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(updated 25 January 2003)    

il Giardino Armonico, founded in Milan in 1985, brings together a number of graduates from some of Europe’s leading colleges of music, all of whom have specialised in playing on period instruments. Many of its members are also in demand as international soloists and have appeared in concert with such eminent artists as N. Harnoncourt, G. Leonhardt, T. Pinnock, Ch. Coin and J. Savall. The ensemble’s repertory is concentrated in the main on the 17th and 18th centuries. Depending on the demands of each programme, the group will consist of anything from 3 to 30 musicians.  

il Giardino Armonico is regularly invited to many festivals all over the world as Musica e Poesia a San Maurizio in Milan, Styriarte Festival in Graz, Salzburger Pfingsten Festival, Osterklang in Vienna, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Rheingau Festival, Internationale Musikfestwochen in Luzern, Festival de Musique de Montreux-Vevey and has performed in the most important concert halls. Among them are Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Tonhalle in Zurich, Victoria Hall in Geneva, Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin, Glinka Hall and Philharmonic in St. Petersburg, Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Konserthus in Oslo, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Oji Hall in Tokyo, Library of Congress in Washington, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York.  

il Giardino Armonico has been under exclusive contract to TELDEC Classics for a number of years. Its various recordings of works by Vivaldi – among which the Four Seasons – and other 18th-century composers have met with widespread acclaim on the part of audiences and critics alike and have received several major awards (Award “Fondazione Cini” of Venice, Caecilia Award in Belgium, Diapason d’Or, Choc de la Musique, Grand Prix des Discophiles). Released under the title Il Proteo, their recording of several of Vivaldi’s double and triple concertos for cello and orchestra, with Christophe Coin as guest soloist, received a Gramophone Award in October 1996 and the Diapason d’Or. The Brandenburg Concertos were awarded with the Echo-Preis 1998 and the CD dedicated to works by M. Locke and H.I.F. Biber won the Diapason d’Or 1999. In 1999 there appeared two CDs: one with arias of Handel sung by Eva Mei and the Vivaldi Album with Cecilia Bartoli for Decca (Grammy Award). In autumn 2000 has been published Viaggio Musicale (10 de Répertoire) with Italian music of the 17^th century. A new CD entitled Musica Barocca has been released in autumn 2001 and has already won the French prize “10 de Répertoire”. In December 2002 Teldec has published an Artist Portrait of the ensemble.  

The ensemble plays regularly with many acclaimed soloists such as Cecilia Bartoli, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Eva Mei, Sumi Jo, Sara Mingardo, Lynne Dawson, Christoph Prégardien, Véronique Gens, Viktoria Mullova and Giuliano Carmignola both in concerts as in opera stage productions such as Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Handel’s Agrippina, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno and La Resurrezione, Pergolesi’s La serva Padrona and J.A. Hasse’s Oratorio I Pellegrini al Sepolcro di Nostro Signore.

Giovanni Antonini

(updated 30 June 2004)

Giovanni Antonini was born in Milan. He studied at the Civica Scuola di Musica of his home town and at the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva.

He is a founder member of the baroque ensemble “il Giardino Armonico”, which he has led since 1989 and with whom he has appeared as conductor, as soloist on the recorder and soloist on the baroque transverse flute in Europe, United States, Canada, South America, Australia, Japan and Malesia.

He cooperates among others with artists such as Cecilia Bartoli, Barbara Bonney, Christoph Prégardien, Christophe Coin, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Viktoria Mullova and Giuliano Carmignola.

He has received the Grammy Award 2000 as conductor of the CD “Vivaldi Album” recorded together with Cecilia Bartoli for Decca.

Giovanni Antonini is regularly invited by the most important festivals, as the Salzburg Easter and Whitsunday Festival, where he conducted F.B. Conti’s oratorium Il martirio di San Lorenzo in 1998 (first representation worldwide), and the Styriarte Festival in Graz, where he has conducted Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo, Handel’s Agrippina, La Resurrezione, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno and in April 2003 an oratorium of J.J. Fux. He has conducted Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at Piccolo Teatro Studio in Milan and Pergolesi's La serva padrona at the Zurich Tonhalle, at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and at Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbona. He is one of the guest conductors of the Milan Bach Festival. A recent tour of Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo brought him to Musikverein in Vienna, to Salzburg and Salamanca. In December 2003 he has conducted with great success Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio segreto in Bolzano, Trento and Rovigo.

Giovanni Antonini is often invited to conduct other orchestras such as Camerata Academica of Salzburg, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica of Tenerife, Orquesta Sinfonica of Galizia and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. He has an intense cooperation with the Kammerorchester Basel, which he recently conducted very successfully at Alte Oper in Frankfurt, and with which he is planning some recordings. In 2005 he will also conduct the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Sir Simon Rattle invited Giovanni Antonini to conduct the Berliner Philharmoniker in January 2004 with pieces of the baroque and classical period: the Berliner Zeitung defined his interpretation as “simply ingenuous” and also the Tagesspiegel has praisen his concerts in Berlin. He recently conducted with great success the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie in Bremen with a program dedicated to Haydn.

Together with il Giardino Armonico he has been for several years under exclusive contract to Teldec, for which he has recorded numerous CDs of instrumental works by A. Vivaldi (among which the Four Seasons), of other Italian composers of 17^th and 18^th Century, of J.S. Bach (Brandenburg Concertos), of H.I.F. Biber and M. Locke.