Flute Quartets by Jed Wentz / Musica Ad Rhenum

Jed Wentz / Musica Ad Rhenum

Flute Quartets

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917201628
Catnr: CC 72016
Release date: 01 January 1998

Hi-res download at Spirit of Turtle

1 CD
		Hi-res download at Spirit of Turtle

Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917201628

Catalogue number
CC 72016

Release date
01 January 1998

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

The Noble Art of (Comparative) Simplicity: Mozart's Flute Quartets
"Simplicity is our word of disguise for a shameful unpoetical neglect of expression."
Alexander Pope's assertion, taken from the annotations to his great translation of Homer's Iliad (published in 1715), epitomizes that drive towards grandeur and expression typical of the fine arts of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Music was no exception: during the Baroque period, musical expression was to a great extent imposed on the notes by means of a highly ornamented and rhetorically constructed performance style. According to the aesthetics of the time, an overly literal performance of music by Handel, Telemann or Corelli would but moderately move the passions of the audience, and any attempt to justify the performer's lack of
2 imagination with a plea of "simplicity" was considered "shameful".

Yet, this aesthetic point of view was to change drastically in the course of the century. Following the lead of composers like Leo, Pergolesi and Hasse, critics and audiences ceased to use the word ‘simplicity’ in a pejorative sense. As the century progressed, noble melodies with straightforward accompaniments became fashionable, while fugues and counterpoint took their last stand in sacred music. By the 1770s, when Mozart was commissioned by a wealthy amateur flautist to write quartets for flute and strings, simplicity had triumphed, and musicians and audiences alike expected composers to supply them with elegant, polished pieces in the latest style, free from Baroque bombast and Rococo bizarreries.

Yet, what seemed simple to late 18th-century ears should not be confused with our modern devotion to the notes on the page,
all the notes on the page, and nothing but the notes on the page.

De kunst van eenvoud
Eenvoud—een woord dat volgens Alexander Pope bestaat om te verbloemen dat iets poëtische diepgang en expressie ontbeert. Deze uitspraak, afkomstig uit een van de aantekeningen van Popes bekende vertaling van Homerus’ Iliad, staat symbool voor het streven naar grootsheid in de 17e en vroege 18e eeuw. Muziek was hier geen uitzondering in: tijdens de barok stond muzikale expressie gelijk aan ingewikkeld contrapunt, uitgebreide versieringen en een dramatische uitvoeringsstijl. In deze tijd werd een letterlijke uitvoering van de werken van Händel, Telemann en Corelli waarin weinig geïmproviseerd werd ook gezien als een gebrek aan creativiteit en fantasie.
Deze kijk op kunst veranderde compleet in de 18e eeuw, en “eenvoud” werd dankzij componisten als Giovanni Battista Pergolesi en Johann Adolf Hasse niet langer gezien als esthetisch gebrek. Gedurende de 18e eeuw werden simpele melodieën met een duidelijke begeleiding steeds populairder. Toen een rijke amateurfluitist Mozart in 1170 de opdracht gaf kwartetten te schrijven voor fluit en strijkers, had de eenvoud zijn hoogtijdagen.

De fluitkwartetten van Mozart zijn bedrieglijk eenvoudig: de melodieën zijn aanstekelijk maar op wonderlijke manier muzikaal versierd en gevestigd. Beethoven vond de melodie uit het Kwartet in D majeur zo treffend dat hij hetzelfde thema gebruikte voor zijn duo voor klarinet en fagot in 1792. Het langzame Adagio in b mineur uit hetzelfde kwartet is een romantisch troubadourslied—een lied dat hij ook gebruikt in het 'adagio' van zijn bekende Pianoconcert nr. 23 in A-majeur (K.488).

Op dit album wordt de muziek uitgevoerd door Jed Wentz samen met het ensemble Musica Ad Rhenum.
Wentz is een fluitist en musicoloog die zich richt op de historische uitvoering van oude muziek. In 1992 richtte hij het ensemble Musica Ad Rhenum op waarmee hij meerdere albums heeft opgenomen.

