Max Emanuel Cenčić

“With these arias by Vivaldi and his lesser-known contemporaries I am hoping both to capture the musical tastes of Venice in the early 18th century and to recreate the moods and colours of a city that was open to the world. Venice was one of Europe’s most important musical centres, both exporting its operatic glories and importing new ideas from Rome and Naples.”

For today’s audiences, Vivaldi’s name exemplifies Venetian opera in the early 18th century – but he was not the only composer to shape the distinctive musical aesthetic of the great trading city known as La Serenissima. In this programme of arias by Vivaldi and his contemporaries, countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic further explores Venice’s contribution to world’s rich store of Baroque opera. His intention, in this first collaboration with Italian violinist/conductor Riccardo Minasi and his ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro, is to recreate Venetian taste and to trace the influences of the time, particularly as the city faced operatic innovations originating from Rome and Naples.

Cencic has been lauded for his assumption of the title role in Virgin Classics’ complete recording of Vivaldi’s Farnace, which Opera magazine felt “will set the standard for the foreseeable future ... Max Emanuel Cencic has all the necessary fire and fury for Farnace, with excellent coloratura singing and shows control in the more introspective numbers.” Gramophone meanwhile wrote that: “[Cencic's] brilliant coloratura is never merely showy, his poetic lament singing is superb...and his knack for portraying explosive vengefulness does not preclude intelligent musicality...this marvellous recording reveals that Vivaldi's theatrical fantasy is a journey worth taking.”

All the arias on Venezia are new to Cencic and, assembling a richly varied programme, he has sought out some exquisite rarities. Vivaldi is represented by several numbers, while other composers include the Venetians Albinoni, Caldara and Porta and two composers born elsewhere in Italy, but who became closely associated with Venice: Gasparini (born in Lucca), who employed Vivaldi at the Ospedale della Pietà and who became something of a mentor to him, and Giacomelli (born in Piacenza), whose style was very close to Vivaldi’s; his touching aria ‘Sposa, non mi conosci’ was ‘borrowed’ and transformed by Vivaldi into the celebrated ‘Sposa, son disprezzata’ from Bajazet.

Along with a fascinating exploration of the cross-currents of Venetian Baroque style, Cencic promises both virtuoso fireworks and gentle lyricism – and a collaboration with Minasi and Il Pomo d’Oro that will be ignited by the spark of spontaneity.

It is one of the oldest boys' choirs in the world, and even after now 500 years, the Vienna Boys' Choir is still a living tradition. This 2 CD set presents a selection of world famous Christmas songs alongside highlights from Handel’s Messiah.

Two star countertenors, Philippe Jaroussky and Max Emanuel Cencic, join William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, for a programme of chamber-scale duets and arias by Italian composers of the early 18th century. As Jaroussky says, these are “duets of great beauty, where the two voices entwine in a way that is sometimes very sophisticated, but also very sensual.”

The contrasting and complementary talents of two star countertenors, Philippe Jaroussky and Max Emanuel Cencic, come to the fore in this programme of chamber-scale duets and arias by Italian composers of the early 18th century: Porpora, Mancini, Bononcini, Marcello, Conti and Alessandro Scarlatti. Two instrumental items by Corelli are also included in this richly filled programme, based on concerts presented by Jaroussky, Cencic and Les Arts Florissants under William Christie’s direction in France and Spain in early 2011.

Both countertenors are virtuosic performers, but Jaroussky is especially famed for the gracefulness of his vocalism, whether in brilliant castrato arias or his Virgin Classics album of belle époque song, Opium, while Cencic favours a more assertive and athletic style, which served him well in his breathtaking recital of Rossini arias for Virgin Classics.

Alan Curtis, described by the New York Times’ as “one of the great scholar-musicians of recent times”, conducts a brilliant cast including Sonia Prina, Ann Hallenberg, Max-Emanuel Cencic and Topi Lehtipuu in the original, 1750 version of Gluck’s Ezio, described by Curtis as “from a dramatic point of view, perhaps the finest of Gluck’s pre-Orfeo operas”.

Alan Curtis, described by the New York Times’ as “one of the great scholar-musicians of recent times”, feels that Gluck’s opera Ezio is “from a dramatic point of view, perhaps the finest of Gluck’s pre-Orfeo operas.” This recording presents the original version of Ezio, which received its premiere in Prague in 1750, some 12 years before Gluck’s revolutionary Orfeo ed Euridice was seen in Vienna.

Written to a libretto by the prolific and influential Metastasio, Ezio exemplifies the formal opera seria that Gluck sought to leave behind with his so-called reform operas such as Orfeo and Alceste; but after Orfeo’s epoch-making premiere in Vienna in 1762 he revised Ezio for performance at the city’s Burgtheater in 1763.

“Gluck’s revisions to Ezio were not motivated not by any dissatisfaction with the work itself, but by the larger size of the Burgtheater and the concomitant need for a larger orchestra,” explains Alan Curtis. “Ezio is one of Metastasio's most dramatic operas. It is also one of the few with a plot totally lacking any absurdities or situations which modern listeners could find difficult to accept. An unfortunate aspect of the later version is the omission of the magnificent aria for the tenor, Massimo – ‘Se povero il ruscello’. Gluck had adapted it for Orfeo, where it became ‘Che puro ciel’, so the Viennese public already knew it too well. We are especially happy to be able to include it in this new recording, sung magnificently by Topi Lehtipuu.”

