Sunday 18 October 2009 7.30pm
LSO St Luke’s
Les Arts Florissants
Laura Claycomb soprano
Kristian Bezuidenhout fortepiano
Jonathan Cohen conductor
Gluck Orphée et Euridice – Dance of the Furies; Dance of the
Blessed Spirits
GluckParide ed Elena – Ballet
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 18, K456
Interval
Haydn Symphony No. 80
Mozart Arias for soprano and orchestra:
Idomeneo – Quando avran fine omai … Padre, germani,
addio
Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio
Ah! se in ciel, benigne stelle
Pascal Gély
These concerts are part of a series of programmes
between London and Paris co-produced by the Barbican
Centre, the Salle Pleyel and the Cité de la Musique on the
occasion of the 30th anniversary of Les Arts Florissants.
introduction
Les Arts Florissants at 30
What a difference a generation makes. In the past 30 years, the world of Baroque music-making has been transformed.
Musicians had for a while been acquiring the skills of playing old instruments and rediscovering former playing styles, but it
was only during the 1970s that these made a major impact on the wider public. Of course there had been pioneers before
this: a whole generation of enthusiasts and researchers had explored old repertory, and Arnold Dolmetsch had played his
clavichord in candlelit London drawing rooms to the delight of George Bernard Shaw and Percy Grainger. But this was
essentially an esoteric activity – until a new generation of players and conductors launched themselves into the re-creation of
Baroque ensembles in the 1970s.
William Christie’s achievement with his French group Les Arts Florissants from 1979 onwards has been an outstanding part of
this revival, for it grew out of a repertory that many had thought inaccessible – the distant world of the French Baroque, with
its rich and dense texts, its complex ornamentation and rhetoric, and its unfamiliar emotional language. What Christie and
his young ensemble achieved in spectacular fashion was to show how, when performed with penetrating understanding and
vivid communication, this music could be made as available and exciting as any on offer. From Charpentier (who gave the
ensemble its name) and Lully through to Rameau, Les Arts Florissants lit up this music and brought it to life with unparalleled
success.
Christie’s ensemble has moved from the French Baroque into Handel and Purcell, Monteverdi and Landi, and beyond that to
Haydn and Mozart. It has gained a huge following for its fresh insights into Haydn’s The Creation and Monteverdi’s Vespers,
and its staged operas here at the Barbican – the fantastical, video-dominated production of Rameau’s Les Paladins and Luc
Bondy’s severely intense staging of Handel’s Hercules – have been among the highlights of our output.
So it is appropriate that this anniversary season celebrates the historic achievement of Les Arts Florissants with opera
(Purcell’s immortal Dido and Aeneas), oratorio (Handel’s rarely performed Susanna) and the French choral motets that the
group has made its own. And it is also entirely typical of its work with younger artists that for two of these anniversary
concerts, William Christie hands the baton on to directors of the next generation, Jonathan Cohen and Paul Agnew. Like the
great music of the past, Les Arts Florissants will continue to reinvent itself as it looks towards the next 30 years.
Nicholas Kenyon
Managing Director
2
Les Arts Florissants
30th Anniversary
Celebration
William Christie and his ensemble present
an exciting and diverse musical showcase
celebrating their 30th anniversary
Sun 18 Oct 09 7.30pm
LSO St Luke’s
Jonathan Cohen conducts
Haydn’s Symphony No 80 and
music by Mozart and Gluck.
Returns only
Sun 8 Nov 09 7.30pm
Union Chapel
Talented British conductor and
tenor Paul Agnew leads this
performance of Monteverdi’s
Sixth Book of Madrigals.
Sun 25 Oct 09 7pm
A performance of Handel’s
rarely-heard oratorio Susanna
with soloists including William
Burden, Alan Ewing and
Sophie Karthäuser.
Thu 26 Nov 09 7.30pm
Grand Motets by Lully, Rameau,
Desmarest and Campra with
soloists including Patricia
Petibon and Toby Spence.
