[SACD-R][OF] Andreas Scholl (Countertenor), Ensemble 415 - Chiara Banchini (Dir.) - Antonio Vivaldi: Stabat Mater - 1995/2003 (Classical, Vocal)

Ensemble 415 is a chamber ensemble devoted largely to the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. The numerical reference in the group's name derives from the pitch used for tuning instruments in the Baroque era. In performing chamber music, Ensemble 415 consists of just a few players, but for larger compositions, the number expands to a minimum of 13 and can reach up to as high as 40 performers. The ensemble's repertory has been broad over the years, taking in many Baroque standards by J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel, as well as lesser known fare by Muffat and others. But the group is really best known for its interpretations of the works by the Italian masters: Corelli, Boccherini, Bononcini, Geminiani, Albinoni, Sammartini, Valentini, and a spate of others. The group has also extended its repertory into the Classical era to include works by Haydn and Mozart. Ensemble 415 concertize at a variety of venues in Switzerland, France, and Germany during the concert season, including at the Lausanne opera house, Victoria Hall (Geneva), Komische Oper (Berlin), the theaters in Caen and Poissy (France), and the Clermont-Ferrand Opera (France). It also regularly appears at music festivals like the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Copenhagen Early Music Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival, and countless others. It has regularly toured throughout Europe, Asia, and South America and has made numerous acclaimed recordings for such labels as Harmonia Mundi, Zig-Zag Territoires, Erato, Accent, and Astrée.
Ensemble 415 was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1981 by virtuoso Baroque violinist Chiara Banchini, who from the beginning has served as the group's artistic director and conductor. The ensemble quickly drew attention from both critics and public alike, and by the mid-'90s, when its recording of Vivaldi's Stabat Mater (1996) was released by Harmonia Mundi, the group had achieved international notice.
The first recording for the French label Zig-Zag Territoires, a disc of Valentini concertos, was given the prestigious Diapson d'Or Award in 2002. In the new century the group's tours have included concerts in Australia, Singapore, Turkey, Russia, and Slovenia, as well as major cities throughout Europe. Ensemble 415's March 2010, tour of Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, with soprano soloist Cristina Kiehr and featuring music by Boccherini, was a great critical success. Among the ensemble's later recordings is the 2010 Harmonia Mundi CD of Tartini concertos, with cellist Roel Dieltiens and violinist Enrico Gatti.

Анто́нио Лю́цио Вива́льди (итал. Antonio Lucio Vivaldi; 4 марта 1678, Венеция — 28 июля 1741, Вена) — итальянский композитор, скрипач-виртуоз, педагог, дирижёр, католический священник. Вивальди считается одним из крупнейших представителей итальянского скрипичного искусства XVIII века, при жизни получил широкое признание во всей Европе. Мастер ансамблево-оркестрового концерта — кончерто гроссо, автор девяноста опер. Вивальди в основном известен благодаря своим инструментальным концертам, в особенности для скрипки. Его наиболее известной работой является цикл из четырёх скрипичных концертов «Времена года».

Chiara Banchini is a Swiss violinist, involved in the historical performance practice movement. She specializes in the music of the Baroque.
Banchini was born in 1946 in Lugano, Switzerland. She graduated from the Geneva Conservatory; following this she studied under Sandor Vegh and then at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague under Sigiswald Kuijken for the Baroque violin. She taught at the Centre for Early Music in Geneva and began performing as a soloist.
In 1981, she moved from Geneva to the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, where she formed Ensemble 415, a Baroque performance ensemble, which was dissolved in January 2012. The group took its name from a common Baroque pitch. The ensemble's recording of Arcangelo Corelli's Concerti Grossi for Harmonia Mundi was a commercial success in 1992, as was their 1996 recording of Antonio Vivaldi's Stabat Mater. She has also recorded with Erato, Virgin Records, Accent, Astreé, and Zig Zag Territories.
She plays a violin made by Nicolò Amati in 1674

Andreas Scholl (countertenor)
Ensemble 415 - Chiara Banchini (cond.)

Андреас Шолль (нем. Andreas Scholl 10 ноября 1967, Эльтвилле-на-Рейне) — немецкий оперный певец, контратенор. В его репертуаре преобладает музыка барокко.
Шолль родом из музыкальной семьи. Оба родителя были хористами в Кидрихе, его сестра — Элизабет Шолль — певица сопрано.
Получил своё первое музыкальное образование в хоре мальчиков в Кидрихе. С 1987 по 1993 годы обучался под руководством Рихарда Левитта и Рене Якобса в базельской Schola Cantorum, где получил диплом по старинной музыке (de:Alte Musik). В 1992 году он был отмечен Советом Европы и Фондом Клода-Никола Леду. Сотрудничает с крупнейшими дирижёрами-аутентистами, среди которых Уильям Кристи и Вернер Эрхард.

Review of the RBCD from Nicholas Anderson at Gramophone
At first glance it seemed odd to me that an ostensibly countertenor programme of music by Vivaldi should have omitted his fine setting of the psalm Nisi Dominus (RV608). Let’s hope a recording is planned. Meanwhile, here is a very attractively prepared menu whose main course is the Stabat mater for countertenor and strings. Hors-d’oeuvres and side-dishes consist of a ripieno concerto (RV114), a chamber cantata for countertenor and strings (RV684), a string sonata in E flat (RV130) and an introductory motet to a lost Miserere (RV638).
Taken together, the pieces demonstrate something of Vivaldi’s diverse style as a composer. The two instrumental works offer the strongest contrasts, the Concerto suggestive, above all in its opening movement, of an opera sinfonia, the Sonata redolent with poignant suspensions and darkly sonorous in its first movement, but yielding to a tautly constructed fugue in the second. The chamber cantata, if closely related to the two sacred vocal items on the disc in respect of tonal colour, differs from them in character. Conforming with the standard Italian cantata pattern at the time of two pairs of alternating recitative and da capo aria Vivaldi enlivens his pastoral idyll with two particularly affecting arias, the first with a palpitating pizzicato violin, the second a virtuoso vocal tour de force illustrating the plight of the forsaken lover. The soloist Andreas Scholl brings the whole thing off superbly with only a moment’s faulty intonation at the close of the first aria.
Unlike settings of the Stabat mater by Pergolesi and some others, Vivaldi used only the first ten of the 20 stanzas of the poem. His deeply expressive setting of the poem will be familiar to many readers but few will have heard such an affecting performance as Scholl achieves here. The lyrical prayer of human yearning for faith contained in the “Fac ut ardeat” movement is most tenderly sung and here, as throughout the programme, sympathetically supported by the strings of Ensemble 415 under Chiara Banchini’s experienced direction. The Filiae mestae is well worth becoming acquainted with and is of an expressive quality that makes the loss of the Miserere itself all the more regrettable. An outstanding disc in almost every respect, and most highly recommended. I eagerly await the Nisi Dominus.’