Categories
Recording

Vivaldi: Recorder Concertos

Dan Laurin, 1B1, Jan Bøjranger
70:03
BIS-2035 SACD
RV92, 108, 441–5

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]an Laurin made two previous recordings of Vivaldi recorder concertos in the 1990s but now rejects these, as well as most other recordings of them, as being insufficiently operatic. Following his recording of The Four Seasons (BIS-SACD-1605) he identified similar dramatic writing in RV441 and in RV 443-5 (the concertos for flautino) and his aim on the present recording is to bring out this operatic quality with the freedom and spontaneity often found in modern recordings of the “Seasons” with solo violin. In this he is greatly aided by the Norwegian ensemble 1B1 (short for Ensemble Bjergsted 1) who play with tremendous verve and precision, driven along by the vigorous continuo playing of Anna Paradiso (harpsichord) and Jonas Nordberg (theorbo and baroque guitar). Dan Laurin has chosen to play two of the flautino concertos (RV443 and 445) down a fourth on the soprano recorder, on the grounds that they are marked ‘alla quarta bassa’ in the original scores, and for the first of these he plays a specially made copy of a descant recorder by Domenico Peroso, one of the few surviving examples of recorders by Venetian makers.

There are many recordings of Vivaldi’s recorder concertos but this is certainly one that stands out, not just for Dan Laurin’s exciting and seemingly effortless recorder playing and his wonderfully imaginative ornamentation of the slow movements, but also for the magnificent ensemble playing of the whole team. Laurin’s interesting and informative booklet notes are the icing on the cake.

Victoria Helby

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Recording

Wild Men of the Seicento

17th-century music for recorder and harpsichord
Piers Adam, David Wright
d’Anglebert, Bull, Castello, Corelli, van Eyck, Falconieri, Fontana, Pandolfi Mealli, de Selma y Salaverde & Uccellini

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]iers Adams and David Wright are pictured on cover and throughout the booklet of their new CD looking like a couple of slightly dangerous outlaws returning from the California Gold Rush without any gold. It turns out though that the wild men of the title are actually the experimental composers of the seventeenth century whose compositions, full of drama, passion and florid ornamentation, give the players ample scope to display their expected virtuosity and imagination. If anything some of these performances are even more over-the-top than usual, notably in Biber’s extraordinary Sonata 3, originally for violin like much of the other music on the CD, which is surely the culmination of the fashion for rapid changes of mood and tempo more usually associated with Castello and his contemporaries.

Piers Adams’s bravura playing is what immediately strikes the ear, with his use of a range of modern (and loud) recorders, but it would be a mistake to ignore David Wright’s wonderfully varied accompaniment which helps to create every change of mood and achieves a remarkable range of dynamics. His harpsichord solos, by D’Anglebert and John Bull, are less obviously adventurous but are to be enjoyed even if they don’t fit in so well with the title of the CD.

Perhaps this is not one for the purists, but as usual with these performers there is plenty of historically informed performance practice underlying the fun and flamboyance.

Victoria Helby

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Recording

Bach: Mass in B minor

Maria Keohane, Joanne Lunn, Alex Potter, Jan Kobow, Peter Harvey SSATB, Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen
103:35 (2 CDs)
cpo 777 851-2

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he way in which the first chord in the opening Kyrie  is placed tells you that this is a performance where each contributor, whether singer or player, listens before they plunge in, breathes as one (even the strings) and so questions of balance and articulation have been sorted almost by osmosis as it were. This is not to decry the hard work that must have gone into this performance, but it reveals the underlying quality of the string playing, where the players achieve an unusual degree of clarity. No-one who has heard this group’s recordings of the Bach violin concertos will be surprised at this: they play with 4.4.2.2.1. The numbers are, I think, reduced in the Laudamus te  as well as in the Credo. Every player as well as singer is (very properly) listed, and although there are no details of pitch and temperament given, nor of the actual instruments used, we get a fair idea of who is playing what, if not always when.

