Categories
Recording

Schumann: Piano Concerto & Piano Trio op. 80

Alexander Melnikov fortepiano, Isabelle Faust violin, Jean-Guihen Queyras violoncello, Freiberger Barockorchester, Pablo Heras-Casado
57:51
Harmonia Mundi HMC 902198

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is the second of three recordings from this team that will pair the three piano trios with the concertos written for each of the instruments in the trio. Partnered by the ever-alert Freiberg Barockorchester (86543 strings), Alexander Melnikov’s performance of possibly the best-loved of the concertos takes one by the scruff of the neck and gives a good shake – there is nothing nostalgic about his reading. I have read another review in which the critic said he would rather hear Schumann than Melnikov interpreting Schumann; I find that not only a rather vacuous thing to say (isn’t ever performance, even the first one, an interpretation?), but also an insult to these wonderful musicians and their fresh exploration of Schumann’s score. Inevitably period instruments bring a clarity to the palette that reveal new details in a score that caused its composer no end of difficulty.

Faust, Queyras and Melnikov have embraced gut strings and a period piano for their trio performances, too. To me, this brings a richer colour to the strings and lightens the texture of the piano part to a degree that once again these seem like new works. The slow movement of op. 80, “Mit innigem Ausdruck” in the outlandish key of D flat major, is absolutely gorgeous – the strings dialoging beautifully against the backdrop of the piano’s figuration. The “Nicht zu rasch” finale is a tour de force from composer and performers.

I was not sure how a CD juxtaposing an orchestral work with a chamber piece would work, but it does. The sound worlds are so different, and yet the calibre of performance is maintained. It is impossible (for me) to fault a splendid achievement.

Brian Clark

PS I was reviewing a downloaded version which came without the DVD that is bundled with the CD, so I am unable to comment on that aspect of the package.

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Categories
Recording

Captain Hume’s Journey to India

Philippe Pierlot lyra viol, Dhruba Ghosh sanagi, Nitiranjan Biswas tabla, Roselyne Simpelaere tanpura
63:03
Flora 1006

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat a fanciful idea to take Hume’s extraordinary imagination and contrast/combine it with the imagination of a far continent with enormously appealing musical traditions of its own! And who better to do it than Philippe Pierlot – a marvellous player, playing what he calls a ‘lyra viol’ – in this case a 6-string bass viol in standard tuning, apart from ‘I am melancholy’ which is indeed in the bandore set.

The first nine tracks are all from the 1605 ‘Captain Humes Musicall Humors’ the most substantial being ‘Captain Humes Pavan’ (no 46) with which he opens the recording. This is followed by 12 of the shorter pieces, all persuasively played with great insight, infectious enthusiasm and, of course, complete technical assurance. One finds oneself wondering: why not just let this music and this playing stand on its own, it’s so inventive, so attractive, with lovely melodies and the gorgeous sounds of the bass viol so beautifully played? Why take it to India? Before he leaves, as it were, there is such a lovely account of ‘I am melancholy’.

Then, unexpectedly, bells, the drone of the tanpura, the bowed sarangi, not such a foreign sound after what we have heard, playing a raga that recalls our minor scale, joined by the subtle plastic rhythms of the tabla. The piece has the title ‘Sunrise by the Riverside’ and, in contrast, nearly 10 minutes long. It imparts a sense of inner landscape rather than that which its pictorial title might suggest, not so distant from Hume’s whimsy, sometimes humorous, sometimes suggesting great depths.

The playing is compelling, surging to and from its principal notes, with gossamer figuration, ever increasing in its range and intensity, concluding peacefully as it began with the bells, the tanpura drone lingering on e, as Hume’s ‘Deth’ comes in with its a minor chord. The sarangi then joins it with an improvisation on what has just been played. The second section of ‘Deth’ then follows, joining seamlessly with the sarangi, and so to the end, with the tanpura maintaining its drone throughout. The result is magical and very moving.

It’s immediately followed, almost interrupted, by ‘A Tune to Hume’ played initially on the sarangi weaving its endless flow, until the tabla enters, then the voice, presumably the sarangi player, as accomplished a singer as he is a player.

Then the ‘Lamento di Tristano’ – the medieval tune, played first by the viol, with the tanpura drone, joined by the sarangi, in octaves, but with its characteristic flourishes, including bending the tuning.

The sarangi then takes off on its own for a time, and they all tear into the Rotto with the tabla even playing in octaves with the two melody instruments. Its very infectious, marvellous listening, a complete answer to my initial questions.

The booklet gives more suggestions than information, quoting Hume’s introduction to his publication, and F. J. Fétis ‘There is nothing in the West which has not come from the East.’ It doesn’t help that one page is repeated, and it seems another page is missing, but it matters so little, and perhaps even contributes to an open-ness that this recording imparts. Highly recommended – a tour de force of imaginative insight.

