Composer: Richard Strauss, Jean-Baptiste Lully
Orchestra: Norwegian Chamber Orchestra
Conductor: Terje Tønnesen
Audio CD
Number of Discs: 1
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: LAWO
Release: 2018
Size: 576 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Richard Strauss:
Suite for orchestra from Der Bürger als Edelmann (The Bourgeois Gentleman) Op. 60
01. I. Ouverture
02. II. Menuett
03. III. Der Fechtmeister
04. IV. Auftritt und Tanz der Schneider
05. V. Das Menuett des Lully
06. VI. Courante
07. VII. Auftritt des Cléonte
08. VIII. Vorspiel zum Acte II
09. IX. Das Diner
Jean-Baptiste Lully:
Le bourgeois gentilhomme – excerpts
10. X. Ouverture
11. XI. Ritournelles
12. XII. Premier Intermède: Air – Sarabande – Bourrée – Gaillarde – Canarie
13. XIII. Premier air des garçons tailleurs – deuxième air – Marche pour la cérémonie des Turcs
14. XIV. Troisième air
15. XV. Le donneur de livre – Ritournelle des Espagnols – Deuxième air des Espagnols
16. XVI. Ritournelle italienne
17. XVII. L’entrée des Scaramouches, Trivelins et Arlequins – Chaconne des Scaramouches, Trivelins et Arlequins
The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra turns forty this year and is celebrating the occasion with this new recording.
They have been around in every age, those who put on airs and think themselves better than the rest of us. They have been depicted in countless plays, the best known of which is Molière’s ‘Le bourgeois gentilhomme’.
Two musical versions are presented here, written almost 250 years apart, yet equally relevant in their time and ours. Lully and Strauss both revel in their love of telling stories: not with words, but with a wealth of tonal material, they tell the tale of Monsieur Jourdain, who aspires to rise from his middle-class (bourgeois) status to the ranks of the aristocracy, with all it entails. No one escapes in this satirical presentation, which ridicules everyone involved.
Strauss?s ‘Der Bürger als Edelmann’ is directly inspired by Lully’s ‘Le bourgeois gentilhomme’; his music describes the same situations, and several of the movements are based on Lully?s music. Yet never before have these works been released together, presumably because of the distance between the compositions in terms of time and style: modern orchestras play Strauss and specialized baroque orchestras play Lully. In the words of artistic director Terje Tønnesen, “It is exciting when the same musicians with the same instruments try to recreate the sounds of these very different epochs. We in the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra endeavour to create something unique that makes our recordings meaningful.”
Conductor Terje Tønnesen is one of Norway’s leading violinists with a distinguished reputation in Norway’s classical music world as artistic director of the Norwegian chamber Orchestra and concertmaster of Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.