Beyond Words: Music By Js Back / Vivaldi / Handel / Gluck

Felix Klieser, on his new album Beyond Words, focuses on the language of music, the stories that it tells - all without any words at all. He places the emphasis on the images that arise before our mind's eye when listening to the music, on the emotions triggered by the music. For Beyond Words the hornist has chosen various arias by Bach, Vivaldi, Handel and Gluck, each of which describes the various, self-contained musical worlds they encompass in a very individual manner. For many listeners, the repertoire will probably conjure up memories, since many people will be very familiar with Handel's Hallelujah Chorus and Ombra mai fù or Bach's Bereite dich Zion and Wohl mir, dass ich Jesum habe. On this album, they will hear them in a very different form: the choice of Baroque arias and chorales by the master composers Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel gives the horn the role of the human voice, allowing it to trace the melodic flow and imitate the sound of the voice. Klieser is accompanied by the CHAARTS Chamber Artists ensemble, founded in 2010 in Zurich. The musicians are able, in harmony with Klieser's soft timbre, to breathe new life into the Baroque works with their modern instruments. What is really important for his album however is not virtuosity, but tonal expression, according to Felix Klieser: "It needs to be easy to put into action. The songfulness and the expressive range of sound should always be at the heart, always be the focus." Listeners are being told a story that is open to any interpretation at all, and this allows them to immerse themselves in a purely musical world. "They don't have to know what is happening content-wise, just let themselves be led by the music."