Watch video interviews and listen to music clips
at www.greatperformers.org.uk
Box Office 0845 120 7557
The Barbican is
provided by the
City of London
Corporation
programme note
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87)
Orphée et Euridice (1774)
Dance of the Furies; Dance of the Blessed Spirits
Elena ed Paride (1770)
Ballet
When the Emperor Francis I and his retinue heard Gluck’s
Orfeo ed Euridice in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 5 October
1762 they were doubtless expecting a lightweight pastoral
entertainment. The occasion – the Emperor’s name-day –
and the opera’s billing as an azione teatrale (‘theatrical
action’) promised as much. What they got was a work of
startling originality and emotional power that integrated
chorus, soloists and ballet in dramatic complexes and broke
down the clear-cut division between recitative and aria.
Gluck’s librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi was a disciple of the
French Enlightenment, and a passionate opponent of the
artifices and excesses of Italian opera, as was the composer.
Calzabigi took the archetypal myth of Orpheus’s descent to
Hades to rescue Euridice and pared it down to essentials;
Gluck’s music was correspondingly strong and direct, shorn
of rococo frills and fripperies. The composer’s watchwords
were dramatic truth and ‘beautiful simplicity’: no more
pandering to the whims of overindulged and overpaid star
singers. From the solemn opening chorus onwards, his music
makes its effect with swift, shattering economy.
In 1774 Gluck revised and expanded Orfeo as Orphée et
Euridice, adding new arias and ballet numbers, including
the ‘Dance of the Furies’, for dance-mad Paris, but diffusing
the elemental force of the original. In Vienna the hero – part
symbolic demigod, part human lover – had been sung by the
castrato Gaetano Guadagni. The French deemed castratos
an offence against nature, so Gluck duly reworked the role
for the celebrated haute-contre (high tenor) Joseph Legros,
in the process making Orpheus a more heroic figure.
In the first scene of Act 2, Orpheus has subdued the Furies
with the eloquence of his singing. After he has passed
4
through the gates of Hades, they revert to their true nature in
a thrilling, torrential D minor dance. An inveterate recycler,
Gluck lifted this ‘Air de Furies’ from his 1761 ballet Don Juan.
It became one of his most famous movements, and a crucial
influence on the Sturm und Drang (‘Storm and Stress’)
symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and others. Stygian darkness
yields to the pure, dazzling light of the Elysian Fields in the
‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’, an F major minuet of unearthly
serenity. For Paris Gluck added, as a central trio, a sinuous
D minor flute solo that leaves an aftertaste of sadness.
A flop at its Viennese premiere in 1770, Gluck’s third socalled ‘reform’ opera, Paride ed Elena, has always
remained in the shadows. Where its predecessors, Orfeo
and Alceste, are dramas of life and death, Paride ed Elena
deals with Paris’s wooing of Helen. Cupid pulls the strings,
while Athene appears as a malign dea ex machina with a
prophecy of future carnage, which the lovers then blithely
disregard. Paride ed Elena is even more static than Alceste,
and suffers from having an all-soprano cast – prime reasons
for its neglect. But much of the music is glorious. Variety
comes from Gluck’s portrayal of the two national characters,
Sparta and Troy. The Trojan Paris sings music in Gluck’s most
ravishing vein, while Helen, far from being the sex-kitten of
popular myth, maintains a certain Spartan aloofness until
her final capitulation.
Gluck magnified these national contrasts in the opera’s
splendid choruses and ballet music. In the five-movement
ballet sequence in Act 1, three brusque, angular dances for
the Spartans alternate with two beguiling numbers for the
Trojans: a gavotte that Gluck later recycled for the French
version of Orfeo, and a dulcet minuet – something of a
Gluck speciality.
programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91)
Piano Concerto No. 18 in B flat major, K456 (1784)
1 Allegro vivace
2 Andante un poco sostenuto
3 Allegro vivace
Kristian Bezuidenhout fortepiano
When Mozart departed the service of the hated Archbishop
Colloredo of Salzburg in 1781, helped by history’s most
famous kick up the backside, he was confident that fame
and fortune in Vienna were his for the taking. For the next
few years he was triumphantly vindicated in what he dubbed
‘the land of the clavier’, earning a handsome living from
teaching, publishing his works and giving concerts. Though
Mozart spent almost as fast as he earned, he was for a time,
at least, a shrewd business operator; and he promoted
himself as both performer and composer in the magnificent
series of piano concertos he premiered at his own
subscription concerts, held during Lent and Advent and
attended by the Viennese social and musical elite.
vivace begins with one of the composer’s favourite march
gambits, though it is immediately apparent that these are toy
soldiers. Mozart’s use of woodwind, as an independent
group of ‘characters’, is especially piquant: and many of the
movement’s playful, epigrammatic themes are fashioned as
dialogues between wind and strings, and between the
various members of the wind group. The diatonic chirpiness
of the opening is offset by a louring chromatic passage in
B flat minor, with the woodwind playing in gaunt octaves
against stabbing accents from the strings. Typically, when
Mozart brings back this passage in the solo exposition he
makes it even more dramatic, with sweeping keyboard
arpeggios.
