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Light Divine
Georg Friedrich Händel

Aksel Rykkvin

Light Divine

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212052624
Catnr: SIGCD 526
Release date: 09 March 2018
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Label
Signum Classics
UPC
0635212052624
Catalogue number
SIGCD 526
Release date
09 March 2018

"Pleasant background music!"

Luister, 18-5-2018
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
Press
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About the album

The prodigious Norwegian treble Aksel Rykkvin returns to disc on Signum with a new disc of Baroque works, accompanying the MIN Ensemble under trumpeter Mark Bennett and the ensemble director Lazar Miletic. Featuring both instrumental pieces and excerpts from operas and oratorios by Handel, Rameau, Albinoni and Rittler, this disc further documents Aksel’s unique talent as a performer and interpreter of Baroque music.

Praise for Aksel’s previous release (Aksel! SIGCD435) and performances:

“A mature, musical performer [...] an accomplished and adult disc” Gramophone

“A remarkable performance - pure,confident, technically perfect and hauntingly beautiful” Classic FM

“Freakishly good, with a musical assurance and richness of tone that are almost superhuman” Financial Times

“A superb debut ... Exceptionally polished performances” BBC Music Magazine

Aksel Rykkvin (2003) is een jonge Noorse zanger. Sinds kort is hij - met zijn 14 jaar - een bariton, maar tijdens de opname van dit album was hij nog een jongenssopraan. Op het album staan zowel instrumentale stukken als delen uit opera's en oratoria van Händel, Rameau, Albinoni en Rittler. De jonge zanger is vol zelfvertrouwen, muzikaliteit en is onberispelijk qua intonatie.

Stem jongenssopraan van beperkte levensduur
Jongenssopranen hebben een unieke aantrekkingskracht maar ook een beperkte levensduur en hun stemmen moeten dan ook op hun hoogtepunt worden vastgelegd. Stemmen breken tegenwoordig eerder dan in de baroktijd (1600-1750), waardoor de prestatie van de 13-jarige Aksel in het veeleisende repertoire des te opmerkelijker is.

Internationaal operadebuut

Aksel Rykkvin is de zoon van het Noorse echtpaar Rikard Rykkvin en Maj-Christel Skramstad. Hij begon op 5-jarige leeftijd te zingen in het kinderkoor van de kathedraal van Oslo. Eigenlijk was hij daarvoor nog te jong maar omwille van zijn motivatie werd hij toch toegelaten. Zijn talent bracht hem ook bij het kinderkoor van de Noorse Opera en Ballet. Aksel is inmiddels een waardig solist bij de Noorse Opera. The Financial Times omschreef hem als “uitzonderlijk goed” in zijn eerste rol op het hoofdpodium als ‘the Boy’ in Rolf Wallins Elysium. In september 2017 maakte Aksel zijn internationale operadebuut in de Opéra Comique in Parijs als ‘Anthony’ in Miranda van Katie Mitchell en Raphaël Picho en trad hij ook voor het eerst op in Nederland, waar hij te gast was op het festival ''Klassiek op het Amstelveld' in Amsterdam. Aksels stem veranderde in de herfst van 2017. Sindsdien zingt hij als bariton en volgt hij trainingen om een carrière als klassieke zanger en operazanger te realiseren.

Artist(s)

Aksel Rykkvin (soprano)

