Categories
Recording

Platti: 6 Trio Sonatas for violin, violoncello and continuo

Armoniosa
64:40
MDG Scene 903 1978-6

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]everal previous encounters with the chamber works of Giovanni Benedetto Platti (c. 1697-1763) have a favourable impression fully confirmed by this new CD of trio sonatas. Born in the region of Padua, Platti was educated in Venice, where his father served as violist at San Marco. In 1722 he went with a group of Italian musicians to Würzburg, where he was offered a place in the service of the prince-bishop of Bamburg and Würzburg. On the archbishop’s death two years later the orchestra was disbanded but Platti managed to find employment with the archbishop’s brother in nearby Wiesentheid, where it seems most of his music was composed. After the court orchestra was re-formed in 1729 Platti returned to Würzburg, where he would remain until his death in 1763. There he came into contact with Tiepolo, who included Platti in one of his frescos forming a part of his re-decoration of the palace.

Platti composed 22 trio sonatas, of which the six performed here have been published. With the exception of the Sonata in C minor, WD 694 (the numbering comes from the Wiesentheid library that is home to Platti’s manuscripts), which has only three, all have four movements, including the odd one employing dance forms. They tend to strike a balance between older Baroque forms and newer galant  tendencies. Unsurprisingly it is the minor key works that are more likely to adopt the former, though the B-flat Trio ends with a well-worked fugue culminating in a particularly satisfying stretto. Arguably the most satisfying sonata is the G minor (WD 691), which opens with noble, flowing Largho (sic) with considerable contrapuntal intricacy, before proceeding to a terse Allegro making much play on imitative sequences, another Largho, a heart-easing movement with effective use of suspensions and a brisk finale not without some quirky moments to add spice. Also worthy of special note is the opening Adagio assai of the Sonata in D (WD 680), an expansive melody that sounds like a quasi-operatic aria. But Platti’s writing in general is highly accomplished and appealing. If there is a fault it is perhaps an over- reliance on sequences.

The performances by the Italian ensemble Armoniosa are very attractive, being accomplished technically, thoughtful and unfailingly musical. I was especially taken by the readings of some of the slower movements, where there is much affecting cantabile playing. Full marks, too, for the stylish ornamentation the players apply to repeats (most movements are binary form). One curiosity is the use of both harpsichord and organ as keyboard continuo at the same time, which presumably accounts for the thickening up of the bass texture. I write ‘presumably’ as it is difficult to tell just how much this happens, since the harpsichord is so backwardly balanced that it frequently cannot be heard. Still, this is a fine CD of music that is assuredly worth investigating.

Brian Robins

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Categories
Recording

Monteverdi: Madrigali, vol. 3 Venezia

Les Arts Florissants, Paul Agnew
74:44
Les Arts Florissants HAF 8905278

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the past couple of years I’ve twice experienced – the right word in this case, I think – the vocal ensemble from Les Arts Florissants performing selections of Monteverdi madrigals at the Ambronay Festival, the review of the 2015 concert being on this website. Remarkable above all for their sheer intensity and compelling commitment, I would count these among the very finest musical events I’ve attended in recent years. The Ambronay concerts were a spin-off from a complete cycle of the madrigals given in Paris, where a selection was recorded for release across three CDs. It can only be regretted that the whole cycle was not recorded, but we must be eternally grateful for what we do have.

This final volume is devoted to extracts from the culmination of Monteverdi’s path-breaking madrigal output. Nowhere of course does that description apply more than in these last books, Seven and Eight, the latter bearing the title Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi, published respectively in 1619 and 1638. In both, but above all in Book 8, we find Monteverdi breaking through any boundaries still remaining after the radical developments initially introduced in Book 4. Thus from Book 7 we have ‘Con che soavità’ and the famous ‘Lettera amorosa’, both solos rather than concerted madrigals, the first sung by Miriam Allan with perfect technique – gorgie  are splendidly articulated – and a mesmerizing, rapt sensuality that employs messa di voce  to stunning effect. The long love letter in the stile rappresentazione  is equally compelling, delivered by alto Lucile Richardot with absorbed and absorbing attention, the lines sustained by beautiful tone and insightful vocal acting. There are two lighter pieces here, too, the infectious ‘Chiome d’oro’, given a deliciously light touch by Allen and Mhairi Lawson, while in the hands of Allan and Paul Agnew the irresistible Ballo: Tirsi e Clori  exudes sweet pastoral charm in the early verses before the 6-part ensemble enters to carry the madrigal to an exuberant conclusion.

