Frank Agsteribbe

Frank Agsteribbe

Frank Agsteribbe (* 1968 in Ghent ) is a Belgian conductor , harpsichordist , composer and lecturer , who is particularly characterized by his expressive expression as well as his strong timbre and flow in his music. His repertoire ranges from the 16th century to contemporary music. Agsteribbe is dedicated to opera as well as vocal and instrumental baroque music and new music .

Live and act

Frank Agsteribbe grew up in Ghent and started playing the piano at the age of ten and later on the organ and harpsichord. He started composing small pieces early on, which he performed with some friends.

He studied harpsichord and organ with Jos van Immerseel , Gustav Leonhardt , Davitt Moroney and Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini and performed with the baroque ensembles La Petite Bande , Collegium Vocale, Huelgas Ensemble, Anima Eterna and Concerto Köln .

In 2005 Agsteribbe founded the Flemish B'Rock Barock Orchestra together with bassist Tom Devaere and was artistic director until the end of 2012. Frank Agsteribbe has conducted the orchestra at the Opera Festival in Rotterdam, Potsdam Sanssouci, the Klara Festival van Vlaanderen in Brussels and the MA Festival in Bruges and from Tallinn to Cape Town.

In 2010 he was presented as an up-and-coming artist at the Klara Festival in Brussels and conducted and arranged the opening concert with a Mozart program together with Concerto Köln. He also implemented the theater program "Bach Danced".

Conducting opera productions is of particular importance to Frank Agsteribbe's artistic development. His repertoire begins with baroque operas such as La Dafne by Marco da Gagliano (1608), Orontea by Antonio Cesti , Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Magic Flute , Ferdinando Bertoni's Orfeo (1776) and Gioachino Rossini's Italian in Algiers . In addition, he has dealt intensively with romantic operas such as Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème through to 20th century opera with Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress , Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček , Le vin herbé by Frank Martin and Giorgio Battistelli's Prova d'Orchestra . He worked at the Flemish Opera (Antwerp-Gent), the Ruhrtriennale (Germany), the Castleward Opera (Belfast, Ireland), the Teatro Sao Carlos (Lisbon, Portugal), the Grand Théatre (Luxembourg) and at the Festival Aix en Provence. Agsteribbe was also the overall musical director of Jan Decorte's opera production of Purcell's Indian Queen 2011/2012 and conducted the B'Rock orchestra from the harpsichord directly on the theater stage. In 2012 Agsteribbe was involved with B'Rock in the opera production of Handel's Orlando at the Brussels Opera in collaboration with René Jacobs as assistant. In 2013 he directed B'Rock in Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda , with Dietrich Henschel , Claron McFadden and Reinout Van Mechelen.

Frank Agsteribbe is the founder and conductor of the new Luxembourg vocal ensemble "CantoLX", which made its first recording in February 2012. The ensemble's repertoire includes in particular early music, such as Dieterich Buxtehude , François Couperin , Girolamo Frescobaldi , Domenico Scarlatti , Heinrich Schütz , František Ignác Tůma , Tomás Luis de Victoria and Jan Dismas Zelenka , but also modern composers such as John Cage are in the repertoire.

Agsterribbe has composed 80 compositions, some of which were recorded on the radio or are available on CD. His composition et nova sunt semper, which he composed for the European Radio Union, has been played in Europe, Canada and the United States. In addition, Agsteribbe realized a new composition for De Bijloke in Gent for a fortepiano with a range of six octaves, in the premiere of which Ronald Brautigam was heard. He also composed the compulsory piece for the International Harpsichord Competition of the MA Festival Bruges 2010. In his compositions, Frank Agsteribbe deals intensively with composers of early music and shows a particular fascination with the inner complexity and expression, for example of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart .

Frank Agsteribbe has made sound recordings with the B'Rock orchestra with music by Georg Friedrich Händel , Georg Philipp Telemann and Dutch composers of the 18th century. In 2011 he made a recording of Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons in combination with John Cage's Quartet in four parts in an arrangement for baroque strings that he himself made.

