Bavarian Radio Chorus, Il Giardino Armonico & Giovanni Antonini
Biography Bavarian Radio Chorus, Il Giardino Armonico & Giovanni Antonini
The Bavarian Radio Chorus
enjoys the highest international reputation on account of its uniquely homogeneous sound as well as its stylistic variety in every area of the choral repertory from the medieval motet to contemporary music and from oratorios to operas.
Mariss Jansons was the principal conductor of the Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio from 2003 until his death in 2019. His successor, Simon Rattle, took over in the autumn of 2023. Howard Arman was appointed the Chorus’s artistic director in 2016 and was succeeded by Peter Dijkstra in the autumn of 2022.
The Chorus regularly gives world premieres both as part of the series ‘musica viva‘ and at its own subscription concerts. Guest appearances have taken the Chorus to Asia and to the Lucerne, Baden-Baden and Salzburg Festivals. Among the leading European orchestras that value the Chorus’s work are not only the Berlin Philharmonic and the Dresden Staatskapelle but also period ensembles such as Il Giardino Armonico and the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin, while the conductors with whom the Chorus has performed include Herbert Blomstedt, Zubin Mehta, Christian Thielemann, Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Giovanni Antonini and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
The Bavarian Radio Chorus has received numerous awards for its recordings, including several ECHO and OPUS Klassik awards. In 2017, the Chorus’s DVD of Bach’s St John Passion conducted by Peter Dijkstra was included in the Quarterly Critics’ Choice of the German Record Critics. In 2021 the Choir received an International Classical Music Award, the Croatian Porin Music Prize and a Diapason d’Or for its recording of Igor Kuljerić’s Croatian Glagolitic Requiem. Other recordings that have garnered a Diapason d’Or include Rachmaninoff’s The Bells, Enno Poppe’s Fett — Ich kann mich an nichts erinnern, Valentin Silvestrov’s Requiem for Larissa and Caplet’s Le miroir de Jésus.
Il Giardino Armonico
Founded in 1985 and led by co-founder and conductor Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico has been established as one of the world’s leading period instrument ensembles, with the enemble primarily focusing on delivering pieces from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Il Giardino Armonico are regularly invited to festivals all over the world performing in the most important concert halls and receive high praise for both their concerts and opera productions, such as Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Vivaldi’s Ottone in Villa, Händel’s Agrippina, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, La Resurrezione and Giulio Cesare in Egitto with Cecilia Bartoli.
As well as their international success in live performances, Il Giovanni Armonico has also achieved great success in their recordings, with their two albums with Cecilia Bartoli, The Vivaldi Album and Sacrificum, both winning the ‘Best Classical Vocal Performance’ Grammy Awards. The ensemble have also won the International Classical Music Award ‘Baroque Vocal’ award for Serpent & Fire, with Anna Prohaska and a the Recording of the Year Gramaphone award for the Mozart Violin Concertos Nos 1 – 5 with Isabella Faust, with Gramaphone declaring that “you may find yourself hard-pressed to better this thought-provoking and eminently enjoyable” album.
Il Giardino Armonico work with many other acclaimed soloists such as Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Viktoria Mullova, Christophe Coin, Giuliano Carmignola, Sol Gabetta, Katia and Marielle Labèque and Giovanni Sollima.
Currently in the midst of a twenty-year long project, Haydn2032, with Kammerorchester Basel, the ensemble aims to both record and perform all of Joseph Haydn’s symphonies by 2032; marking the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Giovanni Antonini
Born in Milan, Giovanni Antonini studied at the Civica Scuola di Musica and the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva. He is a founding member of the Baroque ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, which he has led since 1989. With this ensemble, he has appeared as conductor and soloist on the recorder and Baroque transverse flute, performing across Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, Australia, Japan, and Malaysia. He also serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the Kammerorchester Basel.
Antonini has collaborated with numerous renowned artists, including Cecilia Bartoli, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Giuliano Carmignola, Isabelle Faust, Sol Gabetta, Sumi Jo, Viktoria Mullova, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Emmanuel Pahud, and Giovanni Sollima. Recognized for his refined and innovative interpretations of the classical and Baroque repertoire, he is a frequent guest conductor with esteemed orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Concertgebouworkest, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, London Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
His opera productions include notable performances such as Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto and Bellini’s Norma with Cecilia Bartoli at the Salzburg Festival. In 2018, he conducted Orlando at the Theater an der Wien and returned to the Opernhaus Zürich for Idomeneo. In 2019, he led Giulio Cesare at La Scala, where he returned in 2021 for Così fan tutte. That same year, he revisited the Theater an der Wien for Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo. Antonini will once again conduct at La Scala in the 2024-25 season for Robert Carsen’s production of L’Orontea. Throughout the season, he will also return to the Berliner Philharmoniker, Czech Philharmonic, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and Bamberger Symphoniker.
With Il Giardino Armonico, Antonini has produced numerous acclaimed recordings, including instrumental works by Vivaldi, J.S. Bach (Brandenburg Concertos), Biber, and Locke for Teldec. For Naïve, he recorded Vivaldi’s opera Ottone in Villa, while his collaborations with Decca feature two volumes with Julia Lezhneva. His releases with Alpha Classics (Outhere Music Group), such as La morte della Ragione, showcase his interest in Renaissance music through collections of 16th- and 17th-century instrumental works. With the Kammerorchester Basel, he recorded the complete Beethoven Symphonies for Sony Classical and Revolution, a disc of flute concertos with Emmanuel Pahud, for Warner Classics.
Antonini is the Artistic Director of the Haydn2032 project, an ambitious initiative aimed at recording and performing the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn with Il Giardino Armonico and the Kammerorchester Basel by the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth. To date, the first 15 volumes of this monumental undertaking have been released on the Alpha Classics label.
