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Latest Press
CD RECORDING REVIEWS OF JUDAS MACCABAEUS
... The recording preserves in good sound an enjoyable live February 2009 performance by unstarry but worthy Philadelphia-based forces. Romanian born Valentin Radu paces the able Ama Deus chorus increasingly well and elicits generally solid results!...Timothy Bentch is incisive as to phrasing and diction, showing good coloratura and breath control, with dynamic play in the voice...Soprano
Andrea Lauren Brown (Israelite Woman) offers a pretty, clear timbre with very little vibrato; most of what she
does - and hers is the most substantial solo role - is very enjoyable, though my personal taste runs against so
preciously Kirkbyish an attack on exposed high notes...Richard Shapp handles the Messenger's two recits capably.
- Opera and Oratorio ONLINE, October 2009, by DAVID SHENGOLD
... Both the Handel and Vivaldi albums are excellent buys. Handel's "Messiah" is so overwhelming and popular a masterpiece that it has overshadowed many of his other compositions. "Judas Maccabeus" may not approach the flawless so closely as does "Messiah," but its telling of the story of the ancient Israelites' rebellion against their Syrian oppressors is thrillingly relayed in arias, ensembles, choruses and instrumental music. The performance is energetic, stylish and resonant.
Radu wisely balanced audiences' familiarity with the four concerti of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" by including on the CD the Flute Concerto in A minor, the Concerto for Two Violins in A minor and the Concerto for Two Trumpets in C major. Both CDs feature exemplary playing in the continuo of Roxborough harpsichordist Bronwyn Fix-Keller.
- Noteworthy, Chestnut Hill LOCAL 09/03/09 by MICHAEL CARUSO.
PERFORMANCE REVIEW OF JUDAS MACCABAEUS
...Radu and his forces -- including Roxborough
harpsichordist Bronwyn Fix-Keller -- acquitted themselves more than honorably if not quite
spectacularly...by the second and third parts of "Judas Maccabeus," [Radu] was eliciting exciting singing from his choir, ...good playing from his baroque orchestra, and several excellent performances from his soloists.
Chief among these was tenor Timothy Bench, who sang the oratorio's title role. Bench was in fine voice Friday evening. His projection was exemplary, his tone was clear yet unforced, his high notes rang with clarion brilliance yet he employed soft singing to telling dramatic effect, his diction was excellent, and he embellished the vocal line with stylistically appropriate bravura and emotionally compelling expressivity... soprano Andrea Lauren Brown sang with tonal beauty and dramatic exuberance as the Israelitish woman. Alto Tatyana Rashkovsky, tenor Dana Wilson and baritone Richard Shapp rounded out the vocal cast admirably. Among the instrumentalists, Fix-Keller's fine playing was joined by flutists Colin St. Martin & Steven Zohn, cellist Vivian Barton-Dozer and trumpeter Elin Frazier. Many of the same forces will return to the Perelman Theater on Friday, March 27, at 8 p.m. for a performance of Mozart's Requiem Mass.
- Noteworthy, Chestnut Hill LOCAL 03/05/09 by MICHAEL CARUSO. (Handel Judas Maccabaeus, Feb. 27th at the Kimmel Center, Philadelphia, PA) | |
With two repeat performances later this month:
This delightful musical journey exploring the genius of the founder of the Viennese Classical style Franz Josef Haydn, affectionately know as "Papa Haydn". After its second successful season of delightful "soirée musicales" with "live notes" by Maestro Radu, Camerata Ama Deus makes its third thrilling season debut with a tribute to Haydn!
Maestro Radu's all-Haydn concerts will feature both well-known and less familiar musical gems: Three Divertimenti, the Concerto for Organ in F Major (to be performed only at Daylesford Abbey this Sunday!), the Concerto for Horn No. 2 in D Major and the Concerto for Violin and Harpsichord in F Major.
Featured soloists will be Valentin Radu (organ), Paul Rosenberg (horn), Thomas DiSarlo (violin) and Bronwyn Fix-Keller (harpsichord).
Insure Your Friends Get Our Concert Information! Have them go to the Vox Ama Deus website to sign up for our newsletter and mailing list! |
Maestro Radu Up Close and Personal: Watch Money Matters on COMCAST CABLE T.V. to get a behind the scenes look at Vox Ama Deus!
Broadcast locally this month! (Anticipated viewing show times are as follows, please verify with your own local listings or call Comcast).
Radnor Channel 21 on:
Check local listings for broadcasts dates this week!
Malvern Channel 21 on:
Wednesday 10-14-09 @ 9:30 PM
Chester County, Lower Merion, Plymouth Meeting, and Willow Grove Channel 190 on:
Thursday 10-15-09 @ 6:30 PM
Pottstown Channel 27 on:
Friday 10-16-09 @ 7:00 PM
Berks County Channel 13 on:
Wednesday 10-28-09 @ 11:00 PM
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Next Month: Papa Haydn Bicentennial Gala at Kimmel!