The balance and cohesion of the choral sound is equally impressive: the five concertinists are matched by a similar group of five ripienists, and care is taken in the darker four part concerted numbers to silence the upper sopranos. A careful scheme of where the vocal lines are doubled has been worked out, and is especially effective (and complex!) in the opening of the Gloria, the Cum sancto spiritu  and the Sanctus, while the divisions in the opening Kyrie, between the Credo  and the Patrem omnipotentem, the Confiteor  and Et expecto  are much as you might imagine. They are sometimes hard to spot because, as you would expect from performers of this quality, the vocal sounds are as well matched as the strings. This is rare achievement, as so many singers get used to singing ‘solo’, even when singing as part of an ensemble. What this means is that the full vocal group has a more solid and sustained sound, while only being marginally ‘louder’ in the traditional understanding of dynamics, like the difference between an Oberwerk  and a Hauptwerk  in a classical German organ. These ‘terraced’ dynamics balance the instrumental scoring for the most part, and the ten singers allow a OVPP Hosanna, which captures the antiphonal feel, if not an entirely doubled Sanctus, where a couple more altos would have completed the scheme. If you can manage a third oboe just for this one movement, why not have a couple more altos?

This all makes for a really good performance. Tempi feel unforced, and Mortensen is not trying to prove anything by introducing extreme dynamics or idiosyncratic phrasing. It all sounds natural, and very poised, even when really fast.

It is important to have two such well-matched sopranos in the Christe: they are distinct vocally, but beautifully balanced and equally assured in how they shape their phrases, and how get the word ‘Christe’ to hang in the air rather than being squeezed over the bar-lines. Joanne Lunn is an acknowledged star in this kind of singing, but the Swedish soprano, Maria Keohane, sings freshly and brightly and is clearly vocally extremely able; she seems to have sung an enormous variety of operatic roles as well as being perfectly at home in this style and repertoire, including having recorded BWV 51 with Mortensen and the EUBO. She has worked a good deal with Philippe Pierlot and Ricercar. All in all, I’ve never heard such a good performance of the Christe.

Joanne Lunn’s Laudamus te  is equally beautifully poised, and I suspect that single strings are being used here to give those accompanimental figures that degree of rhythmic flexibility to partner the voice exactly. The soprano/tenor duet Domine Deus has fine flute playing with the semiquavers paired inégales  but not over-Lombardised, as in the 1735 version, and the transition to the clear and lucid Qui tollis  with single voices is managed beautifully. Alex Potter balances his artistry with the d’amore in Qui sedes  – listen to how he shapes his phrases in bars 26 to 29 especially, and it is rare for the same bass singer to sound as convincing singing low in the thickly scored Quoniam  as in the lyrical Et in Spiritum sanctum  as Peter Harvey does. But it is not just in their more obviously solo passages that the quality of these singers’ phrasing and musicianship shines out. Listen to the way they tackle the Cum sancto spiritu  fugue: not a detail is lost, their breathing shapes the lines and the players follow them, yet nowhere does the impetus slacken.

The same qualities are apparent in the Credo  – spun between the five singers and the two – I think – single violins over the bass (but do I detect the 16’ before the Patrem?) and its junction with the full band and ripienists in the Patrem omnipotentem. Mortensen’s attention to vocal scoring brings out the chiastic structure of the Symbolum perfectly, and the slackening of the tempo at the end of the Confiteor  before launching into the Et expecto  seems near perfect.

There are numerous other recordings of the B minor – why don’t we call it the great Mass in D? – available, so why might you choose this one?

First, because although I have long favoured Andrew Parrott’s pioneering OVPP recording of 1985 for the absolute clarity of its voice parts, this is even better – especially in the playing. As well as the superb strings, the quality of the wind playing and Bob Farley’s trumpeting is matched nowhere. And while there are some things I find captivating about Collegium Vocale 1704 with Vaclav Luks (reviewed in EMR December 2013) – the swing of the Sanctus  in particular – Luks hasn’t got the vocal scoring as well thought out as Mortensen, nor are his enthusiastic players quite so polished.

