Czech Philharmonic • Giovanni Antonini

In the era of modern media, the life and career of the Magdeburg native Georg Philipp Telemann would undoubtedly enjoy enormous attention and popularity. After all, even in the 18th century he managed to earn fame as the greatest living composer despite being a contemporary of Bach and Handel. He was in every respect completely self-taught because his mother, a widow, did not regard education as important. Without any support whatsoever, he learned to play flute, violin, viola da gamba, oboe, trombone, contrabass, and various keyboard instruments, and he discovered the mysteries of musical composition for himself. At age 20, he departed for Leipzig to study law, but that city instead awakened in him an even greater desire to be a musician. During his first year there, he became the assistant to the organist Johann Kuhnau at St Thomas’s Church and the organist at the university chapel, and he reorganised the students’ collegium musicum into an efficient orchestra that gave public concerts. For this reason, the Leipzig city government made him the director of the local opera company, for which he wrote four operas in quick succession. Just a few years later, we find Telemann in the Silesian town Sorau (today Żary, Poland) serving as the Kapellmeister. There, he became familiar with Polish and Moravian music. Next he was at the court in Eisenach, then in 1712 he became church choirmaster and director of music for the city of Frankfurt am Main. Finally, he caught on in Hamburg, where he was the city’s music director from 1721 until his death. That prestigious position included responsibility for the music at the five main churches and the operations of the Hamburg Opera, the position of head cantor at the Johanneum, a famous music school, leading the students’ collegium musicum, and organising public concerts.

All of these duties involved providing repertoire, so Telemann became one of the most prolific composers in music history (including the creation of 31 annual cycles of cantatas for every Sunday). He had remarkable knowledge of a wide range of the styles of the period, and he was able to imitate both the Italian and the French idioms despite having almost never left the territory of present-day Germany. By combining influences, he created his own style, usually described as “mixed” or “German”. His compositions stand out for their melodic originality, colourful harmonies, soaring rhythms, and imaginative orchestration. Dozens of his compositions appeared in print in his lifetime and were played all over Germany. However, there was a radical stylistic change soon after his death, as we hear in the music of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Then the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel was rediscovered in the 19th century, and only yet another century later did Telemann’s music again begin to find renewed appreciation.

Georg Philipp Telemann also wrote several instrumental concertos: six for violin, two for viola, eight for French horn, five for trumpet, two for chalumeaux, six for oboe, one for bassoon, five for recorder, and four for transverse flute. In 1725 he composed the Concerto in C major for alto recorder, strings, and basso continuo, which mostly exhibits Italian influences. There are many concertos for the “flauto dolce”, as the recorder was called in Italian, written by Telemann’s contemporaries including the great composer Antonio Vivaldi.

Born in Milan but with strong Tuscan roots, he studied violin at the Civica Scuola di Musica under the lead of Carlo De Martini graduating in 1991. In the same year he joined the young baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, starting a long career and playing in the most important festivals and musical seasons all over the world, performing with many prestigious artists including Isabelle Faust, Viktoria Mullova, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Giuliano Carmignola, Christophe Coin, Giovanni Sollima, Cecilia Bartoli, Julia Lehzneva. In 2001 he became concertmaster of the ensemble.

His recognized expertise in this role has brought him to lead many ensembles specialized in playing on historical instruments such as Anima Eterna Brugge, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla, La Scintilla, I Barocchisti, Il Pomo dʼOro, La Divina Armonia. Heʼs regularly invited as concertmaster by the Kammerorchester Basel. In October 2019 he made his debut as concertmaster of the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala in Milan performing Handel’s Giulio Cesare conducted by Giovanni Antonini.

He has recorded for Teldec, Naïve, Decca, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Winter&Winter, Passacaille, Amadeus, Alpha and many other labels.

He plays a 1830 violin by Giacinto Santagiuliana.

A native of Milan, Giovanni Antonini has long been acclaimed worldwide for his innovative and polished approach to performing the Baroque and Classical repertoire while fully respecting the precepts of historically informed interpretation. However, the path of early music was not his first choice of study. He had originally applied to the conservatoire as a violinist, and it was only because he did not succeed at his audition that he ultimately began studying the recorder, and he became a master of the instrument. It was thanks to his study of the flute at the Civica Scuola di Musica that Antonini fully discovered the world of Baroque music. In addition, as he himself recalls, it was a great advantage that as a flautist specialising in historical interpretation, he did not have many artistic models to rely on and simply imitate (after all, in the 1980s the field was still in its infancy), so he had to seek out his own interpretive approaches. He found further support in his studies at the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva, but the urge never abandoned him to penetrate truly deeply into the music and to create his own language, which is now so appreciated for its uniqueness.

In 1985 he founded his own Baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, with which he still appears all around the world in the dual role of soloist (whether on the recorder or the Baroque transverse flute) and conductor. Overall, perhaps the most ambitious project he threw himself into a few years back with the Basel Chamber Orchestra was to record the complete symphonies of Haydn, and to finish by the year 2032, the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The project Haydn2032, of which Antonini is the artistic director, is daring not only for its scope (Haydn wrote 107 Symphonies, so it is necessary to release 2 CDs with three or four symphonies every year!), but also because of the interpretive difficulties of Haydn’s music. “Haydn is very difficult to perform well because many of the interpretive paths can sound boring. But Haydn is not boring, it’s just the matter of finding the key to the correct interpretation”, explains Antonini. So far, 18 CDs have been issued, so the Haydn symphonic repertoire he has already recorded, rehearsed, or prepared has also influenced the programming of Antonini’s concerts in recent years.

Of course, Antonini does not overlook other greats masters of the 16th through the 18th centuries, whose works he has recorded with Il Giardino Armonico or performed in concert with such major orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra and with renowned soloists like Cecilia Bartoli, Giuliano Carmignola, Isabelle Faust, and Katia and Marielle Labèque. He also devotes himself to opera; in recent years, for example, we have been able to see him at Milan’s La Scala (Giulio Cesare), the Zurich Opera House (Idomeneo), and the Theater an der Wien (Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo). He is also the artistic director of the Polish music festival Wratislavia Cantans and the principal guest conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra.