Wilbert Hazelzet

Always up for a challenge, Bach. just about as much a mathematical genius as a musical one, served up A Musical Offering - one of the pinnacles of the Baroque repertoire and offering track after track of delectable Baroque chamber music. Coupled with it are two of his most popular Flute Sonatas, all performed with incredible verve and zest by Musica Antiqua Koln.

To talk about Wilbert Hazelzet is to speak about another of those magnificent musicians who, with their unforgettable recording projects for Glossa, helped create the special aesthetic view of the label, which has always seen in interpretative poetry one of its philosophical foundations. Together with his regular musical colleagues-in-arms, harpsichordist Jacques Ogg and cellist Jaap ter Linden, Hazelzet encompasses on this pair of discs the entirety of the flute sonatas as composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, including the piece which forms part of the Ein Musikalisches Opfer, and for which the heady sound aromas of a Silbermann fortepiano was used.

Maya Homburger and Malcolm Proud’s ensemble Camerata Kilkenny perform one of J S Bach’s most enduring works, The Musical Offering, BWV 1079, with the baroque flautist Wilbert Hazelzet. It’s their second recording for Maya Recordings following a highly praised CD of Biber’s Mystery Sonatas three years ago.

Founded by the Irish international harpsichordist and organist Malcolm Proud and the Swiss violinist Maya Homburger, Camerata Kilkenny is a period instrument group specialising in the performance of Baroque music. Many of its programmes combine 17th and 18th century music with the works of contemporary composers. It consists of artists from Ireland with guest artists from further afield who are renowned internationally for their performances and recordings.

Camerata Kilkenny gave its debut recital at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in August 1999, since when it has performed in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Estonia. In Ireland the group has appeared at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, the Sligo Festival of Baroque Music, the Festival of Great Irish Houses, the Galway Early Music Festival, the East Cork Early Music Festival 'Music in the Mosaics' in Timoleague and the Kilkenny Arts Festival.

In April 2010 Camerata Kilkenny and Wilbert Hazelzet gave a concert in St Peter’s Church in Leut-Maasmechelen, Belgium following which they recorded Bach’s Musical Offering. The Irish Times said: “Performances of this extra-special work can be sometimes illuminated, sometimes stultified, by an atmosphere of overpowering reverence. Not so this one, in which the music’s artifices were subsumed in a world of rhetoric, decoration and dance.”

Their first CD of Biber’s Mystery Sonatas with Maya Homburger was on the “Bestenliste” of the prestigious German music industry ‘Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik’ award in 2007.

Louis-Nicolas Clerambault came from a musical dynasty, and was a formidable violinist and organist. He favoured the Italianate style of Corelli, and his music is a unique blend of French and Italian styles – the latter noticeable in the rhythmic vitality of the music.

The cantata form was also an Italian import – a cross between opera and song, it could have all the drama of an opera, but run its course in a fraction of the time, and require only one voice. In Orphee for example, the singer takes up the roles of Orpheus, Narrator, Pluto and the Chorus. Interaction between characters is reflected in the instrumentation used.

The harpsichord suites date from 1702. While adhering to the baroque suite of Prelude, Allemende, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Clerambault expands the form with additions – the Prelude is very free in form, and unlike those found in the Bach suites where strict contrapuntalism reigns supreme.