Only the motets Ecce beatam lucem (1561; ten parts in each of the four voices and continuo ad libitum) by Alessandro Striggio and Spem in alium (after 1567) by Thomas Tallis (forty independent parts laid out for eight five-voice choirs) surpass this number.
The Deutsche Motette is rarely performed or recorded because of the technical feats it requires of its interpreters. It calls for seasoned professional singers with keen ears, an extended vocal range, and absolute security of pitch. The overall compass spans four complete octaves, from the bottom C of the basses to the sopranos’ top D flat. In spite of clear tonal reference points, the web of harmonic turbulences, modulations, enharmonics and chromaticism remains entirely unsupported throughout this long composition (around twenty minutes). One must marvel at its instrumental character, with its progressive superimpositions of voices, its dovetailings, its contrasts, and above all its sonorous dynamics.
The breadth of the work amply justifies Strauss’s remark on the ‘flourishes’ of Rückert’s poem, which is inspired by the ghazals of Hafez, imitated in the West by Goethe, Rückert himself, Karl August von Platen, and Gottfried Keller.
After a calm introduction, the score’s keyword (‘Licht’, light) is underlined by a radiant chord. In the lower registers, the basses and tenors, then the altos, and finally a quartet of basses, invoke this light to protect them from the powers of darkness. A flexible triple-time rhythm, with melodic intertwinings, creates a sort of hubbub and an increasingly paradisiacal atmosphere. The second section consists of an imposing fugue whose subject is set to insistent demands that the creator be shown his work finished (‘O zeig mir, mich zu erquicken’ – Oh show me, to revive me). The concluding lullaby breathes confidence and bliss in the light of heaven. Is this a religious work? The composer expressed his spiritual sensibility on several occasions: he was instinctively and profoundly pantheistic, open to the mystical character of Rückert’s Motette, which embraces the whole of Creation.

See our YouTube widget for a video on this recording.

Fascinating new video for Minkowski's 'To Saint Cecilia: Purcell, Handel, Haydn' release

More info can be found here: http://en.naive.fr/#/work/to-saint-cecilia.

In the press about the performance of ‘To Saint Cecilia’

“A gloriously lengthy evening. [...] Minkowski’s Purcell, though never less than exquisitely beautiful […] It would be hard to imagine the Handel better done.”
Tim Ashley ,The Guardian, 22 January 09

“Indeed, the whole evening cast a spell […] Each work highlighted different instrumental stars – oboist/recorder players in Purcell, a cellist and a flautist in Handel – while the ensemble as a whole generated a wonderfully warm and vibrant sound. And what a discovery the Haydn was. Why is it so seldom performed?”
Michael Church, The Independent, 19 January 09

“How wonderful sounded the period intruments under the controlled and burning Minkowski’s conducting!”
Karl Harb, Salzburger Nachrichten

Five-star review of 'The Food of Love' in the Daily Telegraph

Purcell: The Food of Love
Paul Agnew, Anne-Marie Lasla, Elizabeth Kenny, Blandine Rannou
★★★★★

Two of Purcell’s settings of If Music be the Food of Love – words by Henry Heveningham rather than Shakespeare – top and tail this delightful disc focusing on Purcell’s love songs but also embracing instrumental pieces by Francisco Corbetta, Christopher Simpson and Robert de Visée. Paul Agnew’s pure, golden tenor voice and verbal expressiveness are sensitively backed by period instruments to convey love’s agonies and joys. GN

Kopatchinskaja's new Beethoven CD reviewed in The Times

Patricia Kopatchinskaja
Beethoven
naïve
★★★★

... With Beethoven’s concerto, there’s a far higher pile of CDs to climb. Jansen’s extreme beauty of tone and phrasing is definitely alluring, though it wasn’t until the cadenza in the first movement (she uses Kreisler’s) that I felt her heart had fully opened up. Järvi conducts the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, who play with a period instrument band’s lean thrust and lack of string vibrato; striking in itself, though not always the best setting for [Janine] Jansen’s essentially romantic art.
No such dislocation exists in a rival Beethoven recording from the gifted Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja (the two violin Romances and a separate concerto fragment fill out the disc). Her orchestra and conductor are official “authentic” specialists (Orchèstre des Champs-Elysées, and Phillippe Herreweghe). And she’s slimmed her tone to a fragile finesse, following the reported playing style of the concerto’s first interpreter, Franz Clement.
Beethoven’s autograph score has been studied, too, prompting some changes from the norm.
Not everything is uniformly successful. The concerto’s cadenzas, adapted with overdubbing from Beethoven’s piano adaptation, certainly seem a trick too far. But the freshness of this interpretation is exhilarating, and as bar succeeds bar the soloist certainly beats [Janine] Jansen for edge-of-the-seat excitement.
Four stars for Jansen’s Britten; but in the Beethoven, Kopatchinskaja wins.

