This recording of Mozart’s Requiem stands out even in the well-trodden landscape of classical repertoire. While the piece has been recorded many times, the combination of top-tier soloists, the brilliant voices of the Flemish Radio Choir, and the enchanting timbres of Il Gardellino Orchestra on period instruments, all under the energetic direction of Bart Van Reyn, infuses this live performance with an extra spark of magic. The result is a fresh, captivating interpretation that breathes new life into Mozart’s timeless masterpiece.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE, NL

A once abandoned Passion project by J. S. Bach? Harpsichordist and conductor Alexander Grychtolik, together with the Il Gardellino Orchestra, embarks on a captivating artistic experiment with this presentation of the Passion Oratorio BWV Anh. 169. The starting point for the partial reconstruction attempt and the completion of the work is the surviving libretto by the poet Picander from 1725. This unique endeavor draws the audience into a profound exploration of human empathy with the poignant suffering of Jesus and sheds light on a passion aesthetic we had not seen previously in Bach’s repertoire.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

Lyrics: DE, EN

This album takes the listener on a journey through Handel’s Italian years, featuring one of his most stunning compositions. Experience the beauty of his Dixit Dominus which showcases his remarkable skill as a composer. The record also features the breathtaking cantata Il pianto di Maria, thought to be by Handel until recent research revealed it was from the pen of Italian composer Giovanni Battista Ferrandini (1710-1791).

Booklet : EN, FR, DE

Lyrics: LAT/IT, EN

The story of the liberation of the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt, as told in the Book of Exodus, has often been set to music. The works by Telemann and Rolle recorded here are based on this subject and partly even on the same libretto. And yet these two composers, separated by only one generation, handle this topic in remarkably different ways.

Following the release of C. P. E. Bach’s Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (PAS1115) and Niccolo Jommelli’s Requiem and Miserere (PAS1076), Il Gardellino once again presents a work that has been virtually unknown to a wide audience with this premiere recording of Rolle’s oratorio.

Under the direction of Peter Van Heyghen, the vocal ensemble and the baroque orchestra Il Gardellino bring these oratorios to new splendour. The solo parts feature outstanding singers such as Miriam Feuersinger, Elvira Bill, Daniel Johannsen, André Morsch and Sebastian Myrus.

Booklet: EN, DE, FR

Lyrics: DE, EN

Alex Potter and Il Gardellino perform two Bach cantatas from 1726: Geist und Seele wird verwirret BWV 35 and Gott soll allein mein Herze haben BWV 169. The secular origins of the genre can be clearly perceived in these cantatas. The expressive recitatives and virtuoso arias testify more to the influence of opera than to Bach’s Lutheran roots. Moreover, instrumental music plays a prominent role in these cantatas, which are preceded by independent sinfonias.

To round off the programme, Leo van Doeselaar plays Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major BWV 564, which illustrates the growing influence of the concerto form on Bach’s way of thinking. Like the rest of the programme, this work is played on the Treutmann organ of the Stiftskirche St. Georg in Grauhof.

The listener is offered the opportunity to hear precisely those colours that Bach expected from an organ, for while it is standard today to perform the Baroque repertoire on a positive organ, Bach made full use of the grand organs of the churches in which he was employed.

Booklet: EN, DE, FR

Lyrics: DE, EN

Radical, daring and extremely refined: that’s how C. P. E. Bach saw his new path for the Oratorio, after his father’s Passions had marked the climax of the baroque era. Encouraged by his godfather Telemann and liberated from the yoke of the capricious Frederick of Prussia, he found himself in Hamburg with an audience hungry for new music. And he brought them his oratorios, no longer in churches but in concert halls, where he demanded the listener’s undivided attention for sudden changes of mood and colour.

Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu did indeed leave its traces: both Haydn and Beethoven showed great interest after a series of three performances conducted by Mozart in Vienna. Not only did it pave the way for Haydn’s oratorios, but there are also clear influences on the Pamina arias in Die Zauberflöte written a few years later. C. P. E. Bach wrote to his publisher Breitkopf, “I think this is the best work I have ever written.”

Booklet : EN, FR, DE

Lyrics: DE, EN

As the name suggests, a claviorganum is a keyboard instrument with a harpsichord and an organ section, which can be played individually or together on one or two manuals. While this instrument may seem like a curiosity today, many sources confirm that “curiosities” were rather the norm on the European continent from the 15th to the 17th century. There was a variety of different keyboard instruments at this time, but which instrument should be used for a particular work is usually not specified. Therefore, it is extremely interesting to try to establish the connection between an instrument and a particular repertoire. That is the task Il Gardellino and Bart Naessens have set themselves with this recording.

Handel’s Organ Concertos op. 7 were written at a time when the composer was more than ever in search of the perfect instrument. While there is no evidence that Handel knew the claviorganum, it is very likely that he did. The present CD shows that the claviorganum sounds absolutely exquisite in the selected repertoire, both as a solo and as a continuo instrument.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE, NL

Deep remorse and the longing for divine redemption are two of the central topics in the cantatas of Northern German Baroque composers. Griet de Geyter and Il Gardellino have selected three exemplary works in this genre by Dieterich Buxtehude, Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach, giving special emphasis to the clearly led voice and striking expressivity of the young Belgian soprano.

The emotional climax is Bach’s cantata with obbligato oboe “Mein Herz schwimmt im Blut” BWV 199, which is based on Christ’s parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. The programme is complemented by an instrumental sonata by Buxtehude and two organ versions of the chorale “Jesu, meine Freude”, played by Leo van Doeselaar.

Booklet: EN, NL, DE, FR

Lyrics: DE/LAT, EN

Niccolò Jommelli was one of the most sought after composers of his time, but finally accepted to become musical director at the corut of Stuttgart in 1753. Three years later he composed his Requiem to commemorates the recent death of the Duchess von Württemberg, mother of his patron, the Duke Karl Eugen..

Despite the fact that Jommelli owed his fame almost exclusively to his operas during his life time, the Requiem became his most famous work after his death; the almost one hundred handwritten and printed copies of the entire work or fragments of it that have survived in some seventy libraries throughout Europe, some also in the USA, bear witness to this. Whilst the score and parts of the first performance have been lost, we can still form a reasonably good idea of the original instrumentation thanks to a surviving list of payments made to the musicians. We know that there were eight singers (one female and seven male) in addition to Jommelli. We also know that soon after Jomelli’s death the work was performed with ensembles of very different sizes But Peter Van Heyghen and Il Gardellino choose for the version that was close to the first performance and based it’s own edition on the mansuscript that is considered to be the primary source for the work.

Van Heyghen and il Gardellino choose to constitute a vocal ensemble with the state of the art singers of the moment, and the result is stunningly convincing and beautiful.

Booklet: EN, DE, NL

Lyrics: EN

“Full of fire, spirit, and life”: this description of the Bohemian composer Josef Mysliveček’s character was made by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his younger contemporary. Mysliveček (1737-1781) spent his entire career in Italy and committed himself to the life of a freelance composer: he obstinately refused to accept any type of employment in permanent service. Not only did he develop into one of the most talented, successful and productive opera and oratorio composers of his time, but he also achieved distinction as a composer of instrumental music.

His great artistry lay in his mastery of all the forms and techniques current at that time, in the inventiveness revealed in his musical ideas and techniques, and in the ease with which he connected and alternated these ideas in new and often unexpected ways. All of the above are amply illustrated by this world premiere recording of Adamo ed Eva(1771), his third oratorio.

Booklet: FR, EN, DE, NL

Lyrics: IT, EN