Artist(s)

Jed Wentz

Jed Wentz graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Robert Willoughby. He continued his studies with Barthold Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, receiving a Soloist Diploma in 1985. In 1987 he joined Musica Antiqua Köln. In 1992 he founded the early music ensemble Musica ad Rhenum, a group devoted to the application of information from original sources in order to recreate the virtuosic and expressive perfomances of the 18th century. Jed Wentz communicates his musicological discoveries not only through his performances, but also in lectures and articles. He teaches at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam.

Jed Wentz graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Robert Willoughby. He continued his studies with Barthold Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, receiving a Soloist Diploma in 1985. In 1987 he joined Musica Antiqua Köln. In 1992 he founded the early music ensemble Musica ad Rhenum, a group devoted to the application of information from original sources in order to recreate the virtuosic and expressive perfomances of the 18th century. Jed Wentz communicates his musicological discoveries not only through his performances, but also in lectures and articles.
He teaches at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam.

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Anton Steck

Steck began studying the modern violin with Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn in Karlsruhe and the baroque violin with Reinhard Goebel in Cologne. After his studies he served as concertmaster for Musica Antiqua Köln and the French ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre under Marc Minkowski. With these ensembles he gave concerts worldwide and has participated in more than thirty album recordings. In 1996 he co-founded the Schuppanzigh Quartet, where he was first violinist. From 2005 to 2008 he was concertmaster of Concerto Köln. In 1997 he made his conducting début with the Handel Festival Orchestra Halle, where he has been artistic director since 1999. His repertoire ranges from early Baroque to the sonatas and violin concertos of Louis Spohr. The recording of the Sonatas KV 55-60 by Mozart and...

His repertoire ranges from early Baroque to the sonatas and violin concertos of Louis Spohr. The recording of the Sonatas KV 55-60 by Mozart and sonatas by Johann Georg Pisendel been awarded several international record prizes.

Steck, since 2000, is professor of baroque violin and conductor of the Baroque Orchestra of the National Academy of Music Trossingen. He is married to Marieke Spaans who also teaches at the Musikhochschule Trossingen.
Steck plays a Jakob Stainer violin from 1658 and a Alessandro Gagliono from 1701. In 2011, Steck was a judge at the MAFestival in Bruges.

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Musica ad Rhenum

Musica ad Rhenum, founded in 1991 by a group of enthusiastic young musicians specialized in the performance of 17th- and 18th-century music on period instruments, has performed for radio, television and in concerts throughout Europe as well as in festivals in Spain, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Brazil and Argentina. The group's name - latin for Music on the Rhine - reflects the determination of its members to combine the latest musicological research and playing styles associated with the Rhenish cities Basel and Cologne with their own vision of authentic Baroque performance practice. The ensemble's emphasis on musicological research, however, does not exclude the element of personal expression from their playing style. As one reviewer put it: “Musica ad Rhenum is more than just a musicological experiment. The results of research express themselves in joyful and convincing performances full of swager and daring”.
In thus combining musicology and personal inspiration to achieve a moving musical experience, the musicians of Musica ad Rhenum are following the advice of the English poet Dryden, who, in his Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1684) wrote that art should be follow nature, not slavishly on foot, but rather, with unbridled imagination and fantasy, mounted on the back of winged Pegasus.

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Nico de Gier

Job ter Haar

Christoph Mayer

Marcelo Bussi

Composer(s)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose actual name is Joannes Chrysotomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a composer, pianist, violinist and conductor from the classical period, born in Salzburg. Mozart was a child prodigy. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart is considered to be one of the most influential composers of all of music's history. Within the classical tradition, he was able to develop new musical concepts which left an everlasting impression on all the composers that came after him. Together with Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven he is part of the First Viennese School. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position. From 1763 he traveled with his family through all of Europe for three years and from 1769 he traveled to Italy and France with his father Leopold after which he took residence in Paris. On July 3rd, 1778, his mother passed away and after a short stay in Munich with the Weber family, his father urged him to return to Salzburg, where he was once again hired by the Bishop. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death.

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