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amarcord (ensemble)

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For the Federico Fellini film see Amarcord

The ensemble amarcord is a German male classical vocal ensemble based in Leipzig, founded in 1992 by five former members of the Thomanerchor. Their focus is Medieval music, Renaissance music and the collaboration with contemporary composers.

Singers

The ensemble typically performs as a quintet, singers have included

  • Wolfram Lattke (tenor)
  • Martin Lattke (tenor)
  • Dietrich Barth (tenor)
  • Frank Ozimek (baritone)
  • Daniel Knauft (bass)
  • Holger Krause (bass)

Career and program

As members of the boys choir Thomanerchor, which Johann Sebastian Bach directed at his time, the singers received the same vocal training and the knowledge of a vast repertory. The ensemble attended masterclasses with the Hilliard Ensemble and the King's Singers. In 2000 they were granted a scholarship of Deutscher Musikrat (German Music Council) and were selected for the Bundesauswahl Konzerte Junger Künstler, sponsored concerts of young professional musicians. They have appeared on international festivals and toured in Europe, North America, the Middle East, South East Asia and Australia.[1]

Their concerts programs, which they comment with a sense of humour, concentrate on a theme, such as Musik und Musiker in Paris (Music and Musicians in Paris) in a concert of the Rheingau Musik Festival in Wiesbaden-Frauenstein on 26 August 2004. The first half of their program is typically devoted to sacred music, in this case by composers Pierre de la Rue, Johannes Ockeghem, Pérotin, Gioachino Rossini and Francis Poulenc's Laudes de Saint Antoine de Padoue and Quatre petites prières de Saint François d'Assise. The second half usually shows secular music and took in this case through the centuries again with entertaining works of Pierre Certon, Pierre Passereau, Orlande de Lassus, Camille Saint-Saëns and Dans la montagne of Jean Cras. Their concert in 2010 in Schloss Johannisberg picks up the festival's "theme", Fernweh ("far-sickness").

In 2009 they participated in a performance and live recording of Bach's lost Markus-Passion, in the reconstructed version by Dietmar Hellmann and Andreas Glöckner, in the Frauenkirche Dresden. The ensemble was augmented by sopranos Anja Zügner and Dorothea Wagner, and altos Clare Wilkinson and Silvia Janak, the Kölner Akademie was conducted by Michael Alexander Willens. The lost recitatives were replaced by recitation.[2]

Contemporary composers such as Ludwig Marcus, Ivan Moody and Dimitri Terzakis wrote music for the ensemble amarcord. The singers initiated in 1997 the yearly international summer festival for vocal music in Leipzig, a cappella, where guests as different as the Swingle Singers, the Huelgas Ensemble, the ensemble Chanticleer and The Real Group have appeared.[3]

Prizes and awards

The ensemble amarcord won prizes at competitions in Tolosa, Spain (1995), Tampere (1999) and the 1st Choir Olympiad in Linz (2000). In 2002 the ensemble won the German music competition Deutscher Musikwettbewerb and in 2004 the prize of the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Music Festival of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern).[1]

The ensemble won the Contemporary A Cappella Recording Award (CARA) of the Contemporary A Cappella Society several times, first in 2002 for their album Hear the voice, a collection of sacred music of composers Thomas Tallis, Francis Poulenc, Rudolf Mauersberger, Josquin des Prez, Darius Milhaud, William Byrd, Carl Orff, Pierre de la Rue, Peter Cornelius and Ludwig Marcus.[4] The program and the singing were reviewed:[5]

"... the offering of works by Orff, Peter Cornelius, Rudolf Mauersberger, and Marcus Ludwig shows Ensemble Amarcord well attuned to their national heritage. The Orff work, “Sunt lacrimae rerum” is notably rhythmicized and reiterative, and an interesting contrast to the supple lines of the earlier Renaissance works. Similarly, Ludwig’s “Tenebrae” explores a clustery palette and features some of the ensemble’s best soft singing."

In 2006 they won the CARA in the categories "Best classical album" with Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland and also the second prize with Incessament, they won in the category "Best classical song" with Sanctus Incessament and second prize with Sic Deus Dilexit.[6] Incessament features music of Pierre de la Rue, especially his Missa Incessament, a five-part canonic mass ordinary, also known as Missa Sic deus & Non salvatur rex, La Rue's longest mass cycle.[7] A review on this first recording of the work remarked:[8]

"However, the Ensemble Amarcord itself deserves full credit for its breathtakingly smooth blend and celestial sweetness of tone. As with the Brumel work on the disc previously discussed, this is a worldpremiere recording of this lovely and important piece."

In 2010 their album Rastlose Liebe won the CARA in the category "Best classical album".[9][10] Rastlose Liebe (restless love), after a song by Robert Schumann, is a collection of works of composers who lived in Leipzig in the 19th century, such as Felix Mendelssohn, Adolf Eduard Marschner, Heinrich Marschner, Carl Steinacker, August Mühling and Carl Friedrich Zöllner.[11]

Discography

  • insalata a cappella (2001)
  • in adventu Domini (2001)
  • Hear the voice (2001)[12]
  • And So It Goes (2002)
  • ensemble amarcord (2003)
  • Sounds like Christmas (2004)
  • Pierre de la Rue: Incessament (2005)
  • Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (2005)
  • The Book of Madrigals (2007)
  • album français (2008)[13]
  • Rastlose Liebe (2009)
  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Markus-Passion (2010)

References

  1. ^ a b "Amarcord". singers.com. 2006. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
  2. ^ Michael Cookson (2010). "Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750) St. Mark Passion, BWV 247". musicweb-international.com. Retrieved 2010-07-03.
  3. ^ "Ensemble Amarcord (Vocal Ensemble)". bach-cantatas.com. 2007. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
  4. ^ "PRAYER TO GOD amarcord". International Izmir Festival. 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
  5. ^ Steven Plank (2007-09-23). "Hear the Voice and Prayer". operatoday.com. Retrieved 2010-07-05.
  6. ^ "Amarcord reviews". towerhill-recordings.com. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
  7. ^ "Pierre de la Rue (c.1460-1518) - A discography". medieval.org. Retrieved 2010-07-01.
  8. ^ Rick Anderson (2006). "Briefly noted". britannica.com. Retrieved 2010-07-01.
  9. ^ Ute van der Sanden (2010-05-14). "Rastlose Liebe zur Kunst des reinen Gesangs" (in German). Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved 2010-07-01.
  10. ^ "Amarcord". oslokammermusikkfestival.no. 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-02.
  11. ^ "Ensemble Amarcord - Restless Love: Rastlose Liebe". singers.com. 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-01.
  12. ^ "Hear the Voice - Tallis, etc / Ensemble Amarcord". hbdirect.com. 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
  13. ^ "Album Français - Poulenc, Milhaud, Cras, Etc / Ensemble Amarcord". ArkivMusic. 2008. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
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