Jean-Guihen Queyras, Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans – Haydn: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 – Monn: Cello Concerto (Remastered) (2004/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:08:40 minutes | 697 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
In 2004, Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Freiburger Barockorchester offered us a prodigious interpretation of Haydn’s two cello concertos, coupled with a rare concerto by Georg Matthias Monn, a pioneer of the genre. A version now recognized as a landmark in the discography.
“A sense of seemingly effortless bravura to [Queyras’] playing, as well as superb technical control and intelligence. An extremely attractive proposition.” – International Record Review
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Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans, Gottfried von der Goltz and Anne Katharina Schreiber – Bach: Violin Concertos (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:33 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Bach’s three well-known Violin Concertos are paired here with a splendid concerto for three violins, reconstructed from the surviving version for three harpsichords, BWV 1064. The composer’s fascination with the Italian solo concerto, which resulted in numerous arrangements and compositions, dates to his second Weimar period from 1708 to 1717. However, current research has revealed that Bach wrote the violin concertos around 1720, during his engagement as Kapellmeister in Cöthen. On this recording, soloists Petra Mullejans, Gottfried von der Goltz, and Anne Katharina Schreiber are backed by the matchless Freiburger Barockorchester in dazzling readings of these evergreen favorites.
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Georg Nigl, Andreas Staier, Anna Lucia Richter, Petra Müllejans, Roel Dieltiens – Bach Privat (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:24:54 minutes | 1,52 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
This recording is an invitation to immerse ourselves in the musical inner circle of the Bach family. We are familiar with Johann Sebastian Bach as a composer of genius, but we know little about his family life, with the exception of the famous Clavierbüchlein (Little keyboard book) that the forty-year-old composer gave as a present in 1725 to his second wife Anna Magdalena, his junior by sixteen years. This manuscript is a unique document of the music the family played together. It provides us with a point of reference for the ‘programmes’ of these domestic concerts: it contains short keyboard pieces and songs alongside extended arias taken from the church cantatas, as well as chamber music. Bach and his two eldest sons were not only virtuoso harpsichordists but also excellent violinists, while the composer’s son-in-law Bach, J. C. Altnickol, played the cello and was an outstanding double bass player. Anna Magdalena Bach and her oldest stepdaughter both contributed as singers. And the still young children of the second marriage participated by playing easy pieces on their father’s various keyboard instruments. The musicians and singers on this recording, all eminent exponents of Bach and of Baroque music in general, have come together here to bring these exceptional moments back to life.
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Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans & Gottfried von der Goltz – Handel: Concerti a due cori (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:44 minutes | 927 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
It was for the occasion of the Covent Garden premiere of his oratorio Joshua in 1748, that Handel composed – or rather arranged – the first of his three Concerti a due cori (« Cori » does not mean here a vocal group, but two instrumental groups – two oboes, two horns, and one bassoon each, a total of ten soloists – answering to each other on the playing grounds provided by the strings), namely the HWV 332. At that time, it was customary to lighten up performances of the largest compositions, especially oratorios, with a sprinkling of instrumental pieces. But as Handel was a busy man and a businessman, and producing so much music so fast was no easy feat. This accounts for the fact that so many of his instrumental pieces are in fact recyclings – transcriptions, reorchestrations, transcriptions, according to what was available and requested – of earlier works, mostly his own, sometimes that of fellow composers – who would not necessarily be informed of the pillage. In the case of Concerto a due cori No. 1, Handel plundered a handful of his own operas and oratorios.
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Carolyn Sampson, Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans – Bach: Cantatas for Soprano (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:02 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
The three Bach cantatas presented on this album belong to the composer’s Weimar period (where he lived and worked from 1708 to 1717), written between 1711 and 1714. Bach was still a young composer then, but the full body of his artistry is already present, and one can but shake the head in disbelief: where did the fellow find the source of such intense emotion, such harmonic and melodic boldness? The beginning of “Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten” (“Yield now, troubling shadows”) unfolds a succession of harmonies which seem to have no logical link with each other, some kind of non-tonality – this being the way the composer describes in music the aforementioned lugubrious shadows. Arias alternately heartbreaking and tender, instrumental inventiveness, you name it, Bach has it. Soprano Carolyn Sampson, accompanied by the Freiburger Barockorchester (together with baritone Andreas Wolf for the cantata “Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn”), lends her voice with dedication to the music, combining the teachings of historically informed performance with a solid sense of emotion, indispensable for such masterpieces.
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Carolyn Sampson, Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans – Bach: Cantata, BWV 199 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 23:32 minutes | 434 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
In each of the works he composed at Weimar (1708-17), the young Johann Sebastian introduces bold experiments at every turn, ever in search of renewed possibilities of musical expression and thus of an expansion of the conventional formal and stylistic canon.
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Andreas Staier, Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans – C. P. E. Bach: Concertos pour clavier, Wq. 43 (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:34:35 minutes | 959 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
The Sei concerti per il cembalo concertato were the outcome of a period of intensive work between 1770 and 1772 shortly after Carl Philipp Emanuel arrived in Hamburg. Introducing one of his most exciting recording ventures, Andreas Staier explains the incredible diversity in unity of these works, whose arrangement is not linear, but concentric. One has the impression that Bach wanted to set a series of musical riddles which constantly force the audience to take a critical distance from its own listening. Staier is joined by the Freiburger Barockorchester in this fascinating disc of keyboard concertos.
Staier is unquestionably one of the most probing and thoughtful of musicians around today. –Gramophone
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Kristian Bezuidenhout, Freiburger Barockorchester and Petra Müllejans – Mozart – Piano Concertos nos. 17 K.453 & 22 K.482 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:39 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Mozart places melody at the very heart of his concertos. Introverted and sometimes uncertain at the start of K453, it is subsequently transmuted into birdsong – foreshadowing Papageno – and leads to a finale worthy of an opera buffa. Imbued with majesty in K482 (contemporary with Le nozze di Figaro), it takes on a tinge of bitterness in the work’s slow movement, before returning to more joyful melodic motifs, one of which will recur in Cosi fan tutte. Never have opera and concerto been so close. Partnering with the Freiburger Barockorchester, acclaimed fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout brings out all of the singing lines and sparkling bravura of these two great concertos.
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