Mozart entered the B flat Concerto, K456, in his thematic
catalogue on 30 September 1784. While the evidence is not
watertight, he seems to have intended the work not only for
his own use but also for the blind pianist Maria Theresia
Paradies to perform in Paris. Mozart probably introduced
the concerto to the Viennese at a Lenten subscription concert
on 13 February 1785. Three days later Leopold Mozart,
visiting his son and daughter-in-law in their apartment in the
most fashionable quarter of Vienna, described the event to
his daughter Nannerl: ‘Your brother played a glorious
concerto … I had the great pleasure of hearing all the
interplay of the instruments so clearly that tears of sheer
delight came to my eyes. When your brother left the stage the
Emperor tipped his hat and called out “Bravo, Mozart!” and
when he came on to play there was huge applause.’
This momentary darkening of mood foreshadows the
Andante second movement, a theme and five variations in
Mozart’s favourite ‘pathetic’ key of G minor. The first three
variations chart a gradual increase of tension; and in the
third the forlorn piano entreats the implacable orchestra like
some tragic operatic heroine. The fourth variation then turns
to G major for a vision of pastoral innocence, coloured by
luminous woodwind writing. The poignant coda equivocates
between major and minor in a way it would be tempting to
call Schubertian were it not equally characteristic of Mozart.
Like all Mozart’s Viennese concertos, K456 is a wonderful
amalgam of keyboard virtuosity, symphonic organisation
and vivid operatic characterisation. The opening Allegro
Introspection is summarily banished by the finale, a
boisterous 6/8 ‘hunting’ rondo whose main subject seems to
mock the theme of the Andante. Midway through the
movement Mozart springs the concerto’s biggest surprise,
spiriting the music to an exotically remote B minor, and
setting up a clash of metre, with the orchestra (first bassoon
to the fore) playing in 2/4 against the soloist's 6/8 before
roles are reversed.
5
programme note
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Symphony No. 80 in D minor (1783–4)
1
2
3
4
Allegro spiritoso
Adagio
Menuetto
Finale: Presto
During the 1780s Haydn led something of a double life as
provincial Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Nicolaus
Esterházy and an international celebrity whose symphonies,
quartets and piano trios were in demand throughout
northern Europe. Publishers in the 18th century liked to issue
instrumental works in batches of three or six; and beginning
with Nos 76–8 of 1782 – designed for an aborted visit to
London – all Haydn’s later symphonies were written in sets
for consumption beyond the Esterházy court. The triptych
Nos 79–81 from 1783–4, published more or less
simultaneously in Vienna, Paris and London, proved even
more popular than the 1782 symphonies. With his by now
shrewdly developed commercial sense, Haydn secured
additional profit from sales to publishers in Lyon and Berlin,
and, true to form, sold ‘exclusive’ manuscript copies to
several patrons in Austria and Germany. Two of the
symphonies (we do not know which) were performed at
a concert of the Viennese Tonkünstler-Societät in March
1785, in a programme that also included Mozart’s cantata
Davide penitente.
tremolos. Then, at the last moment, Haydn introduces a
comically trivial Ländler tune that, but for its irregular
phrasing (four plus three bars), could have drifted in from a
Viennese beer garden. Despite a ferocious burst of activity
from the main theme, the Ländler dominates the
development, turning up in various remote keys (starting with
D flat major) separated by quizzical silences. The
recapitulation, as usual in late Haydn, radically reworks the
events of the exposition, varying and developing the main
theme before plunging to D major and giving the Ländler the
last word, its phrasing now ‘normalised’ into four plus four
bars. In the process a movement that had begun in strenuous
Sturm und Drang mode ends in the utmost levity: just the kind
of thing that offended po-faced North German critics during
Haydn’s lifetime.