Norwegian treble Aksel Rykkvin (b. 2003) recorded his debut album with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at just twelve years old. Aksel! Arias by Bach, Handel & Mozart (2016) was awarded a DIAPASON ‘d'Or découverte’, and BBC Music Magazine named him as one of the ‘six best child prodigies’ in classical music. Aksel was nominated as ‘Newcomer of the year’ at the Spellemannprisen awards in Norway in 2017. Aksel has performed at numerous concerts and festivals all over Norway, including Fjord Classics and Oslo Chamber Music Festival. In 2017, he opened the Stockholm Early Music Festival and performed at the Klassiek op het Amstelveld in Amsterdam. He has performed several times on radio or tv in Norway, Sweden,...
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Norwegian treble Aksel Rykkvin (b. 2003) recorded his debut album with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at just twelve years old. Aksel! Arias by Bach, Handel & Mozart (2016) was awarded a DIAPASON ‘d'Or découverte’, and BBC Music Magazine named him as one of the ‘six best child prodigies’ in classical music. Aksel was nominated as ‘Newcomer of the year’ at the Spellemannprisen awards in Norway in 2017. Aksel has performed at numerous concerts and festivals all over Norway, including Fjord Classics and Oslo Chamber Music Festival. In 2017, he opened the Stockholm Early Music Festival and performed at the Klassiek op het Amstelveld in Amsterdam. He has performed several times on radio or tv in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, including Scandinavia’s biggest talkshow, ‘Skavlan’, and BBC Radio 3 ‘In tune’. Aksel has sung for the Norwegian Royal family on several occasions, including at the 80 years anniversary party of the King and Queen with a host of European royalty present. He has worked with the Oslo Philharmonic, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Arve Tellefsen, Henning Kraggerud, Håvard Gimse, Christian Ihle Hadland, Lars Anders Tomter, Rolf Lislevand, Sigmund Groven and many more of the most prominent Norwegian orchestras, classical musicians and conductors. Aksel is something of an international phenomenon in social media, with millions of video views on YouTube and Facebook.
At 13 years old Aksel won the Norwegian Music Competition for Youth, which is open to classical musicians and singers up to age 22.
Aksel is already a merited soloist at the Norwegian National Opera. The Financial Times described him as “freakishly good” in his first main stage role as ‘the Boy’ in Rolf Wallin’s Elysium. He dazzled critics further as ‘Yniold’ in Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande, a performance that ResMusica called ‘unsurpassable’. In September 2017 Aksel made his international opera debut at Opéra Comique in Paris, as ‘Anthony’ in Katie Mitchell and Raphaël Pichon’s Miranda.
Aksel still sings in Oslo Cathedral Boys’ Choir where he started out receiving training as a five-year-old from voice teacher Helene Haarr. When he started singing in the Children’s Chorus of the Norwegian National Opera at the age of ten, Aksel began singing studies with his present main voice teacher Marianne Lewis both in the opera and in the classical music talent class at Majorstuen school in Oslo. Aksel’s voice changed in the autumn of 2017 and he now continues to sing as a baritone, training to pursue a career as a classical and opera singer.

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The MIN Ensemble

The MIN Ensemble is one of Norway’s few professional chamber ensembles, and is widely considered to be one of the foremost ensembles in Norway. It is based in the county of Nordland but tours throughout the country as well as abroad. As a large chamber ensemble (string quintet, wind quintet and piano), MIN Ensemble performs music that is only rarely heard by today’s concert audiences. The ensemble also tours with various arrangements and programmes. Its repertoire is dynamic and broad, ranging from early through to contemporary music. Since its foundation in 1992, the ensemble has been enthusiastically received by audiences and critics both at home and abroad. 
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The MIN Ensemble is one of Norway’s few professional chamber ensembles, and is widely considered to be one of the foremost ensembles in Norway. It is based in the county of Nordland but tours throughout the country as well as abroad.

As a large chamber ensemble (string quintet, wind quintet and piano), MIN Ensemble performs music that is only rarely heard by today’s concert audiences. The ensemble also tours with various arrangements and programmes. Its repertoire is dynamic and broad, ranging from early through to contemporary music.

Since its foundation in 1992, the ensemble has been enthusiastically received by audiences and critics both at home and abroad.


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Mark Bennett (conductor)

