Huelgas Ensemble, Jos van Immerseel & Paul Van Nevel – Max Reger: Melancholy (Vocal Works) (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:01 minutes | 820 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
This album features the works of German Romantic composer Max Reger by the Woergas Ensemble, which has made numerous rediscoveries in medieval and Renaissance polyphonic music over the past 50 years. Led by choral work specialist Paul van Nervel, the ensemble departs from the usual repertoire of ancient music to explore Reger’s vocal music. Max Reger (1873-1916) is a composer best known for his symphonies and organ works, but his vocal music has been largely ignored. Schoenberg described him as a “genius” and Hindemith called him “the last giant of music. Reger himself wrote that he wanted to be a “breathtaking” composer. Reger was familiar with Bach’s polyphony, and in his own compositions he explored the beauty of construction and masterful imitation of melody. This time the Huelgas Ensemble showcases Reger’s diversity, from emotionally rich arrangements of folk songs such as “The Little Star” and “I Dreamed a Night Dream” to Renaissance-inspired pieces such as “The Time of Man’s Life is Short.” The album also includes pieces such as “With Peace and Joy We Go,” which reflects the spirit of Bach, and harmonically complex pieces such as “O Death, How Thou Art Bitter,” in which Reger explores the limits of sound. Jos van Immerzeel joins as the historically sensitive piano accompanist on the concert grand built by Carl Bechstein in 1870, and as in his performances of Renaissance music, van Nevel, along with the singers, adds a unique touch to the polyphony of this repertoire, beautifully The music is beautifully colored.
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Jos Van Immerseel – Le clavecin à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 02:42:42 minutes | 6,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Channel Classics
Dans ce coffret de trois albums, Jos van Immerseel enregistre sept maîtres parisiens du XVIIIème siècle sur trois clavecins historiques, parmi les pièces les plus exceptionnelles du Musée de la musique de la Philharmonie de Paris : un clavecin Jean-Henri Hemsch de 1761, un Ruckers-Taskin de 1646 (modifié en 1780 par le second) et un Goujon de 1749 (restauré par Swanen en 1784). Jos van Immerseel, de retour chez Channel Classics où il a sorti ses premiers enregistrements dans les années 1990, rend hommage aux compositeurs qui l’ont accompagné depuis les débuts de sa prestigieuse carrière de claveciniste : “Marchand avec ses tournures fantasques et étonnantes, François Couperin avec son style royal, Rameau avec son atmosphère théâtrale et ses sympathies populaires, Forqueray avec son langage audacieux de la diabolique viole de gambe, Dulphy qui fait chanter le clavecin, Balbastre, le provocateur révolutionnaire, et Armand-Louis Couperin qui oscille entre brillance et douleur de l’adieu.”
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Lisa Shklyaver, Jos van Immerseel – La clarinette française (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:28 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Zig-Zag Territoires
Musical love at first sight’, that is a good description of the meeting of Jos van Immerseel and Lisa Shklyaver. With her sweet tone and fine articulation, the young clarinetist effortlessly won the pianist over. No matter which repertoire they played, it clicked immediately.
The desire to come as close as possible to the sound aesthetic of composers at the time of the first performance of their works, along with the simple pleasure of the sound of period instruments, guide Jos van Immerseel in his approach.
For this recording, offering a panorama of French music for clarinet and piano from the early 20th century, Jos van Immerseel has chosen a Bechstein piano of 1870, and Lisa Schklyaver, a Dolnet Lefevre & Pigis clarinet from 1930.
The recording is doubly precious in that it proposes both the view of one of the finest performers of French music on a variety of remarkable works as well as, in a way, the sonority and poetry of an era.
2015 marks Jos van Immerseel’s 70th birthday, one of Belgium’s most acclaimed musicians. Later in 2015 Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna will record and release an album of Janacek and Dvorak.
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Jos Van Immerseel – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:34:32 minutes | 3,58 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha
A leading authority on the fortepiano, Jos Van Immerseel has devised a programme focusing on the music Beethoven composed for a Viennese piano with a range of five octaves. This includes the finest keyboard music from Beethoven’s early Viennese period, more specifically works written between 1795 and 1804. For this recording, the Flemish pianist has used the composer’s extant autograph manuscripts or the first editions published shortly after composition, as well as the latest critical edition by Jonathan Del Mar (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 2017-18). The writings of Carl Czerny, one of Beethoven’s most important ‘pupils’, were also a significant source of information. With his customary attention to the instrumentarium, Jos Van Immerseel has opted for a five-octave Viennese grand fortepiano by Christopher Clarke, a masterly replica, built in 1988, of an instrument by Walter, whom Beethoven himself selected in 1802 from among the sixty or so Viennese piano makers of the time.