Friday, November 6 at 8:00 PM
The Kimmel Center - Perelman Theater
Vox Ama Deus presents the 2009-2010 return of Ama Deus Ensemble in concert at the Kimmel Center on Friday, November 6 at 8:00 PM.
Performing on this evening, Maestro Radu and the artists of the Ama Deus Ensemble will continue their musical tribute to Franz Josef Haydn...the Austrian musical genius often acknowledged as the Father of the Symphony... during the bicentennial year of his passing.
Maestro Radu and Vox Ama Deus have crafted an audience-pleasing concert that will illustrate many of the appealing facets of Haydn the man and the musician:
- His jaunty and tuneful musical style
- His prowess at the keyboard
- His devotion to his faith
-His renowned sense of humor (that even poked fun at his powerful and rich aristocratic patron) and above all...
- His masterful genius as a composer that won him fame throughout late 18th and early 19th century Europe, and the unqualified admiration of Mozart.
On November 6th, join in and experience: > The lively Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major with dazzling trumpeter Elin Frazier as soloist; > The virtuosic D Major Piano Concerto with Maestro Radu conducting the orchestra from the keyboard. (Incidentally, it was with this demanding work that Valentin Radu made his concert debut with the Bucharest Philharmonic at age 9!); > The stirring Mass in D minor, known as the Lord Nelson Mass, featuring the Ama Deus Ensemble's chorus of professional and leading community choral singers, and acclaimed vocal soloists Sarah Davis (soprano), Jody Kidwell (mezzo-soprano), Kenneth Garner (tenor) and Kevin Deas (bass);
> The spotlight will be on the orchestral artists of the Ama Deus Ensemble during the opening Overture in D Major, and especially in the tonally unique and tongue-in-cheek Farewell Symphony when, as the 4th movement draws to an end, one-by-one the players turn off their music stand lights, depart the stage and leave Concertmaster Thomas DiSarlo and Maestro Radu all alone! |
Mozart called it "the queen of instruments" while Virgil Fox, the famous American organist, called it "the most complex sound machine!" And complex it is! From the keys to the sounding pipes, a very intricate system of cables, magnets, contacts, blowers, windchests, etc., make possible the variety of sounds from the softest to the loudest - most of them imitating real orchestral instruments (flutes, oboes, clarinets, trumpets, trombones, tubas, bassoons, etc.!)
Contrary to some beliefs that Bach invented it, the first organ, (called " the hydraulis"- a name due to the use of water reservoirs, which were used to stabilize air pressure in the windchests - not because it was a "water organ"!) was invented in the 2nd century B.C. by  Ctesibius, a Greek genius who worked at the court of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II! And was certainly not used, as it is mostly today, in churches, but for the entertainment of the pharaoh and his guests. It was a much smaller portable version spanning only two octaves (versus five today) and only one keyboard (versus two to six today!) Eventually it travelled, over the course of the next few centuries, first to Constantinople (today's Istanbul) and to Rome for similar purposes of pleasing the emperor's ears! Then around 800 A.D. it made its way to France, where Pepin, the French emperor, upon hearing its sounds, decided it was mot fitted to praise the Lord and His Angels in the chapel of Versailles Palace outside Paris! The organ grew in size (number of pipes and keyboards) and scope (expanding to many churches and cathedrals across Europe and later, North America!) For those of you unaware of this history, the largest instrument ever built is right here in Center City Philadelphia in what was formerly called the Wanamaker Building across from City Hall. Built by Rod and John Wanamaker,  (the inventors and owners of the "world's first department store"), for the occasion of the 1910 World's Fair which was held in Philadelphia! It is built inside the massive (formerly the Philadelphia Central Train Station!) on nine stories and has over 55,000 pipes operated from an impressive console with six keyboards and 464 stop-registers!
Some of the other renowned pipe organs (that yours truly has performed on many times) are in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral and Riverside Church (where Virgil Fox played for over 40 years), Washington D.C.'s National Cathedral, San Francisco's St. Matthew's Cathedral, in Europe at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Chartres Cathedral (also in France), London's St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, Vienna's St. Stephens Cathedral, and of course in Romania in the Black Church in Brasov (Transylvania), and last but not least the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Bucharest, my native city, where I had the privilege of being the organist and choir master for a number of years back in the seventies before coming to the USA! Regretfully, very few famous composers wrote pieces for the organ and orchestra. Bach surprisingly did not write any (although his solo organ legacy is the most impressive of all). Handel on the other hand, wrote a handful (twelve), and Haydn wrote two (the F Major being performed by me this Sunday with the Camerata Ama Deus at Daylesford Abbey). Mozart wrote some (called Church Sonatas for Organ and Strings) and later there were a few here and there (notably Francis Poulenc and Maurice Durufle). In spite of this and due to the majestic and varied sounds unique to it, the organ remains forever "the queen of the instruments"!
