Orfeo Orchestra

Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra & György Vashegy – Jean-Marie Leclair: Scylla et Glaucus (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 22, 2023 · Comments off

Jean-Marie Leclair’s Scylla et Glaucus (Tragédie en un prologue et cinq actes, Paris, 1746) provides an excellent opportunity for György Vashegyi, a luxury cast and music scholars at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles to revisit the French Baroque operatic canon and emerge with a fresh new take on this established work, the violin virtuoso and composer’s single offering for the Paris Opéra.

For this recording György Vashegyi has made use of the original performing manuscript of the batteur de mesure, one consequence being that the dramatic structure of the work is tightened. Here, water-god Glaucus (Cyrille Dubois) convinces the reluctant nymph, Scylla (Judith van Wanroij) of his intentions towards her, but only once he has been to visit the wicked sorceress Circé (Véronique Gens) in search of magical assistance.

A bad move, which culminates in a broken Glaucus looking out over the strait of Sicily towards a newly-formed rock formation… called Scylla.

Vashegyi’s Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra, and supporting singers, are on hand to do justice to the resulting French Baroque emotional panoply of rustic and demonic dances, welcomed and spurned love arias, and choral and divine interventions.

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Cyrille Dubois, Orfeo Orchestra, Purcell Choir & Gyorgy Vashegyi – Jouissons de nos beaux ans ! (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 3, 2023 · Comments off

Cyrille Dubois, Orfeo Orchestra, Purcell Choir & Gyorgy Vashegyi – Jouissons de nos beaux ans ! (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:17:29 minutes | 805 MB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

The French tenor, Cyrille Dubois, returns to his favourite period in music: Baroque. Pursuing his mission as a trailblazer, he has teamed up with the Hungarian conductor György Vashegyi and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles to create a recital aimed at reviving little-known treasures of the Eighteenth Century French operatic repertoire – several of the pieces are recorded here for the first time.

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Orfeo Orchestra – Jean-Baptiste Stuck: Polydore (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 29, 2023 · Comments off

With Jean-Baptiste Stuck’s Polydore, Gyorgy Vashegyi’s directing talents alight once again on a French opera from the era between Lully and Rameau. Whist Louis XIV’s reign was gradually drawing to a close, his nephew, duke Philippe d’Orl?ans – due to become regent for Louis XV on the death of the child’s great-grandfather, the Sun King – was greatly expanding his own court cultural activities (within which he had a pronounced predilection for Italian music). The Tuscany-born, later-naturalized Frenchman, Giovanni Battista Stuck was a beneficiary of ducal and regental munificence and, given that taste for opera continued at full tilt in Paris after Louis XIV’s death in 1715, Stuck was well-placed to prove his worth. His most highly regarded opera is Polydore, a 1720 tragedie en musique with a libretto confected by Simon-Joseph Pellegrin: a mythological tale of Greeks, Thracians and Trojans, interweaving war, family and love, with tragedy brewing up throughout the work. Stuck’s vocal, choral and orchestral music infuses Pellegrin’s libretto with dramatic power: intense monologues, mournful laments, forceful duets, as well as sweeping choruses and stirring dance music. A splendid follow up to Vashegyi’s reading for Glossa of Gervais’ 1716 Hypermnestre (and the selection of his grands motets as well).

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György Vashegyi, Orfeo Orchestra – Rameau – Dardanus (Revised 1744 Version) (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 26, 2023 · Comments off

The complete edition of 1744’s Dardanus by Rameau did not come out on record until the present release (almost three hours of music) was made in Budapest. Closely linked to the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, György Vashegyi presented the work alongside some unpublished pages, including the poignant “Amour, cruel auteur du feu qui me dévore” which opens Act III, a sumptuous lament sung by the baritone Tassis Christoyannis.