The madrigals of Book 8 are divided between those devoted to war and to those that concern love, the selection here starting off with the introductory ‘Altri canti d’Amor’ (Let others sing the sweet charms). The opening, sung with languorous flow, is harshly challenged by the superb bass Lisandro Abadie, his announcement that he will sing of ‘harsh encounters and daring battles’ introducing a fiercely virtuoso account of the remainder of the madrigal, in which Monteverdi employs the new concitato  style. The war part of the book is in fact as much metaphor for the war of love as literal, but in the final piece the two are combined in Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, effectually a chamber opera based on an episode from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata  that here comes to compelling dramatic life. The major weight of the work falls on the narrator (Testo), sung by Agnew. If his vibrato is occasionally a problem and I have heard the role more strongly projected, there is no doubting the interpretative insight and superbly rhetorical delivery Agnew brings to the role. He is excellently supported by Hannah Morrison and Sean Clayton in the relatively minor contributions given the protagonists, the former being intensely moving in her final dying words, delivered with a heartbreaking diminuendo.

Other extracts from Book 8 include the ravishingly lovely ‘Dolcissimo usignola’ and ‘Lamento de la ninfa’, a performance by Morrison, Agnew, Clayton and Cyril Costano of touching simplicity that goes straight to the heart, the inexorable ground bass relentlessly underpinning the misery of the abandoned nymph. A marvellous, life-enhancing CD of some of the greatest music the 17th century has to offer.

Brian Robins

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Categories
Book

Daniel R. Melamed, Hearing Bach’s Passions

Updated edition, OUP: 2016
204pp, £14.99
ISBN 978-0-19-049012-6 (paperback)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his indispensable handbook for all interested in performing, exploring and listening to Bach’s remaining Passions was first published in 2005. Now Daniel Melamed has revised and updated it in the light of recent research and some new discoveries, as well as the changing fashions in historically informed performance practice. Alongside up-to-date bibliographies and discographies, it has a set of tables in the back with the contents of the Good Friday Vespers in Leipzig in Bach’s time, the Passion repertory in Bach’s possession and a Calendar of all his known passion performances in Leipzig; there are lists of the vocal parts for the 1725 John, the 1736 Matthew and the anonymous Mark passion. There are lists of the various movements in the different versions of the Passion, including the Mark BWV 247 and the anonymous Luke BWV 246, and there are suggestions for further reading and a good index. All this makes this slender volume – 178 pages in all – an enormously useful guide to the issues around current research and performance.

Melamed’s Preface to this 2016 edition lists the new discoveries: a printed libretto for the ‘lost’ St Mark Passion BWV 247 of 1731 dated 1744, confirming that this Passion entered Bach’s repertoire and was not just a one-off; a Nuremburg publication of 1728 containing a number of church texts including a libretto that corresponds to the 1725 version of Bach’s St John Passion; and a libretto for a Leipzig performance directed by Bach of a poetic Passion by Heinrich Stölzel, containing no direct biblical text, but only a paraphrase on the lines of the Brockes passion set by Telemann and Handel amongst others. A Passion without the actual biblical text seems to have been frowned on in Leipzig.

He lists other important published sources, including the www.bach-digital.de website that reproduces most of the surviving autograph scores and parts, outlines the areas where research continues – in the connection between the Cöthen Funeral Music and the Matthew Passion, for example, and draws our attention to significant recent studies – Eric Chafe’s J. S. Bach’s Johannine Theology  (OUP, 2014) and John Butt’s Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity: Perspectives on the Passions  (CUP 2010) among them.

His introduction is impressively comprehensive: Melamed takes us through questions of performing forces, the liturgical context and the text of Bach’s Passions and then comes to the music itself and the way we hear it compared to Bach’s listeners. Novel to them would have been the recent Oratorio Passions, with their operatic sounding ariosos and arias. But while we can pretty accurately reconstruct the instruments and the size of both playing and singing groups, what can we discern about the ears through which these compositions were heard and the sound of those voices through which they were realised?