Robert Oliver

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Categories
Recording

Veracini: Complete Sonate accademiche, Op. 2

Trio Settecento
186:48 (3 CDs)
Cedille CDR 90000 155

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ollowing hot on the heels of Rie Kimura’s recording of two of Veracini’s monumental op. 2 sonatas, along comes the formidable Rachel Barton Pine and her colleagues John Mark Rozendaal on cello and David Schrader on harpsichord (who also features on Cedille’s Greene: Six Overtures in Seven Parts) with a three disc set of the complete publication. The recording emphasizes the stringed instrument sound, with the harmonic support of the keyboard mostly in the aural background. In her personal note that accompanies the recording, Barton Pine explains how the initial discussions didn’t even involve the harpsichordist, but that the final sound is the fruits of their giving several houses concerts and gauging the reaction of audiences. I do not recommend listening to all three CDs one after another – there is so much to enjoy, with every track demonstrating different aspects of Veracini’s creativity and Barton Pine’s virtuosity; it would be a sin to take any of it for granted; these are extraoradinary performances by anyone’s standards, and I am sure this will be the benchmark against which future recordings will be judged. Bravo to all involved!

Brian Clark

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Categories
Recording

Maurice Greene: Overtures

Baroque Band, Garry Clarke
David Schrader solo harpsichord
Overtures in Seven Parts, nos. 1-6, Overtures to Phoebe and Ode for St Cecilia
Pieces in C minor, G minor and A minor from Lessons for the Harpsichord

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] still do not understand why Handel’s English contemporaries so rarely feature on concert programmes and recordings. Hyperion’s enterprising English Orpheus series brought us Croft, Stanley, Arne and Boyce amongst others. One published set that had not appeared on disc before a ridiculous court case forced Hyperion to tighten its belt was Maurice Greene’s excellent Overtures in Seven Parts, which the present CD combines with overtures to the pastoral opera Phoebe and an Ode for St Cecilia from 1730 (premiered on the eve of the composer’s appointment as Professor of Music at Cambridge University). Greene was no lightweight – he was organist at St Paul’s cathedral, organist and composer to the Chapel Royal and Master of the King’s Musick…

Four of the six have three movements, while numbers 4 and 6 have four each, and there is an easy tunefulness about them all. The last of the set is for strings alone, as are the two unpublished works. The remainder of the disc features three sequences of music printed in “A Collection of Lessons for the Harpsichord“, though not in the order published by John Johnson in around 1750. After the richness of the orchestral sound (33221 strings with oboes or flutes), the keyboard instrument sounded a little insubstantial; having initially thought that it would have been more sensible to programme these pieces between the overtures, having a longer sequence actually allows the ear to acclimatize. Personally, I think I would have sought out more ensemble music, or even added pieces by Stanley and/or Boyce, who were among Greene’s many students.

If you do not know Greene’s music, do not miss this first class introduction!

Brian Clark

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Categories
DVD

Handel: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

Mark Morris Dance Group, [Sarah Jane Brandon, Elizabeth Watts, James Gilchrist, Andrew Foster-Williams SSTB], Teatro Real Orchestra and Chorus, Jane Glover
97+13:00
BelAir Classiques BAC123

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is one of the very few ballets I have actually seen in the theatre. I was dragged along somewhat reluctantly by a friend who loves Handel’s music and wanted to see what a choreographer could possibly make of vocal music. Watching the DVD brought back fond memories of the production (although the musicians are completely different!) – the staging is very simple with large panels of colour creating the only real visual stimulation, which (of course!) forces attention on to the dancers, who mostly cavort and frolic in looped routines which are so short as to appear almost mechanic in nature, and yet others that are strikingly visually representative of the text (try the hunt scene, for example). Of course, the advantage of viewing a film rather than squinting at the entire scene from a distance is that one can see quite a lot of detail.

I was extremely impressed by the energy and stamina of the dancers, who must shed pounds during every performance. The musical performance is pretty much of secondary importance, although there are close-ups of singers during some of the numbers. I would not recommend this if it were a CD purely of the music, but as a Gesamtkunstwerk it works very well.

Brian Clark

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Categories
Sheet music

Francesco Antonio Pistocchi: Scherzi musicali [op. II] and Duetti e terzetti, op. III

Critical edition by Alejandra Béjar Bartolo.
Lucca, LIM: 2015. 256pp.
ISBN: 9788870967777 €30

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his well-researched and well-printed modern critical edition of the 24 surviving printed vocal works of Francesco Antonio Pistocchi (1659-1726) is welcome: he was a more than competent composer, and his music is charming and lyrical. Precocious as a composer, his instrumental Capricci puerili…, were published in 1667 as Op. I, when he was eight. His actual first opus of cantatas, published in Bologna by Silvani in 1698, and lost, was unknown to Estienne Roger when the latter printed the Scherzi musicali as ‘Op. I’ in the same year, in Amsterdam. So despite the composer’s authorisation to call it ‘op. I’, it is now dubbed ‘[Op. II]’. In fact his Duetti e terzetti was published by Silvani in 1707 as Op. III.

