Gli Incogniti

Amandine Beyer, Gli Incogniti – Biber: Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:45:51 minutes | 1,96 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Whether we call them ‘Mystery’ or ‘Rosary’ Sonatas, these fifteen pieces, crowned by a sublime passacaglia for unaccompanied violin, form one of the greatest violinistic masterpieces of the Baroque repertory.This version, by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti, derived from a dance project with the Rosas company, leads us into their magical universe through a novel prism: that of movement, to which these pieces are an infinite ode.
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Gli Incogniti, Amandine Beyer – Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Op. 8 & Other Concertos (Alpha Collection) (2008)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:56 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Director and violinist Amandine Beyer acknowledges in her booklet notes for this disc that the world may not seem to need another recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, but then she tops the bar she has set up by delivering an entirely distinctive reading of the work. Her version, with the Italian historical-instrument group Gli Incogniti (who are not quite as unknown as all that), is as strikingly revisionist as the various turbo-powered, operatic Vivaldi recordings that began coming out of Italy in the 1990s, but it is different in flavor. In her own words, Beyer seeks “lightweight forces and freedom of phrasing.” The group is small, with microphones put down right in the middle, and you hear lots of internal lines and interplay rather than contrast between orchestra and soloist. The overall feel is light and agile; Beyer doesn’t so much push the tempo (although there’s a little of that) as imbue the solo lines with maximum variety, creating a fantasy-like feel. That works quite well with the Four Seasons concertos, which are rendered in a colorful enough way that they evoke many of the images in Vivaldi’s accompanying printed sonnets (which would have been a profitable inclusion in the booklet). There are, however, enough startling choices, like the heavily plucked and much-faster-than-Largo central movement of the “Winter” concerto (track 18), that the disc may be more to the tastes of the adventurous than otherwise; sample extensively and decide. The Four Seasons are balanced with other concertos that are quite rare, two of them world premieres. One and possibly more of these works were written for Vivaldi’s orchestra of illegitimate girls at the Ospedale della Pietà, and indeed the entire disc is easy to imagine in performance by that presumably small group. The Violin Concerto in B flat major, RV 372, “Per Signora Chiara,” and Violin Concerto in B minor, RV 390, are late works that contribute anew to the understanding of how much Vivaldi contributed to the forerunners of Classicism. It may be a bit far out, but this is a fresh Vivaldi disc in every way.

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Gli Incogniti & Amandine Beyer – BWV… or not ? (Deluxe Edition) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:30:19 minutes | 1,69 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Bach (Johann Sebastian, that is) or not Bach? This is the question that the violinist Amandine Beyer and the ensemble Gli Incogniti asked themselves by seizing a handful of works long thought to be from the Kantor and that we now know to be from other composers—known, identified or not. Thus, the Sonata BWV 1024 may have “ended up” in Bach’s repertoire because a musicologist knew how to use the right scientific arguments (paper, copyists, geographical and historical contexts) to achieve his goal. The style of the composition, which admittedly is a bit reminiscent of Bach, cannot however quite fall in line with the musician’s writing style. Therefore, in order to avoid the sonata disappearing back into anonymity, it has now been attributed to Pisendel, rightly or wrongly. The Trio BWV 1036 is from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach—we were always quite sure of that, even if some less scrupulous releases have omitted the first name… The Trio BWV 1037 seems to be from Goldberg (the one from the Variations). The Suite in A major BWV 1025 is of somewhat ambiguous paternity, but it’s actually an arrangement Bach created for violin and harpsichord using the Suite SC 47 for lute that his friend and colleague Silvius Leopold Weiss composed. These are a few works that, after long being in the paradise of being attributed to Bach, are now in the hell of the “fake”, even if it’s not the fault of the composers that wrote them! What a pity…

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Amandine Beyer, Gli incogniti – Couperin: Apothéoses & autres Sonades (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 57:32 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The ensemble Gli incogniti, led by Amandine Beyer, makes their harmonia mundi début with this album of chamber music by François Couperin. When he published his two Apothéoses in memory of two great masters of music in 1724-25, François Couperin was asserting his desire to promote a meeting of the French and Italian styles – from a very Gallic point of view, naturally.

The idea was to convince the French Muses that henceforth one could say sonade and cantade in their language – a strategy already pursued in the much earlier La Sultane and La Superbe. But, far from blindly imitating his idols, Couperin takes inspiration from their styles and adapts them to his own brio.

The result is a delight for all to share with the musicians of Gli Incogniti and Amandine Beyer, whose first harmonia mundi recording this is.

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Amandine Beyer, Gli Incogniti – Vivaldi: “Il Mondo al rovescio” – Concerti con molti istromenti (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:16:32 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Vivaldi’s concerti con molti stromenti are true precursors of the symphony in their amplitude and audacity. In these pieces, the ‘Red-haired Priest’, a creator of boundless imagination, amused himself by devising literally unheard-of combinations of timbres. In the famous concerto Il Mondo al rovescio (The world upside down), he invited flutes, oboes and harpsichord to double violin and cello in a colourfl whirlwind of parallel octaves. This recording by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti provides an opportunity to discover these incredibly modern compositions.
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Gli Incogniti & Amandine Beyer – Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Op. 8 & Other Concertos (2008/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:56 minutes | 1,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha

The one-to-a-part Gli Incogniti offer a pliant, transparent texture, and soloist Amandine Beyer’s tone has an attractive brogue to it. Gramophone

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Amandine Beyer & Gli incogniti – C.P.E. Bach: “Beyond the Limits” Complete Symphonies for Strings and Continuo (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:11 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

With these six symphonies dedicated to Baron van Swieten, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach demonstrated his talent for instrumental and expressive genius. Entirely devoid of sentimentality and gratuitous extravagance, they open the doors to both Viennese Classicism and its immediate successor: Romanticism. It was only natural that, after tackling Haydn and the Esterházy princes, Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti should investigate this repertoire in which, once again, aristocratic patronage lies at the heart of musical creation.

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