Part I rehearses the evidence for Vocal Forces in Bach’s Passions, and their numbers in relation to the instruments – still, in spite of the evidence marshalled by Joshua Rifkin and Andrew Parrott, a hotly contended issue – and follows this with a section on Singers and their Roles in the Passions. Melamed reminds his readers of the evidence for the size of the chorus, and of the nineteenth century origins of the tradition of performances with large choirs. He then helps his readers to step behind the modern operatic convention that one singer ‘represents’ a particular character and realize that Bach’s singers sing all the music in their voice-part, and so – like us – find themselves exposed to contradictory demands and emotions. This is important if listeners are to feel drawn into the liturgical action of the Passions and experience the challenges they pose, and not merely observe them from their seats as concertgoers. He also rehearses the diversity of practice between different performances, and asks why subordinate roles were sometimes given to the principal singer or to a ripienist  or even sometimes written in an entirely separate part – were these parts perhaps sung by an instrumentalist? We have no means of knowing, as each performance produced its particular revisions. Certainly my own conducting scores are littered with names of performers who took roles on different occasions, crossed or rubbed out when other singers’ names were inserted. This is a useful summary of the discussion that was generated first by John Butt in Bach’s Dialogue with Modernity  (CUP 2010), who has put into practice much of what we know about the place of the Passions in the liturgical life of the worshippers in Leipzig in the first third of the eighteenth century in his recording with his Dunedin Consort of the St John Passion in 2012/3 (LINN CKD419).

Part II is headed: Passions in Performance, and devotes a chapter to each of the Matthew, John and Mark Passions. The focus of that on the Matthew is: Is Bach’s St Matthew Passion really for double chorus and orchestra? To which his answer seems to be both yes and no. In some ways I find this a less satisfactory chapter, though its fuller form published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2004, vol. 57, no. 1 is more persuasive. Unlike other chapters, it does not seem to me to address the essential question that those who listen to or perform the Matthew need to grapple with. For me, that question is not about the two cori and whether they have independent or merely intertwined lines: several of the motets are in two choirs, and there are those cantatas like BWV 67, Halt im Gedächtnis, which have a Vox Christi responding to disciples or some other form of one against three like Eilt, eilt  in the John Passion. Nor does Melamed refer to Peter Seymour’s recording with the Yorkshire Bach Soloists of the early version of the Matthew with its single continuo line (Signum SIGCD 385) as I imagine that his revised book was already with the publisher before Seymour’s recording was published.

The Matthew is nowhere as dramatic as the John in its setting of the biblical narrative, but the quality of the melodic material in the ariosos and arias has an instinctive appeal. In a work where each singer covers many different roles, how does the principle, enunciated by Luther in his sermons on the Passion in 1519 and 1521, that it is wrong to blame others – the Jews or Judas – for the death of Christ as we are all we are fallen sinners so corporately responsible, work out in practice for the listeners – the congregation? The more pressing question for me about the Matthew is how Bach works with the two cori, a step beyond the single coro with the additional four ripienists of the John, to help us understand the theology of Matthew’s passion narrative and develop our reflection on it. In other words, how does the dramatic interplay between the ‘Daughter of Zion’ (coro I) and the ‘Believers’ (coro II) contribute both musically and theologically to the evolving work?

The Chapter on the John Passion is called Which St John Passion BWV 245: What do we do when a composition survives in several versions? Here we are on ground that performers have been grappling with for some time, and where the questions of how a ripieno group or second coro was used seem relatively clear: you cannot perform Mein teurer Heiland  without a second bass singer, and ripieno parts for all four voices survive, making it clear that the St John Passion was performed by eight singers in the coro.