Pistocchi, born in Palermo, and whose father was a violinist and a tenor, was in Bologna by the age of two, sang from the age of 11 in S.Petronio (the Bologna cathedral) and had an active operatic career from 1675 to 1695, teaching singing thereafter. This volume gives a detailed biography, only in Italian. He composed operas and oratorios, sacred and instrumental music, and was highly regarded by Torelli, Perti and Tosi.

Op. II contains 12 pieces, all with continuo: three cantatas for soprano, two for contralto, one for bass, two Italian duets (SS and SC), two French solo arias (S and C, emulating Lully), and two German solo arias (C and S, in ‘Italian’ style). They are above all pleasing, relatively undemanding, and short, with good and sometimes bold harmony. Not only are the da capos written out, but Pistocchi tends to repeat phrases and sections as well, which is perhaps more typical on the stage than in cantatas, or perhaps a reason for calling them collectively ‘scherzi musicali‘.

The prints can also be consulted instantly online here (Op. II) and here (Op. III).

This permits me to comment on Béjar Bartolo’s transcription and critical notes. The source itself is very good, but as inevitable in all prints in movable type, manuscript copies will yield some additional details, different lyrics or underlay, innumerable ties, and may confirm or not other questionable readings. So to that extent, this is not really a complete critical edition. The print requires relatively few things to be noted. I found a manuscript viewable online for the first cantata, which Béjar Bartolo does not list, and this makes me assume that many other manuscripts of these diffusely circulated pieces may not be listed!

I was especially eager to find the first cantata (In su la piaggia aprica) because I suspected a mistaken interpretation of the text, a simile that makes no sense as Béjar Bartolo explained it, abetted by an incorrect comma which she inserted. She misinterprets ‘veloci piante‘, the soles of the feet of the fleeing Mirtillo, as ‘pianti‘, or sobs (of spurned Lucinda), thinking that the spelling was compromised to rhyme with amante! No, these piante are Mirtillo’s fleet feet. The point is that Mirtillo wants nothing to do with poor Lucinda, who isn’t quite crying yet, though she will be at the end. In the opening narrated recit, Mirtillo, as the mythical Daphne had to, is running away, in this case from the girl who loves him (‘che a fuggir la sua amante,/ al par di Dafne, ebbe veloci piante.’).

To her credit, Béjar Bartolo has carefully aligned the continuo figures from the Amsterdam print with the music, providing where necessary the editorial accidentals without which a continuo player would be apt to err. Since movable type has no beaming and this print does not tie any continuo notes, it might have been nice to follow the beaming and to include or comment on the omnipresent continuo ties from manuscript versions, and, where differing, any alternative lyrics or underlay. The print sometimes uses black notation for hemiolas, which the editor then indicates silently by adding coloration brackets. I found one wrong vocal note in this first cantata (in Aria 1 bar 38, b’ instead of a’), and several questionable notes in the others. Players and singers should be suspicious enough to double check with the online original. Pistocchi’s audacious chromatic surprises are, however, theoretically acceptable, if at times challenging. His precise tempo indications are also uncommon: abbastanza adagio, adagio assai, andante ma non presto, più andante; and almost all of his interesting recits turn into substantial ariosos, longer than the recits themselves.

Op. III includes ten duets (SC), and two trios (STB and SCT). These are also cantatas in form, with solo or dialoguing recits between the arias. It is not mandatory, but the entire sequence could be performed as a unified work, since the soprano and the contralto are figures complementing one another in their contrasting points of view, and the final madrigalistic trios address those who have ‘sailed the undulating sea of love’ (Ecco il lido, a terra, a terra) and remind them with downward arpeggios (Tramonta il sol e lascia il mondo tutto) of the sunset of ‘beauty which is born and dies in a flash’.

It is slightly inconvenient that the critical apparatus of Op. III was put in the middle of the volume, between the two works, and much more so that a fairly heavy book of 256 pages needs so much manhandling to make it stay open for playing from. The LIM has very moderate prices, and I wonder how much more it would have cost to print Op. II and Op. III in separate bindings, with the critical material, which is not needed when playing and should have been translated into other languages, in a third. Are we ‘supposed’ to resort to photocopying in order to be able to use the music we buy?

