Giovanni Antonini

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico – Haydn 2032, Vol. 1: La Passione (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:49 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

‘Symphony No. 49 is of dramatic inspiration, as is the finale of the 39th (with four horns!) in a fairly “Gluckist” style. We are at the beginnings of Sturm und Drang.
‘The first performance of Gluck’s ballet Don Juan, in Vienna in 1761, was an outstanding event in the development of dramatic expression in music. This was the first “modern” ballet, featuring dancers illustrating the story, not through a pre-established dance form (minuet, gavotte, etc.) but through free expression of their bodies.
‘I am truly captivated by the very strong correspondence existing in Gluck’s score between the story of Don Juan (the dancers’ movements) and the music, like a sort of little dictionary of musical gestures, with elements that are to be found in purely instrumental music of the period, including Haydn’s.
‘Yet it was in the 1760s (thus after the first performance of Gluck’s Don Juan) that Haydn began his first “dramatic” symphonies. ‘So I find it very interesting to bring together this piece by Gluck and these symphonies.’ –Giovanni Antonini

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Il Giardino Armonico & Giovanni Antonini – Haydn 2032, Vol. 13 Horn Signal (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:27:01 minutes | 3,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

The Esterházy princes’ love of hunting prompted their ‘house composer’ Joseph Haydn to make extensive use of the horn. At the time, this was still the hand horn (Waldhorn), limited to ‘natural’ harmonics, since it did not yet have valves. Between 1761 and 1790 there were a total eighteen horn players in princely service, but no trumpeters! So, in his Symphony no.48 of 1769, for example, Haydn used the horns as ‘replacement trumpets’, instructing them to play an octave higher than usual. The horns strike a flamboyant note in Haydn’s symphonies, which is probably why an anonymous copyist of no.59 dubbed it the ‘Fire’ Symphony. The Symphony no.31 ‘Horn Signal’ (1765) gives its name to this thirteenth volume in the Haydn2032 Edition. The four horns ring out majestically and the musicians of Il Giardino Armonico perform this music in their characteristically impetuous style, under the fiery direction of Giovanni Antonini.

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Giovanni Antonini & Il Giardino Armonico – Haydn 2032, Vol. 8: La Roxolana (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/176,4 kHz | Time – 01:16:41 minutes | 2,43 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

For its eighth volume, Haydn2032 invites us on a musical journey that takes the Balkan route. Of all the ‘Viennese Classical School’, Joseph Haydn is certainly the composer closest to folk music, first because he spent his early years in the countryside and also because, unlike his colleagues who worked in the urban centres of the Habsburg monarchy, Haydn was in contact with Croats, Roma and Hungarians throughout his life. These influences were omnipresent in his music, to the delight of Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy and his guests, but by some accounts were not to the taste of many music theorists in Germany. Haydn gave his Symphony no.63 in C major the title of ‘La Roxolana’, from the famous sixteenth-century sultana who was the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent after having been his slave. As usual, Giovanni Antonini, who is reunited here with Il Giardino Armonico, juxtaposes Haydn’s music with that of another composer. The natural choice here was Béla Bartók, who is represented by his Romanian Folk Dances, composed in 1917.

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