“My love for Kraus is well-known”: Claudio Astronio about Theresia’s new album

By Emilia Campagna - November 10, 2023

Claudio Astronio, who leads Theresia on our latest album released on the CPO label, talks about the joy of performing the complete Kraus Overtures.
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The recent release of the album “Kraus’s Overture” fills us with great satisfaction, marking the start of a significant collaboration, a wide-ranging recording project with the CPO label. Leading our orchestra on this recording endeavour is Claudio Astronio, the conductor who has directed Theresia in numerous performances since its early days. We caught up with him over the phone to get the conductor’s insights on our latest album release.

Maestro Claudio Astronio, how did the idea for a disc of Kraus’ Overtures come about?

When we were thinking of future projects with Artistic Director Mario Martinoli, we realised that a complete recording of this wonderful music wasn’t existing. We embarked on this adventure, which meant a significant amount of effort, particularly for the orchestra. However, the outcome is a product of exceptional quality that has garnered enthusiastic support from CPO. This is not only due to the high quality, but also because this new recording shines a light on music that is rarely performed nowadays.

How did you experience working on this music? What did it mean to you?

My love for Kraus is well-known: I already performed his music with Theresia back in 2016, especially some symphonies and the stunning Chaconne. And I would love to record all the symphonies one day. The symphonies are remarkable, but working on the overtures was almost more interesting. They are such unique pieces, when placed side by side, they form a narrative of which each one is a part.

Does this have to do with the fact that Kraus composed his Overtures not only for melodramas but also for other occasions?

Exactly. There are overtures for operas, ballets, plays, but also for birthdays and funerals. The variety of musical renditions on such different occasions is great, and those who listen to the disc will enjoy this richness.

Apart from the world of historically informed performance, Kraus is not a well-known composer: do you think this recording will help to put his name back on the musical map?

I hope this is a start, opening a door. Reflecting on the symphonies, some have been recorded and these recordings are quite well known, but they are sporadic. Certainly a complete recording is still missing. If one day a complete edition of the symphonies were to appear, it would be a breakthrough. Kraus’s symphonies precede Beethoven and display a style and orchestral technicalities, which cannot be found in Mozart either. We must always bear in mind that Kraus, although a contemporary of Mozart, was not influenced by classical music; on the contrary, we hear a particularly advanced language in his compositions.

You conducted Theresia during its debut performance in 2012. How has the orchestra changed over the last decade?

It has changed a lot: in the beginning it was an orchestra of young musicians that we contacted directly and invited to participate in Theresia. Then we launched the grant programme, which allowed us to have musicians from abroad and to overcome the problem of not having enough musicians to realise our musical ideas. The level has also grown thanks to the organizational leap that the orchestra took by becoming part of the ICONS foundation. It is now definitely a solid organisation, run with great professionalism.

Claudio Astronio conducts Theresia on our latest album released on CPO: Kraus’ Overtures

Future releases of Theresia on CPO are planned for 2024 featuring various seldom-performed orchestral pieces and opera rarities. The next album will be released in February featuring the first three symphonies by Ernst Eichner, one of the early masters of symphonic compositions, in which Theresia is conducted by Vanni Moretti. May and September will see the release of two opera recordings: Le astuzie femminili by Domenico Cimarosa and Rossini’s L’inganno felice, both conducted by Alessandro De Marchi. August will mark the world premiere recording release of Traetta‘s oratorio Rex Salomon.

Kraus’ Overtures is available to buy and listen here.

Happy listening!

Theresia Orchestra’s Symphonies at the Teatro alle Vigne

By Theresia - November 24, 2021

Behind the program of the concert
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On Saturday 27 November, Theresia Orchestra will return to play at the Teatro alle Vigne in Lodi at the end of its first residency in the Lombardy city after the pause caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The programme of the concert, conducted by Alfredo Bernardini, will be based on the core repertoire of the Theresia project, the classical symphonic, and will feature Symphony in G major K444 / P16 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart/Michael Haydn, Symphony in D major VB143 by Joseph Martin Kraus, and Symphony No. 91 in E flat major Hob. I/91 by Franz Josef Haydn.

The two first symphonies are misattributions that we could call musicological fake news. Both Kraus’s Symphony in D and Michael Haydn’s Symphony in G, in fact, have been in the past centuries united by a fate common to many other pieces in the history of music: on several occasions the musicians of the past, taken by the enthusiasm of having to do with a composition of an author more emblazoned than others, were more or less consciously guilty of misattributions. In the case of Kraus, the attribution error was intentional, because printed parts of this Symphony began to circulate in Paris between 1786 and 1787 with attribution to Joseph Haydn. 18^th-century music market was in fact extremely lively and competitive, and greedy for compositions by this already well-known composer; Kraus, although an excellent musician, certainly did not have the same commercial appeal. Research carried out in the first half of the 19th century by Fredrik Silverstolpe succeeded in re-establishing the truth and determining the correct attribution, thanks to the analysis of manuscript sources preserved in Stockholm, the city where Kraus worked as Chapel Master at the court of King Gustav III and as director of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. This research also established 1784 as a possible date of composition of this symphony.

The second piece presented in the programme probably dates from the same year, 1784. Michael Haydn’s Symphony in G Major No. 25 has historically been known as Mozart’s No. 37. This was at least until 1907, when musicologist Lothar Perger, while studying the catalogue of Michael Haydn, was able to establish its true authorship by naming Joseph’s brother as its author. Following this discovery, however, Mozart’s symphonies were not renumbered, leaving a gap in the celebrated composer’s catalogue between Symphony No. 36 and Symphony No. 38. In the case of this symphony, however, the erroneous attribution is partially justified by the fact that the Adagio Maestoso that introduces the first movement (twenty bars in all) was indeed composed by Mozart, as evidenced by a manuscript source of the score: the two composers used to collaborate, and this has led to other musicological misunderstandings (as with Mozart’s duets for violin and viola K423 and 424, published under Haydn’s name). In the Andante sostenuto of the “Mozartian” version of this piece, however, a valuable bassoon solo is missing, which is found in other manuscripts of Haydn’s version: in this concerto the solo is reinstated, in fact creating a synthesis between the two versions of the same symphony.

Joseph Haydn’s Symphony in E-flat Major No. 91 (about which there is no doubt as to its attribution) was composed in 1788 on the commission of Count d’Ogny, together with Symphonies Nos. 90 and 92, to be performed at the Concerts of the Olympic Lodge in Paris. Founded as a Masonic lodge of musicians, this concert society had already commissioned Haydn to write Symphonies 82 to 87, known as the ‘Parisian’ Symphonies. Like most first-rate musicians of the 18th century, Haydn was also affiliated to Freemasonry, which essentially acted as a support network and exchange of information and work assignments throughout Europe. The Olympic Lodge had 364 members, of whom 29 were administrators, 24 ‘associate members’ and a further 65 members who were part of the concert orchestra. The conductor was Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de Saint-George (1745-1799), a French composer and violinist of Senegalese origin. Several thematic elements of Haydn’s Symphony No 91 are related to the cantata Ariadne at Naxos, Hob. XXVIa/2, for piano and voice, composed in the same year, and in particular the chromatic theme that appears at the beginning of the Allegro assai of the first movement.

Simone Laghi,

Artistic Secretary at Theresia Orchestra