Les Passions de l'Ame (orchestra)
Les Passions de l'Ame - Orchestra for Early Music Bern (original spelling) is an instrumental ensemble for early music based in Bern, founded and directed in 2008 by the Swiss violinist Meret Lüthi .
History of the orchestra
The musicians of Les Passions de l'Ame are internationally active specialists in the field of early music. They “work as soloists, as chamber musicians, as orchestral musicians, as well as lecturers for institutions such as the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the Belgian Baroque Orchestra B'Rock, the Antwerp Conservatory or the Bern University of the Arts.” The ensemble presents annually at its headquarters in Bern the concert series “Early Music? - Brand new!". In this, the ensemble offers the performance of orchestral works from the 17th and 18th centuries and often attracts rarities to the public. The ensemble has been a guest at the Handel Festival in Halle (2019), the Valletta International Baroque Festival in Malta (2019), the Stuttgart Music Festival (2018), the Schwetzingen Festival (2018), the London Festival of Baroque Music (2017) ), the days of early music in Regensburg (2018 and 2016), the Lucerne Festival (2015) or the celebrations of the cultural capital Riga (2014). The ensemble has performed in concerts with soloists such as Kristian Bezuidenhout , Hana Blažíková , Simone Kermes , Nuria Rial , Carolyn Sampson , Dorothee Oberlinger and the conductor Hans-Christoph Rademann .
European radio stations such as SRF 2 Kultur , Deutschlandfunk Kultur , BBC , SWR2 , concertzender.nl regularly broadcast concerts by Les Passions de l'Ame . The Bayerische Rundfunk and Arte were broadcasting 2,019 video live streams of concerts of the ensemble in Nuremberg and at the Handel Festival in Halle . Some of the records recorded by Les Passions de l'Ame were awarded the Diapason d'or or the Supersonic Award from the music magazine Pizzicato .
The name of the orchestra refers to the eponymous essay by René Descartes from 1649. “In it, the philosopher speaks of the passion that mediates between body and soul. It is precisely in this mediating role that the ensemble sees the music and turns 'les passions' into an immediate experience in the concert. "
Discography
- Variety - The Art of Variation. ( Schmelzer , Biber and Fux ), SONY Switzerland, 2019
- Joke - A Treasure Trove of Musical Jokes. SONY Switzerland, 2017
- BEWITCHED. ( Geminiani , Handel), SONY Switzerland, 2014
- SPICY - "Exotic" Music for Violin. (Biber, Fux, Schmelzer), SONY Switzerland, 2013
Web links
- Literature by and about Les Passions de l'Ame (orchestra) in the bibliographic database WorldCat
- Les Passions de l'Ame at Discogs (English)
- Les Passions de l'Ame on MusicBrainz (English)
- Les Passions de l'Ame (Baroque Orchestra) with Bach Cantatas (English)
- Les Passions de l'Ame. (No longer available online.) Lucerne Festival, August 2015, archived from the original on March 18, 2020 ; accessed on June 5, 2020 .
- Les Passions de l'Ame. (No longer available online.) Sony Music, archived from the original on June 5, 2020 ; accessed on June 5, 2020 .
- Website of the orchestra Les Passions de l'Ame. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 13, 2019 ; accessed on June 5, 2020 (there under the tab "Orchestra" a description of the orchestra).