Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Il Giardino Armonico & Giovanni Antonini
Biography Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Il Giardino Armonico & Giovanni Antonini
Patricia Kopatchinskaja
A combination of depth, brilliance and humour, Kopatchinskaja brings an inimitable sense of theatrics to her music. Whether performing a violin concerto by Tchaikovsky, Ligeti or Schoenberg or presenting an original staged project deconstructing Beethoven, Ustwolskaja or Cage, her distinctive approach always conveys the core of the work.
Highlights of the 2019/20 season include: a European tour with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle and a series of concerts in Japan with Teodor Currentzis. Special highlights include the world premiere of a new commission by Francisco Coll with Philharmonie Luxembourg and a new collaboration with soprano, Anna Prohaska and Camerata Bern. Maria Mater Meretrix includes works by Kurtág, Martin and Holst and amongst others, will tour to Cologne, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.
Last season included the world premiere and European tour of a Vivaldi project with Il Giardino Armonico featuring new works by living composers, which will be released on disc (Alpha) in summer 2020. Kopatchinskaja also made important debuts with Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (Nagano) and Los Angeles Philharmonic (Gražinytė-Tyla). She gave a Japanese tour with Currentzis and performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker (Petrenko).
Kopatchinskaja appears regularly with artists such as: Polina Leschenko with whom she toured recently to Japan and the U.S; Reto Bieri, with whom she premiered a new trio programme at the Wigmore Hall (with Leschenko) which will tour this season and cellist, Jay Campbell whom she will join in January 2020 for recitals in Washington, Boston, Santa Barbara and San Francisco.
In addition to her regular performance schedule, Kopatcinskaja continues to curate interesting and original projects including her most recent, ‘Pierrot Lunaire’, which was performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker this summer and followed the success of ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Bye Bye Beethoven’.
As a passionate campaigner against global heating, last season Kopatchinskaja partnered with musicians from the Staatskapelle Berlin (founders of the Orchester des Wandels) to perform ‘Dies Irae’ in support of the NaturTon Foundation. Kopatchinskaja is also a humanitarian ambassador for Terre des Hommes, the leading Swiss child relief agency.
Kopatchinskaja held the position of Artistic Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra from 2014 – 2018. She was awarded the Swiss Grand Award for Music by the Federal Office of Culture for Switzerland in 2017 and has held positions as Artist in Residence at various festivals including Lucerne (2017) and Ojai (2018). In 2018 she won a Grammy Award in the Best Chamber and Small Ensemble Performance category for Death and the Maiden with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (Alpha) and was nominated in 2014 in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category (Naïve).
Recent releases include Michael Hersch’s Violin Concerto recorded with International Contemporary Ensemble and Deux, a duo recital disc with Polina Leschenko. Forthcoming recordings include her first release with Camerata Bern, Time and Eternity (Alpha) due for release in autumn 2019.
Il Giardino Armonico
Founded in 1985 and conducted by Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico has established itself as one of the world’s leading period instrument ensembles, bringing together musicians from Europe’s relevant music institutions. The ensemble’s repertoire mainly focuses on the 17th and 18th century. Depending on the demands of each program, the group consists of six up to thirty musicians.
Il Giardino Armonico is regularly invited to festivals all over the world performing in the most important concert halls and receiving high acclaim for both concerts and opera productions, such as Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Vivaldi’s Ottone in Villa, Handel’s Agrippina, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, La Resurrezione and Giulio Cesare in Egitto with Cecilia Bartoli during the 2012 edition of the Salzburg Whitsun and Summer Festival.
Besides, Il Giardino Armonico sustains an intense recording activity.
After many years as an exclusive ensemble of Teldec achieving several major awards for the recordings of works by Vivaldi and the other 18th century composers, the orchestra had an exclusive agreement with Decca/L’Oiseau-Lyre recording Handel’s Concerti Grossi op. VI and the cantata Il Pianto di Maria with Bernarda Fink. Il Giardino Armonico also released on Naïve La Casa del Diavolo, Vivaldi’s Cello Concertos with Christophe Coin, as well as the opera Ottone in Villa, that won the Diapason d’Or in 2011. Furthermore, for the label Onyx it recorded Vivaldi’s Violin Concertos with Viktoria Mullova.
After the universal success and the Grammy Award received for The Vivaldi Album with Cecilia Bartoli (Decca, 2000), a new cooperation with her in 2009 led to the project Sacrificium (Decca), a Platinum Album in France and Belgium and a further Grammy Award. The most recent project with Cecilia Bartoli brought about the release of the album Farinelli (Decca, 2019).