Curtis provides illuminating insights into Gluck’s place in operatic history. “For a while during the twentieth century, Gluck was almost reduced to being a one-opera composer: the composer of Orfeo. One could even say that he suffered from too much praise as the reformer, the saviour of opera -- integrating the chorus into the action, liberating opera from the da capo aria and from solo virtuosity. But these days solo virtuosity and da capo variations are very much back in fashion, and people have come to realise that, especially in the first half of his mature years, he was also a master of this ‘old-fashioned’ seria style.”

Until now, Curtis’ operatic recordings for Virgin Classics have focused on Handel, with Berenice and Ariodante as the most recent additions to his discography of the composer’s works. Gramophone has said that “Alan Curtis has done more than most to prove that many of Handel's 42 operas are first-rate music dramas”, while the BBC Music Magazine has praised him as “a seasoned Handelian who has contributed, perhaps more than anyone now, to the composer’s operas on disc.” How, though, does Curtis view the relationship between Gluck and the older Handel?

“Gluck no doubt respected Handel,” he says, “though there is no direct evidence that he learned anything from him -- and certainly no example of his stealing any ideas. Unfortunately, the respect was not mutual. It is said that Handel remarked, after Gluck's visit to London, that his cook knew more about counterpoint than Gluck! Coming from the world of Handelian opera, one is first of all struck by the simplicity of much of Gluck's music -- a simplicity which can be mistaken (as it no doubt was by Handel) for a mere lack of complexity or even lack of skill. But Gluck’s music is much more revolutionary than that. It was a way of changing the musical language of the time, and of concentrating on dramatic situations and bare emotions: in short, a way of reforming opera, a process that Gluck and others began long before the appearance of Orfeo in 1762.

“Fortunately for us today, one does not have to choose between these two styles of opera. One can appreciate both. As I work with instrumentalists as singers, not only do we find it refreshing to approach a different style with different criteria, but we sometimes thereby discover new modes of expression. Listen, for instance, to the mezzo soprano Sonia Prina as Ezio, singing ‘Ecco alle mie catene’ near the end of Act II. She is justly famous for her lively, virtuosic Handelian coloratura, but while her Handel can astonish, her Gluck can move you to tears.”

In this double album, the greatest vocal artists of the present day offer their own vision of the singing of their legendary predecessors.

The extraordinary adulation accorded to castrati during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is still today one of the most fascinating phenomena in the history of music. During this golden age of the castrato, these male singers endowed with high voices that combined incredible refinement, amazing power and superhuman virtuosity took the musical world by storm. The whole of Europe was overcome by infatuation for these vocal prodigies. In the absence of the castrati themselves, the singers of today face the formidable challenge of reviving their repertoire. Both male and female singers now undertake the task of bringing back to life the wondrous voices of their androgynous forebears, in music that is by turns unsettling, deeply moving and of a dizzying virtuosity.

A 2CD-Compilation for the Price of 1 + 1 Bonus DVD - Digipack Format

This was the response of Classique News to Max Emmanuel Cencic’s first recital for Virgin Classics, released in 2007 and since awarded the Orphée d'Or by the Académie du Disque Lyrique. The German website KlassikInfo judged that: “It would not be possible to sing Malcolm’s arias from La donna del lago with more beauty and erotic charge, from the dark velvety depths to the brilliant top notes … a wonderful CD to combat a bad mood on a rainy Sunday afternoons …”, while the Rossini expert Richard Osborne, writing in Gramophone observed that: “The singing of Viennese countertenor Max Emmanuel Cencic is distinguished by good rhythm, crisp divisions and clear, expressive word use. The range these roles require sits comfortably on his voice. The G below the stave is rounded and full, the two octaves beyond are clear and bright … Cencic's musicianship is generally impeccable: a tribute to the values instilled in him during his time in the Vienna Boys' Choir which he left in 1992, nine years before his decision to ‘re-create’ himself as a countertenor.”

After that foray into the early Romantic era -- heroic arias written for female mezzo sopranos to perform in male disguise – Cencic returns to core countertenor repertoire with this programme of Handel. When Cencic performed the role of Sesto in Giulio Cesare on stage in Toulouse in 2006, ResMusica described him as a “true phenomenon”.

Handel retains a prominent position in Cencic’s performance schedule. Among operas by the composer that he has performed are Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, Fernando, Serse, Ottone and Faramondo – his complete Virgin Classics recording of this work was designated a Diapason ‘Découverte’ in March 2009, also being selected for Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice in July 2009. The Daily Telegraph wrote of the recording that: “The cast is notable for the flamboyant contributions of the impressive young countertenors Max Emanuel Cencic (in the title role) and Philippe Jaroussky. Strongly recommended to diehard Handel fans.”

“It seems that, in the years around 1720, when people went to the opera to hear a castrato idol or an adored soprano, they would play cards, pay court to their neighbours and savour sorbets during the recitatives – even during the so-called arias of action, which they enjoyed less than the ornamented reprises of the showpiece arias. With this intractable and hedonistic audience in mind (so different from people like us, of course), thirteen star singers came together to concoct this festive piece, constructed and presented in three acts like a true dramma per musica, but with no explicit story and no concrete characters: in other words, an imaginary opera formed of passion and music.” Ivan A. Alexandre

This album marks the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death with creativity, erudition and maybe a touch of audacity. Far more than a compilation album, it selects individual numbers from 11 operas and two oratorios by Handel and reassembles them in a sequence that respects the potent formula elaborated in the composer’s 38 works for the operatic stage.

While there is no specific narrative, the listener will be drawn in by the dramatic logic of a balanced succession of numbers, including some ‘greatest hits.