conductor Jakob Lehmann on bringing traditionally knowledgeable Rossini to Cadogan Corridor with the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique

Jakob Lehmann (Photograph: Sercan Sevindik)

Because the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique makes its first foray into Rossini, we discuss to conductor Jakob Lehmann about his ardour for music of the interval, how we have to be taught to take pleasure in power, freedom and rubato within the music, his discoveries about stability within the bass line, working with fashionable orchestras and way more.

On 2 October 2025, conductor Jakob Lehmann joins the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique at Cadogan Corridor for Rossini’s Stabat Mater alongside excerpts from his opera Ermione. This would be the orchestra’s first foray into Rossini and the inaugural occasion in a deliberate main new exploration of Rossini’s music. Jakob was Affiliate Inventive Director of New York-based opera firm Teatro Nuovo from 2019 to 2025 and is Inventive Director of Eroica Berlin, a chamber orchestra he based in 2015.

Jakob’s latest expertise consists of conducting Les Siècles in Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony on the Worldwide Bruckner Competition in Linz for the composer’s two hundredth anniversary celebrations, in addition to performances of operas by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. After we spoke, Jakob was in Bloomington, Indiana and about to make his debut with Indiana College Live performance Orchestra. The Cadogan Corridor live performance can be his London debut, while his UK debut was final month when he performed the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Rossini, Spohr and Schubert.

Traditionally knowledgeable performances (HIP) of Rossini’s music in London have nonetheless been comparatively uncommon, and I used to be focused on discovering out what Jakob thought HIP dropped at the composer. His ideas had been two-pronged. First, the added colors and textures of the interval devices enable a distinct kind of storytelling by way of the brand new sound qualities. That is very true of Rossini. Jakob feels that, not like composers reminiscent of Mozart and Beethoven, with Rossini, we now have not totally grasped the sound and elegance of interval Rossini; we now have not essentially absorbed the model change that has occurred in different composers.

Jakob Lehmann & Anima Eterna Brugge (Photograph: Koen Broos)

The opposite facet impact of HIP is that we come to understand the sheer high quality of the music in one other means. For instance, Jakob mentions the Berlin Philharmonic, which, 30 years in the past, wouldn’t have dreamed of doing a night of music by Telemann or Vivaldi, however they do now, because of in depth interval performances. We have now a distinct view on the worth and high quality of the music. That is one thing that has not occurred in Rossini, but. Jakob feels that we nonetheless underestimate the composer. He was not simply writing for singers, and we must always admire how he writes for the orchestra.

Jakob factors out that performing with interval devices is one factor, however traditionally knowledgeable efficiency observe is one other, and we nonetheless have extra to find about performances of Rossini’s period. HIP initially jumped again in time and checked out music from a specific viewpoint. Now, for various eras, we will juxtapose early recordings, writings of early commentators and notations on surviving components.

Jakob feels that we have to be taught to understand the rhetoric wanted within the music and revel in Romantic melodies. He mentions an article, ‘Why has early music develop into so crisp’, and he feels that in Rossini and different bel canto music, we have to benefit from the power but in addition the liberty and rubato, the flexibility to comply with a bel canto line. For those who add within the sound of the interval devices, you get a brand new image.

Speaking to Jakob about Rossini, you are feeling that he’s passionately evangelical in regards to the composer. For him, Rossini is a good composer, and he’s motivated to indicate how improbable Rossini is.

Isabella Colbran who sang the title function in Rossini’s Ermione in 1819

Within the forthcoming live performance, he and the orchestra are aiming to indicate the 2 sides to the composer, sacred and secular, with a different and attention-grabbing programme. It was determined fairly early on that the live performance can be a mixture, and since the Monteverdi Choir can be concerned, they wished a giant choral piece to offer ample alternative for the choir. They’re performing Rossini’s Stabat Mater, which was written between 1831 and 1841 and premiered in Paris in 1842. Alongside this, they’re performing substantial excerpts from his opera Ermione, written for Naples in 1819, the place Rossini was utilizing classical varieties and increasing them.

The live performance is meant to launch a long-term collaboration between the orchestra and Jakob, so this primary programme can also be meant to indicate what’s in retailer, to offer an impression of the repertoire Jakob can be and the way they are going to current it. They’re performing entire scenes from the opera, thus celebrating the launch of a long-term collection the place, in future, they hope for full performances of the operas.

So far as Jakob is anxious, Rossini’s finest work is in his severe operas, significantly these written for Naples between 1815 and 1822. Jakob describes the subject material of Ermione as being womanhood. Andromaca (Andromache), the widow of Hector, is making an attempt to avoid wasting her son, and Jakob sees her as the one winner. She is the one one of many protagonists that the viewers can like, and the one one who will get what she needs, as all of the others are destroyed by ambition and fervour. Additionally it is a strongly choral piece, with the refrain used to impact within the overture. This choral side and the final topic of motherhood are the hyperlinks between the 2 works within the live performance, Ermione and the Stabat Mater. The Stabat Mater was written a lot later than Ermione, after Rossini had retired from the theatre. Jakob says that the work nonetheless seems like Rossini, however you may hear how he has progressed as a composer.

Jakob is as obsessed with voices as about devices. However he factors out that singing is completely different to instrumental efficiency. A singer’s method is embodied within the physique, and you can not change their model the best way instrumentalists can change their efficiency. What Jakob has performed is locate singers who can deliver the presents wanted within the music. With HIP, the devices allow the singers to search for freedom, color and suppleness.

