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In saeculum viellatoris: The Medieval Vielle

Baptiste Romain, Le Miroir de Musique
67:19
Ricercar RIC 388

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CD provides so much more than its title promises. In fact, it is a survey of medieval bowed instruments in general, but also a beautiful programme of songs and instrumental pieces from the 13th-15th century, mainly anonymous but some by named composers such as Perdigon, Ciconia and Dufay. Playing vielle, rubeba, crwth and bagpipes, and directing the ensemble Le Miroir de Musique, Baptiste Romain is the main focus for these performances, but the group also boasts three further vielle players as well as four fine singers. When three vielles, bagpipes and lute strike up in the anonymous Tenor “La belle”, the sound is stirring indeed, while Grace Newcombe’s singing in the opening track, the anonymous “Ar ne kuthe ich sorghe”, is beautiful, as is Paulin Bündgen’s languid countertenor contribution to Perdigon’s “Bele Ysabelot”. Béatrice Dunoyer supplies a lovely account of Dufay’s “La bellese siet au pié de la tour” and the concluding beautifully blended duet version of “Soyés loyal” from Grace Newcombe and Sabine Lutzenberger is a fitting way to complete this attractive programme. The performers display a wonderful musical instinct with repertoire which, in the wrong hands, can sound cold, abstract and distant, while a CD like this could so easily have been an academic introduction to long-dead instruments rather than the dynamic revelation that it is. The Miroir de Musique have brought this lovely repertoire vividly to life.

D. James Ross

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Basso ostinato: Passacaglias and chaconnes

Pieter-Jan Belder
77:58
Brilliant Classics 95656

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the course of this programme, Pieter-Jan Belder plays three modern copies of harpsichords by Giusti, Blanchet and Ruckers respectively, each producing a distinctive sound appropriate for the music he plays on it. We have a stimulating mix of familiar music by J. S. Bach, Purcell, Tomkins, Couperin and Frescobaldi, and unfamiliar works by less than well-known composers such as Giovanni Picchi, Louis Marchand, Antonio Soler, Bernardo Storace and Georg Muffat. There is something very reassuring about a repeating bass pattern, and by the middle of this CD I found myself well and truly in a chaconne groove – on a day which started badly when Morrisons changed its breakfast menu, it is good to know some things can be relied on. The inventive choice of basses, the imaginative variations set above them, and Belder’s expressive and highly rhetorical playing prevented any boredom setting in, and had ennui threatened, the inclusion of Soler’s flamboyant D minor Fandango would have headed it off at the pass. Technically assured and musically intelligent, Belder makes a reliable and authoritative guide through this interesting Baroque repertoire.

Brian Clark

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Dietrich Buxtehude: Sonates en trio – Manuscrits d’Uppsala

La Rêveuse, Florence Bolton, Benjamin Perrot
69:25
Mirare MIR 303

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith the exception of the opus 2 Sonata by Buxtehude, all the music on this CD is unpublished, preserved in the Düben Collection in Uppsala – Gustav Düben, a friend of Buxtehude, was an organist and court music director in Stockholm. On the disc we find BuxWV 272, a Sonata in A minor, BUXWV 273 (Sonata and Suite in B flat major), and BuxWV 267, a Sonata in D major for gamba, violone and continuo. In addition, there is an attractive Sonata and Suite in D major by Dietrich Becker and an anonymous Sonata and Passacaglia for solo gamba with continuo. This music provides a unique window into the musical world of late 17th- and early 18th-century Lübeck, with its clearly talented pool of gifted amateur string players for whom this music was apparently intended. The considerable demands of all of the music here suggests that the citizens of Lübeck put their long dark winter evenings to good use, practising their violins and gambas until they achieved an impressively virtuosic standard. La Rêveuse also demonstrate effortless virtuosity in their performances, which combine charm and genuine emotional impact. Düben may have been a court musician by profession, but his music collection was surely also intended for domestic use in performances in which he would have played keyboard continuo. Buxtehude, too, might well have played this and similar music with his more musically adept friends in Lübeck. This CD is wonderfully evocative of these delightful evenings of socializing and music-making.

D. James Ross

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Gabrieli for Brass: Venetian Extravaganza

Royal Academy of Music and Juilliard School Brass, Reinhold Friedrich
76:37
Linn CKD 581

[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]our enjoyment of this CD depends on the degree to which you crave authenticity. These are performances of music composed for sackbuts and cornetts around the beginning of the 17th century on modern brass instruments: valved trumpets and trombones. Given the change of medium, the trumpet players approach the cornett parts with integrity inasmuch as they decorate the lines with scampering passaggi, as would their cornettist forebears. The playing is wonderfully musical and impressive, with impeccable intonation and phrasing, and a wonderful depth of tone, while the fleet-of-lip trumpeters impress with their valved virtuosity. I found I couldn’t really settle to the overall sound and yearned for actual cornetts, but maybe that’s just me. Certainly, in addition to the expected Giovanni Gabrieli (including his stunning 1615 22-part Sonata XX), we have enterprisingly more unusual repertoire such as canzonas by Lappi, Frescobaldi and Massaino, a sinfonia by Viadana, and sonatas by Buonamente and Gussago. A delicate account on trumpets of Gabrieli’s Sonata con tre violini is unexpectedly charming, while the account of the 22-part Sonata, with which the CD ends, sounds – on the modern instruments – like Bruckner or Richard Strauss! It is good that these clearly gifted young brass get a taste of where their instruments’ repertoire started out from, and it is a mark of the superlative quality of the music of Giovanni Gabrieli and his contemporaries that it works so well on a parallel modern medium. And it has to be said that St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead provides a very good impression of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice!

