Blazers van het Orchestre des Champs-Elysées

You can just picture it, can't you? In the last scene of Mozart's opera 'Don Giovanni', the key protagonist allows his dinner to be accompanied by his own brass band playing arrangements of popular arias. This scene illustrates perfectly the lifestyle and manners of the Viennese nobility in the second half of the eighteenth century. It was fashionable to maintain their own woodwind ensemble or brass band. Besides adaptations of popular opera arias, serenades were often composed, often no more than light-hearted background music. The young Beethoven wrote his wind octet for the Archduke Franz Maximilian's brass band at his residence in Bonn. Mozart also wrote many pieces for this genre. In his hands, the serenade grew into an elevated musical art form that was no longer associated with ordinary 'entertainment'. His Serenade in B flat, KV361, for twelve wind instruments and double bass, called the 'Gran Partita', is an impressive example of colourful instrumentation and expert counterpoint. One of the most beautiful compositions ever written for wind ensemble! The wind players from the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées play the 'Gran Partita' on period instruments. This provides the perfect opportunity to hear the oboist Marcel Ponseele once again.