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What does the "Hob." after Haydn's music stand for?
Composers of most periods, as they were struggling to break-into-the-business, earn a living, meet deadlines and travel by horse-drawn coaches over rutted roads, generally did not have time to carefully catalogue their compositions. Even if a composer dreamt of artistic immortality, and imagined that a century-or-more later people would still cherish his/her music, why on earth would anyone want to know when, where and why it was written and what "opus" number (Italian for "work") it had been assigned? Even J.S. Bach, a composer long acclaimed as a giant amongst musical geniuses, was nearly forgotten after his death in 1750 until Felix Mendelssohn championed his music about 80 years later.
It is thanks to tenacious musical sleuths who spent years sorting through music stashed away in musty trunks, on dusty shelves and up in dim attics that we have detailed catalogues of the music composed by many greats. Ludwig von Köchel, of the famous K-numbers, did the honors for Mozart; Otto Eric Deutsch for Schubert and Wolfgang Schmieder for J.S. Bach. It fell to a Dutch musicologist, Anthony von Hoboken (1887 - 1983) to impose order on over 750 works composed by Franz Josef Haydn (1732 - 1809). It was almost 200 years after Haydn already was a renowned living composer that Hoboken's "werkverzeichnis" (German for "work index") finally was published in 1957 and 1971. While Köchel's more famous catalogue of 1862 attempted to list Mozart's compositions in chronological order, Hoboken took another course. His index was divided into 31 major divisions, with 4 sub-divisions, of the "type" of music Haydn had written. For example Symphonies are Hob. I (1-108), Piano Concertos are Hob. XVIII (1-11), Masses are Hob. XXII (1-14) and Operas are Hob. XXVIII (1-13).
Ergo, Hob. signifies the life's work of Anthony von Hoboken ... not the city of Frank Sinatra's birth!
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The Chestnut Hill LOCAL's Michael Caruso sat down with Maestro Radu to get the inside story on the XXIII Season!
Expanded schedule of concerts at Chestnut Hill churches
Against the backdrop of cutbacks in budgets and reductions in the numbers of performances, one local classical music ensemble with ties to Chestnut Hill will be bucking the trend for the 2009-10 season. Vox Ama Deus has announced an expanded roster of concerts for the coming season, including the addition of a second church in Chestnut Hill as a venue for its three-part series of performances.
Vox Ama Deus actually comprises three ensembles, all of which were founded by the Romanian-born organist, pianist & conductor, Valentin Radu. The oldest group within the organization is the Vox Renaissance Consort, which Radu founded in 1987. It consists of between 16 and 20 professional singers and a small complement of period instrumentalists dressed in Renaissance attire and performing theme-centered programs of Renaissance music.
Established in 1991, the Ama Deus Ensemble combines a larger chorus with a full baroque instruments orchestra to perform the great standard repertoire works of the 18th & 19th centuries. The Ama Deus Ensemble not only has performed these scores -- it has also recorded many of them in "live" concert settings for subsequent release on compact disc. The roster of recorded offerings includes Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," Handel's oratorios, "Messiah" & "Judas Maccabeus," Bach's Mass in B minor and both the St. Matthew & St. John Passions, Mozart's Requiem Mass, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis & Ninth Symphony ("Choral"), and Verdi's "Manzoni" Requiem Mass.
The newest member of the Vox Ama Deus family is the Camerata Ama Deus, founded in 2007. Camerata Ama Deus is a period instruments ensemble that specializes in the intimate chamber repertoire of the 18th century. Its programs often include scores by such titans as Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Haydn & Mozart alongside such lesser known baroque, rococo and classical masters as Telemann, Albinoni, Marcello & Pachelbel.
When I questioned Radu concerning his ability to steer his three ensembles against the tide of financial retrenchment, he first acknowledged the realities of the current economic situation.
"I recently read an article," he answered, "that pointed out that the 'entertainment' industry often fares extremely well during recessions and even during depressions. But you must remember that by 'entertainment' they don't mean classical music. They mean Hollywood - the movies and television - and popular music. Many classical music ensembles are facing serious problems.
"We've been lucky," he continued. "We've built up our number of ensembles and the number of performances we give very slowly and very carefully. We've tried to avoid - and I think we've succeeded in avoiding - over-extending ourselves and extending ourselves too quickly. We've planned carefully and slowly so that our growth has been based on a solid foundation.
"For instance," Radu said, "this will be the third season for our newest group, the Camerata Ama Deus. We started small but we've increased Camerata's concerts each season."