Brian Clark

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Light Divine: Baroque music for treble and ensemble

The MIN Ensemble, Aksel Rykkvin treble, Mark Bennet Baroque trumpet, Lazar Militec director
63:47
Signum SIG CD 526

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]andel’s “Eternal Source of Light Divine” was catapulted to popular celebrity at the Royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The strikingly original opening movement to a Birthday Ode for Queen Anne, it relies for its success on a steady voice and controlled trumpet tone and both are wonderfully exemplified here. The boy treble, Aksel Rykkvin, has a beautifully pure tone, and if his boy’s lungs require refilling more often than an adult falsettist’s, he nevertheless achieves a lovely legato effect. Mark Bennet manages to match his vocal phrasing with a subtle and expressive Baroque trumpet tone. The MIN Ensemble uses a mixture of modern strings and period brass and continuo instruments but with modern oboes and bassoon, and I have to say I found the rich tone of the modern strings and the occasional post-Baroque habits of their players a little incongruous. However, the intriguing and imaginative choice of repertoire more than made up for this. Much of the music has been arranged by Bennet and fellow trumpeter Stian Aarekjold, but this has been achieved in a way which enhances the originals. Alongside unfamiliar Handel, we hear a series of arias and instrumental episodes by Rameau, as well as a Ciaconna by the Czech priest/composer Phillip Jakob Rittler and an aria by Albinoni. In the vocal music by Rameau, for which the trumpets largely fall silent, I felt we could have done with more in the way of vocal ornamentation – it is now widely agreed that the apparently long sustained vocal lines would have been encrusted with ornaments. I am a mug for anything with Baroque trumpets, but Bennet and his ‘second’, Simon Munday, produce a magnificent sound, while I also enjoyed hugely the voice of Aksel Rykkvin who, at the age of 15, is producing a wonderfully secure and mature sound and has mastered to an impressive degree the technical demands of Baroque vocal music.

D. James Ross

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Sibylla

Gallicantus, Gabriel Crouch
53:10
Signum SIG CD 520

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CD presents the remarkable music of Lassus’ Prophetae Sibyllarum interspersed with contemporary music written in response to it with a couple of chants by Hildegard von Bingen, slightly shoe-horned into the mix, by virtue of her epithet “the Sibyll of the Rhine”. The male-voice ensemble produces a warm and beautifully polished sound, and more importantly for highly chromatic music such as Lassus writes here, they have wonderful focus and pinpoint accurate intonation. Those not familiar with this rather visionary side of Lassus will be intrigued with the daringly exploratory writing style, similar to his Lagrime di San Pietro cycle and bordering on the uniquely strange world of Gesualdo. Wisely, though, the ensemble doesn’t just rely on the strangeness of this score, but work to find the music behind the notes, producing a genuinely moving performance of some of Lassus’ most heartfelt utterances. Is a well-known fact that Lassus suffered from sometimes crippling depression, suggesting bipolarity, and this strange, otherworldly music seems to touch on some of his lowest, darkest moods as well as episodes of sublime transcendence. Resulting from a project at Princeton University which also gave rise to the contemporary compositions, this CD is evidence of an intimate understanding of this challenging music and is as fine an account of the score as has been committed to CD to date. Particular plaudits are due to the group’s wonderfully clean-voiced countertenors, David Allsopp and Mark Chambers, and to baritone, Gabriel Crouch, who charts their intelligent and expressive route through the music while also holding one of the vocal lines.

Brian Clark

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Mr Handel’s Musicians

Benoît Laurent, Teatro del Mondo
63:22
Perfect Noise PN 1703

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his imaginative CD brings together music from the many musicians who worked with Handel in his long career in London. In the first half of the 18th century, London with its regular opportunities for public concert performances and lively operatic scene was a magnet for musicians from all over Europe, indeed it was this aspect of the metropolis which drew Handel in to begin with. We have music by Giuseppe St Martini (Sammartini), Gastrucci, Galliard and Loeillet, all of whom played under Handel’s direction in the opera orchestra at the King’s Theatre and by de Fesch, Babell, Caporale, Vincent, Cervetto and Bononcini, all of whom moved in Handelian circles in London. Benoît Laurent’s Baroque oboe tone is full and expressive, and he is ably supported by the Teatro del Mondo, members of whom take solo parts in some of the sonatas. Particularly fine is the Baroque cello playing of Marie Deller in sonatas by Bononcini and Galliard. It is not entirely clear from the notes, but she also seems to contribute some lovely recorder playing, particularly in an arrangement by Handel’s publisher Walsh of “Haste, haste” from Solomon and in de Fesch’s song, Polly, both for oboe, recorder and continuo. It is fascinating to hear the music which surrounded Handel and to note the amount of sheer talent which he could draw upon for performances of his own music. Much is made of the many vocal virtuosi he worked with, but we tend to overlook the fact that the instrumentalists must have been quite something too!

