Il Giardino Armonico / NFM Choir / Giovanni Antonini by Haydn, Från (2023/2023), Dirigent Giovanni Antonini, deSingel, Antwerpen, Belgien

If there is someone on this earth who knows the music of Joseph Haydn, then it is Giovanni Antonini. Back in 2014 the conductor began on a Herculean task: recording all 106 (!) of the composer’s symphonies with his orchestra Il Giardino Armonico. Since then, twelve volumes have been completed. Anyone who believes that the conductor has therefore had his fill of Haydn could not be more wrong. In between all the symphonic repertoire, Antonini still finds room for the oratorio Die Jahreszeiten, Haydn’s majestic song of praise to the cyclical rebirth of nature. Unlike Vivaldi’s instrumental seasonal sketch, Haydn draws the slipping away of the seasons in the grandest of forms: as an oratorio with spectacular choral parts that sing of the ‘burning summer sun’, ‘the lovely sight of leaping lambs’ or ‘the sharp breath of ice from the arid east’. Following years of absence from our stage, Antonini returns to the Blue Hall in 2023, together with his faithful companions from Il Giardino Armonico, the outstanding chamber choir of Wroclaw’s National Forum for Music and three leading soloists.