David Bergmüller | Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews +

Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik
Innsbruck, 21-23 August 2017

The Innsbruck Festival of Early Music runs annually for about three weeks during August. It was founded in 1976 and since the start has focussed on Baroque opera, in recent years usually performing three each season. Between 1991 and 2009 René Jacobs was the director of the opera programme and, from 1997, the entire festival. Since 2010 the festival has been directed by Alessandro De Marchi, who instigated the International Singing Competition for Baroque Opera Pietro Antonio Cesti, named after Antonio Cesti, a 17th-century Italian singer and composer who served at the Innsbruck court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles of Austria. The focus this year was on the music of Monteverdi, and included a staged performance of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend for three days, so my review is necessarily limited in scope. Continue reading →

klingzeug – Secret Destinations
Austrian Cultural Forum, 19 Nov 2014

I first reviewed the three members of the young Austrian group klingzeug in the curious surroundings of an open-sided pavilion in Innsbruck’s Hofgarten, so it was good to be able to hear them playing indoors. The title of their programme, ‘Secret Destinations’ could have applied to the London venue, the intimate setting of the Austrian Cultural Forum, hidden away in the backstreets near the Albert Hall. But, in reality, it referred to the Europe-wide range of pieces, from one of the first violin sonatas, by Cima (1610), to a lute concerto by the Austrian Johann Georg Weichenberger (c1700). This was almost inaudible in Innsbruck, but here the delicacy of David Bergmüller’s playing was evident.

The highlight of the evening was the musically sensitive violin playing of Claudia Norz, notably in Pandolfi’s Sonata la Biancuccia (a musical reflection of a singer in the Innsbruck court) which also demonstrated the virtuosity of her technique.