Mark Bennett won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied with Michael Laird. Whilst there he was awarded the Royal College Brass prize and also became interested in the natural trumpet and baroque performance practice. Since then he has been involved in many different types of music making, including playing principal trumpet with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Between 1990 and 2000, Mark was a professor at the Royal Collage of Music, teaching both modern and baroque trumpet.    He has performed and toured extensively with many period instrument orchestras and ensembles, including the English Concert, London Brass and Baroque Brass of London, as well as the Orchestra of the Age...
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Mark Bennett won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied with Michael Laird. Whilst there he was awarded the Royal College Brass prize and also became interested in the natural trumpet and baroque performance practice. Since then he has been involved in many different types of music making, including playing principal trumpet with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Between 1990 and 2000, Mark was a professor at the Royal Collage of Music, teaching both modern and baroque trumpet. He has performed and toured extensively with many period instrument orchestras and ensembles, including the English Concert, London Brass and Baroque Brass of London, as well as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and The English Baroque Soloists. He has worked with some of the world's leading conductors, including Esa Pekka Salonen, Claus Tennstedt, Franz Bruggen, Sir Roger Norrington, William Christie, Ton Koopman Iona Brown, Christopher Hogwood, Sir Simon Rattle, Philippe Herreweghe, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner Mark played lead trumpet in the West-End production of Cats for the last 2 years of its London run, and has also played on over one hundred feature films, including Shakespeare in Love and Stargate.
Mark has made many solo recordings on both the modern and the baroque trumpets. These include concertos by Haydn, Fasch, Vivaldi and Telemann, all with Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert for Deutsche Gramophone archive. He has recorded 2 solo recordings with the Purcell Quartet: A Purcell collection and Biber’s Sonatae Tam Aris Quam Audis Sevientes. Mark has recorded Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto seven times: the first time when with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields he was just 21, and subsequently with enembles including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Hanover Band and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. For ten years Mark was a member of London Brass, where he recorded many solo brass pieces. Including works by Marini, Gabrieli and Purcell.
In the last ten years Mark has built a fruitful relationship with Norway, working with the Norwegian Baroque Orchestra, the Oslo Baroque Orchestra and as soloist with Terje Tønnesen and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. He has also appeared in the Oslo Chamber Music Festival playing Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto. Conducting has also become a more important part of his musical life, with invidations to lead Orchestras and wind bands in Norway such as NRK Radio Orchestra, MiN Ensemble, Den Norske Blaseensemblet and Kongelige Norske Marinenes Musikkorps amongst others.

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Composer(s)

Georg Friedrich Händel

Georg Frideric Handel was a composer from the Baroque period. Handel wrote primarily music-dramatic works: 42 operas, 29 oratorios, more than 120 cantatas, trios and duets, which comes to a total amount of almost 2000 arias! Furthermore, he composed English, Italian and Latin sacred music, serenades and odes. Among his instrumental music are several organ concertos, concerti grossi, overtures, oboe sonatas and violinsonates, along with many solo works for harpsichord and organ.  Together with Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born in the same year (1685), Handel is viewed as one of the greatest composers of his time. He was extremely prolific and wrote in total more than 610 works, many of which are still performed today.  Compared to his contemporaries Bach, Telemann...
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Georg Frideric Handel was a composer from the Baroque period. Handel wrote primarily music-dramatic works: 42 operas, 29 oratorios, more than 120 cantatas, trios and duets, which comes to a total amount of almost 2000 arias! Furthermore, he composed English, Italian and Latin sacred music, serenades and odes. Among his instrumental music are several organ concertos, concerti grossi, overtures, oboe sonatas and violinsonates, along with many solo works for harpsichord and organ.

Together with Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born in the same year (1685), Handel is viewed as one of the greatest composers of his time. He was extremely prolific and wrote in total more than 610 works, many of which are still performed today.

Compared to his contemporaries Bach, Telemann and Scarlatti, Handel was by far the most cosmopolitan. When Handel was a child, his father, who was a surgeon at the court of Saxe-Weissenfels, imagined a juridical career for him. But his musical talents did not go unnoticed at the court, which forced the father to let him study music. In Hamburg, Handel befriended Mattheson. Together they visited Buxtehude, the greatest organ player of his time, in 1703 (two years before Bach did). At that time, Handel was already an excellent musician, but it wasn't until his stay in Italy - the land of opera - that his talents and skills truly started to flourish. Back in Germany, he received a position at the court of Hannover, where the noblemen had a connection to the British throne. Thanks to these connections, Handel decided to move to London, after which a puzzling history of intrigues and political games started. For example, it is unclear what the exact political message of his famous Water Music is, which was composed for a boat ride on the river Thames by King George. Initially, Handel focused on Italian opera during his stay in London, but from the 1730s onwards he started composing English spoken oratorios, with the celebrated Messiah at its peak.


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Press

Pleasant background music!
Luister, 18-5-2018

A good advice: give yourself this CD, there may not be another coming out of Aksel Rykkvin, not as a 'boy treble'.
Kerk & Leven, 03-4-2018

Let's hope that this young guy who is already enjoying a world career at the age of fifteen, will emerge within a few years as a celebrated song interpreter or opera singer.
Kerk & Leven, 13-3-2018

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