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

  • Further dates upon request

    Anima Eterna Brugge (33 Musiker) - Richard Egarr

    Licht & Schatten

    Details

    Program:

    W.A. Mozart:
    Sinfonie Nr. 40 in g-Moll K.550 (1788) - 35'
    Konzert für Klarinette und Orchester in A-Dur KV 622 (1791) – 25’

    Contact:

  • 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 (64 Musiker) & Jakob Lehmann (Leitung)

    Dvorak in the old world

    Details

    Program:

    Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
    Symphonie n°7 en ré mineur op. 70 (1885)
    *****
    Symphonie n°8 en sol majeur op. 88 (1889)
     

    From London to Prague, Dvořák’s European soul

    In 2015, Dvořák’s New World Symphony marked one of the highlights of Anima Eterna’s historically informed practice. At the time, the ensemble’s Konzertmeister was none other than Jakob Lehmann! Today, he returns to the orchestra, this time with the baton, to continue exploring Dvořák’s work—with highly contrasting pieces that were written shortly before the composer’s American journey.
    The symphonies featured in this program present very different yet complementary aspects of Dvořák’s artistry in the years leading up to his American experience. In 1885, when the London Philharmonic Society commissioned his Seventh Symphony, Dvořák was still regarded as a «regional» composer in the Germanic world (as Bohemia was an Austrian province). This turbulent and heroic symphony, which leans more towards the great European Romantic tradition than the Czech spirit, opened the doors of the European musical scene to him—and soon, of the entire world. Five years later, before officially confirming his departure for the New World, it was the Old World of his homeland that he celebrated in his deeply Czech Eighth Symphony. Composed in his village of Vysoká, it seems to be like a farewell to the landscapes and atmospheres he was about to carry across the Atlantic in his heart—landscapes and atmospheres for which he would soon feel a profound nostalgia.

    Contact:

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Biography EN 2022/2023