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Aapo Häkkinen – Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:49 minutes | 1,71 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ondine
“[Bach] speaks to us in his work in such clear terms that we may quite well call these fugues poems. (…) These have warmth, quiet joy, love. And running through all the poems, dressed in different guises, is the main theme, creating order, binding the work as a whole together: it is a safe bond in all its diversity. Over all lies the proximity of death.” (Enzio Forsblom). In this new recording, Bach’s final magnum opus is played by Aapo Häkkinen on a harpsichord built in 1614 by Andreas Ruckers the Elder (1579–?1652) and which belonged to the composer John Blow (1649–1708), organist of Westminster Abbey and former teacher of Henry Purcell. A tradition exists that G.F. Handel had also played this harpsichord.
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Helsinki Baroque Orchestra & Aapo Häkkinen – Crusell: The Last Warrior; Bassoon Concerto; Overture to ‘The Little Slave Girl’ (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:15 minutes | 888 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ondine
This new album by the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and Aapo Häkkinen together with the Audi Jugendchorakademie and bassoonist Jani Sunnarborg featuring late works by composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell (1775–1838) makes an important addition to the recordings of Nordic Classical period works and of early Finnish music. Highlight of the album is the world première recording of Crusell’s Viking-themed ‘The Last Warrior’ (Den sista kämpen), the composer’s last large-scale composition.
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Aapo Hakkinen – C.P.E. Bach: Fantasias (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:50 minutes | 1,39 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Brilliant Classics
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was widely known for his passionate, incomparable improvisations on the clavichord, most characteristically in the form of free fantasia. His compositions were unique in style, full of contrasts, and universally admired by several generations; the Vienna Classicists, even Beethoven and Schubert, considered him their musical father.
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Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, Aapo Hakkinen – Johan Joachim Agrell: Orchestral Works (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:16:48 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Aeolus
Johan Agrell was in many ways a traveler between the worlds: in Uppsala, the Swede’s great talent was recognized by the Hessian envoy, which resulted in Agrell being summoned to a court near Kassel in Germany. He later went as municipal chapel-master to Nuremberg.
Musically, Agrell was a brilliant Baroque composer in whose works many of the new early Classical trends were anticipated. This recording thus continues the series of AEOLUS releases that feature the orchestral music of this exciting period, a series that has already very successfully presented works by Fasch, Hertel, and Molter.
The Helsinki Baroque Orchestra is a shining star of Finland’s musical life. The young musicians around the harpsichordist Aapo Häkkinen appear year after year throughout Europe. Further releases on AEOLUS are in preparation.
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Erich Höbarth, Alexander Rudin, Aapo Hakkinen – Schubert: Chamber Works (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:51 minutes | 1,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata may these days be firmly established in the cello repertoire, but the instrument for which Schubert originally intended it was of course its namesake – a curious and now-defunct six-stringed creation, played with a bow, that although fretted and tuned like a guitar, resembled a cello and was played vertically; and whose distinctive, feathery soft, stringy timbre sounds very much like a blend between those two instruments. Inevitably, actual arpeggione performances of this work are as rare as hens’ teeth, meaning the major draw of this particular offering from Russian cellist and historical performance expert Alexander Rudin is the fact that he’s on the actual instrument. So when you add the pretty delicacy of Aapo Häkkinen’s fortepiano, in timbre tones alone this is a very attractive recording; and for a moment where those already-ear-pricking timbres combine with the resonant acoustic to especially lovely effect, head to the first movement’s pizzicato writing.
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Elisabeth Breuer, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, Aapo Hakkinen – Beethoven: Egmont, Op. 84 (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:26 minutes | 943 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ondine
Beethoven was really following his heart when he chose to set Goethe’s dramas to music. The work is a dream of a utopia of a free humanity; a dream Beethoven had already held up in his opera Fidelio and that reached its culmination in his Ninth Symphony. Written in 1788, Goethe’s piece has the Count of Egmont grappling with a despotic Duke, who represents the Spanish invader in Flanders. Arrested, imprisoned and abandoned, he is condemned to death. But his martyrdom turns out to be a victory against absolutism. For Beethoven, this was a goldmine. With great enthusiasm, he sent his score to the poet… And got no response.
