24 Sep 2025
I am very happy to present the works presented in Rossini: Sacred & Profane in a historically informed way, a topic that still is all too rare in Rossini’s music and that of the early Italian Romantic era in general, and something that I have been researching intensely for years.
Other than the use of period instruments, which open up a whole new world of sounds, colours, and shapes, the way of how to play this music is of equal, if not even greater importance in our attempt to bring about a “style change” in the perception and consumption of the music of this very important, yet today too often neglected period in musical history.
In my opinion, every truly historically “informed” interpretation has to not only closely follow the so-called “Urtext”, in this case the up-to-date critical editions published by the Fondazione Rossini in Pesaro and Carus in Stuttgart, but also read between its lines and in certain cases go beyond it whilst closely following the findings and research of Romantic Performance Practice. Those reflect on theoretical writings, treatises, manuscript annotations and other written sources of the time as well as the scholarly analysis of early recordings, which very often form an important link back to much older traditions. In that sense, our rhetoric-driven and drama-oriented approach to tempo and rhythm adds more nuances and details than are prescribed in the score, but surely done and expected by the musicians back then - both on a micro- as well as macro-level. The former can be observed in the treatment of the agogics of a melody which does not always have to line up exactly with an accompaniment, almost as in a jazz solo; and the latter in an abundance of flexibility of the tempo itself, such as the holding back of time in lyrical or especially emotive moments, or the speeding up of the pace for dramatic passages as well as play-outs of arias and ensembles. Widely documented (partly through negative accounts of non-Italian commentators such as Louis Spohr) are the free embellishments of soloistic passages in the orchestra, which we will invite the players of ORR to employ widely. Our string players will make use of numerous stylistic devices such as the abundant employment of portamento (the sliding between two notes) as well as diverse articulations of short notes such as battuto (the “beating” of the bow onto the string), as well as a punta d’arco (the playing at the tip of the bow without leaving the string).
The balance in the orchestra’s bass register, nowadays seemingly unusual but omnipresent in Italy over the course of almost the complete 19th Century, is something that we want to put into focus in a striking way.
Jakob Lehmann
The balance in the orchestra’s bass register, nowadays seemingly unusual but omnipresent in Italy over the course of almost the complete 19th Century, is something that we want to put into focus in a striking way. We are following the relations both suggested by Italian theorists as well as used in the actual practice of the day, in which the numbers of double basses was almost always larger than that of the violoncelli and violas – in our case 7 double basses and each 6 violas and violoncellos. In addition, our double basses perform on instruments with 3 strings (and not the usual 4 or 5) which results in a bigger and freer resonance. The resulting bass-heavy balance of the orchestra is a seminal part of our “new-old” soundscape in this repertoire, especially as we also employ one of the chief characteristics in the historical placement of the orchestra in which the basses are not united in one large group, but put “stereophonically” at both sides of the orchestra, resulting in an even spread of the sound.
As far as the vocal part is concerned, we are presenting a cast of young voices who are following the idea of approaching this music from a different angle than usual: the quite abundant ornaments and cadences of the vocal lines are closely following historical models such as Manuel García and Rossini himself, and the omission of the exposed high notes at the end of arias and ensembles, regrettably still in wide use today, is as important an element of this style as is the correct use of appoggiaturas in the recitatives.
I do hope that this concert will show in a very engaging way what a historically informed and at the same time “liberated” approach to the music of Gioachino Rossini can give us today: the opportunity to see a composer, still misjudged and misunderstood by parts of the musical establishment, and his groundbreaking, timeless and eternally intoxicating music in a new, “old”, and fresh light – smelling of the theatre, but never dusty; following old traditions, but never dogmatically so; always entertaining, but never superficial.
Book tickets to Rossini: Sacred & Profane, 2 October at Cadogan Hall