Second, while you may instinctively prefer the ‘big choir’ sound of Gardener’s recent Monteverdi Choir version (EMR November 2015) or Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan, this performance is hard to beat for clarity, coherence and equal musicianship from every participant, and while the feeble packaging and pretty thin liner notes do not add to what we already know about the history and recension of the B minor text, they do hint at the underlying decisions that make this such a winning performance.

A further comment: with many performances of these frequently recorded works available, I would find it helpful to have a link to a website where some of these issues in performance practice can be discussed, and the director can lay out his critical decisions with more space to give us the details of his scoring, the temperament at which they are performing, the makers of the instruments used, and especially the details of the organ. This might not be what most of the punters need, but in the same way as John Butt is able to fill out a performance (like that of the Dunedin’s Johannespassion  or their recent Magnificat) with supplementary material, I would find this degree of detail useful when there are so many unresolved issues and the autograph score is the subject of much critical appraisal, as Uwe Wolf’s introduction to the revised NBA (2010) reminds us.

But hear this splendid performance as soon as you can, and keep it on the top of the pile.

David Stancliffe

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Categories
Recording

Lettere Amorose

Magdalena Kožená, Private Musicke, Pierre Pitzl
61:33
Deutsche Grammophon 477 8764
Briçeño, Giulio Caccini, Foscarini, d’India, Kapsberger, Marini, Merula, Monteverdi, de Ribayaz, Sanz & Barbara Strozzi

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here are several giveaways that provide a clue as to what to expect here. The recital is a collection of mostly early 17th-century Italian songs interspersed by instrumental pieces, the kind of thing one would expect to appear on Archiv rather than the parent Deutsche Grammophon label. Then there’s the celebrity cover photo, showing Magdalena Kožená, wearing a dramatic ball gown, arms outstretched, apparently tossing around the love letters of the CD’s title. Further investigation reveals that her accompanists Private Musicke are an 8-piece ensemble who bow (occasionally), pluck and hit things much in the manner of L’Arpeggiata. Moreover, the notes are largely a puff for the singer, whose quotes take up much of its space. In short, this is a CD aimed at Kožená fans rather than early music enthusiasts.

The singer is cited as stressing the simplicity of this repertoire, but she and her backing group (the term seems appropriate here) bring to it an artifice that suffocates that very simplicity beneath thick layers of romantic varnish. Kožená’s voice has now assumed a mantle of continuous vibrato, her diction in music where words are of paramount importance is poor and she shows little sense of style or command of appropriate ornamentation. Just occasionally the attention is caught (Marini’s ‘Con le stelle in ciel’, for example, does convey a certain charm), but I’m afraid there is little here to engage either senses or mind, the CD acting more as a kind of musical Ibuprofen. Others will no doubt disagree, but early music enthusiasts who enjoy this repertoire will find it far more satisfying in the hands of a Maria Cristina Kiehr, to name but one singer who excels in it.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Music & Poetry from Thirteenth Century France: Conductus 3

John Potter, Christopher O’Gorman, Rogers Covey-Crump
Hyperion CDA68115

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] spent a lot of time working on this repertoire in the 1960s and 70s, and the editors then assumed that the notation must be according to the six metrical modes. These follow the main four sources, “Notre Dame” sources: W1, W2, F & Madrid (any textbooks will give the information), but there is no certainty that the conductus  should use the metrical modes except for short openings. (Other forms in the main sources are also not necessarily metrical.) The short lines of the conductus  are based on the texts. The number of voices can be one, two, three or (though not on this CD) four. Three of the 11 are vernacular, and of the remaining eight none relate to the Notre-Dame MSS. The flexibility of what is heard here is intensely refreshing.