Last year marked Camerata Ama Deus' first appearances in Chestnut Hill. The programs were performed in St. Paul's Church, the larger of the two Episcopal churches in Chestnut Hill. This season's performances will be split between St. Paul's Church and the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
Explaining his decision to utilize both sacred venues, Radu said, "There are two reasons. I just love the place - St. Martin's. It's gorgeous - and it's intimate - and that makes it perfect for the smaller, chamber music programs of Camerata. St. Paul's is equally beautiful - but in a different way. It's a majestic church, very much in the tradition of a smaller European Gothic cathedral. But both have excellent acoustics for the kinds of programs we'll be performing in those churches."
Speaking of acoustics, one of the most amazing achievements of Vox Ama Deus is its regularly making CDs from "live" concerts given in the Kimmel Center's smaller venue, the Perelman Theater. While it was immediately recognized and acknowledged by anyone and everyone that the Perelman's acoustics were superior to those of Verizon Hall, virtually no other ensemble has successfully - let alone frequently - make "live" recordings in it. And yet, under Radu's baton the Ama Deus Ensemble performed and recorded "live" Handel's "Judas Maccabeus" in the Perelman February 27, 2009, and Camerata Ama Deus played and recorded Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" there April 17, 2009. This pair joins another duo performed and recorded in 2008: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and the "Egmont" Overture; and the Ninth Symphony ("Choral") plus "The Ruins of Athens."
All four CDs were produced by John Ostendorf and engineered by Stephen Epstein. Radu mentioned the importance of discovering the optimal placement of the microphones and then discovering and maintaining the proper balance and blend between them. He also emphasized his personal belief that making CDs of major repertoire works is part of what he considers Vox's core mission and that CDs made from "live" concerts offer a special level of intensity, expressivity and spontaneity absent in studio recordings.
Both the Handel and Vivaldi albums are excellent buys. Handel's "Messiah" is so overwhelming and popular a masterpiece that it has overshadowed many of his other compositions. "Judas Maccabeus" may not approach the flawless so closely as does "Messiah," but its telling of the story of the ancient Israelites' rebellion against their Syrian oppressors is thrillingly relayed in arias, ensembles, choruses and instrumental music. The performance is energetic, stylish and resonant.
Radu wisely balanced audiences' familiarity with the four concerti of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" by including on the CD the Flute Concerto in A minor, the Concerto for Two Violins in A minor and the Concerto for Two Trumpets in C major. Both CDs feature exemplary playing in the continuo of Roxborough harpsichordist Bronwyn Fix-Keller.
Valentin Radu and Camerata Ama Deus will present a "Haydn Fest" Friday, October 16, at 7:30 p.m. in the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Harpsichordist Fix-Keller and Radu, himself, as organist, will be among the evening's soloists. Vox Renaissance Consort will perform a "Renaissance Noel" Friday, December 14, at 7:30 p.m. in St. Martin's Church. Camerata Ama Deus will play a "Baroque Christmas" Saturday, December 19, at 7:30 p.m. in St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Other highlights of the season include Handel's "Messiah" Friday, December 11, at 7 p.m. in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, "Bach Fest" Friday, February 5, at 8 p.m. in the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater, Brahms' "German" Requiem Good Friday, April 2, at 8 p.m. in the Perelman, a "Mozart Gala" Friday, April 30, at 8 p.m. in the Perelman, and "Festa Vivaldi" Friday, May 14, at 7:30 p.m. in Old St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Society Hill. For ticket information call 610-688-2800 or visit www.voxamadeus.org.
- Reprinted with permission. Noteworthy/Local Life, 09/03/2009 by Michael Caruso, Chestnut Hill LOCAL
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EASY ONLINE ACCESS TO OUR NEWEST CD's & DONATIONS PAGE
Thank you for your continued and renewed donations! The wonderful programs of Vox Ama Deus are only possible with your support.
VIVALDI: THE FOUR SEASONS and More with Baroque Instrumental Soloists: Thomas DiSarlo, Thomas Jackson, Colin St. Martin, Elin Frazier, and Daniel Orlock.
 Vivaldi's greatest orchestral masterpiece, the Four Seasons, brilliantly performed by Thomas DiSarlo, our own genius concertmaster - this CD also features three other "more" concerti: two doubles (violin & trumpet) & a single (flute). A true collector's item! Recorded live at the Kimmel Center on April 17, 2009. You can buy our CD's and make donations online easily and securely. Our prior release, Judas Maccabaeus, is now available. 
Did you know this Lyrichord release is so exceptional that there is serious talk that it might be nominated for a Grammy? Get your copy today!
Click here to purchase CD's and/or make a secure online donation, or simply call us today at 610-688-2800! | |
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