D. James Ross

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Jacques Arcadelt: Motetti, Madrigali, Chansons

Choeur de Chambre de Namur, Cappella Mediterranea, Doulce Mémoire
185:12 (3 CDs in a box)
Ricercar RIC 392

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a collection in three parts, with the motets sung by the Chamber Choir, the madrigals sung and played by the Cappella and the chansons by Doulce Mémoire. While I was aware of and have directed several of Arcadelt’s madrigals and chansons, I don’t think I have come across any of his motets, so it was with particular interest that I listened to them. Very smoothly crafted and with elegant part movement, they are very much the sort of sacred music one would expect from the composer of his secular music. Arcadelt was a Namur man, and the Chamber Choir de Namur appear to be at the root of this project, but it has to be said they struggle a little with the more complex passages in Arcadelt’s polyphony, particularly as they have recorded them in a rather resonant acoustic and use an organ accompaniment throughout. The music is nonetheless interesting, and the motets CD ends intriguingly with a couple of homages from Pierre-Louis Dietsch and Franz Liszt whose versions of Ave Maria based on Arcadelt’s music started the revival of interest in the composer’s own music. The Cappella Mediterranea’s beautiful account of the madrigals opens with Arcadelt’s lovely setting of Il bianco e dolce Cigno and they proceed to give us lovely accounts of a cross-section of his madrigals from several of his collections. The voices are supported severally by lute, guitar, harpsichord and organ. With the chansons CD, we come to the wonderfully professional Doulce Mémoire, whose energetic and characterful accounts of the chansons on a mixture of voices and instruments are perhaps the most successful part of this comprehensive collection. This three-CD collection performs a valuable service in drawing attention to the versatility of Jacques Arcadelt, and it was only when I came to listen to the chansons after the motets that I realised that the distinctive combination of highly animated lines combined with more sustained textures also occurs in his motets.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Hummel: Complete Piano Sonatas

Constantino Mastroprimiano
158:19 (3 CDs in a box)
Brilliant Classics 94378

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese six three-movement sonatas, along with an extra Finale movement in number 6 and a bonus Fantasino in C, are played by Constantino Mastroprimiano on a fortepiano by Urbano Petroselli after a 1790 Anton Walter original, with the later sonatas being played on an 1838 Erard. Ranging from the composer’s opus 2 a set of sonatas composed when he was just 14 to his opus 106 from around 1824, when he was 46, these pieces chart the development of his compositional skills up to his last decade. They also chart the dramatic changes which occurred in musical taste during this period – his opus 106, a ‘Grande Sonate Brillante’, is a work of fully fledged romanticism while his opus 2 had elements of the galante style. His pleasant opus 124 Fantasino on a theme from Mozart’s Die Hochzeit des Figaro and the dedication of his opus 13 to Haydn remind us of the musical circles that he moved in, and while he seems to me never quite to achieve the profundity of many of his greater contemporaries, you can hear elements particularly of Beethoven and perhaps even a hint of Chopin and Schumann in his piano textures. Constantino Mastroprimiano has a fine mastery of these works, although – whether due to microphone placement or the instrument itself – I feel that the Erard sounds a little fluffy, particularly in the opus 106 which could do with an altogether brighter instrument. Hummel himself owned and played an Erard, so perhaps he would disagree!

D. James Ross

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Recording

A Courtly Garland for Baroque Trumpet

Robert Farley, Orpheus Britannicus, Andrew Arthur
resonus RES10220

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CD of courtly music for Baroque trumpet accompanied by strings and/or organ features all the likely names – Viviani, Biber, Schmelzer, Fantini, Torelli – and a couple of unexpected ones such as Godfrey Finger, Andrea Grossi and Gottfried Reiche. There are also a couple of solo organ sonatas Pasquini and Frescobaldi played by Andrew Arthur. Clearly, this programme relies heavily on the merits of the soloist and fortunately these are many. Robert Farley has a radiant trumpet tone and his playing has an innate musicality, bringing out the full subtlety of movements which in the case of some of the early Baroque slow movements such as the Viviani are somewhat skeletal melodically. He is also a master of phrasing and dynamics, while introducing delicate ornaments and subtle trills as appropriate. The Sonata in C for trumpet, violin and continuo by Godfrey Finger turns out to be one I have performed on Baroque clarinet, and is a work of genuine originality and subtle beauty, powerfully brought out here by Robert Farley, with Theresa Caudle providing an eloquent account of the violin part. Perhaps the most striking music is by Biber – his Sonata a5 no. 4 in C, in which the strings play in a calm and sustained manner under the flamboyant trumpet part, before joining in the technical fireworks. This a lovely CD, thoughtfully programmed and beautifully executed.

D. James Ross

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