What is more complex is to establish with some clarity just which of the four known versions any one performance will follow. Clearest is the second, from 1725, because it is from this version that the bulk of the surviving parts date. But that is also the least typical, with a large number of substitutions of different arias, choruses and chorales steering the work in a more apocalyptic theological direction, made perhaps to distinguish the work from the previous year’s performance. In the third version from around 1732, Bach restored a good deal of the material from 1724, though he substituted muted violins and a keyboard for the violas d’amore and lute of 1725 in Betrachte  and Erwege, and in this version, Ach, mein Sinn  and Zerfließe  had a substitute aria and an instrumental sinfonia respectively, both of which are now lost. For the final revision in 1749, there was a more wholesale return to the earliest version musically with only slight tweaks musically, but this time the rather striking imagery in the text of a number of the arias was toned down in a more rationalistic manner, and we can only imagine what theological controversies or undercurrents may have provoked this. Again, what developing theological understanding of his own might lie behind Bach’s changes? We cannot know, and can only surmise from the textual history.

The third chapter in this section is called A St Mark Passion Makes the Rounds: What should we make of the eighteenth-century practice of reworking passion settings for performances in various times and places? This section is on how working church musicians like Bach used and adapted other people’s work to fulfil a liturgical requirement, when there was not the reverence that would now be felt for the integrity of a composer’s composition. The working example is the St Mark Passion that was long thought to be by Reinhard Keiser, and first surfaces in a performance in 1707 at Hamburg. Some arias in a more Italianate style were added to this Passion – these were  by Keiser – before this bundle reached Bach for the first of his performances of it somewhere in Weimar between 1711 and 1714. In making a set of parts, Bach seems to have added a couple of arias of his own. This was the Passion that he performed in his third year in Leipzig, in 1726, and at least again in the 1740s for which a number of further arias were added from Händel’s Brockes passion, as evidenced by the very few parts that survive from that revision, prompting Melamed to conjecture that someone somewhere is sitting on the surviving set! What these substitutions and borrowings show is that Bach was adapting other people’s material, but with each revision making it closer to the theological conception behind his own setting of the Mark Passion, to which he turns next.

In Parody and Reconstruction: The St Mark Passion BWV 247, the question he asks is Can the eighteenth century practice of reusing vocal music help us recover a lost Passion setting by Bach? Here there are two examples: first the extensive parodying of the Matthew Passion and the Trauerode  in 1729 to produce the funeral music for Prince Leopold in Cöthen. Those familiar with Andrew Parrott’s 2004 reconstruction and have had the opportunity to compare that with Morgon Jourdain’s more recent version by the Ensemble Pygmalion under Raphäel Pichon will have seen the ‘restorer’s’ skills at work. The second is the St Mark Passion which we know that Bach presented on Good Friday 1731, and we can reconstruct some of it, because the libretto survives in a collected publication of Picander’s – Bach’s favourite librettist’s – verse published in 1732. To use the rhythms of Picander’s verse to recover suitable music is sometimes easier, and the Trauerode  seems again a likely source for at least the opening and closing choruses. The chorales too can mostly be traced in Bach’s extensive oeuvre. Arias can sometimes conjecturally be matched, but the ariosos and the recitative carrying the narrative never. So he concludes that all the versions – and there are several by reputable conductors – are ersatz, and at best can be no more than a modern pastiche in the eighteenth-century tradition. I think that this is right, and have never felt able to present one of these versions, as they have never seemed to me to be what it says on the tin.

Where does that leave Melamed with the Luke Passion to which the nineteenth century editors of the BG confidently assigned the number BWV 246? Clear for internal reasons and from what we can discern about the music’s transmission that it cannot be genuine Bach, and uncertain as to whether it was ever performed by Bach, Melamed concludes that it will be its fate to be Bach and Not Bach forever.

While it is good to be reminded of the reception history of these imperfect works, my take on this guide is that it is those performance issues that surface in the earlier part of the book that are the most useful practically to performers and listeners alike. Other performance issues that might have deserved a mention include the use of the harpsichord, the pitch of the violone, the use of the Bassono Grosso in the 1749 revision of the John – does it really mean what we mean by a Contra-bassoon, or was it used more as the wind equivalent of a G violone? – and the pitch and temperaments of the organ(s). Another table might have given the ranges of the voice-parts in the various Passions, including the bit-parts.

But performers and listeners alike will learn something they did not know from this brief work, and the publishers should be congratulated on this revision and reprint.