Geoff Brown

'Arie per Basso' reviewed in Opera Now Nov 09

Handel: Arie per Basso
Naïve OP 30472

Not the most imaginative title, but Handel’s bass arias perhaps have a reputation for a certain matter-of-factness – mostly thanks to the old dudes, dads and kings who get to sing them. But there are plenty of gems among them, and Lorenzo Regazzo avoids those that slavishly follow the bassline in favour of the likes of Elviro’s jaunty arietta from Serse, Claudio’s sweet love-song from Agrippina and others. Of course the non-English speaker limits himself by excluding the oratorios, but there is a nice surprise in the inclusion of a couple of cantatas – Dalla Guerra amorosa and Apollo e Dafne – where the singer is freed from operatic character and can indulge his velvety voice with a little more fantasy and lightness. Rinaldo Alessandrini and the Concerto Italiano provide great sparky, spiky accompaniments – in fact much of the charm lies there, as well as in these rather overlooked pieces. RT

Naïve reissues reviewed in BBC Music Magazine Nov 09

Andrew McGregor’s Reissues

Baroque Voices

Though Carlo Gesualdo is the headlined composer on O dolorosa gioia (OP 30486) the first madrigals aren’t by him; he’s been placed among his fellow travellers, as Rinaldo Alessandrini and Conerto Italiano offer us a new context for Gesualdo’s music. Yet his tortured chromaticism still leaps out at us with stark immediacy in such fluent performances. The notes point out that despite our modern reactions to Gesualdo’s sound, he wasn’t nearly as experimental as Monteverdi, already stretching his musical muscles in his Second Book of Madrigals (OP 30487). Alessandrini and his singers focus on the extraordinary expressive potential of the text, in readings of unusual subtlety and power. In one of his early contributions to what we now know as the Naïve Vivaldi Edition, Alessandrini chose pieces intended for the liturgical use (OP 30488); the Concerto funebre RV 579 is beautifully coloured with chalumeau and viola d’amore, matched by Sara Mingardo’s rich contralto in Vivaldi’s Stabat mater.
In a disc of three of Charpentier’s Historia sacra (E 8927), countertenor Gérard Lesne shows tremendous versatility in these vivid miniature oratorios. As the Witch of Endor in The Death of Saul and Jonathan, Lesne combines head and chest voice with nasal organ reeds to eerie effect, while Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac is dramatically coloured by the continuo of Il Seminario Musicale. Amour et Mascarade (AM 187) opens with a wild blast of recorder; the Furies from an English masque introducing Purcell among his Italian contemporaries – Frescobaldi and Mancini – and the Amaryllis Ensemble’s star is a young Patricia Petibon, duetting with tenor Jean-François Novelli in an imaginative account of Sound of the Trumpet.
Vespers at the Court of Charles VI in Vienna (AM 188) offers hitherto unrecorded works from the Austrian imperial chapel in the early 18th century, and psalm settings by the likes of Fux, Gletle and Reinhardt. A ‘Beatus vir’ by Giovanni Sances is a highlight, thanks to the continuo skills of Christina Pluhar and her French ensemble L’Arpeggiata. We’re perhaps on more familiar ground with three Bach Cantatas (E 8926) showcasing Christophe Coin’s piccolo cello, with the Limoges Baroque Ensemble, and alto Andreas Scholl in fine form in BWV 115, interesting for Bach’s use of cellos and gamba, and an historic Silbermann organ that impacts the performance. And then there’s Handel’s Opera seria (E 8928): an award-winning recital of operatic arias from Sandrine Piau, Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset – one of the most satisfying Handel recitals of recent years.