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Erich Höbarth, Aapo Häkkinen – Bach, J.S.: Sonatas for violin & harpsichord (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:59:36 minutes | 2,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aeolus
Almost every music lover has probably heard Erich Höbarth play at least once: active as Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s concertmaster, as first violinist of the Quatuor Mosaïques, and in many other positions of musical life, heard in numerous recordings and television broadcasts, he is an almost omnipresent figure. Höbarth unites historical performance practice with the self-assured poise of an individual artistic personality. The Viennese violinist has found here a congenial partner in the young Aapo Häkkinen from Helsinki, who, exactly like Höbarth, can already boast extensive experience as an ensemble director.
Violin and Harpsichord – these are namely the instruments that Bach himself played as ensemble director and as soloist, and that he brings together in the present sonatas as if at a chamber music summit meeting. Already in the eighteenth century, the six-sonata cycle BWV 1014–1019 numbered among his best works. Höbarth and Häkkinen captivate with wonderful ensemble playing. Aapo Häkkinen plays a – today rarely found – 16’ harpsichord, that is to say, with an additional, lower sounding register. It has been reported that Bach likewise had a 16’ instrument at his disposal in Köthen, where he composed the sonatas.
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Aapo Häkkinen, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra – Bach, J.S.: Harpsichord Concertos, Vol. 2 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:30 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Aeolus
Aapo Häkkinen concludes the cycle of concertos for solo harpsichord and strings. Like in volume 1, he plays a 16’ harpsichord.
That is to say, an instrument with an additional, very low sounding register. Although Bach probably used a similar harpsichord himself, this is the first recording of this cycle of works on an instrument of this kind built in a historical manner! Häkkinen, harpsichordist and director of the ensemble, convinces not only by means of this sonority, but also though his musical powers of imagination and the precision of his articulation.
The Helsinki Baroque Orchestra plays one on a part, and is obliged to the best Baroque traditions. This time the CD contains as a “solo encore,” so to speak, the Fantasia BWV 906 as well as a Concerto for harpsichord solo by Bach’s son Wilhelm Friedemann.
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Aapo Häkkinen, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra – Bach, J.S.: Harpsichord Concertos, Vol. 1 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:33 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Aeolus
In 2012, too, there are prominent treasures to be found: Aapo Häkkinen plays Bach’s Concertos for solo harpsichord and strings – the crown jewels of the harpsichord and piano literature – on a 16’ harpsichord, that is to say, an instrument with an additional, very low sounding register. Although Bach probably used a similar harpsichord himself, this is the first recording of this cycle of works on an instrument of this kind built in a historical manner!
Vol. 2 will contain: BWV 1054, 1055, and 1057. The Helsinki Baroque Orchestra plays one on a part, and is obliged to the best Baroque traditions. As an “encore,” so to speak, the CD also contains Bach’s famous Italian Concerto for harpsichord solo – on the 16’ instrument, it is an amazing sonic experience!
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Zefira Valova & Aapo Häkkinen – Schubert: 4 Sonatas for Violin & Piano (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:25 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Brilliant Classics
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Franz Schubert
Sparkling new accounts of Schubert’s violin-and-piano music from two luminaries of the Finnish period-instrument scene.
The Bulgarian violinist Zefira Valova graduated from the National Music Academy of her native Sofia, Bulgaria, before specialising in Baroque violin studies with Lucy van Dael. While still based in her homeland, having founded Bulgaria’s only annual early-music festival (Sofia Baroque Arts Festival) she is a frequent soloist with and guest leader of the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra under its founder-director Aapo H”akkinen, who swaps the conductor’s platform on this occasion for a seat at a gentle, plangent-sounding fortepiano from 1820 of Viennese manufacture – ideally suited to the repertoire at hand.
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Aapo Häkkinen, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra – Johan Joachim Agrell: Orchestral Works (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:16:48 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aeolus
Johan Agrell was in many ways a traveler between the worlds: in Uppsala, the Swede’s great talent was recognized by the Hessian envoy, which resulted in Agrell being summoned to a court near Kassel in Germany. He later went as municipal chapel-master to Nuremberg.
Musically, Agrell was a brilliant Baroque composer in whose works many of the new early Classical trends were anticipated. This recording thus continues the series of AEOLUS releases that feature the orchestral music of this exciting period, a series that has already very successfully presented works by Fasch, Hertel, and Molter.
The Helsinki Baroque Orchestra is a shining star of Finland’s musical life. The young musicians around the harpsichordist Aapo Häkkinen appear year after year throughout Europe. Further releases on AEOLUS are in preparation.