Listening to early recordings of singers and studying the writings of the pedagogue Manuel Garcia (1805-1906), who was the brother of the singers Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot, informs Jakob’s selection of voices. He doesn’t go for an Early Music sound within the music, however operatic and full-bodied singing. The instruments that the singers of the interval had had been rooted in bel canto with flexibility, a quick open vibrato, use of legato and portamento as an expressive gadget, together with the readability of textual content. Additionally, with sopranos and mezzo-sopranos, the usage of each registers, together with the chest, is a part of the model.

Discovering the suitable singers means searching for these with a capability to be versatile, a willingness to experiment and a curiosity to search out out what they’ll do. This additionally means discovering acceptable ornaments within the music. Composers anticipated music to be ornamented, and we now have examples of Rossini doing this. However to search out period-appropriate ornamentation takes research, together with a willingness for the singers to do issues in another way than a normal efficiency of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Jakob describes his singers for the efficiency as being very curious, open and versatile, and he’s excited to have the ability to experiment with them.

Rossini in 1850

Jakob’s work in bel canto and Nineteenth-century Romantic music hyperlinks to his personal private liking for the music of the Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He had an ear-opening expertise when he first heard the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique within the overture to Weber’s Oberon, when he discovered the sound world unimaginable. This drew him into the Interval world. Early on in his profession, he was fortunate to be the concertmaster of Anima Eterna Brugge, an ensemble that was taking part in quite a lot of Nineteenth-century music. They had been experimenting to search out the suitable model and devices, with many late-night conversations about such subjects because the fingerings in Spohr. This led him to be inquisitive about discovering new issues and new challenges.

He was fortunate to work with musicologist Clive Brown and conductor Will Crutchfield, who based Teatro Nuovo, the American opera firm and coaching establishment specialising within the repertory and efficiency observe of bel canto opera. Jakob has simply completed as Affiliate Inventive Director with Teatro Novo, and he appreciates the corporate’s mixture of younger singers and instrumentalists with elementary analysis in model.

One among Jakob’s massive discoveries from working with Teatro Nuovo was the realisation of the character of the stability within the bass line in Italian orchestras of the time. Orchestras at all times had extra double basses than cellos (one thing that doesn’t occur in fashionable orchestras), reminiscent of two cellos and 6 basses. At La Scala, they’d 12 double basses and eight cellos. Additionally, the double basses had been three-stringed devices (fashionable ones have 4 or 5 strings). Which means that the devices are very resonant due to the decrease pressure of the thicker intestine strings. The result’s what Jakob refers to as an unimaginable bass sound. They tried it out at Teatro Nuovo and at Cadogan Corridor, Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique can be utilizing numerous double basses, three-stringed ones. And Jakob hopes that everybody experiences the music the best way he did. The completely different stability within the bass line has implications for the best way Italian composers wrote for the orchestra, and Jakob sees it as altering the music rather a lot. He feels that the invention is nicely value exploring and sharing with an viewers.

Jakob comes from a musical household; his father performed the trombone within the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin. Younger Jakob began studying the piano on the age of 4 and the violin on the age of seven. He was taken to concert events, music was there, and he grew to become obsessed with it at a younger age. He was fortunate that his instructor in highschool nurtured his curiosity in interval efficiency, encouraging him to check out intestine strings and a interval bow. He took an interest – having fun with analysis, manuscripts and taking part in from facsimiles. It was a means of approaching music that he discovered fascinating. It was a jump-in as concertmaster with Anima Eterna Brugge that helped launch his journey.

However Jakob isn’t just concerned in interval instrument efficiency. He does equal quantities of labor with interval devices and fashionable ones. He jokingly feedback that interval devices usually are not ‘the one fact!’ Greater than having the suitable devices, he feels that a very powerful factor is having the suitable mindset. He feels there may be sope for enchancment and extra analysis in interval instrument teams that transfer between eras but maintain one thing of their home model. He feels you could obtain a lot in the best way of traditionally knowledgeable efficiency with fashionable orchestras which are open to this now, and he appreciates the best way fashionable orchestras are versatile on this respect. He additionally appreciates the logistical side of working with fashionable orchestras. Coming to them as a conductor is improbable, as all the pieces is in place and arrange. 

Jakob Lehmann (Photograph: Pauline Cluzeau)

From 31 October, Jakob can be conducting Les Siècles, the orchestra with whom he carried out Bruckner final 12 months, in Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust in a staging on the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, directed and designed by Silvia Costa with Benjamin Bernheim as Faust [further details]. Throughout November, he will even be conducting Symfonieorkest Vlanderen in a programme that features Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 [further details].

Additional forward, he’s working with the Swiss ensemble, La Banda storica Bern, the place members of the Bern Symphony Orchestra play on interval devices. Throughout February, March, April and Could 2026, Jaokob can be conducting fashionable instrument orchestras in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in a manufacturing by Simon Delétang, which excursions to French opera homes from Rennes to Compiègne. He will even be returning to Les Siècles to conduct them in a programme of music by Liszt and Wagner.

He describes his work as a mix of interval and fashionable, of opera and symphonic, the one lives off the opposite, and there are not any dividing strains.

Charles Motte: George IV greeting Rossini on the Brighton Pavilion, 1823

2 October 2025: Cadogan Corridor
Rossini: Scenes from Ermione
Rossini Stabat Mater

Monteverdi Choir
Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Jakob Lehmann: Conductor
Thomas Guthrie: Stage Director

Soloists: Stabat Mater

Ana Maria Labin: Soprano
Hannah Ludwig: Mezzo-soprano
Alasdair Kent: Tenor
Anthony Robin Schneider: Bass

Ermione
Beth Taylor: Ermione
Hannah Ludwig: Andromaca
Alasdair Kent: Oreste
Anthony Robin Schneider: Fenicio
Rebecca Leggett: Cefisa
Elinor Rolfe Johnson: Cleone
Xavier Hetherington: Pilade
Marcus Swietlicki: Attalo