Anima Eterna Brugge

  • Orchestra

Germany and different countries

Anima Eterna Brugge is an international orchestra based in Bruges, Belgium. Specialised in repertoire written between 1750 and 1945, the orchestra can vary its size depending on the repertoire, performing with anywhere from seven to eighty musicians. Historic performance practice is the theme running through the history of Anima Eterna. Every new project is steeped in an atmosphere of research, discovery and artistic experimentation. Since 2020, Anima Eterna has been working with four different conductors, each of whom is carving out their own artistic path. Giovanni Antonini is searching for a historic bel canto, Pablo Heras-Casado is taking on Bruckner, Bart Van Reyn is taking the orchestra along to the birth of the symphony and Midori Seiler is redefining the sound of the romantic era. Anima Eterna is committed to actively putting the orchestra members’ artistic research into practice on the stage, through innovative concert formats like Anima Insight and Atelier Anima – both in large concert halls as a full orchestra and in more intimate settings playing chamber music.

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The orchestra was founded in 1987 by conductor and keyboard player Jos van Immerseel. Their recordings of the complete Mozart keyboard concerti and the complete Schubert symphonies in the 1990s are just a couple of the many milestones in Anima Eterna’s rich history. Their complete Beethoven symphonies, recorded in 2008, have also become an absolute reference recording. Over the years, Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna have shifted the boundaries of their own repertoire again and again. Although the orchestra focused on baroque music in its early days, it gradually conquered classical, romantic and even early-20th-century music. For each of these repertoires, the orchestra has succeeded in setting new standards in performance practice through its sustained research, and with performances in the world’s major concert halls including Lincoln Center in New York, the Sydney Opera House, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and of course the Bruges Concertgebouw, where Anima Eterna has been artist in residence since 2002.

The orchestra has an especially wide-ranging discography of over fifty titles, on the Channel Classic Records, Zig-Zag Territoires and Alpha Classics labels, distributed world-wide by Outhere Music. Pablo Heras-Casado will also record Bruckner symphonies with Anima Eterna for the Harmonia Mundi label. In 2021, Jos van Immerseel stepped down as artistic director, but still lends his support to the orchestra with masterclasses. He will also be helping to expand the Anima Eterna archives in the coming years, and he still makes an appearance with his favourite orchestra once a season.

More informations: https://animaeterna.be

As of: Season 2022/23

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I wanted to prevent Anima from dying at any cost

Projects

  • Anima Eterna Brugge (7 Musiker) - Midori Seiler

    Johannes Brahms

    Details

    Program:

    Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897)
    Trio for pianoforte, violin and Waldhorn op. 40 – 35’
    Clarinet Quintet in B minor, op. 115 – 40’

    Contact:

  • Anima Eterna Brugge (46 Musiker) - Alexander Melnikov (Klavier & Leitung)

    Central European Landscapes - At the Heart of European Music

    Details

    Program:

    Antonín Dvořák (arr. Josef Suk) - Auszüge aus Les Cyprès B.152 (Cypřiše)
    Leoš Janáček - Concertino (1925)
    Vítězslava Kaprálová - Partita für Streicher & Klavier solo (1939)

    ***
    Béla Bartók - Musik für Saiteninstrumente, Schlagzeug und Celesta (1936)

     

    At the Heart of European Music

    Alexander Melnikov and Anima Eterna explore, on period instruments, three masterpieces that shape the musical landscape of Mitteleuropa at the time.It is first to 19th-century Czech music that Alexander Melnikov and Anima Eterna pay tribute at the outset of this journey. For Dvořák is undoubtedly the first to infuse a deeply Czech inspiration into the European musical spirit. Janáček’s Concertino is an ode to nature where horns become hedgehogs and clarinets squirrels, while owls sing at nightfall. The now-famous Partita Op. 20 by Kaprálová is the culmination of her work in Paris with Martinů, revealing the extraordinary talent of a composer whose life was tragically cut short. Finally, the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta stands as one of Bartók’s masterpieces. From its austere and somber opening fugue to its brilliant, folk-tinged finale, passing through its magical and evocative nocturne, it is an exceptional distillation of the composer’s artistry.

