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weinstadt artists management – s.p.r.l.u.
member of the european association of artists managers
ANIMA ETERNA & JOS VAN IMMERSEEL
Anima Eterna has grown from a small baroque ensemble into a full symphony orchestra whose
players and range of instruments are, for each new project, continually tested against and reflect
historical performance practice.
On the basis of this working method, Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna have carried out
pioneering work from the baroque era to the twentieth century, from Bach to Bartók.
Moreover, the adventure of the now 20 year-old orchestra is catching on in increasingly wider
circles, noticeably amongst young people. International music critics are also reacting with surprise
and enthusiasm to each new re-creation from the treasure trove of our past.
Jos van Immerseel: "More and more people are realising that you can show a composer no greater
respect than by taking his music seriously, in a performance in which duty and freedom go hand in
hand. By duty, I mean the correct performance of the musical notation, the use of the prescribed
set of instruments, the application of the things that were obvious at the time, such as standard
pitch, playing technique, the balance within the orchestra, and the tempo desired by the composer.
But there is also that freedom, namely the right to be a contemporary person with one’s own
erudition and sensitivities and with the possibility of balancing all the available elements."
In addition to many appearances at home and abroad, the company has been the ‘orchestra in
residence’ at the Concertgebouw in Bruges for the last five years and since 2002 has been working
on the ' Collection Anima Eterna' with the French record label Zig-Zag Territoires, a collection that
so far encompasses 17 CDs.
Jos Van Immerseel
Pianist, conductor, researcher, collector, music teacher: the work of Jos van Immerseel is his life
and that life is music. His much-praised historical performance practice is based on a permanent
dialogue between musical knowledge and specialised practice. Or, as Goethe put it almost two
hundred years ago:
He who wants to understand poetry
Must go to the land of poetry
He who wants to understand the poet
Must go to the land of the poet.
Jos van Immerseel is a passionate researcher and collector. With his fascinating collection of
harpsichords and concert grand pianos, together representative of keyboard music from around
1700 until the first decade of the twentieth century, he systematically researches the historicallyfounded relationship between composition, instrument and playing technique. With help and advice
from the best restorers, tuners, technicians and transporters he enraptures listeners from Tokyo to
Oslo with the period sounds of classical, romantic and impressionist instruments, always in a
historically founded and creatively animated context. The approach is uncompromising: Jos van
Immerseel selects the most appropriate instrument for the performance from his private collection
and then takes it along to the concert hall or recording studio so that the listener, whether in the
hall or through the CD player, experiences the adventure of the always unique and authentic
character of the meticulously built facsimile or original instrument. Of critical significance to Van
Immerseel’s development in the field of historical instruments were two magnificent instruments at
the Vleeshuis Museum in Antwerp: a Joannes Dulcken from 1747 and a Conrad Graf from 1826.
No less important in the early years were of course his contacts with committed musicians such as
populierenlaan 3/26 – 2020 antwerp – www.concerts-weinstadt.be
tel : +32/3-216 70 60 - fax : +32/3-216 70 66 - e-mail : [email protected]
licence nrs : B-00414-405 VG 1575/BA - vat : be 0435.501.195 – iban : be61 3100 4141 2117 – bic : BBRUBEBB
weinstadt artists management – s.p.r.l.u.
member of the european association of artists managers
René Jacobs, the Kuijken brothers, Jaap Schröder, Anner Bijlsma, Paul Van Nevel, Guy de Mey,
Paul Dombrecht and others.
Jos van Immerseel was already being acclaimed as an excellent prima vista player in the early
years of his career as a pianist, for example during the Internationales Musikwettbewerb
‘Klavierspiel vom Blatt’, organised by the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation in Munich in 1963. At
that time, the coupling of his talents (also as a virtuoso piano tuner) with his fascination for organ
and vocal music pointed him towards the barely explored fields of the old repertoires. Collegium
Musicum (1964-68), which he founded, quickly attracted attention for its promising experiments
with historical instruments from the renaissance and baroque repertoires. Van Immerseel followed
his research with, among other things, a study of the historical harpsichord with Kenneth Gilbert
which, in 1973, resulted in a higher diploma with summa cum laude and congratulations from the
jury. When, in that same year, the first Paris harpsichord contest was launched, he was not just
acclaimed by the jury ‘à l’unanimité’ but also won the audience prize. He was the only candidate
(on a Ruckers-Taskin from 1780) who consistently opted for the historical harpsichord and, in so
doing, ushered in a new trend in the development of the French harpsichord school.
As a soloist Jos van Immerseel enjoys wide international recognition, both on the concert stage
and for his CD productions. His solo CD recordings have been honoured with various prestigious
awards, including the Diapason d’Or, Le Choc du Monde de la Musique, FFFF de Télérama and
others.
As a conductor, Van Immerseel was until around 1985 oriented towards baroque music. In 1977,
he led the now legendary performance of L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, in the company of a
throng of highly-praised baroque specialists. In the 1980s, he also often conducted the Radio
Chamber Orchestra, the Dutch Chamber Orchestra and the Dutch Chamber Choir. Since then, he
has gradually shifted the boundaries of his research towards classical, romantic and impressionist
music.
He immersed himself in historical improvisation practices and undertook a thorough study of the
use of rhetoric in music. He further elaborated on these insights as the conductor of Anima Eterna,
the orchestra which he set up in 1987 and whose absence from the nobility of authentic historical
performance practice would be unimaginable.
Jos van Immerseel is also much in demand and a popular guest as a music teacher. For a long
time he was professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieure in Paris and guest lecturer at the
Scola Cantorum Basilensis. From 1982 to 1985, he, along with Ton de Leeuw, was artistic director
of the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam. He is regularly invited by music academies and
colleges in Europe, the USA and Japan to give masterclasses and lectures. For its part, since 1995
the Brussels Philharmonic Society has been organising a concert cycle that revolves around him.
The Brussels Kaaitheater adopted Anima Eterna as its resident orchestra for several years,
followed since 2003 by the new Concertgebouw in Bruges.
As a soloist, accompanist and conductor, the work of Jos van Immerseel has already been
documented in well over a hundred recordings (LPs and CDs) with Accent, Channel Classics,
Sony and other record labels. Since 2002, he has been in charge of the Collection Anima Eterna
for the Paris label Zig-Zag Territoires. It goes without saying that he has created this musical
treasure exclusively on and with historical instruments.
Van Immerseel’s historicising ambition is far from dimmed. In the coming months, music by such
composers as Beethoven, Berlioz, Poulenc, Debussy, De Falla and Messiaen will be filling the air
of both concert hall and recording studio. Lovingly discovered again and again in the land of poetry
and the land of the poet.
populierenlaan 3/26 – 2020 antwerp – www.concerts-weinstadt.be
tel : +32/3-216 70 60 - fax : +32/3-216 70 66 - e-mail : [email protected]
licence nrs : B-00414-405 VG 1575/BA - vat : be 0435.501.195 – iban : be61 3100 4141 2117 – bic : BBRUBEBB