Barbara Sachs

Categories
Book

Andrew Parrott: Composers’ Intentions? Lost Traditions of Musical Performance

The Boydell Press, 2015. xiii + 407pp, £19.99.
ISBN 978 81 78327 032 3

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is essential reading. Few performing directors spend as much time and effort on early Music as Andrew. I’ve known him since the early 1970s. We first met at Dartington Summer School. Andrew struck me first as a singer, though I soon learnt that he was far more than that. A few years later, I was involved in a student and amateur run on the Monteverdi Vespers, and it was there that the down-a-fourth (D) first appeared, with the two low basses in “Et misericordia” sung by the lute-maker Michael Lowe and myself – and I’m not a competent singer. I had, however, sung earlier music which went down to bottom D and I found that I could hit that pitch and could take it as the landmark – this didn’t depend on any perfect pitch.

I suspect – and hope – that most readers will have come across Andrew’s powerful imagination in a way that verges on common sense. Nearly 100 pages were devoted to Monteverdi. The size of choirs is crucial in connection with Monteverdi and Bach. Roger Bowers claimed that Monteverdi had ten singers available, so why is it performed by The 18 (ie the pseudo-16) or more?

Bach’s music, too, seems generally to have been sung by soloists, though Handel in church music and oratorio usually had choruses. There are certainly reasons why people who love singing the music should be able to perform it, but that’s not how it should go professionally. Not all conductors are concerned whether singers should be soloists or chorus: reading chapter 2 will give some advice.

Andrew primarily establishes that falsetto is not relevant to high singing at least until the 16th century, though according to Simon Ravens, what we now call counter-tenor was barely known until well into the 20th. Opera singers have been moving up for several decades to enable falsettists to sing natural high male voices, which at least gives a sort of validity. “Performing Purcell” is a fascinating fifty pages. I was intrigued by his review of six Dido and Aeneas recordings in 1978. Of these, Geraint Jones, with Kirsten Flagstad as Dido, was supported by Schwarzkopf as Belinda and two other characters, but she was not in the 1951 Mermaid Theatre stage: I bought the recording in 1960 and it was my favourite version for some 20 years. The other five recordings are Anthony Lewis/Janet Baker, Alfred Deller/Mary Thomas, Raymond Leppard/Tatiana Troyanos, Steuart Bedford/Janet Baker and Barbirolli/Victoria de los Angeles. I also have a 1970 recording by Colin Davis with Josephine Veasey, though I have no recollection of why I have it! My favourite recording, however, is Andrew with Emma Kirkby from 1981 – a new world!

I’m not going to make critical comments. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember their value, and at a price like this, virtually anyone playing, enjoying or studying will find it invaluable.

Clifford Bartlett

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Categories
Recording

Binder: Sei Suonate per il Cembalo op. 1

Paulina Tkaczyk harpsichord
117:24 (2 CDs)
Dux 1153/1154

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]hristlieb Siegmund Binder (1723-1789) is described by some writers as Dresden’s answer to Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach; if these sonatas, printed in 1759, are typical, then that is an exaggeration. Though tuneful and not without exciting outer movements, they are fairly workaday and rarely deviate from the mid-18th-century norm. Paulina Tkaczyk is a lyrical interpreter and uses the full potential of her instrument (there are no details of of the maker in the booklet notes), which means that listening to one CD or the other makes for pleasant background music for a summer’s afternoon, reading Jane Austen.

Brian Clark

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Categories
Recording

Schein: Ich will schweigen

Alice Foccroulle, Béatrice Mayo-Felip, Reinoud Van Mechelen SST, InAlto, directed by Lambert Colson, Marc Meisel organ
62:42
Ramée 1401

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n the whole, I’m more familiar with Scheidt than Schein, though some Scheidt is a bit over-regular. My main criticism here is that Schein deserves a complete disc rather then jumping to the end of the 17th century, and J. S. Bach really is too late!

Most of the Schein works come from Opella nova, 1617, and very impressive they are, though in “Exaudiet” the tenor texts were more audible than the soprano, and cornett/sackbutts do tend to need more gaps, much as I like them. I reckon that this could be a brilliant CD had it been more thought out, though do buy it. The booklet is excellent, apart from not noting which soprano is which.

Clifford Bartlett

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Categories
Recording

Haydn: Klaviertrios

Boyan Vodenitcharov fortepiano, François Fernandez violin, Rainer Zipplering cello
62:08
Flora 0805
Hob. XV:10, 18, 21 & 23

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese delightful performances of four witty works by Haydn were recorded in 2005. The interplay between the three musicians (even though the cellist does little more than reinforce the bass line – and sustain it when necessary, of course) is excellent – listen to the unisono opening to Track 7, and then contrast it with the snippets of melody tossed back and forth between the violin and the right hand of the keyboard part. The recording is lively and captures all the excitement. Like other reviewers, I am slightly frustrated by Flora’s minimal notes (here restricted to a lengthy quotation – only in German – from the composer himself) but, as I have written before, sometimes the music (and this line-up’s contagious enjoyment of it) should simply speak for itself; if I need more information, I can always read a book!

Brian Clark

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