The sonata-form Adagio, in B flat, also lives on extreme
contrasts. Its serene, gracious opening melody is ruffled by
an agitated tutti, with swirling sextuplets in second violins and
violas. The development, beginning with the main theme in
B flat minor and reaching an impassioned climax in G minor,
In sets of three or six symphonies and quartets it was
rises to a higher pitch of dramatic intensity than any previous
customary to include one work in the minor key: Haydn’s No. Haydn symphony slow movement. Back in D minor, the stern
83, ‘La poule’ in the Paris set (1785–6), and Mozart’s G minor minuet (whose stalking theme distantly recalls the symphony’s
Symphony No. 40 are cases in point. Whereas the flanking
opening) encloses a beautiful D major trio that sets an
major-key symphonies of the 1783–4 triptych, Nos 79 and 81, ancient Gregorian chant against a restless, chromatically
are essentially popular in tone, the tensions inherent in the
inflected accompaniment. If the two middle movements are
minor mode make No. 80 a more expressively complex work. wholly serious, Haydn the humorist takes immediate control
No Haydn symphony movement juxtaposes the vehement
in the scintillating, quixotic finale. The syncopated opening,
and the flippant as disconcertingly as the opening Allegro
fashioned so that we do not initially hear it as syncopated, is
spiritoso. For most of its course the exposition lives up to the
one of the composer’s best rhythmic jokes.
expectations aroused by the turbulent opening theme,
Programme notes © Richard Wigmore
ground out by cellos and basses against frenzied violin
6
programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Arias
Idomeneo, K366 (1781) – Quando avran fine omai … Padre, germani, addio!
Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio, K418 (1783)
Ah! se in ciel, benigne stelle, K538 (1788)
Laura Claycomb soprano
Mozart retained a love for the female voice throughout his
life, often transferring his affections for the vocal qualities of
his sopranos and mezzos to affairs of the heart – real or
imaginary. The three Mozart arias we hear tonight were
inspired by two very particular voices. In Idomeneo, his first
great opera seria, the part of Ilia (a Trojan princess,
imprisoned by Idomeneo, the King of Crete, and in love with
Idomeneo’s son, Idamante) was written for Dorothea
Wendling, half of a renowned sisterly singing duo (Elisabeth
Wendling took the role of Elettra in the same work). Mozart
had written other vocal pieces for them but this was the first
opportunity to write at length. The recitative and aria,
‘Quando avran fine omai … Padre, gemani, addio!’, is
dramatically positioned straight after the fraught overture, so
it’s the very first vocal utterance we hear and it immediately
sets the tone – of the torment Ilia is suffering (and the evident
virtuosity of Dorothea Wendling), in a recitative that concisely
brings us up to speed with the background to the story,
combining storytelling with high emotion, the music echoing
the twists and turns as hate and love are portrayed. The
anxiety of the recitative turns to sad resolution in the aria, as
Ilia faces up to that eternal conflict (just think of Dido and
Aeneas), between heart and head, love for an individual and
loyalty to one’s family. It’s hardly surprising that Dorothea
pronounced herself very happy with the role.
The voice behind the aria ‘Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!’ was that
of Aloysia Weber, with whose family Mozart had lodged in
1778 and to whom he had declared his love. Unfortunately it
was not reciprocated (she married the painter and actor
Joseph Lange in 1780, while Mozart subsequently married
her younger sister, Constanze). The aria was one of two he
wrote for Aloysia for a revival of the deservedly forgotten
opera Il curioso indiscreto (which translates roughly as ‘The
nosy parker’), by Pasquale Anfossi. By all accounts, the revival
was a flop with the exception of Mozart’s contributions. He
audibly plays to Aloysia’s strengths: a brilliant upper register,
delicacy of ornamentation and the ability to sustain a musical
line, all qualities that contribute to the characterisation of
Clorinda who, denying her love for the Count, implores him
to return to Emilia – her rival for his affections.
Laura Claycomb’s final vocal offering this evening, ‘Ah! se in
ciel, benigne stelle’, was also originally intended for Aloysia
Lange (née Weber) and sets words by the Italian poet and
librettist Metastasio (1698–1782), whose texts Mozart drew on
throughout his life. The extended nature of the aria – the tone
set by a far from inconsequential orchestral tutti – and its
stratospheric and agile vocal writing, coupled with its
heartwrending sentiments, once again bear testimony to
Aloysia’s prodigious talents, and must surely have brought
the house down when she premiered it in1788.