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Claire Chevallier, Jos van Immerseel – Dvořák, Grieg & Brahms: Music for Piano Four Hands (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:24 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Jos van Immerseel and Claire Chevallier have enjoyed a close collaboration for many years now. Like Jos van Immerseel, Claire Chevallier loves period pianos; like him, she is a researcher and possesses her own collection of keyboard instruments.
After its recordings of works by Saint-Saëns for two pianos and works by Rachmaninoff for four hands, the duo devotes a programme to the dance with the famous Hungarian Dances of Johannes Brahms and the no less celebrated Slavonic Dances of Antonín Dvorák. The much more rarely played Norwegian Dances of Edvard Grieg and the five Spanish Dances of Moritz Moszkowski complete this trip around Europe.
A recording made on an authentic Carl Bechstein piano built in Berlin in 1870, from the personal collection of Jos van Immerseel.
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Chouchane Siranossian, Jos van Immerseel – L’ange et le diable (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:06 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
After a year of celebrations of his seventieth birthday, including several recordings of orchestral music, Jos Van Immerseel returns to chamber music and the accompaniment of young talents, two absolute priorities for him. In Chouchane Siranossian he has found a worthy partner, as gifted on the modern violin as she is on the Baroque instrument, a pupil of Tibor Varga, then of Zakhar Bron, as well as a disciple of Reinhard Goebel, whose first recording, on the Oehms label, attracted great attention (winning a ‘Diapason Découverte’). Here it is the Baroque violinist who engages in dialogue with the harpsichord of Jos Van Immerseel in a Franco-Italian programme juxtaposing the music of the ‘Angel’ Leclair and the ‘Devil’ Locatelli, not forgetting Tartini’s famous ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata . . . Indeed, all this music is ‘devilishly’ difficult to play, but the Franco-Armenian violinist shows perfect mastery of it, combined with great inventiveness.
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Anima Eterna Brugge, Collegium Vocale Gent and Jos van Immerseel – Orff: Carmina Burana (Cantiones profanae) (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:38 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Zig-Zag Territoires
Often described as ‘music for amateurs’, sometimes used (or misused) towards purely commercial ends, Orff’s Carmina Burana was clearly ready for a new approach, a sort of revivifying, thorough rethinking. This has now been done, thanks to Jos van Immerseel and the absolutely exceptional musical team that he assembled.
Faithful to what accounts for the force of his musical approach, Jos van Immerseel profoundly revolutionizes the sound image and interpretation of this score, thanks both to the very high quality of the chosen performers and to the singularity of the instruments and timbres of his orchestra.
So it is a very new way of approaching this work that Jos van Immerseel proposes, open-minded, without concession but with the great pleasure and joy of simply making music.
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Anima Eterna Brugge, Jos van Immerseel – Poulenc: Concerto pour deux pianos et orchestre, Concert Champêtre & Suite Française (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 58:22 minutes | 514 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Zig-Zag Territoires
After exploring the universe of Ravel, Anima Eterna continues its voyage of discovery through twentieth-century French music with Francis Poulenc. In Jos van Immerseel’s view, this composer is one of the most significant personalities of the twentieth century, coupling immense erudition with surprising spontaneity. Not to mention the fact that Poulenc was also a particularly brilliant pianist.
Read more![Anima Eterna Brugge, Jos van Immerseel - Gershwin (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/06/22/z2xjj9rsdj1ja_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Anima Eterna Brugge, Jos van Immerseel – Gershwin (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:26:10 minutes | 1,47 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
It’s not rare for jazz musicians to venture into the world of baroque, often with great success: so, asks Jos van Immerseel – why not the other way around? And so he decided to record… Gershwin. With the original instrumentation and arrangements, on period instruments! Gershwin’s period, that is: not the period of sackbuts and cromornes. The piano used on Rhapsody in Blue was a 1906 Steinway; the piece was first orchestrated by Ferde Grofré in 1906 for a jazz band (Gershwin had dragged his feet and dawdled and the work was finally performed before the ink was dry: and even then, the piano part appears to have been almost completely improvised). Also present are the tranquil vision of an American in Paris as distilled by Immerseel; several songs by Claron McFarren, who is certainly not of that era, but whose voice cleaves closely to a recognisable North American inter-war style; while Gershwin’s Magnum Opus, Porgy and Bess, is presented as an orchestral suite. There is no accounting for taste, and everyone will form their own view of this baroque-jazz interpretation of the tradition. But whatever your own personal preferences, this is an experience not to be missed.
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