David Stancliffe

Categories
Recording

Discovering the Piano

Linda Nicholson reproduction 1730 Cristofori-Ferrini pianoforte
71:39
Passacaille 1024
Music by Alberti, Giustini, Handel, Paradisi, Platti, D. Scarlatti & Soler

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is not clear whether the ‘discovering’ of the title relates to the early days of the piano or to the specific instrument used for this splendid CD. The latter is certainly something of a discovery for at least this listener. I imagine most readers of EMR will be aware that the piano was the invention of Bartolomeo Cristofori somewhere around 1690. During the first two decades of the 18th century his invention gradually became established and known in musical circles; after his death in 1732, building continued under his assistant and eventual successor, Giovanni Ferrini. The present recital is played on a copy by Denzil Wraight of an instrument built by Ferrini in 1730. There is an excellent introduction to it by Wraight in the booklet. It was once owned by Queen Maria Barbara of Spain, who bequeathed it to the great castrato Farinelli, it apparently becoming his favourite instrument. There is therefore a direct link to the Domenico Scarlatti and Soler sonatas included on the present CD.

Like other Cristofori pianos I’ve heard, this example is distinguished by its rounded warmth of tone and richness of bass, which – as the Scarlatti Sonata in G, K.547 amply demonstrates – can take on a chunky meatiness when required. Again, as is customary with Cristofori, there is an overall unity to the sound across the gamut, quite different to the deliberate contrast of tonal colours found in later fortepianos.

The repertoire chosen by Linda Nicholson to show off the instrument is an interesting collection that with one exception was composed relatively shortly after the ‘birth’ of the instrument. The exception is of course Handel, the well-known Suite in F (HWV 427) having been published in a set of eight in 1720. Nicholson mounts a convincing argument that Handel was almost certainly aware of Cristofori’s instruments, which he would have met with during his sojourn in Italy, conjecturing that the ‘cembalo’ part of the famous competition with Domenico Scarlatti may even have been played on the Cristofori owned by Cardinal Ottoboni. The works by the lesser-known composers, a Sonata in G minor of 1732 by Ludovico Giustini, one of the first works specifically written for the piano, two-movement sonatas by P. D. Paradisi and Alberti, and Platti’s Sonata in G minor, op 1, no. 4, all occupy mid-century galant territory to a greater or lesser degree, all sounding thoroughly idiomatic on this Cristofori-Ferrini.

That they do is in no small measure due to the performances of Linda Nicholson. Never one to seek celebrity status, Nicholson has nevertheless long been one of our finest early keyboard players. Here her playing is informed by clean, precise fingerwork and a technique capable of encompassing the most virtuosic passagework, as she demonstrably proves in the Presto e alla breve (II) from the Platti sonata, to cite but one example. But above all it is the sheer musicality of Nicholson’s playing that makes the CD such a joy. Tempos throughout are beautifully judged, rubato is judiciously employed and there is a sensitivity and unfailing response to the instrument’s characteristics and capabilities. I’ll restrict myself to a single, but exceptional example, Scarlatti’s Sonata in B minor, K. 87). Here the nocturnal mystery of the piece attains a magically intimate quality, the playing perfectly weighted and dynamically graded to produce a performance of compelling sensitivity. There is much else that could be written in similarly glowing terms, but I’d rather urge readers to discover this exceptional disc for themselves.

Brian Robins

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Categories
Recording

Cavalli: Requiem

Ensemble Polyharmonique, Alexander Schneider
56:08
Raumklang RK3601
+ Motets by Alessandro Grandi

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n his death in 1667, Francesco Cavalli left behind an eight-part Requiem as well as instructions on how it ought it feature in his funeral service. It is like something out of the plot of Amadeus, but in fact it was not unusual for composers to write their own musical envoi. It certainly guaranteed that the music was generally of the highest quality, as they assembled all the skills they had accrued throughout their lives for this one last attempt at immortality. Certainly Cavalli’s serene and exquisite Requiem  – firmly in the stilo antico  – has this definitive feel about it. Cavalli’s instructions call upon the entire instrumental and vocal forces which could be mustered by San Marco in Venice, where he was working, a vast army including no less than three organists.