First time through, concentrate on the words. The stanzas are rythmically accurate, but the poems avoid normal hymn-style patterns and have mostly short lines: Vite perdite, for instance, has syllable-lengths of 5, 3, 4, 5, 3, 4; 7, 6, 7, 6. Rhymes are in use as well: the first section contains 6 lines, in two groups of three different rhymes; the last four lines are simple ABAB. It must be deliberate that the total number of syllables is 50. I haven’t seen the source, but each syllable has the same length, with breaks at the end of each line. Short additional notes are sung within the main note. The story relates a man who mostly lived badly, the last line finishing with Miserere mei. There are also versions in French and Provençal. But I’m not going to write paragraphs for each of the 11 items in the CD!

The three singers are impressive. All are titled “tenor”, but not particularly high. John and Rogers I’ve known for decades – Rogers goes back to the ‘60s. I don’t know Christopher, but the three singers match well. Mark Everist offers a valuable introduction. It was generally assumed the conductus  implied a medieval procession, but an alternative is “conduct”, as in the ultimate good conduct in Vite perdite.

I hope this will be popular!

Clifford Bartlett

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Categories
Recording

Pasquini: Suites and Variations

Lydia Maria Blank harpsichord

Et’cetera KTC1532

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ccupying a chronological and stylistic position between Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti, Pasquini’s toccatas owe much to the former while the suites show a more French susceptibility. His variation sets are a particularly successful blend of styles and techniques. All are ably played here by Lydia Maria Blank on a copy of an 18th-century Italian harpsichord by Christian Fuchs with a mellow virginal-like sound which suits this music very well and is well recorded. As well as the five suites and six variation sets of the title there are three toccatas. The suites have varying numbers of movements and have no sarabandes, leaving them a bit lop-sided in contrast to those of French composers or of Froberger. But this is bright sparkling music, played with intelligence and panache and with lots of satisfyingly idiomatic ornaments on repeats. There are also very informative liner notes.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

D. Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas

Virginia Black piano
58:18
CRD 3533
K27, 87, 114, 124, 132, 159, 208, 260, 401, 427, 461 & 492

[Dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter recording Scarlatti and Soler on the harpsichord, Virginia Black turns to a modern Yamaha piano for this disc containing 12 of her favourite sonatas, which cover the full range of the composer’s keyboard output. Many are among those most commonly recorded but there are some lesser-known pieces too. Black’s piano playing is relatively restrained when compared to some modern pianists’ performances of Scarlatti and she retains much of her harpsichordist’s sensibility in her approach to the music. She brings great technical control and clearly relishes all the figuration and other challenges. The playing and recording are bright and clear and all this makes the disc an excellent introduction to the composer’s music.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

Mersenne’s Clavichord

Keyboard Music in 16th- and 17th-century France
Terence Charlston
68:36
divine art dda 25134

[Dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is not just another recording of French 16th- and 17th-century keyboard music but the result of a fascinating project by Terence Charlton and the maker Peter Bavington to reconstruct the clavichord illustrated in Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie Universelle  published in 1636/7. Since no French clavichord of the period survives, this reconstruction was both challenging and particularly welcome. The result – while much is conjectural – has a plausible sound and works very well in this music.

Charlston showcases the instrument with a programme covering the whole range of French keyboard genres and composers from Antoine de Févin (b. 1470) to Nicholas Lebègue (b. c. 1631). He shows the instrument’s full compass as well as its ability in imitative, improvisatory and dance music, and particularly effectively in an echo piece. To some extent he is scouring the byways to obtain repertory, particularly for the 16th century and not all the music is of the highest quality, but all is played with great commitment. The playing is cleanly articulated and allows the instrument to speak clearly, aided by excellent recording quality from the Royal College of Music studio. Charlston and Bavington have written extended liner notes covering the construction of the instrument and the choice of music. This is another highly successful and important project from Charlston who is indefatigable in his championing of early keyboard instruments and their music.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

Im Dienste des Königs / The King’s Men

Jermaine Sprosse harpsichord & fortepiano
63:28
klanglogo KL1505
C. P. E. Bach: Sonatas in A Wq55/4 and c Wq65/31, 12 Variationen über die Folie d’Espagne Wq118/9
Carl Fasch: Sonata in F
Nichelmann: Sonata VI in F

