Bach at the Ambronay Festival - Ton Koopman

Ton Koopman directs 3 Bach Cantatas at the Ambronay Festival 2010

Herr Jesu Christ, wahr' Mensch und Gott BWV 127
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme BWV140
Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben BWV147

Performance: 21st September 2010
Running time: 01:29:07



Bach is a genius capable of writing music with an astonishing balance of reason and emotion. Bach the architect, who can embrace the heart with a single chord. Passion, commitment, sensibility, vibrant colours, verve... how to describe the saga of Ton Koopman and the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, saga which has lasted more than 20 years? And for which he created his own record label, in order to record the complete cycle of Bach's cantatas. Now he returns to Ambronay, with three cantatas which unfold across the rich choral and orchestral colours of the ensembles he himself founded.

Johanette Zomer - soprano
Joerg Duermueller - tenor
Thomas Laske - bass
Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir
Dir: Ton Koopman

How To Save Venice

(by Charles Glass in Taki's Magazine)

An international shouting match is underway over the fate of the city everyone loves but no one wants to live in: Venice. It started back in 2008, after Venice ran out of cash to maintain its more famous monuments. To cover some of the repairs on the Palazzo Ducale and the Bridge of Sighs (through which Giacomo Casanova made a famous escape), the local administration allowed the restorers to raise money by selling advertising space on their building scaffolds. This caused mild irritation when the sponsors were Moët Chandon and Bulgari. I, for one, did not mind seeing Julianne Moore’s pretty face touting Bulgari jewels from my gondola in the Grand Canal.

Last summer, however, Coca-Cola bought some space, and the aesthetic world went mad. Coca-Cola’s spokesman may have stretched the truth when he defended its Venetian ads by saying, “When we advertise, we are always conscious of local and artistic heritage.”

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Mozart - The Magic Flute - Akademie fuer Alte Musik Berlin - Rene Jacobs

Daniel Behle - Tamino

Marlis Petersen - Pamina

Daniel Schmutzhard - Papageno

Sunhae In - Papagena

Anna-Kristiina Kaappola - Queen of the Night

Marcos Fink - Sarastro

RIAS Kammerchor
Akademie fuer Alte Musik Berlin
Rene Jacobs
Released: 30th September 2010





(review by Gilles Macassar in Telerama 09 October 2010)

"Mozart retraced the entire journey of man from his instinctive origins to his confrontation with mystery", rejoiced Albert Camus in a tribute published by L'Express in 1956, the bicentenary of the composer's death. "The entire journey of man" - Mozart never demonstrated this better than in The Magic Flute, his final opera, where this journey of life is coupled with a journey of initiation, a spiritual fulfillment that elevates each character - a Prince like Tamino, or a simple bird-catcher like Papageno - from darkness into light, from uncertain self-awareness into wisdom and radiant serenity.

And yet, with its spoken dialogues that pass the non-German-speaking music lover by, the masonic libretto of The Magic Flute has had a bad press - turgid, esoteric, folkloristic and outdated. To the point where, in one of the benchmark discographical interpretations, that of Otto Klemperer, these dialogues are removed, the sung parts connected without breaks.

Brimming with vitality and humour, the interpretation of René Jacobs takes the contrary approach, and may establish itself in turn as the benchmark version. Not only because it uses the correct metronome settings - a kind of summer time, where each tempo proceeds in a sunny allure - but also because this playful interpretation restores all the spoken dialogues with delectable theatrical and acoustic imagination - a hooting owl and rumbling thunder for the Queen of the Night. Tempered by a series of performances at La Monnaie in Brussels, in the highly poetic staging of filmmaker and artist William Kentridge, Rene Jacobs' singers unflinchingly follow his rhythmic hops, his playful ornaments. We  regret the fact that this spectacular Flute, captured by Belgian television, does not appear on DVD, a subtext which would have enabled us to assess further the humour and irreverence which undermine Schikaneder's libretto.

Far from being the low mass or rambling sermon which often bogs down the second act, this desacralised Flute is dedicated to the victory of the human, all too human Papageno (the wonderful Daniel Schmutzhard), the bird-catcher in search of the bird of paradise, in whom we can easily recognize ourselves. "When you have really heard this song, you have travelled the world and all its creatures," said Camus. And made the journey of Mozart's music as well, this recording of René Jacobs seems to reply through the years.

Download links
pw: cabrousa

An interview with Rene Jacobs from Independent Classical:-
Independent Classical: Rene Jacobs podcast
Rene Jacobs: singer, conductor, scholar, archivist, alchemist, teacher. In recent years he's been "rehabilitating" the Mozart operas for the Harmonia Mundi label, eradicating 19th century retouchings and stylistic anomalies in order to restore these great works to their vibrant original colours.

He and his handpicked performers have now arrived at Mozart's beloved "Singspiel" Die Zauberflote and the results are quite revelatory. Jacobs talks to Edward Seckerson about his crusade on behalf of style, 18th century and otherwise, he talks about the hours of reading and researching, the endless detective work offering clues as to how this music might have sounded and why. He talks about the dangers of "performance tradition" and offers some thoughts as to why Mozart's librettist on "Flute", Emanuel Schikaneder, has been so underrated and misunderstood. He also holds court on the latterday evolution of the countertenor with reference to both his own career and to another new release of Handel arias featuring the exquisite voice of Bejun Mehta.

Prints from the Leber Collection - Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans

From Duerer to Mantegna: the masters of printmaking at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Orléans, France until November 28, 2010


A special exhibition which brings together 150 European prints from the Renaissance, the majority never before exhibited.The works presented come chiefly from the collection of Jean-Michel Constant Leber (1780-1859), scholar and bibiliophile, a native of Orléans. On his death, the museum of Orléans acquired his collection of 2,000 prints which represent a history of printmaking  from the 15th to the 19th century. For the first time, the museum unveils to the public some of its treasures.. The exhibition focuses on one of the most interesting periods: prints of the Renaissance from around 1450-1550.Many unpublished prints are presented, along with woodblocks from the famous Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). This exhibition allows us to discover the first masters of this nascent art: Duerer, Cranach, Mantegna, Raimondi, Drevet, Goujon, Breughel: their technical mastery means today we can admire genuine masterpieces.

A catalogue of this unique collection has just been published and will be available online soon.