By contast, singing one to a part with minimal instrumental support in the form of arpa doppia, viola da gamba and organ, the singers of the Ensemble Polyharmonique nonetheless give a passionate and moving account of Cavalli’s music, interweaving motets by his older compatriot Alessandro Grandi into a powerful programme. It would be wonderful some time to hear the work given an epic performance such as its composer envisaged. The recent spotlight that has been turned on Cavalli’s church music has revealed a composer as skilled in this sphere as he was in the realm of opera, and this Requiem  is every bit as fine as the Missa concertata and vespers music which have featured on recent CDs.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

In nomine: Enfers et Paradis…

dans le paysage musical européen autour de 1600
Les Harpies
65:10
Encelade ECL1502

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he star of this CD is undoubtedly the Renaissance organ of Saint-Savin in Lavedan, which not only offers the aural treat of a kaleidoscopic variety of quite extreme stops and nightingale song, but also we are assured the visual treats of grotesque masks with sprung eyes and jaws all operated by the organist. I recall seeing a Baroque organ in Germany where trumpet-playing angels not only raised their trumpets to support the instrument’s trumpet stop, but also clapped their wings to thunderous effect, and this explains the loud extraneous noises during the organ items here, which I originally assumed to be rather random percussion. Built in 1557, this extraordinary instrument has now been restored to its original condition complete with the features I have mentioned as well as trompe l’oeils  of the saints. Surely there is a message here for the church of today concerned at dramatically falling numbers of church-goers! Famous for their iconoclastic and energetic performances, Les Harpies and guest Harpie, Matthieu Boutineau, with Le Choeur des Huguenots take us on a colourful tour of music from around 1600 with often only tenuous connections with their stated themes. But who cares! This is highly entertaining stuff, presented inventively and imaginatively, and played and sung with engaging panache and honesty. And Saint-Savin-en-Lavedan is now firmly on my holiday checklist! For organ nerds, full details of the restoration projects which have brought the organ back to its current rude health as well as details of its stops are included, and for once I can begin to share in their enthusiasm.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Amante Franzoni: Vespers for the Feast of Santa Barbara

Accademia degli invaghiti, Concerto Palatino, Francesco Moi
63:04
Brilliant Classics 95344

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]mante Franzoni, a contemporary of Claudio Monteverdi, worked as a composer and musician for the Gonzaga family in Mantua, and the present recording is a reconstruction of Vespers for the Feast of Santa Barbara, using Franzoni’s choral settings, instrumental inserts and relevant plainchant. The performers give a nod in the direction of Franzoni’s more illustrious contemporary by opening the proceedings with Monteverdi’s familiar setting of Domine ad adiuvandum  featuring the famous Orfeo  toccata. This invites a comparison between Franzoni’s music and Monteverdi’s, and throughout the service we are treated to music for cori spezzati, smaller groups and instruments which is certainly in the same league as Monteverdi. Given the fact that Franzoni spent his whole working life in the employ of the wealthy and demanding Gonzaga family, we should hardly be surprised at the high quality of his music, and it is perhaps a result of the prominence of Monteverdi that the likes of Franzoni have been overlooked. There is some lovely singing and playing on this CD, although occasionally a little more passion would have helped things on their way. Apart from the fact that the recording was made in 2010 in Mantua, we are given no details of the recording venue, and to my ears a little bit more resonance would have given Franzoni’s music more of an epic sound such as it would have had in Mantua’s Basilica of Santa Barbara where Franzoni worked. I know of at least one attempt to present Monteverdi’s Vespers music in the context of a service for Saint Barbara, and it is encouraging to see this Italian ensemble exploring the music of a relatively unknown master rather than just giving us yet another account of the Monteverdi.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Fasolo: Annuale Opera Ottava, Venezia 1645