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Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra & György Vashegyi – Graun, Telemann & J.S. Bach: Wer ist der, so von Edom kömmt (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 26, 2023 · Comments off

Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra & György Vashegyi – Graun, Telemann & J.S. Bach: Wer ist der, so von Edom kömmt (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:53:57 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Glossa

The conductor György Vashegyi and his ensembles, the Orfeo Orchestra and the Purcell Choir, are fluent in various fields of baroque and classical music, with a particular predilection for French baroque opera. But one of their favourite lines of work is Lutheran sacred music, and a good example of this is this beautiful work, “Wer ist der, so von Edom kömmt”, a period pasticcio with pieces by various composers. Graun (a composer at the court of Frederick II who was greatly admired by his contemporary colleagues), rubs shoulders here with Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as with a mysterious unknown, who wrote several of the most impressive passages in the work.

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Orfeo Orchestra – Boismortier: Les voyages de l’Amour, Op. 60 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 20, 2023 · Comments off

Orfeo Orchestra - Boismortier: Les voyages de l'Amour, Op. 60 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

György Vashegyi and his Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir offer up a recording of Boismortier’s Les Voyages de l’Amour of which this 1736 opéra-ballet has been in sore need, a score long and unjustly neglected. For this latest dramatic extravaganza on Glossa, Chantal Santon-Jeffery takes on the title role of lovesick Cupid, and the soprano is joined by two further widely experienced stars of the French Baroque opera revival in Katherine Watson (as the god of love’s sidekick and factotum Zéphire) and Judith van Wanroij as the shepherdess Daphné, smartly resistant to the god’s charms (until the end of the fourth act).
By 1736, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier had become well-known in Parisian musical circles for his entertaining instrumental and vocal music and in his booklet essay Benoît Dratwicki (of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles) explains how this fashionable composer came to have his first production for the Paris Opéra cast into the shadows, how the roles for Cupid and Zéphire may have originally been written for two prominent dessus of the time but were replaced by male singers for the première and how this new recorded edition aims to provide a performance as the composer would have wanted it.
Katia Velletaz, Éléonore Pancrazi and Thomas Dolié also contribute to this lively entertainment, with this release also containing two differing versions of the second act about the arrow-firing god of love’s travels through village, city and court in search of true love for himself.
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Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra & György Vashegyi – Gervais: Grands Motets (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 17, 2022 · Comments off

The five Grands Motets assembled by György Vashegyi for this recording represent just a small sample of the work of Charles-Hubert Gervais – a composer who worked at the court of the young King Louis XV from 1723 onwards.

Given that they were the exclusive property of the king, Gervais’ forty Motets were never published and have been preserved in their manuscript form in the Royal Library, where hundreds of other scores have been accumulated over the years. It wasn’t until 2021 that some of this rich music collection would finally be recorded and revealed to the public.

Gervais perpetuated the style of the great Versailles motet whilst simultaneously enriching it with the Italian influences that were popular at the time. His Motets enjoyed success throughout the Ancien Régime until 1792, both at the Chapelle Royale and the Concert Spirituel.

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Orfeo Orchestra, György Vashegyi, Anaïs Constans – Luigi Cherubini: Les Abencérages (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 16, 2022 · Comments off

Orfeo Orchestra, György Vashegyi, Anaïs Constans - Luigi Cherubini: Les Abencérages (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

Cherubini’s Les Abencérages, premiered in 1813, heralds the spectacle and extravagance of Romantic grand opera. From the Alhambra gardens to the battlefield, the action skilfully intertwines political conspiracies with a love story. Underpinned by the energy and timbres of period instruments, this recording demonstrates the work’s modernity and its musical qualities. Anaïs Constans valiantly tackles the demanding role of Noraïme, while Edgaras Montvidas displays his lyric tenor voice in a series of sublime airs whose beauty was already hinted at by none other than Roberto Alagna in a recital disc released in 2003. Around this couple, a plethoric cast of soloists (Dolié, Sargsyan, Williams, Martin, Lavoie, etc.) achieves the same high standards of French diction and style. The Hungarian conductor György Vashegyi, flanked by the Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra, reveals here another key milestone of French Romantic opera.
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Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra & György Vashegyi – Stölzel: Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 25, 2022 · Comments off

