Ouvertüren: Music for the Hamburg Opera

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
This CD of unusual music is vastly entertaining. With the exception of Handel, who is represented by a suite of dances from his first opera, Almira, the composers whose music is played here are obscure or downright unknown. Johann Christian Schieferdecker's Chaconne is elegance itself; a composer named Erlebach proves himself full of fun in a sprightly dance; Reinhard Keiser's Ridicule Prince Jodelet has a type of energy--and is played with such verve (as are all the selections here)--that it will make you smile. All of these pieces are dispatched with great rhythmic dynamism and the players of the Akademie fur Alte Musik sound as if they're having great fun. So will you--and it's all so new! --Robert Levine

Ouvertüren: Music for the Hamburg Opera, Music, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, George Frideric Handel, Reinhard Keiser, Johann Christian Schieferdecker, Georg Caspar Schurmann, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Classical, Classical Artists, German/Austrian Baroque Opera, Opera, Orchestral, Orchestral & Symphonic, Orchestral Music

Ouvertüren: Music for the Hamburg Opera
Average customer rating:

Great CD

Great performance

German-French Baroque

Fresh Sounds from the Eighteenth Century

Stunning

Ouvertüren: Music for the Hamburg Opera

Manufacturer: Harmonia Mundi Fr.
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B0007KT0PE
Release Date: 2005-05-10

Tracks:

I. Overture
II. Menuet
III. Ballet-Entre
IV. Gigue
V. Staccato
VI. Ballet I
VII. Ballet II
VIII. Gigue
I. Overture
II. Air Gavotte
III./IV. Air Menuet I/II
V. Air Bourree
VI. Air Courante
VII. Air Entree
VIII. Air Gavotte
IX. Air Traquenard
X. Air Lentement
Le Ridicule Prince Jodelet
I. Overture
II. Chaconne
III. Courante
IV. Sarabande
V. Bourree
VI. Menuet
VII. Rigaudon
VIII. Rondeau
IX. Ritornello
I. Overture
II. Passepied
III. Entree
IV. Gigue
V. Chaconne

Amazon.com

This CD of unusual music is vastly entertaining. With the exception of Handel, who is represented by a suite of dances from his first opera, Almira, the composers whose music is played here are obscure or downright unknown. Johann Christian Schieferdecker's Chaconne is elegance itself; a composer named Erlebach proves himself full of fun in a sprightly dance; Reinhard Keiser's Ridicule Prince Jodelet has a type of energy--and is played with such verve (as are all the selections here)--that it will make you smile. All of these pieces are dispatched with great rhythmic dynamism and the players of the Akademie fur Alte Musik sound as if they're having great fun. So will you--and it's all so new! --Robert Levine

Customer Reviews:

Great CD.......2007-06-11

This is a great collection of mostly French-style theater music in a variety of flavors and can be recommended unreservedly. The performances are wonderful overall, but I especially enjoyed the bassoon and recorder playing. The Schieferdecker chaconne and the Keiser sinfonia are the real standout discoveries to me as far as individual pieces go. The very famous sarabande (albeit in another form) from Almira is nicely rendered, but feels a bit flat (maybe it's the context). Speaking of Handel, Schürmann's overture to Ludovicus Pius is excellent and I would have mistaken it for a Handel overture had I not known otherwise. The sound engineering is very good generally, but I wonder about the percussion in the extreme foreground of the Ballet-Entre in Ludovicus Pius.

The only other minor detail is the credit in the booklet for the cover painting, which gives an erroneous date of 1729. The cover is a detail from Pannini's depiction of a performance at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in honor of the second marriage of the dauphin (to a daughter of the Elector of Saxony) in 1747 after the death of his first wife the previous year. 1729 is the date of the dauphin's birth (when his father Louis XV was 19), not his marriage.

Great performance.......2007-06-10

So much energy and drama can be found in these works--most by baroque folks you never heard of. I gave it 4 stars because of the music... yes, it's good music, but these are not masterworks.

My favorite track is a short, but wild one where the violin goes out on a solo that's got drive and passion behind it, not to mention some sassy percussion.

These pave the way to later symphonies by the young Mozart, or Haydn.

German-French Baroque.......2006-03-21

This disc is quite acceptable and recommended if you like Musik of the German Baroque---in the French Style, that is. The franco-german title sort of gives that away.

The performance and recording of the Akademie fuer alte Musik Berlin is excellent. Except for G. F. Handel (a young man at the time), the other composers (Erlebach, Schurmann, Keiser, Schieferdecker) are not widely known. But that's part of the interest here. The 32 tracks for the five composers represented are generally short--6 min 37 sec (an Ouverture by Schurmann) to 31 sec (a bourree by Handel).

Fresh Sounds from the Eighteenth Century.......2005-12-14

Here is the perfect antidote to the ho-hum-not-another-unknown-Baroque-composer blues. If you like Baroque music but think you may have heard it all, then give a listen to this CD from Alte Musik Berlin. The music is elegant, attractive, colorful, and a host of other desirable adjectives. With the exception of the Sinfonia to Reinhard Keiser's "Le Ridicule Prince Jodelet," which, to match its subject matter, is wacky, with lots of unpredictable stops and starts and a couple of pretty but irrelevant appearances of the famous melody known as La Folia di Spagna. It's in the same vein as Haydn's equally wacky Symphony No. 60, "Il distratto."

However, the other adjectives apply in spades to the gallant Suite from "Ludovicus Pius" by Schurmann and the stately dances from "Almira," written by the well-known G. F. Handel as a twenty-year-old, while he was working briefly at the Hamburg Opera. This was just prior to departing for his important musical apprenticeship in Italy and long before he ever set foot in England.

In a slightly older style and influenced by French models, chiefly Lully, P. H. Erlebach's Ouverture no. 4 is more unbuttoned than much of Lully's music. Or maybe that is just thanks to the unbuttoned, indeed robust playing of Alte Musik Berlin, who throw themselves into this music as if it had been written for them. Though numbering only nineteen, these musicians make a big, rich sound at least as reproduced by the Harmonia Mundi engineers working in a Berlin studio. There is no studio dryness to the sound but a fine sense of space and stereo spread, as well as fine presence to the percussion played in show-stealing fashion by Micahel Metzler.

This recording has won much praise from the critics, and I can see why. It is a success on every score.

Stunning.......2005-09-24

I had to wait what seemed forever for Amazon to ship me this CD but it was well worth the wait!

The sparkling sound of this CD has been the soundtrack behind this entire day.

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