Luca Scandali, Bella Gerit
76:35
Tactus TC590701

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]asolo’s Annuale Opera Ottava is essentially a handbook for organists offering music appropriate for services throughout the year. The present CD offers liturgical reconstructions, ordinary and propers, for three types of mass: the Missa in Dominicis diebus, the Missa in duplicibus diebus  and the Missa Beatae Mariae Virginis. Fasolo’s music, played by Luca Scandali on a characterful 1547 organ by Luca di Bernardino in the Chiesa di San Domenico in Cortona, alternates with appropriate chant sung by the Ensemble Bella Gerit. The main star of the CD is the venerable 16th-century organ, which offers an intriguing range of stops. It is imaginatively presented by Luca Scandali, who manages to entice the most gentle and almost strident sounds from the instrument. The chant is beautifully unanimous, and has the pleasant detachment of working clergy perhaps almost over-familiar with its phrases. The only slight fly in the ointment is the audible difference in background sound as we switch from organ solo to the voices and back again – clearly the two were recorded separately and edited together. Fasolo’s publication appeared in the wake of Frescobaldi’s much more famous Fiori Musicali  of 1635, but in its subtle differences from it suggests that local liturgical traditions and musical practices were still very much respected. Rather than pick a publication like Frescobaldi’s off the shelves, at least some local organists decided to compile rival publications in imitation but reflecting their own specific talents and the traditions within which they operated.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Classical Vienna: Music for Guitar & Piano

James Akers romantic guitar, Gary Branch fortepiano
67:47
resonus res10182
Music by Carulli, Diabelli, Giuliani & Moscheles

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his charming CD takes us evocatively into the Viennese salon of the early 19th century with a programme of domestic repertoire for guitar and fortepiano. It is a genre of which I was hitherto completely ignorant, and the surprise is how well the sounds of period fortepiano and romantic guitar blend, a powerful argument if such needs to be made for the correct use of period instruments. This might incidentally be the moment where I lament the demise of the Finchcocks Museum, where this recording was made, making it the last in a noble tradition. Knowing nothing of the circumstances, I feel that its almost unique assemblage of period keyboard should perhaps be the sort of resource that should be saved for the nation. The 1826 Conrad Graf fortepiano featured here offers a delightful range of tone qualities, while James Akers’ original 1820 Saumier guitar and a 2015 Panormo copy have a distinctive and gentle timbre. Incidentally both the fortepiano and the guitars also get a chance to shine in solo repertoire. With the exception of Diabelli (he of the variations) and the ubiquitous Moscheles, who seems to have sat at the centre of music-making in this era like a spider at the centre of a Europe-wide web, the other two composers represented, Ferdinando Carulli and Mauro Giuliani, are unfamiliar. Their music is jaunty and tuneful rather than profound, but understandably this was the sort of repertoire the Viennese who attended operettas and waltzed the night away at the city’s year-round balls wanted to play and hear in their drawing rooms. As in previous programmes, James Akers demonstrates great musicality and an awesome technique, while his partner Gary Branch handles the various features of the Graf fortepiano with panache, making it sing beautifully or almost whisper depending on the requirements of the music. The intimate acoustic of Finchcocks is probably just right for this repertoire, and if you feel rich enough you can plan your own concerts and recordings there as the property is currently for sale.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Beneath the Northern Star

The rise of English polyphony 1270-1430
The Orlando Consort
72:13
CDA 68132
Alanus, Byttering, Chirbury, Damett, Dunstaple, Excetre, Gervays, Power & anon

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]etting aside my objection to the ‘Northern Star’ reference – there was ground-breaking polyphony of superlative quality being composed at this time further north in the British Isles – this CD is a useful look at the roots of English polyphony. It throws a new spotlight on some unfamiliar and mainly anonymous English music from the period immediately prior to the Old Hall Manuscript, although the notes are vexingly vague about the sources of this earliest repertoire.

I have often had reservations about the sound the Orlando Consort produces, and here too particularly with the earliest repertoire there is an annoying degree of vibrato in the inner voices, while the music seems to be divided between ‘sweet’ music, which receives gentle performances, and ‘lively’ music, which is given altogether rougher treatment. There are entire pieces here where the blend is never truly established, and I find it hard to tolerate this, let alone begin to enjoy it. Having said that, there is a general clarity of articulation and a pleasing parity of balance in more animated sections. With the slightly later repertoire from Old Hall onwards, the situation is generally happier, and the expected music of Power and Dunstaple is complemented with less familiar repertoire by Byttering, Gervays, Damett and Alanus. This is an informative survey of the roots of English polyphony, but to judge it at the highest level, I do have reservations about some of the performances. I know that the Orlando Consort has a dedicated and enthusiastic following, and their fans will not hesitate to invest in this CD, and a fair proportion of the works here are simply not available elsewhere.

D. James Ross

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