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he King referred to in the title is Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia, with this disc featuring music by three composers who worked at his court: C. P. E. Bach, Christoph Nichelmann and Carl F. C. Fasch. It is a disc of two halves, with the extended Sonata in A (Wq 55/4) and the Folia Variations by C. P. E. Bach, as well as Nichelmann’s Sonata VI, played on a Ruckers copy (with ravalement) by Titus Crijnen, while a second Bach Sonata in C minor (Wq 65/31) and an F major Sonata by Fasch are played on a copy of a Stein Fortepiano by Bernhard Fleig. As a harpsichordist Sprosse is busy, rather too fast and lacking in poise. His playing can be exciting, but without any great subtlety in the two sonatas, even in the slower movements. The Folia, however, is less rushed and more nuanced. On the fortepiano, on the other hand, Sprosse is more measured and plays with more texture and contrast. There is also more resonance on the harpsichord tracks than on those with fortepiano, which tends to compound the busyness of the former. Both Nichelmann’s and Fasch’s sonatas get their first recorded performances here: they are diverting pieces in the pre-Classical style, not indulging over much in Empfindsamkeit, though the Fasch has some nice quirky moments in its finale. These are sparky performances of interesting music, with lots of well-judged ornamentation on repeats, and are certainly worth listening to.

Noel O’Regan

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Categories
Recording

Upheld by stillness: Renaissance gems and their reflection, volume 1: Byrd

ORA, Suzi Digby
78:00
HWM 906102
De Monte+ Bray, L’Estrange, Panufnik, Park, Pott & Williams

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is the first in a series of discs which I am told will be released at a rate of two a year for five years. Each will feature a work by a Renaissance master, plus several choral works inspired by the Renaissance work in question and commissioned by ORA, a select choir which could equally be named The Usual Suspects. That flippantly said, the singers combine to create an ensemble which lives up to their reputations. They sensibly launch the series with what it says on the tin, a masterpiece by a master, Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices. No gems come more sparkling than this. The choir also sings two other works by Byrd: the famous Ave verum corpus from his first book of Gradualia  (1605) and the substantial unpublished Quomodo cantabimus  paired as is rather boringly usual on disc with Philippe de Monte’s companion piece Super flumina Babylonis.

The performance of the Mass itself is beautiful. Just occasionally in the longer movements one could perhaps wish for the balance to favour the inner parts a fraction more, and throughout Byrd’s contributions there were moments when a bit more pneumatic drill from the basses would have been welcome. Tempi just tip over into the brisk side. The corollary of this is that the interpretation misses that last elusive pinch of memorability. I should like to think that even if I had not initially known the identity of the performers, the recording of the Mass by The Choir of Westminster Cathedral (Hyperion CDA68038) would still have conveyed to me the profound aura of devotion, derived from their theological and liturgical engagement with the work, which radiates from this recording. From another perspective, the recording by Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi HMU 807572), although sung by musicians who seem to have been nurtured in the Anglican tradition, is nevertheless a profoundly thoughtful performance as devout in its own way as Westminster Cathedral’s. It is a complete pleasure to listen to the recording by ORA, and its beauty impacts powerfully, but is fractionally short of the profundity of those other two. Ever since the pioneering disc by King’s College Cambridge under David Willcocks, there have been some wonderful recordings of this work – the Elizabethan Singers on the old Saga label, and St John’s College Cambridge originally on the budget Classics for Pleasure to name but two contrasting versions – but as Suzy Digby remarks in her notes for the recording, we are in a glittering age of choral performing, and ORA’s version – alongside those other recent versions by Westminster Cathedral and Stile Antico – most effectively illustrate and confirm this with their recordings of Byrd’s Mass.