Programme note © Sharona Volcano
7
text and translation
Quando avran fine omai … Padre, germani, addio!
Recitative
Quando avran fine omai l’aspre sventure mie?
Ilia infelice! Di tempesta crudel misero avanzo,
del genitor e de’ germani priva,
del barbaro nemico misto col sangue
il sangue vittime generose,
a qual sorte più rea ti riserbano i Numi? …
Pur vendicaste voi di Priamo
e di Troia i danni e l’onte?
Perì la flotta Argiva,
e Idomeneo pasto forse sarà d’orca vorace …
ma che mi giova, oh ciel!
se al primo aspetto di quel prode Idamante,
che all’onde mi rapì, l’odio deposi,
e pria fu schiavo il cor,
che m’accorgessi d’essere prigioniera.
Ah qual contrasto, oh Dio!
d’opposti affetti mi destate nel sen odio, ed amore!
Vendetta deggio a chi mi dié la vita,
gratitudine a chi vita mi rende …
oh Ilia! oh genitor! oh prence! oh sorte!
oh vita sventurata! oh dolce morte!
Ma che? m’ama Idamante? …
ah no; l’ingrato per Elettra sospira,
e quell’Elettra meschina principessa, esule d’Argo,
d’Oreste alle sciagure a queste arene fuggitiva,
raminga, è mia rivale.
Quanti mi siete intorno carnefici spietati? …
orsù sbranate vendetta, gelosia, odio,
ed amore sbranate sì quest’infelice core!
When will my bitter misfortunes be ended?
Unhappy Ilia, wretched survivor of a dreadful tempest,
bereft of father and brothers,
the victims’ blood spilt and mingled
with the blood of their savage foes,
for what harsher fate have the gods preserved you?
Are the loss and shame
of Priam and Troy avenged?
The Greek fleet is destroyed
and Idomeneo perhaps will be a meal for hungry fish …
But what comfort is that to me, ye heavens,
if at the first sight of that valiant Idamante,
who snatched me from the waves, I forgot my hatred,
and my heart was enslaved
before I realised I was a prisoner.
O God, what a conflict of warring emotions
you rouse in my breast, hate and love!
I owe vengeance to him who gave me life,
gratitude to him who restored it …
O Ilia! O father, O prince, O destiny!
O ill-fated life, O sweet death!
But yet does Idamante love me?
Ah no; ungratefully he sighs for Electra;
and that Electra, unhappy princess, an exile from Argos
and the torments of Oresetes, who fled,
a wanderer, to these shores, is my rival.
Ruthless butchers, how many of you surround me? …
Then up and shatter, vengeance,
jealousy, hate and love; yes, shatter my unhappy heart!
Aria
Padre, germani, addio!
Voi foste, io vi perdei.
Grecia, cagion tu sei.
E un greco adorerò?
Father, brothers, farewell!
You are no more; I have lost you.
Greece, you are the cause;
and shall I love a Greek?
8
text and translation
D’ingrata al sangue mio
So che la colpa avrei;
Ma quel sembiante, oh Dei!
Odiare ancor non so.
I know that I am guilty
of abandoning my kin;
but I cannot bring myself,
O gods, to hate that face.
Padre, germani, addio, etc.
Father, brothers, farewell, etc.
Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!
Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!
Qual è l’affanno mio;
Ma mi condanna il fato
A piangere e tacer.
Arder non può il mio core
Per chi vorrebbe amore
E fa che cruda io sembri,
Un barbaro dover.
Ah conte, partite, correte,
Fuggite, lontano da me.
La vostra diletta Emilia v’aspetta,
Languir non la fate,
È degna d’amor.
Ah stelle spietate!
Nemiche mi siete.
Mi perdo s’ei resta, oh Dio, Mi perdo.
Ah, conte, partite …
Partite, correte, d’amor non parlate,
È vostro il suo cor.
I would like to explain to you, oh God,
how great is my anguish!
Fate, however, condemns me
to weep and keep silent.
