Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

Bach's "Dialogue Cantatas" generally portrayed Jesus in dialogue with the human soul, first tormented and then at peace. The three cantatas selected here by Berlin's Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, which has, over the years since 1982 (with over a million records sold!) brought together musicians from the city's different orchestras – first those under Soviet rule and then all orchestras following the fall of the Wall – are a part of this genre; all date from the great Leipzig period, specifically the third cycle written by Bach for Leipzig in 1726. It will come as no surprise, hearing these cantatas, that the essence of the first arias is desperate, heart-rending: and as they go on, they move towards relief and joy. It is in these first moments that we see Bach at his most intense, most pained, most chromatic, terribly modern as well as at his most romantic, profoundly lyrical and yet rigorous in the musical discourse. The most superbly original piece is surely the Cantata BWV 49, which begins with a Sinfonia with obbligato organ – in which the listener will recognise the final movement of the Harpsichord Concerto in E Major, when Bach recycled it a dozen years later – and continues with an aria with cello and oboe, both soloists immersed in the soprano's joyous voice; and we finish on a magnificent chorale with an aria – the aria being for the bass of the solo organ, while the soprano part sings the chorale's theme from on high: a staggering display of modernity. © SM/Qobuz

This second volume of Handel’s Concerti grossi from Opus 6 was recorded by the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin under the direction of Bernhard Frock, completing the first part published in July 2019. Once again, the sound recording is magnificently natural, brilliantly capturing the venue’s spatiality and the instruments’ full-bodied timbres. Among the many great qualities of this Handel trilogy (the third edition will include the Concerti, Op. 3), the ensemble’s perfectly united playing stands out, without any of the hard or speedy gushes that so often become the hallmarks of less stylistically astute ensembles. While Handel used Corelli as a model for his concerto grosso, importing it to London, the Berlin musicians offer a calm and serene version, one which is often steeped with melancholy, the fruit of a mature composer who absorbed all the different musical styles he heard around him and turned it into something truly unique. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The Akademie für Alte Musik reveals its performance of Handel’s first six concertos from Opus 6 in true chamber music spirit, which sometimes brings Handel’s universe closer to that of his continental counterpart, Georg Philipp Telemann, whose work has often been played and recorded by the Berlin ensemble musicians (including several indispensable albums for the French label Harmonia Mundi). For this magnificently recorded first part of their Handel trilogy, which includes the two opuses 3 and 6, recorded in the Nikodemuskirche in Berlin between September 2018 and February 2019, the Akademie für Alte Musik paints rich, striking colours (already showcased in their album Water Music) while remaining attentive to polyphonies and phrasing. This record is a real pleasure throughout, and perhaps even more compelling than their recent album Water Music. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin's Handel-shaped debut series for Pentatone is very much keeping up the high standards with this third installment, featuring the Opus 3 collection of concerti grossi.Published by John Walsh in 1734, but more likely to have been written during the 1710s when Handel was newly arrived in London and hopping between its opera house and the homes of wealthy patrons, this collection looks on paper like quite the hodgepodge: a two-movement concerto here, five movements there, four somewhere else.... And the reason is that they were in fact assembled from operatic overtures - and indeed the concept of an orchestral concerto was still very much in its early days back then. For instance, No. 4 was first performed as a second overture in the opera Amadigi, on the orchestra's benefit night on 20 June 1716. In fact only the final movement of No. 6 would appear to date from the 1730s, so for all these separate entities to have ended up in orchestral concerto form in the 1730s is likely to have been thanks to business savviness on the part of Walsh, tapping into Britain's huge appetite for Corelli's Concerti grossi (which Handel was influenced by), and also its burgeoning amateur music scene. Unlike Corelli's famous Op. 6 Concerti grossi though, Handel's opera-born Opus 3 collection really shines the spotlight on the woodwind, and you hear that right from the off with No. 1 in B-flat. Most gorgeously so in the central Largo, which opens with duetting recorders supported by bassoon, and which as a whole is delivered with immensely elegant sobriety and a lovely flow. Also to be enjoyed in this concerto is the smooth class and affective shaping with which concertmaster Georg Kallweit dispatches his solos in the joyful opening Allegro; the smoothness of the continuo cello's jumping figures No. 2's Largo; the delicacy of the harpsichord's filigree flourish at the end of No. 2's concluding Vivace; the fabulous neatness and bounce at every turn from the bassoons. Indeed, as with the previous two volumes, nimble neatness, class and polish are the buzzwords across these performances. Plus, in engineering terms, the same satisfying warmth, balance and blend, and pleasing awareness of the Nikodemuskirche acoustic. In short, another success notched up. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

