The recording of The Four Seasons by Amandine Beyer and her ensemble Gli Incogniti (released in 2008) is among the benchmark interpretations of Vivaldi’s work. For the violinist, this recording was anything but a closed chapter in a “sound museum”: it was a sensory shock, a door opening onto the unknown and, more recently, a choreographed playground.
Fabio Biondi does not play Vivaldi: he makes Vivaldi speak through the violin. Between traditional Italian virtuosity and the finely crafted grammar of Baroque research, he has spent nearly fifty years defending the idea that music is a language rather than a mere question of tonality. We look back on a seminal encounter and his album of The Four Seasons, which went on to achieve international success.
In a bend of the Danube, 80 km from Vienna, Melk Abbey (Austria) hosts a Baroque music festival every year at Pentecost, set against an enchanting backdrop. Artistic director and tenor Michael Schade has just unveiled the 2026 edition.
Founded in 1980, the Ricercar label celebrates forty-five years of existence with quiet discretion. An opportunity to take stock with founder Jérôme Lejeune about the complicated economics of the CD, and its indispensable role as both a tool of memory and a musicological act.
At the helm of Cappella Mediterranea, Argentine conductor Leonardo García-Alarcón brings friends and partners into a sweeping saga that links libraries and stages, South America and Baroque Europe, record and video. And he insists: early music doesn’t exist. The moment it is performed, it becomes alive!
Medieval and Renaissance music are rarely heard in Berlin—a city otherwise bursting with musical richness. Singer Sarah Fuhs and flutist Amanda Markrwick, with their ensemble Titan’s Rising, are trying, along with a few others, to change this situation.
Laurent Brunner is taking Versailles to the world stage, from New York to Hanoi via Shanghai. In this second part of the interview, he explains how Château de Versailles Spectacles has built a unique model combining an in-house orchestra, an academy, and international touring.
Between baroque music, the Grandes Eaux, courtly festivities and masked balls, Château de Versailles Spectacles is a private cultural enterprise with multiple activities that has made the famous palace a vibrant hub of initiatives.