My heart cannot burn
for him who would desire love
and a pitiless duty
makes me appear cruel.
Alas, Count, part from me, hurry,
flee far from me.
Your beloved Emilia awaits you,
don’t keep her languishing,
she is worthy of love.
Alas, pitiless stars!
You are hostile to me.
I am lost if he remains, oh God! I am lost.
Ah, Count, part from me.
Part from me, hurry, do not talk of love,
her heart is yours.
Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle
Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle,
La pietà non è smarrita,
O toglietemi la vita,
O lasciatemi il mio ben.
Voi, che ardete ognor sì belle
Del mio ben nel dolce aspetto,
Proteggete il puro affetto
Che inspirate a questo sen.
Ah, kind stars, if Heaven
has not abandoned mercy,
then take my life from me,
or let me keep my beloved.
You, who always shine so brightly
on my darling’s sweet face,
protect the pure affection
which you inspire in that heart.
9
about the performers
About tonight’s performers
Pascal Gély
years in Cambridge), he conducted 10
performances of The Fairy Queen at
the Théâtre d’Aix-la-Chapelle in 2006.
He regularly assists William Christie
(Idomeneo, The Creation, Rameau’s
Les Paladins and Handel’s L’Allegro, il
Penseroso ed il Moderato) and since
2008 he has shared the conducting of
several productions with him, notably
Hérold’s Zampa and Purcell’s The
Fairy Queen. He is also in regular
demand as assistant conductor to
Emmanuelle Haïm.
Jonathan Cohen conductor
Jonathan Cohen was born in
Manchester in 1977. In demand as a
cellist, conductor and keyboard player,
his repertoire ranges from the Baroque
to contemporary music.
In recent years Jonathan Cohen has
turned increasingly to conducting,
studying with Nicholas Kraemer and
Vladimir Jurowski and specialising in
the Baroque and Classical repertoires.
Building on his experience of early
music (which goes back to his student
10
Laurence Mullenders
He began his solo career as a cellist,
performing with the Orchestra of the
Age of Enlightenment, Philharmonia
Orchestra, Scottish Chamber
Orchestra and The King’s Consort,
and today he continues to give
concerts as a cellist with the London
Haydn Quartet.
This season Jonathan Cohen conducts
Les Arts Florissants in Dido and
Aeneas, Actéon and The Fairy Queen
in Amsterdam, Paris and New York.
Laura Claycomb soprano
Native Texan Laura Claycomb, known
for her delicacy, refinement and
theatricality in high-flying repertoire, is
one of the world’s foremost lyric
coloraturas. Following concurrent
degrees in Music and Foreign
Languages at Southern Methodist
University and a subsequent
apprenticeship with San Francisco
Opera, she made her European debut
as Giulietta (I Capuleti e I Montecchi) in
Geneva, reprising it in Paris, Los
Angeles and Munich. She has
subsequently garnered acclaim as
Gilda (Rigoletto) in Houston, Toronto,
Paris, Lausanne, Tel Aviv, Santiago de
Chile and Bilbao; Cleopatra (Giulio
Cesare) in Houston, Drottningholm
and Montpellier; and the title-roles of
Lucia di Lammermoor in Houston, Tel
Aviv, Seoul and Moscow, and La Fille
du Régiment in San Francisco, Turin,
Houston and Rome. Other signature
roles include Linda di Chamounix,
Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos), Anne
Trulove (The Rake’s Progress), Amanda
(Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre),
Morgana (Alcina), Adèle (Le comte
Ory), Ophélie (Thomas’s Hamlet) and
the creation of Queen Wealtheow in
Elliot Goldenthal’s Grendel.
She also regularly performs in concert
with leading conductors and
orchestras.
about the performers
Marco Borggreve
Her recordings include Mahler’s
Fourth Symphony with Michael Tilson
Thomas and the San Francisco
Symphony, Le Grand Macabre under
Esa-Pekka Salonen, a disc of Handel
duets directed by Emmanuelle Haïm,
Vaughan Williams’s Sir John in Love
with Richard Hickox, two recordings
of Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, under
Sir Roger Norrington and Sir Colin
Davis, and recordings of lesser-known
operas by Meyerbeer, Balfe, Pacini
and Thomas.
