Voces Suaves & Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
Biography Voces Suaves & Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
Voces Suaves
which performs Renaissance and Baroque music with solo voices, is a vocal ensemble based in Basel. Taking into account the insights of historical performance practice, the ensemble strives for captivating rhetoric combined with a warm and full overall sound that makes the music come alive with emotion. By virtue of the intensive collaboration, a great familiarity within the musical work has evolved.
The ensemble, founded in 2012 by Tobias Wicky, is made up of a core of eight professional singers of whom most have a connection with the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. The formation varies depending on the program. Instrumentalists are incorporated when necessary.
The repertoire contains a broad selection of Italian madrigals, works of the Early German Baroque, and larger-scaled Italian oratorios and Masses. In planning the programs, care is taken to include works by forgotten composers, such as Stefano Bernardi, Giaches De Wert and Giovanni Croce, alongside those of well-known masters like Monteverdi or Schütz.
Important performances have taken Voces Suaves to prestigious festivals throughout Europe, including the Festival d’Ambronay, the Festival de Saintes, Les Grands Concerts de Lyon, the Ravenna Festival, the Monteverdi Festival Cremona, the MA Festival, Bozar Brussels, the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, the Oslo Internasjonale Kirkemusikkfestival, the Festival Misteria Paschalia Krakow, the Staatsoper Berlin, the Festival Potsdam Sanssouci, and the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik. In the years 2014–16 the ensemble participated in the European promotion program “eeemerging, Emerging European Ensembles Project.”
Voces Suaves regularly joins together with renowned ensembles such as the Ensemble Concerto Scirocco, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Concerto Romano, Capriccio Stravaganza and the Capricornus Consort. Moreover, Voces Suaves has maintained long-standing collaborations with Michelle Vanelli, Jörg-Andreas Bötticher and Johannes Strobl.
Since 2015 various recordings by Voces Suaves have been released on the claves records, Ambronay éditions, Arcana (Outhere Music), and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi labels, and been honored with international prizes (including the Diapason découverte, Choc de Classica).
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Akamus)
celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2022. Founded in Berlin in 1982, the ensemble is now one of the world's leading chamber orchestras playing historically informed music.
For four decades, the orchestra has repeatedly demonstrated its versatility with exciting concert projects and musical voyages of discovery. For example, Akamus has made a significant contribution to the rediscovery of the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann. Consistently and thoughtfully, the ensemble has gradually expanded its core repertoire in the Baroque and Classical periods into the 19th century, most recently with its much-acclaimed cycle "Beethoven's Symphonies and their role models".
Whether in New York or Tokyo, London or Buenos Aires: Akamus is a regular and much sought-after guest on the most important European and international concert stages. In its anniversary year, the orchestra will perform at venues such as the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Vienna Musikverein and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. As artist in residence, Akamus will also perform regularly in London's Wigmore Hall and at the German Mozart Festival in Augsburg in 2022.
Akamus is a central pillar in the cultural life of its home city of Berlin. For over 35 years, the orchestra has been playing a subscription series at the Konzerthaus Berlin. But the musical heart of Akamus also beats for music theatre: at the Berlin State Opera, the ensemble has regularly dedicated itself to baroque opera since 1994. With its own concert series, Akamus has also been a regular guest at Munich's Prinzregententheater since 2012.
Akamus performs under the changing direction of its two concertmasters Bernhard Forck and Georg Kallweit as well as selected conductors. The ensemble has a particularly close and long-standing artistic partnership with René Jacobs. In addition, Emmanuelle Haim, Bernard Labadie, Paul Agnew, Diego Fasolis, Fabio Biondi, Rinaldo Alessandrini and Christophe Rousset have recently conducted the orchestra.
Akamus also works regularly with internationally renowned soloists such as Isabelle Faust, Antoine Tamestit, Kit Armstrong, Alexander Melnikov, Anna Prohaska, Michael Volle and Bejun Mehta. Together with the dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests, they created the international successful production of Henry Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, which has been widely performed from Berlin to Sydney.
The extraordinarily successful cooperation with the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin, deserves special mention: The collaboration, which has been equally formative for both ensembles, began 30 years ago. Akamus also maintains a close partnership with the Bavarian Radio Chorus.
The ensemble's recordings, which now number around one hundred, have won all the major recording awards, including the Grammy Award, Diapason d'Or, Gramophone Award, Edison Award, MIDEM Classical Award, Choc de l'année and the Annual Prize of the German Record Critics. In 2006 the orchestra received the Telemann Prize of the City of Magdeburg, and in 2014 the Bach Medal of the City of Leipzig.
In the anniversary year, CD releases include orchestral works by Telemann with violist Antoine Tamestit as soloist, as well as a recording of Beethoven's 4th and 8th symphonies and Bach's Mass in B minor with the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin conducted by René Jacobs. A special 10 CDs boxset will also reunite its best recordings dedicated to the Bach family.
