dimecres, 9 de juliol del 2025

LEDESMA, Nicolás (1791-1883) - Stabat Mater (1837)

Henri Lehmann (1814-1882) - Miraculous transport of the body of St.Catherine (1839)


Nicolás Ledesma (1791-1883) - Stabat Mater (1837)
Performers: Paloma Pérez Iñigo (soprano); J. Mecharri (tenor); R. Salaberria (bass);
Orquesta del Festival Internacional de LOIOLA; Javier Bello-Portu (1920-2004, conductor)

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Spanish composer. He was a choirboy at Tarazona Cathedral, where he was taught music by Francisco Javier Gibert and José Angel Martinchique. He later moved to Zaragoza, where he studied the organ with Ramón Ferreñac. From an early age he was organist and choirmaster in various collegiate churches: Borja (1807), Tafalla (1809), Calatayud (where he is known to have been about 1824) and finally Bilbao (1830), where he remained until his death. He was a prolific composer of masses, Lamentations, motets and villancicos. Although his music reflects the bombastic and theatrical tendencies of his age, he had a sound technique and a certain nobility of invention. He was also active with Hilarión Eslava in efforts to renew and purify religious music.

dilluns, 7 de juliol del 2025

RUST, Friedrich Wilhelm (1739-1796) - Sonate in Fis moll (1784)

Unknown artist (18th Century) - Kurfürst Maximilian Joseph von Pfalz-Bayern mit seiner Familie (1799)


Friedrich Wilhelm Rust (1739-1796) - Clavier=Sonate in | Fis moll | componirt | 1784
Performers: Seth Carlin (1945-2016, pianoforte)

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German composer. As a small child he learnt to play the violin, encouraged by his elder brother Johann Ludwig Anton, who was himself considered an excellent violinist. He also learnt the piano, and according to his own account in his autobiography (1775) could play the first part of J.S. Bach’s Das wohltemperirte Clavier from memory when he was 16. After his father’s death in 1751 he lived with his mother and eldest brother in Gröbzig until 1755. A copy that he made of the trio sonata from Bach’s Musical Offering dates from this period; it is now considered lost. He then attended the Lutheran Gymnasium in Cöthen, 1755-58. From 1758 he studied law at Halle-Wittenberg University; he also had lessons with W.F. Bach and in return deputized for him as a church organist. Soon after Rust had completed his studies there, Prince Leopold Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau sent him to Zerbst to study with Carl Höckh, and then to Berlin and Potsdam (July 1763-April 1764) to study the violin with Franz Benda and keyboard instruments with C.P.E. Bach. In 1765-66 he visited Italy in the prince’s retinue, and there completed his musical training. He then settled in Dessau, where a lively court and civic musical life soon developed under his influence, and he wrote most of his compositions for it. From 1769 he organized regular subscription concerts, with music performed by both court musicians and amateurs, and in 1775 a theatre was founded, a project for which Rust was largely responsible. His achievements were recognized in April 1775, when the prince made him court music director. He married his former singing pupil Henriette Niedhardt in May; the couple had eight children, two of whom became professional musicians. In his lifetime Rust was honoured and esteemed as an instrumentalist and composer; contemporary lexicons and his correspondence with colleagues bear eloquent witness to this. He was also active as a teacher, and trained a series of well-regarded instrumentalists and singers. The surviving instrumental music includes works for clavichord, viola d’amore, harp, lute, and nail violin, the sound of which appealed to his introverted nature. In addition to large-scale vocal works and six stage works he also wrote some 100 lieder, of which 70 have been made usable for modern performance.

diumenge, 6 de juliol del 2025

D'AMBLEVILLE, Charles (1587-1637) - Missa Psallite Domino (1636)

Christophe Nicolas Tassin (c.1600-1660) - Rouen (1636)


Charles d'Ambleville (1587-1637) - Missa Psallite Domino des 'Harmonia sacra, seu vesperae in dies tum dominicos, tum festos totius anni, una cum missa ac litaniis beatae virginis cum sex vocibus' (1636)
Performers: Ensemble Meihua Fleur de Prunus; Chœur du Centre Catholique Chinois de Paris;
François Picard (conductor)
Further info: Musique des Lumières

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French composer. All that is known of his life is that in 1626 he was procureur of the Compagnie de Jésus at Rouen. He left only musical works, from which we may infer that he was director of music of one of the colleges of his order. His Octonarium sacrum (1634) is a set of five-part verses for the Magnificat, using all eight tones; they are fugal and closely resemble similar pieces by Nicolas Formé. Two years later he published his Harmonia sacra in two complementary volumes for four and six voices respectively. It includes works for double choir in a distinctly modern style originating in Italy that had already been adopted in France by several composers. Each volume also contains several masses and motets for a single choir. The double-choir works are for liturgical use and comprise psalms, motets and hymns.