Kristian Bezuidenhout fortepiano
Kristian Bezuidenhout was born in
South Africa in 1979 and his teachers
included Malcolm Bilson, Paul O’Dette
and Robert Levin. He won First Prize
and the Audience Prize in the 2001
Bruges Fortepiano Competition.
He regularly performs on fortepiano,
harpsichord and modern piano in
North America, Europe, Australia and
Asia. Among the festivals at which he
has appeared are those of Barcelona,
Boston, Bruges, Esterhaza, Utrecht, St
Petersburg, Vermont, Venice and West
Cork. He is currently professor of the
Eastman School of Music and in Basle.
His recordings include solo fortepiano
works and violin sonatas by Mozart,
Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, and
Bach concertos with Daniel Hope.
Highlights of last season include a tour
with Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra
of the 18th Century, performing
Mozart’s late piano concertos. This
season he plays concertos with the
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, goes on
tour with the Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra, conducted by Ton
Koopman, performs and records
Schumann’s Dichterliebe with Mark
Padmore and takes part in the 2010
Holland Festival, where he will be
playing from Bach’s 48.
Les Arts Florissants
The renowned vocal and instrumental
ensemble Les Arts Florissants was
founded in 1979 by William Christie,
and takes its name from an opera by
Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
Since the acclaimed production of Atys
by Lully at the Opéra Comique in Paris
in 1987, it has been in the field of opera
where Les Arts Florissants has found
most success. Notable productions
include works by Rameau (Les Indes
galantes in 1990 and 1999, Hippolyte
et Aricie in 1996, Les Boréades in 2003,
Les Paladins in 2004), Charpentier
(Médée in 1993 and 1994), Handel
(Orlando in 1993, Acis and Galatea in
1996, Semele in 1996, Alcina in 1999,
Hercules in 2004 and 2006), Purcell
(King Arthur in 1995, Dido and Aeneas
in 2006), Mozart (The Magic Flute in
1994, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at
the Opéra du Rhin in 1995) and
Monteverdi (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
at Aix-en-Provence in 2000, revived in
2002, L’incoronazione di Poppaea in
2005, and L’Orfeo at the Teatro Real
de Madrid in 2008).
Les Arts Florissants has an equally high
profile in the concert hall, giving
concert performances of operas
(Zoroastre and Les fêtes d’Hébé by
11
about the performers & player list
Rameau, Idomenée by Campra,
Jephté by Montéclair and L’Orfeo by
Rossi), as well as secular chamber
works (Actéon, Les plaisirs de
Versailles and La descente d’Orphée
aux Enfers by Charpentier and Dido
and Aeneas by Purcell) and sacred
music (grands motets by Rameau,
Mondonville and Desmarest) and
Handel oratorios.
The ensemble has an impressive
discography of over 70 CD recordings,
most recently Haydn’s The Creation. Its
most recent DVD is Il Sant’Alessio by
Stefano Landi, filmed at the Théâtre de
Caen, where, for the past 15 years, the
ensemble has been artist-in-residence.
Les Arts Florissants also tours widely
within France, and is a frequent
ambassador for French culture
abroad, regularly appearing at the
Brooklyn Academy, the Lincoln Center
in New York, the Barbican Centre and
the Vienna Festival.
Les Arts Florissants receive financial
support from the Ministry of Culture and
Communication, the City of Caen and the
Région Basse-Normandie. Their sponsor is
Imerys. Les Arts Florissants are artists in
residence at the Théâtre de Caen.
12
Les Arts Florissants
Musical Director
William Christie
Executive Manager
Luc Bouniol-Laffont
Cello
David Simpson
Damien Launay
Alix Verzier
Tonight’s Conductor
Jonathan Cohen
Double Bass
Jonathan Cable
Joseph Carver
Orchestra
Flute
Charles Zebley
Serge Saitta
Violin I
Nadja Zwiener leader
Bernadette Charbonnier
Martha Moore
Benjamin Scherer
Satomi Watanabe
Violin II
Catherine Girard
Sophie Gevers-Demoures
Michèle Sauvé
George Willms
Viola
Galina Zinchenko
Lucia Peralta
Jean-Luc Thonnerieux
Oboe
Pier Luigi Fabretti
Michel Henry
Bassoon
Claude Wassmer
Philippe Piat
Horn
Helen MacDougall
Benjamin Locher