<\/p>\n
Releasing the ‘Loudie’<\/p>\n
Handel\u2019s years in Italy (ca. 1706-1710) were extremely creative. His chamber cantatas were performed by the most eminent singers and instrumentalists in Rome. Exploring the art of continuo playing in Handel\u2019s \u2018continuo cantatas\u2019, harpsichordist Christian Kjos releases an album with captivating interpretations, describing his project in these words: \u201cContinuo playing can be rendered in various degrees of complexity, depending on the skill of the performer. The treatise Grosse General-Ba\u00df-Schule (Hamburg, 1731) by Johann Mattheson \u2013 Handel\u2019s friend from his Hamburg years \u2013 gave me the incentive to research this rarely heard approach and to try it out in Handel\u2019s equally rarely played continuo cantatas where the continuo part is so fundamental to the result.\u201d Christian has been a research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music since 2015 with the artistic research project \u2018Releasing the \u2018Loudie\u2019, harpsichord accompaniment in the G. F. Handel\u2019s continuo cantatas\u2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Handel\u2019s years in Italy (ca. 1706-1710) were extremely creative. His chamber cantatas were performed by the most eminent singers and instrumentalists in Rome. Exploring the art of continuo playing in Handel\u2019s \u2018continuo cantatas\u2019, harpsichordist Christian Kjos releases an album with captivating interpretations.<\/p>\n
The chamber cantata was a popular genre in Italy. Their main subject is passionate love in all its facets between the shepherds in the romanticized region of Arcadia in Greece. Handel wrote around seventy continuo cantatas \u2013 a lesser known genre among his rich output \u2013 performed at weekly musical gatherings in the palaces of his Roman patrons. They were a treasure trove from which he borrowed pearls and nuggets of gold throughout his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cContinuo playing can be rendered in various degrees of complexity, depending on the skill of the performer. The treatise Grosse General-Ba\u00df-Schule (Hamburg, 1731) by Johann Mattheson \u2013 Handel\u2019s friend from his Hamburg years \u2013 gave me the incentive to research this rarely heard approach and to try it out in Handel\u2019s equally rarely played continuo cantatas where the continuo part is so fundamental to the result. What might be most noticeable is how frequently I abandon chordal playing to let more melodic material, imitations, parallel thirds and added dissonances into the realization, making it sound closer to an obbligato harpsichord part. Therefore, I have deliberately chosen to render these cantatas solely with harpsichord accompaniment. This chamber musical duo format \u2013 like the later German Lieder \u2013 seems especially suitable in terms of chamber musical flexibility, and in order to hear the independent realization even better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ditte Marie Br\u00e6in stems from one of Norway\u2019s oldest families of musicians and she studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Ditte has worked extensively both as soloist and ensemble singer gathering experience within baroque, classical and contemporary music. Marianne Beate Kielland is one of Scandinavia’s foremost singers, and she regularly appears in the concert halls of Europe, Japan and America. Christian Kjos is one of Norway\u2019s most active harpsichordists. After studying at the Norwegian Academy of Music with Knut Johannessen and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Jesper Christensen, he has been a freelance harpsichordist and continuo player in several of Norway\u2019s early music ensembles, particularly Barokkanerne. Christian has played with Concerto Copenhagen under Alfredo Bernardini and is a founding member of the Swiss-based Ensemble Meridiana. Christian has been a research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music since 2015 with the artistic research project \u2018Releasing the \u2018Loudie\u2019, harpsichord accompaniment in the G. F. Handel\u2019s continuo cantatas\u2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2013 Br\u00e6in sings with unaffected purity in Nice, che fa? Che pensa?, the brief yet lovely Chi rap\u00ec la pace al core? (Kjos\u2019s imaginative realisation and passing dissonances fitting the tormented final aria like a glove), and Lungi dal mio bel nume; her ornamentation is graceful and she has an admirably neat trill [The Gramophone]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":37425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[180],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37424","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-simax-classics","7":"product_shipping_class-cddvd-shipping","8":"uni_artist_tag-christian-kjos","9":"uni_artist_tag-georg-friedrich-handel","10":"uni_artist_tag-jorn-pedersen","11":"uni_artist_tag-marianne-beate-kielland","12":"uni_main_artist_tag-christian-kjos","13":"uni_artist_genre-early-music","15":"first","16":"instock","17":"taxable","18":"shipping-taxable","19":"purchasable","20":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/37424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=37424"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=37424"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=37424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}