divendres, 4 de juliol del 2025

ROSETTI, Antonio (c.1750-1792) - Concertino Per il Fagotto (c.1780)

Frans Xaver Hendrik Verbeeck (1686-1755) - Concerto


Antonio Rosetti (c.1750-1792) - Concertino (Es-Dur) | Per il Fagotto Solo | Violini Primo, e 2do oblig:ti |
2: Corni, Flutta | Viola, e Basso (c.1780), MurR C68
Performers: Leo Cermak (bassoon); The Vienna Orchestral Society; Charles Adler (1889-1959, conductor)

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Bohemian composer and double bass player. The precise date and location of his birth remain uncertain. When he died in 1792, the death register in Ludwigslust recorded his age as 42, placing his birth in the year 1750. He is believed to have received early musical training from the Jesuits in Prague. In 1773 he left his native country and found employment in the Hofkapelle of Prince Kraft Ernst of Oettingen-Wallerstein whom he served for sixteen years, becoming Kapellmeister in 1785. While there, he orchestrated two piano concerti by Anna von Schaden. In July 1789 Rosetti left Wallerstein to accept the post of Kapellmeister to the Duke Friedrich Franz I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Ludwigslust where he died in service of the duke on 30 June 1792 at the age of 42 years. In 1777, he married Rosina Neher, with whom he had three daughters. In late 1781 he was granted leave to spend 5 months in Paris. Many of the finest ensembles in the city performed his works. Rosetti arranged for his music to be published, including a set of six symphonies published in 1782. He returned to his post, assured of recognition as an accomplished composer. As a composer, he wrote over 400 compositions, primarily instrumental music including many symphonies and concertos which were widely published. Rosetti also composed a significant number of vocal and choral works, particularly in the last few years of his life. Among these are German oratorios including Der sterbende Jesu and Jesus in Gethsemane (1790) and a German Hallelujah. The English music historian Charles Burney included Rosetti among the most popular composers of the period in his work A General History of Music. Rosetti is perhaps best known today for his horn concertos, which Mozart scholar H. C. Robbins Landon suggests (in The Mozart Companion) may have been a model for Mozart's four horn concertos. Rosetti is also known for writing a Requiem (1776) which was performed at a memorial for Mozart in December 1791. Attributing some music to Rosetti is difficult because several other composers with similar names worked at the same time, including Franciscus Xaverius Antonius Rössler.

dimecres, 2 de juliol del 2025

PAER, Ferdinando (1771-1839) - Concerto per Organo

Unknown artist (19th Century) - Portrait of Ferdinando Paer


Ferdinando Paër (1771-1839) - Concerto (Re maggiore) per Organo con strumenti
Performers: Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini (1929-2017, organ); Orchestre de Chambre de Milan;
Tito Gotti (1927-2024, conductor)

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Italian composer. He studied with Francesco Fortunati and Gaspare Ghiretti in Parma, producing his first stage work, the prose opera 'Orphee et Euridice', there in 1791. On July 14, 1792, he was appointed honorary maestro di cappella to the court of Parma, bringing out his opera 'Le astuzie amorose' that same year at the Teatro Ducale there. His finest work of the period was 'Griselda, ossia La virtu at cimento' (Parma, 1798). In 1797 he was appointed music director ofthe Karnthnertortheater in Vienna. While there, he made the acquaintance of Beethoven, who expressed admiration for his work. It was in Vienna that he composed one of his finest operas, 'Camilla, ossia II sotteraneo' (1799). After a visit to Prague in 1801, he accepted the appointment of court Kapellmeister in Dresden. Three of his most important operas were premiered there: 'I Fuorusciti di Firenze' 1802), 'Sargino, ossia L'Allievo del Vamore' (1803), and 'Leonora, ossia L'amore conjugate' (1804), a work identical in subject with that of Beethoven's Fidelio (1805). In 1806 he resigned his Dresden post and accepted an invitation to visit Napoleon in Posen and Warsaw. In 1807 Napoleon appointed him his maitre de chapelle in Paris, where he also became director of the Opera-Comique. Following the dismissal of Spontini in 1812, he was appointed director of the Theatre-Italien. One of his most successful operas of the period, 'Le Maitre de chapelle' (Paris, 1821), remained in the repertoire in its Italian version until the early years of the 20th century. Paer's tenure at the Theatre-Italien continued through the vicissitudes of Catalani's management (1814-17) and the troubled joint directorship with Rossini (1824-27). After his dismissal in 1827, he was awarded the cross of the Legion d'honneur in 1828 and he was elected a member of the Institute of the Academie des Beaux Arts in 1831. He was appointed director of music of Louis Philippe's private chapel in 1832. As a composer, he was a prolific composer, producing at least 55 operas, most of them during the 25-year span from 1791 to 1816. His vocal writing was highly effective, as was his instrumentation. He was one of the central figures in the development of opera semiseria during the first decade of the 19th century. Nevertheless, his operas have disappeared from the active repertoire.