On Decca Il Giardino Armonico also published Alleluia (March 2013) and Händel in Italy (October 2015) with Julia Lezhneva, volumes acclaimed by the public and critics.
In co-production with National Forum of Music in Wroclaw (Poland), Il Giardino Armonico published Serpent & Fire with Anna Prohaska (Alpha Classics – Outhere Music Group, 2016) winning the ICMA “Baroque Vocal” in 2017. The ensemble recorded the Telemann CD and LP (Alpha Classics, 2016), that won the Diapason d’Or de l’Année and the Echo Klassik Award in 2017.
The recording of five Mozart Violin Concertos with Isabel Faust (Harmonia Mundi, 2016) stands as the result of the prestigious cooperation with the great violinist, winning the Gramophone Award and Le Choc de l’année in 2017.
A new Vivaldi Album Concerti per flauto has been published (Alpha Classics, March 2020): a generous bouquet of this repertoire with Giovanni Antonini as soloist, recorded between 2011 and 2017.
Il Giardino Armonico is part of the project Haydn2032, for which the Haydn Foundation was created in Basel to support both the recording project of the complete Haydn Symphonies (label: Alpha Classic) and a series of concerts in various European cities with thematic programs focused on this repertoire. In November 2014 the first album titled La Passione was released and won the Echo Klassik Award (2015). Il Filosofo, issued in 2015, has been awarded with the “Choc of the Year” by Classica. The third album Solo e Pensoso was released in August 2016; the fourth Il Distratto in March 2017, winning the Gramophone Award in the same year. The eighth volume La Roxolana has been published in Jan 2020.
The ensemble worked also with such acclaimed soloists as Giuliano Carmignola, Sol Gabetta, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Viktoria Mullova and Giovanni Sollima.
The most recent projects include the recording of La Morte della Ragione (co-produced with National Forum of Music in Wroclaw, published by Alpha Classics and awarded with the Diapason d’Or in 2019), a program focused on the raise of Baroque sensibility through Europe and the search for a renewed listening experience of early music.
In 2018, Il Giardino Armonico continued the collaboration with the young and gifted violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja with a new program of fertile tension between past and future, bringing together philological accuracy and contemporary music: the volume What’s next, Vivaldi? will be soon published on Alpha Classics.
Giovanni Antonini
Born in Milan, Giovanni Antonini studied at the Civica Scuola di Musica and at the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva. He is a founder member of the Baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, which he has led since 1989. With this ensemble he has appeared as conductor and soloist on the recorder and Baroque transverse flute in Europe, United States, Canada, South America, Australia, Japan and Malaysia. He is Artistic Director of Wratislavia Cantans Festival in Poland and Principal Guest Conductor of Mozarteum Orchester and Kammerorchester Basel.
He has performed with many prestigious artists including Cecilia Bartoli, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Giuliano Carmignola, Isabelle Faust, Sol Gabetta, Sumi Jo, Viktoria Mullova, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Emmanuel Pahud and Giovanni Sollima. Renowned for his refined and innovative interpretation of the classical and baroque repertoire, Antonini is also a regular guest with Berliner Philharmoniker, Concertgebouworkest, Tonhalle Orchester, Mozarteum Orchester, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, London Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
His opera productions have included Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Handel’s Alcina at Teatro alla Scala in Milano and Opernhaus Zurich, Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto and Bellini’s Norma with Cecilia Bartoli at Salzburg Festival. In 2018 he conducted Orlando at Theater an der Wien and returned to Opernhaus Zurich for Idomeneo. During the 2019-20 season, Antonini conducts Giulio Cesare in Egitto at La Scala and returns to Mozarteum Orchester, Tonhalle Orchester, Czech Philhamonic and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischer Rundfunk.
With Il Giardino Armonico Antonini has recorded numerous CDs of instrumental works by Vivaldi, J.S. Bach (Brandenburg Concertos), Biber and Locke for Teldec. With Naïve he recorded Vivaldi’s opera Ottone in Villa, and for Decca he has recorded 2 volumes with Julia Lezhneva. Later with Alpha Classics (Outhere Music Group) he released various albums: among all La Morte della Ragione, collections of sixteenth and seventeenth century instrumental music. With Kammerorchester Basel he has recorded the complete Beethoven Symphonies for Sony Classical and a disc of flute concertos with Emmanuel Pahud entitled Revolution for Warner Classics. In 2013 he conducted a recording of Bellini’s Norma for Decca in collaboration with Orchestra La Scintilla.
Antonini is Artistic Director of the Haydn2032 project, created to realise a vision to record and perform with Il Giardino Armonico and Kammerorchester Basel the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn by the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The first 8 volumes have been released on the Alpha Classics label with two further volumes planned for release every year.