Furthermore, while ORA’s performances of Monte’s Super flumina  and Byrd’s Ave verum  are as good as that of the Mass, their version of Byrd’s Quomodo  has a good claim to be among the finest of the eight-and-counting now recorded, all of them by outstanding ensembles at the top of their respective games. Whereas some versions emphasize the massiveness of Byrd’s construction, or respond to the tension of the presumed subtext, or to the sheer virtuosity of the writing, ORA’s version possesses an airiness that sets it apart from the others, while not defaulting to blandness or mere beauty for its own sake, and is at the opposite pole from the slower, pensive, anxious and almost resigned interpretation which is one of the highlights on The Cardinall’s Musick Byrd Edition (disc 3 of 13, ASV CD GAU 179). This deserves to be a deciding factor for purchasers interested in a programme that combines a Renaissance classic with modern commissions which respond to it.

The majority of the half dozen pieces premiered on this disc do the old master proud. The composers were asked to set their own reactions to the individual movements of the Mass. Not all of the composers use the texts in their responses to Byrd’s settings, but Roxanna Panufnik does so in her Kyrie after Byrd, and produces a stunning piece that contains echoes of the music and momentum of the original, but which is a strikingly personal reaction to the text, subtly varying Byrd’s structure and exploiting the possibilities of a six-part choir (with an extra bass) both vertically and horizontally, in reduced and, especially, full scoring. Francis Pott has already established his Byrdian credentials in his excellent Mass for Eight Parts  and for his take on Byrd’s Gloria he sets Laudate Dominum. After an unpromising beginning, when I began to dread some bombastic pastiche, the work develops magnificently into a sustained emulation of Byrd’s intense creativity, its five parts sounding like more. Alexander L’Estrange’s text employs passages from the Credo beside excerpts from, amongst others, Byrd’s will and John Donne’s poem Show me, deare Christ  which gives the work its title. Regrettably this causes the work to lack cohesion and momentum, as does the use of several musical styles (besides bits of Byrd I detected moments of Monteverdi, though I do not know whether the composer intended this) and I am afraid my concentration began to wander before the middle of this piece. The title for the entire disc is provided by Owain Park’s Upheld by stillness, a setting of Kathleen Raine’s poem The word  responding to Byrd’s Sanctus. I really hate saying this about works by young aspiring musicians such as Alexander and Owain, but I feel much the same about the latter’s setting as I do about Alexander’s, and believe that both men could do with the musical equivalent of a good literary sub-editor to tell them where and how to take out the unnecessary, sluggish and, I am afraid, self-indulgent bits, because there are good passages within both pieces. Unfortunately the downsides are all too readily exposed by their proximity to the preceding pieces by Roxanna and Francis, and by Charlotte Bray’s Agnus Dei  in which the composer fearlessly follows Byrd’s structure but sings out with a confident individual voice, again exploiting polyphony and homophony while sustaining the narrative momentum which is always an essential element in Byrd’s own music. I do not know any more of Charlotte’s music (a situation I intend to rectify soon) but her curriculum vitae is evidence of an outstanding talent, a fact that I can well believe on the basis of hearing this beautiful and challenging response to one of Byrd’s greatest and most deeply felt pieces.

This level of modern creativity is sustained in the final piece on the disc, Ave verum corpus  re-imagined by Roderick Williams, which grabs one by the ears and the throat from the start, and continues with a steady momentum exploiting both massive homophony and ecstatic polyphony. It is a fine and striking work in its own right and, like the other new pieces by Roxanna, Francis and Charlotte, deserves to become a standard repertory item in both sacred and secular musical environments. All four are worthy of their original.

Even if one already possesses one or more versions of Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices  – and it is a work which invites and can bear any number of interpretations – it is well worth owning the disc under review, to hear the Mass in this accomplished performance by ORA in the company of some outstanding modern compositions which respond to it, with the bonus of Byrd’s best-known motet, plus one of the finest recordings of his increasingly popular large-scale unpublished masterpiece Quomodo cantabimus. Be tempted, give in.

Richard Turbet

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NOTE: As we received only a promotional copy, Richard has been unable to award stars for the contents of the booklet or the overall presentation of the finished product.