Andreas Scholl, Alessandro Tampieri, Accademia Bizantina – Invocazioni Mariane (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:18 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naive
For the first time on naive, countertenor Andreas Scholl presents a Neapolitan program centered on the Virgin Mary with the Accademia Bizantina and Alessandro Tampieri. Andreas Scholl and the Accademia Bizantina have enjoyed a successful musical partnership for several decades, spanning the entire baroque repertoire. The new album contains both renowned and lesser-known vocal and instrumental pieces: the figure of Mary, who has inspired a large repertoire of sacred and secular pieces, runs through this Easter program of infinite tribulation, virtuosically scored for voice and orchestra.
Read moreSarah Traubel & Andreas Scholl – De profundis (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:20 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
Psalm 130, De Profundis, expressing human distress and the hope for divine mercy, is one of the best-known and most frequently quoted of biblical texts, and the starting point for numerous compositions, notably by J. S. Bach, who used this text as a basis for several works: his cantata BWV 131, the organ prelude BWV 745, the chorale prelude BWV 687, and his two extant Passions.
His compositions were later echoed in the poems by Baudelaire, Stefan George and Georg Trakl that were set by Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg (Lyric Suite and String Quartet no. 2, respectively).
Sarah Traubel is joined by Andreas Scholl in an exploration of this theme through three centuries of music, from Baroque to the Expressionist and post-Romantic periods, thus sharing with us its universal beauty.
Read moreMorphing Chamber Orchestra, Aleksandra Kurzak, Andreas Scholl, Roberto Alagna, Tomasz Wabnic – Arvo Pärt: Stabat Mater & Other Works (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:43 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
Arvo Pärt is one of the greatest and most performed of living composers. Slow and meditative, often religious, reflecting his mystical experiences, Pärt’s works are unmistakeable. Here Morphing Chamber Orchestra, under its artistic director Tomasz Wabnic, performs some of the Estonian composer’s finest instrumental works, Fratres, Spiegel im Spiegel and Summa, together with one of his vocal masterpieces, the Stabat Mater, presented here in a new arrangement, sung by three of today’s greatest operatic voices, Roberto Alagna, Aleksandra Kurzak and Andreas Scholl. Several shorter pieces, marvels of poetry and purity, sung by Andreas Scholl, complete this programme.
Read moreAndreas Scholl, Tamar Halperin – Wanderer (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:23:04 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca Music Group Ltd.
German countertenor Andreas Scholl is known not only for his gorgeous voice, but gutsy programming, and he may never have been more gutsy than in this set of German Romantic and proto-Romantic (an important distinction of which more in a moment) songs. It’s pretty clear that any of the composers included on this album would have doubled over with laughter at the idea of hearing his music sung by a countertenor, and the highly gendered quality of the music of the 19th century is one of its primary motivating forces. Thus there’s real excitement in hearing that Scholl does, in fact, pull it off. Quoted in the notes, he offers the expected platitudes about how what matters in singing lieder is not voice type but connection with the music. Yet there’s more than that to what’s happening here. Scholl does not simply program a typical lieder recital; rather, he tailors his repertoire to his unusual voice. Haydn, with three songs, and Mozart (two) are overrepresented, and this helps bridge the acceptance gap: the simple, folklike melodies of these songs (Haydn’s are in English) require less suspension of disbelief than do the full-blown Romantic pieces. Moving into Schubert, Scholl makes some interesting choices. The famed Ave Maria is a piece of sheer Italianate melody that works beautifully in Scholl’s voice; it’s of a piece with any number of his earlier recordings. In Der Tod und das Mädchen, D. 531 (Death and the Maiden, the source of a tremendous set of variations in one of Schubert’s string quartets), Scholl sings both of the dialogic parts himself: the Maiden is his usual countertenor voice, while he sings Death as a baritone. The strangeness of this leapfrogs, as it were, that of hearing a countertenor sing Schubert. Add to these the fact that Scholl mostly avoids songs with romantic and erotic themes, and it adds up to an album that continually surprises rather than one that is trying to force something into a mold where it doesn’t belong. Accompanist Tamar Halperin stays mostly out of the way, which is the right thing to do, and in all Scholl can claim another in his string of triumphs, even if it’s maybe not the first one for newcomers to start out with.
Read moreAndreas Scholl & Tamar Halperin – The Family Songbook (Deluxe Version) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 46:33 minutes | 465 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics
On “The Family Songbook” Tamar Halperin and Andreas Scholl combine the sounds of the Middle East with classic children’s songs from the West, harpsichord with country-music sounds and sing-along songs with lullabies. This is a family album for the entire family.
Read moreAndreas Scholl – Bach – Brouwer: Canciones (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 54:08 minutes | 999 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté
The curiosity of the countertenor Andreas Scholl is well-known, with his taste for rare and precious musical items. We find him here with the lute player Edin Karamazov as the embodiment of an encounter between Havana and Leipzig, between contemporary Cuba and baroque Germany. Navigating from the one to the other, the two musicians weave the fabric of a musical reverie in which Johann Sebastian Bach walks alongside the Cuban master Leo Brouwer, whose crossover works draw at once from folklore, creole roots, dance and the scholarly European tradition. These works echo in marvellous manner the chorales, the Cello Suite or English Folk Songs, arranged here by Brouwer himself, and dedicated to the duet.
Read moreAndreas Scholl & Tamar Halperin – The Family Songbook (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:32 minutes | 456 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Berlin Classics
On “The Family Songbook” Tamar Halperin and Andreas Scholl combine the sounds of the Middle East with classic children’s songs from the West, harpsichord with country-music sounds and sing-along songs with lullabies. This is a family album for the entire family.
Read more