L’Arpeggiata

Founded in 2000, L’Arpeggiata is an ensemble directed by Christina Pluhar. Its members are today’s finest instrumentalists specialized on Early music in collaboration with exceptional singers.

L’Arpeggiata also likes to bring together artists from various musical backgrounds around programs and projects skilfully conceived by Christina Pluhar based on her musicological research, encounters, the curiosity that drives her and her immeasurable talent.

Since its creation, L’Arpeggiata has aimed to explore the rich music of the early Baroque period. The ensemble set itself the guiding principle of instrumental improvisation and research into the instrumentarium, into the rarer Baroque tradition, and the creation and performance of “events”. It thus favours the coming together of music and singing with other elements from the Baroque period, which were indistinguishable in their day, such as dance and theatre, and openness to various musical genres, such as jazz and traditional music. The programs of L’Arpeggiata reconnects with the surprising, the unexpected, making each concert a unique encounter.

L’Arpeggiata regularly collaborates regularly with outstanding soloists performing art music from the Baroque period (Philippe Jaroussky, Valer Sabadus, Céline Scheen, Véronique Gens, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Rolando Villazon) and traditional music (Vincenzo Capezzuto, Ensemble ‘Barbara Furtuna’) and other genres of music, such as jazz or flamenco (Gianluigi Trovesi, Pepe Habichuela, Wolfgang Muthspiel). Since its creation, the ensemble has been performing at festivals and in the most prestigious theatres in Europe  (Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, Tonhalle in Zürich, Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Saint-Denis Festival, Sablé sur Sarthe Festival, Utrecht Oude Muziek, Festival d’Ambronay, Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci, Ruhrtriennale, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, Bordeaux Opera House, Philharmonie Köln, Philharmonie Luxemburg …) and throughout the world (Carnegie Hall New York, Sydney City Recital Hall, Brisbane Festival, Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, Karura Hall…). L’Arpeggiata was given residency at Carnegie Hall in New York, and also at the Theatre of Poissy, Wigmore Hall in London and the Teatro Mayor in Bogotà, Colombia, to perform the opera in five acts Orfeo Chaman, directed by Rolf and Heidi Abderhalden.

In 2011, l’Arpeggiata had already performed the disregarded opera by Giovanni Andrea Bontempi, Il Paride (1662) at the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci, directed by Christoph von Bernuth. This work had been performed again in 2012 at the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik.

The discography of l’Arpeggiata is unanimously and constantly applauded by both critics and the public. The ensemble records one album each year and regularly wins prestigious prizes. Winner of the Echo Klassik Preis in Germany in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the Edison Preis in the Netherlands in 2009 and the VSCD Muziekpriis in 2008, l’Arpeggiata has regularly been rewarded for its rich discography, from its albums on Alpha (“La Villanella”, “Homo fugit velut umbra”, “La Tarantella”, “All’Improvviso”, “Rappresentazione di Anima et di Corpo”), then on Naïve (“Los Impossibles”)  to its collaboration with EMI/Virgin classics, which has since become Warner/Erato “ Teatro d’Amor”, “Via Crucis”, “Monteverdi Vespro della Beata Vergine”, “Los Pájaros perdidos”, “Mediterraneo”, “Music for a while – improvisations on Henry Purcell”, “L’Amore Innamorato”, “Händel goes wild”) with “R10 from Classica Répertoire”, Cannes Classical Awards, “International Opera Platinum Stamp”, Disc of the Month”, BBC Magazine, “Prix Exellentia Pizzicato”, ffff  Télérama, Baroque music’s favorite of the Académie Charles Cros …

The CD “Himmelsjusik”, released in 2018, again saw the collaboration of Philippe Jaroussky.

Released in March 2011, the film Tous les soleils, written and directed by Philippe Claudel, was inspired by the music of the “La Tarantella” disc. Two album tracks were re-recorded for this occasion, with the voice of the male lead actor Stefano Accorsi.