Agsteribbe is also a chamber musician and has performed with the Belgian violinist Guido de Neve . He lives in Ghent and teaches at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp.

philosophy

Frank Agsteribbe deals both theoretically and musically very intensively with an equal dialogue between conductors, musicians, composers and listeners across the different epochs. The use of historical instruments or their replicas are of particular importance to him; he himself plays a replica of a Grimaldi harpsichord, the original of which can be found in the Germanic Museum in Nuremberg. Agsteribbe often conducts from the harpsichord and thus has very direct access to music, musicians and listeners. In doing so, he follows the baroque music tradition, in which the musician was mostly composer, interpreter and teacher at the same time.

What is particularly important to him is understanding and feeling for the music being interpreted and its composers, but at the same time the interpreter's active participation in the action. The interpreter brings his understanding and personality into the act of performance and is thus able to transfer the music into the present day.

Agsteribbe is not only concerned with early music, but is increasingly looking for access to the original form of interpretation of romantic music. In a recently published scientific article he questioned the role of the composer and interpreter in Romanticism and proved that the freedom of interpretation was recognized and implemented even by composers of the 20th century such as Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky. Agsteribbe always defines music as an act and not as an object that wanders through time as a static fact.

Quotes

• “The historical background is very important for my work. It is important to know the sources and the historical facts of the instruments well…. We use what we know about eighteenth-century music, for example. But we're not saying we're playing the same way as we were in the 18th century, that would be wrong and outright a lie. We play the music of our time. Although the notes were written 250 years ago and we play them knowing the historical conditions, it is still a very contemporary way of making music. "

• In the 20th century people wanted to “play very precisely, at a steady tempo, very clearly and with a small cast. I am convinced that this kind of musical interpretation is actually more of an idea of ​​the 20th century than one of the 18th century. But of course she had enormous success. Our generation differs from it to the extent that we admit from the start that we are not at all authentic, at least not authentic in a historical sense. Still, I think we are authentic in a different way because we play in the spirit of our time. And 2011 is different than it was in 1970 - we deal with early music differently. ... We want it to be more subjective again - the personal is returning. "

• “I appreciate writing for historical instruments because I know their possibilities very well. And I notice that the musicians understand my language immediately. But that's just the hardware. The software is contemporary through and through! "

• “ Opera has played an important role in my work from the start . I think it's because we all love this genre, but also because it's the place where you meet other artists who all have their own experiences and ideas. This can be a set designer, a lighting technician or the director. I love this interaction and this process of developing something new as a team. "

• “ What is essential about our time is that we have access to an unimaginable amount of information , to an unprecedented library of art and music. In his last great novel, Das Glasperlenspiel, from 1943, Hermann Hesse describes a future world around the year 2200, in which everything that has ever been produced in terms of art is available ... It is unique in history that we have these quantities to enjoy music and art. The challenge for our generation of musicians who work in the field of historically informed performance practice is now to enter into dialogue with the past and make a compelling story out of it. Or better: An endless series of stories, because the story no longer exists . "

• “While in historical performance practice a lot of research is carried out into the final, definitive version of a score (Urtext) and the musical text is followed literally as much as possible , a composer experiences the struggle with the limitations of musical notation every time . What is ultimately in the score is only a small part of what the composer has in his head. The inability to translate one's imagination into notation is frustrating and confronting . Performers should work more with living composers in order to learn to better assess this problem. "

Discography

with B'Rock:

• Vivaldi-Cage: 8 Seasons: Et'cetera KTC 1429
• Handel: Concerti Grossi and Overtures: Et'cetera KTC 1383
• Telemann: Suites for Strings: Et'cetera KTC 4027
• David Petersen: Speelstukken: Et'cetera KTC 4032

with Huelgas Ensemble:

• Lassus: Il canzoniere di Petrarca: Harmonia Mundi HMC901828
• Andrea Gabrieli: Psalmi Davidici: Globe GLO 5210

with La Petite Bande:

• Vivaldi: Le Quattro Stagioni: Accent
• Bach: Motets: Challenge: Records SACC72160

Frank Agsteribbe solo:

• Haydn: Sonates pour Clavier (played on organ): Les amis de l'orgue St. Jean-Baptiste d'Illzach

Web links

• Homepage Frank Agsteribbe
• Homepage B'Rock
• Homepage cantoLX

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Helga Heyder-Späth: "The personal is returning." In: concerto. No. 240, 2011, pp. 31-33.
2. ↑ ^{a b} B´Rock: The Eight Seasons - Interview ( Memento from December 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Website sonus-alte-musik. Retrieved February 25, 2012.