    Contact:

  • Anima Eterna Brugge (46 Musiker) - Alexander Melnikov (Klavier & Leitung)

    Central European Landscapes - At the Heart of European Music

    Details

    Program:

    Antonín Dvořák (arr. Josef Suk) - Auszüge aus Les Cyprès B.152 (Cypřiše)
    Leoš Janáček - Concertino (1925)
    Vítězslava Kaprálová - Partita für Streicher & Klavier solo (1939)

    ***
    Béla Bartók - Musik für Saiteninstrumente, Schlagzeug und Celesta (1936)

     

    At the Heart of European Music

    Alexander Melnikov and Anima Eterna explore, on period instruments, three masterpieces that shape the musical landscape of Mitteleuropa at the time. It is first to 19th-century Czech music that Alexander Melnikov and Anima Eterna pay tribute at the outset of this journey. For Dvořák is undoubtedly the first to infuse a deeply Czech inspiration into the European musical spirit. Janáček’s Concertino is an ode to nature where horns become hedgehogs and clarinets squirrels, while owls sing at nightfall. The now-famous Partita Op. 20 by Kaprálová is the culmination of her work in Paris with Martinů, revealing the extraordinary talent of a composer whose life was tragically cut short. Finally, the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta stands as one of Bartók’s masterpieces. From its austere and somber opening fugue to its brilliant, folk-tinged finale, passing through its magical and evocative nocturne, it is an exceptional distillation of the composer’s artistry.

    Contact:

  • Anima Eterna Brugge (45 Musiker) & Midori Seiler (Violine & Leitung)

    Celebrating Beethoven

    Details

    Program:

    Maria Antonia Walpurgis; Ouverture zu Talestri, Regina delle Amazzoni (c. 1760): I. Allegro
    Maddalena Sirmen (1745-1818): Duetto op 5 nr 1 in E Flat major
    Regina Strinasacchi (1761-1839): Violin concerto B flat Major
    Paul Wranitzky (1756-1808): Sinfonie C Major op.19 „the Emperors“, only Andante con moto and Finale: Presto
    Pause
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Ouverture „La Clemenza di Tito“
    Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony no 5 c minor

    The other Vienna

    This program features a well-known, an exceptionally famous piece from Vienna of the year 1808, when Beethoven was already on the peak of his fame. The four notes of the entry theme of his Symphony no 5 is maybe the most well-known classical melody of the world. Beethoven was a star in his chosen hometown Vienna, and many more musicians passed through this cultural centre of the Western world.

    One of them was the young female violinist Regina Strinasacchi. As female visibility has been a great issue in the arts of the past centuries, her legacy was preserved mainly by a coincidence: Leopold Mozart in 1785 heard her concert in Salzburg and wrote a letter to his son Wolfgang. In this letter he describes Regina as a very skilful 23 year old violinist who plays with outstanding sentiment, beauty and sense, as to prove that women are capable of playing with stronger expression than men. Strinasacchi commissioned Wolfgang to write a sonata for her, the famous sonata KV 454, which the two of them performed together in Vienna (again, we have knowledge of this concert only by a letter from Wolfgang to Leopold). Regina was also a star at her time, despite of the moral standards at that time, when women were not supposed to be on a stage. (The only exception of this standard were singers, whose fame was paid for with a dubious reputation.) She composed several works, one remaining in the British Library is the manuscript of her violin concerto in B major, which Midori Seiler has copied and put in a modern writing.

    Vienna was frequently visited by artists from England and Italy, but hardly any French composer came to visit, even if French music was played. So we can only speculate why Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges, who travelled extensively through his life, never paid a visit to the metropole, if for traditional reasons or because of his origin, being the son of a former slave from Guadeloupe in 18th century society. There is strong evidence that Saint George had personal contact with Haydn and even commissioned Haydn’s Paris Symphonies (Nr 82-87), when Saint Georges was the conductor of „Loge Olympique“ in Paris. Both Mozart, when travelling to Paris in 1778 and Saint George were long term guests at the very same apartment of Baron Melchior Grimm and Louise d’Epinay- so there is a possibility, that although Saint George never travelled to Vienna, he met two of the most influential Viennese composers of his time.

    Contact:

  • Anima Eterna Brugge (45 Musiker) - Jos van Immerseel (Leitung) - Václav Luks (Leitung)

    Happy Birthday Anima Eterna Brugge - 40 Years!

    Details

    Program:

    Part 1 conducted by Jos van Immerseel & Part 2 conducted by Václav Luks

    Jospeh Haydn (1732 - 1809), Symphonie Nr 53 „L’Imperiale“  - 22’

    Franz Schubert, (1797 – 1828) Symphonie "die Unvollendete“ - 22’

    INTERMISSION

    Antonín Dvořak (1841-1904), Symphonie Nr 7 - 40’

    This program is unusual in its composition with 3 symphonic works, but it uniquely demonstrates the orchestra's development. "Founder" Jos van Immerseel leads the first half with the repertoire that catapulted Anima Eterna to the top of the HIP movement (Historically Informed Performance Practice) in its early years: Viennese Classicism and Schubert.

    In the second half, we arrive in the Late Romantic era to rejuvenate ourselves and lead the legacy of the research-driven, but legendary inspired playing style into the future with Antonín Dvořák and the remarkable Czech conductor Václav Luks. – Midori Seiler

    Contact:

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Biography EN 2022/2023