Spotify list by Tom Goossens
Enjoy early music year-round with the playlists by MA Festival on Spotify, put together especially for you. Each month we present to you a playlist with known music and new discoveries. These are put together by musicians and specialists from within the MA Family.
The next playlist was put together by Tom Goossens, the young director of DEDAPONTETRILOGIE that will will play at MA Festival on 10 August.
“MA Festival asked me to compile a list of my favorite Spotify tracks that have a link with baroque music. Since my DESCHONECOMPANIE is a guest at MA Festival with the theatrical performances of DEDAPONTETRILOGIE, I was guided in my choice by the criterion of ‘theatrical strength”. I chose fourteen pieces of music, dating from Shakespeare’s time to Ane Brun’s today. It is music that would not let go of me from the first moment I heard it and that often expresses a special theatrical situation: a lover of Jupiter who admires herself in a magic mirror that makes her look prettier, or two men in disguise being introduced to a chambermaid. Other arias manage to convey more recognizable feelings, from which I, as a listener, draw comfort. In an oboe-concerto composer Marcello does so even without words.
Personally, I like Mozart’s last operas the most, but in his young work I really enjoy the ‘best of both worlds’: his first steps in classicism, combined with what he took with him from baroque music. I selected an aria from his early opera Mitridate that takes a remarkable step towards many later arias such as Smanie implacabile from Così fan tutte and D’Oreste, d’Ajace from Idomineo.
For entertainment, I colored a little more outside the timelines of the Baroque, from the Norwegian singer-songwriter Ane Brun singing Monteverdi, to a surprising aria by a Rossini who seems nostalgic for the Baroque, and a lost Puccini melody in a song by the American jazz singer Della Reese.” — Tom Goossens
Listen to the playlist here.