After their recent releases of Conti’s Missa Sancti Pauli and Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, conductor György Vashegyi and his Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir present a world premiere recording of a passion by a today virtually unknown composer, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. The name of Stölzel does not ring a bell even with the keenest lovers of Baroque music, even though he was a significant figure in the musical life of Germany in the first half of the 18th century; he was held in highest respect even by Johann Sebastian Bach himself, just to name the greatest authority of all, as documents of the time show.

The work recorded here is a so-called “passion oratorio”, a musical form widely used in the Germanspeaking world in the 18th century built upon a series of lyrical contemplations resting on the story of Christ’s passion. The libretto for Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld was written by Stölzel himself. After listening to the passion of Stölzel, one can only agree with Lorenz Mizler, founder of the “Corresponding Society of the Music Sciences and the author of an obituary for the composer: “… Germany has lost a great deal with the loss of this skillful and really great Kapellmeister, and it would be desirable that there should be many Stölzels in this regard. His name is therefore and will always be venerated not only by the Society, but by all true composers.” Though Mizler was wrong in his prophecy, as Stölzel has been forgotten until recently, recordings like the present one might start a real, if belated renaissance of Stölzel. He deserves it.

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Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra & Gyorgy Vashegyi – Montéclair: Jephté (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 25, 2022 · Comments off

In Jephté by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, György Vashegyi directs – with style and energy – another riveting account of a neglected French Baroque opera. The work, based on the Biblical tale of a conquering general obliged, by a sacred vow, to sacrifice his own kin, became an immediate success in 1732, indeed a fixture in opera life in France, receiving over a hundred performances at the Opéra alone in the three decades following its première.

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Purcell Choir, Orfeo Orchestra & Gyorgy Vashegyi – Conti: Missa Sancti Pauli (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 25, 2022 · Comments off

The modern-day appreciation of Francesco Bartolomeo Conti takes a decisive turn in the direction of his church music with this early eighteenth-century composers Missa Sancti Pauli given an ideal recording on Glossa by György Vashegyi, the Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra. Conti was a Florentine who worked for much of his career in the Imperial Court in Vienna, generating much attention there the ever-observant JS Bach and Zelenka were both known to have been attracted by his music.

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Orfeo Orchestra, Purcell Choir, György Vashegyi – Les Indes Galantes (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 29, 2022 · Comments off

With Les Indes galantes by Jean-Philippe Rameau, György Vashegyi – along with his Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir – makes a further dazzling addition to their Glossa series of French dramatic masterpieces from the Baroque, and in the company of a luxurious line-up of vocal soloists.

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Orfeo Orchestra – Lemoyne: Phèdre (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · July 29, 2022 · Comments off

Located in Venice’s Palazzetto Bru Zane, the Centre de Musique Romantique Française (Centre for French Romantic Music) continues in its pursuit of publishing unknown French music with the very same dynamism it’s displayed since its conception. This particular excavation was performed in Budapest by the Purcell Choir and the Orfeo Orchestra, conducted by György Vashegyi. The cathedral-sized concert hall in which it was recorded has exceptional acoustics and gives this discovery a wonderful sense of space and openness. While the protagonists of this opera Phèdre (Phaedra) may be familiar to us – Phaedra, Hippolytus, Theseus and Ono, its composer is much less well-known. The opera may have been shunned by Berlioz sixty years after it was written but Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne nevertheless scored a veritable triumph in 1786 when it was sung at the Opera (Royal Academy of Music) by the best singers of the time. Especially when it’s compared to Gluck’s masterpieces, this opera deserves to come out of hiding due to its undeniable melodic and theatrical qualities.

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