Handel’s Messiah has been adored by the English since it premiered. It’s a masterpiece in the British repertoire and has never been eclipsed. It’s been sung in every possible style, in every possible size. “Bigger is better” seems to be the general rule of thumb and the number of musicians and singers has approached the thousands. Attending one of these huge performances, Haydn was inspired to write his own oratorio: Die Schöpfung (The Creation).Recorded in January 2020 in Berlin’s famous Jesus-Christus Church, where so many legendary performances have been recorded, this new version uses the ‘reasonable’ size of its 1742 Dublin premiere. The fabulous RIAS-Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin joined forces for the occasion with an amazing English vocal quartet consisting of Julia Doyle (soprano), Tim Mead (countertenor), Thomas Hobbs (tenor) and Roderick Williams (bass).After their three editions devoted to Handel's Concerti grossi, the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin continues to invest in the music of the most English of German composers. Just to give you a taste of what it’s all about, the RIAS-Kammerchor has been led by English choirmaster Justin Doyle since 2016. Here he gives an intimate reading of Messiah, conducting an incredible choir and orchestra that are among the best in the world at performing this music. Berlin was treated to this at the Philharmonie for the 2020 New Year Concert a few days before this recording. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The almost encyclopedic undertaking that French label harmonia mundi has embarked on to celebrate the double anniversary of the birth and death of Beethoven between 2020 and 2027 has already proven itself to be captivating with its emphasis on contemporary works from the start of the 19th century. It also presents us with a version of Beethoven in direct contact with the works of his own era, a step away from the usual romanticised image of the solitary genius in his ivory tower. The juxtaposition of the renowned ‘Pastoral’ Symphony with the Portrait musical de la nature ou Grande Simphonie is troubling to say the least. The latter was written by relatively unknown composer Justin Heinrich Knecht 25 years prior to Beethoven’s masterpiece (it was recorded in a world premiere in 1997 by Frieder Bernius but flew under the radar). The two composers having had the same editor, everything points to the fact that Beethoven was probably familiar with the work, and the similarities between the two are not unrecognisable. The result of a long tradition of pastoral musical works, divided into five movements, with very similar programme indications, Rousseauesque naïvety with regard to the melodic contours and imitations of bird calls all go to show the proximity of the two works. This is a thrilling interpretation thanks to the convincing performance by the Berlin Akademie für Alte Musik that puts the two works on a par together. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was much admired by Haydn, Mozart, as well as young Beethoven, who piously treasured his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments. The two men never met (Beethoven was eighteen when Johann Sebastian’s son passed away), but there are many affinities between them. Both of their works span the transition between two eras of music, and both shared a passion for harmonic exploration and formal studies, combined with a love of the bizarre. It was therefore only right to bring them together on the same album. In his first two symphonies, Beethoven created a world of his own, drawing on the relatively recent history of the musical form that Carl Philipp Emanuel and Joseph Haydn had helped to shape and develop fifty years earlier. Although the works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Beethoven presented here have little in common, they have a similar air of audacity and novelty about them, traits which have been wonderfully showcased by the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin under the baton of their “konzertmeister”, Bernhard Forck. An exciting example of mirroring works released by Harmonia Mundi as part of its monumental Beethoven edition commemorating the composer’s birth and death dates (2020 and 2027). © François Hudry/Qobuz

Pentatone presents Telemann’s rarely-performed opera Miriways (1728) with a stellar cast and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin conducted by Bernard Labadie. Star vocalists such as André Morsch (Miriways), Robin Johannsen (Sophi), Sophie Karthäuser (Bemira), Lydia Teuscher (Nisibis) and Michael Nagy (Murzah) offer a string of beautiful baroque arias and scenes in this German-language opera. Miriways is a piece about love, duty and truthfulness, and was based on political events from that time in Afghanistan and Persia that actually made headlines in European newspapers, demonstrating the eighteenth-century fascination for the Orient. The opera was recorded live during the Telemann Festival Hamburg in 2017. © Pentatone

There was a lot of buzz surrounding this version of Alessandro’s Scarlatti’s Griselda when it was first released in 2002 and soon after, a barrage of articles were published across the world singing its praises. It was considered a momentous occasion in the world of opera. It is a dramatic and wonderful piece and René Jacobs’ lively rendition of Scarlatti’s score in January 2000 at the Berlin State Opera is a real success. Dorothea Röschmann is also the ideal performer for the lead role, conveying the emotion and meaning behind every word marvellously and giving her character a genuine and individual personality that was not often conveyed in operas at that time. The rest of the cast, including Bernarda Fink, Veronica Cangemi and Lawrence Zazzo, are equally of high calibre.It’s also worth mentioning that the libretto (set to music by other composers, such as Vivaldi) is by Apostolo Zeno and (for once) acknowledges the defeat of men. “Griselda is not degraded but transformed by the humiliations inflicted upon her. A champion of selflessness, she doesn’t arouse pity so much as admiration. She is a moving but superhuman character, a heroine in the original sense of the word, in search of the absolute, a fabulous but also overwhelming role”. (Bernard Schreuders).The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin orchestra in Berlin is magnificent here and takes on board even the most minute details of the composer’s theatrical intent with absolute mastery. Scarlatti’s score is full of instrumental richness and the innovative René Jacobs has developed this even further with his own alterations. We certainly have no complaints. © François Hudry/Qobuz