Category: Recording

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Buxtehude: Membra Jesu nostri

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The Chapel Choir of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Orpheus Brittanicus, Newe Vialles, directed by Andrew Arthur
70:17
Resonus RES 10238

It is often the context of the music-making that distinguishes its character, and the near ideal conditions of a choir of young singers (helped by performing in the excellent acoustic of Jesus College) together with a quintet of singers who share that background and the strings, lute and keyboard of Orpheus Britannicus, joined by the Newe Vialles viol consort in the subdued Part 6 (Ad Cor) provide a very coherent group of musicians for this tense, yet restrained masterpiece of early German Baroque oratorio.

I admire the overall sound – there are no prima donnas here, nor the sense that this is just another routine performance. The intensity of it all is maintained by the experienced and capable direction of Andrew Arthur, as is the sense of the different chori – well laid out in the structure of the work as it is in the performance. His scholarly and helpful essay is a key element in the liner notes, revealing where and how Anders von Düben transcribed this work from its tablature original of 1680 into staff notation. This is complemented by a revealing note on the Latin text by Francis Basso, which is then given with an English translation. Details of pitch, instruments and tuning complete a model booklet.

The major decision for anyone directing Membra Jesu nostri is whether to use single voices throughout or to use a choir as well as a group of solo singers. Using a choir of bright, young voices and placing the instruments and single voices in the foreground gives a good balance and a clean distinction between the two vocal groups. The choir sings with conviction and clarity, no individual voices stand out to spoil the cohesion and they reflect their director’s precision and their regular experience of singing in the small Chapel at Trinity Hall. This is ideal.

The singers charged with solo lines sing well with each other in the duet and trio sections while retaining their own individuality. Nicholas Mulroy’s distinctive voice never has to over-sing, and Daniel Collins is a good match for him in tone and intensity. His leading of the almost Purcellian moments with their tightly wrought suspensions like the trio sections towards the end of Ad Manus (which were given to the solo singers, unlike the SSA passage at the opening of the final tutti section: I love it, but why?) gave these moments a richness that made me wonder about using the choir at all: the ATB sound is so rich! It was perfect in sit tamen gustatis in Ad pedes, the first number where the choir is tacet. To hear Reuben Thomas on his own you have to wait for Ave verum templum Dei where he sings with the strings – the effortlessness of his bottom notes is miraculous.

Eloise Irving, the first soprano, sings beautifully, with a clarity and grace to which Charlotte Ives responds with a warmer tone; in the duet and trio sections, the contrasting tone colour (unlike the identical tone of S1 and S2 in the choir) offers a genuine contrast, and helps colour the words, which all five solo singers enunciate with exemplary clarity. The choir might have copied this – especially in the homophonic quasi-parlando sections – to advantage. The obvious benefit of a many-voices choir is demonstrated in the long, seamless, fluid lines of the final Amen.

The strings are perfect: I have never heard the Sonata in tremulo in Ad Genua so beautifully detailed by the violins, and the reedy quality of the bass violin is a perfect complement in this music. Their wonderful relaxed cross rhythms in the opening to Ad Latus are a model for how to play this brief sonata.

The viols in Ad Cor made a dark contrast, introducing the SSB vocal complement for this number with its rich chromatic suspensions and a piano end like BWV 106. Their reedy tone is not dissimilar to the sudden change to a regal and trombones in the underworld in L’Orfeo. There is such wonderful variety of mood and expression in this pioneering work, and we should be glad that it has received such skilled and musical a treatment. If you want a recording to complement a six-voice performance, I recommend this CD wholeheartedly; and in its own right it is a fine advertisement for this director and his college choir.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Mozart, Beethoven: Quintets for piano and winds

Pink chrysanthemum

Ensemble Dialoghi
51:08
harmonia mundi musicque HMM 905296
K452, Op. 16

It is not often possible to place similar works by Mozart and Beethoven side by side and unequivocally assert that the Mozart is the greater, but for all the prevarication of the notes accompanying this new coupling it does apply to the E-flat quintets for piano and wind (oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon). There is, of course, a reason. While the Beethoven is a relatively early work, composed in 1796 (the year before the C-major Piano Concerto), the Mozart dates from his high maturity, 1784, a period during which he was composing the six great string quartets dedicated to Haydn. Indeed, in an oft quoted passage from a letter to his father Leopold, Mozart wrote that at its first performance the quintet ‘called forth the very greatest applause: I myself consider it the best work I have ever composed’.

While we must probably allow for the understandable enthusiasm of the moment in this verdict, the quintet is a work of sublime qualities that surely unquestionably acted as the inspiration and model for Beethoven’s work a dozen years later. Not only is the key and layout of each work the same, with three movements, the first of which opens with a slow introduction, but there are also thematic similarities between the two works. Yet Beethoven at the age of 26 was already very much his own man and there are also significant differences between the two, which can immediately be heard in the contrasts between the two slow introductions, where Beethoven gives us an improvisatory, fantasia like preamble introduced by hunting calls that differs significantly from Mozart’s more structured opening. The latter, at once more contrapuntal and already reaching for the sublime by the time we reach the wind’s imitative descending figure (ff bar 9), transports us to quite a different world. As do the slow movements. Beethoven’s Andante cantabile is based on a song-like theme introduced by the piano, continuing as a quasi-rondo with concertante opportunities for the four wind instruments in the course of its dreamily romantic discourse. Mozart’s Larghetto is again more highly structured, its translucent theme given to the wind to instigate an exploration of dynamics and colour, much of it over the piano’s bed of arpeggiated figuration.

It is, I think, the greater directness of the Beethoven that for me makes its performance by the Barcelona-based Ensemble Dialoghi the more satisfying of the two. But there is no doubting that this fine group of players, all members of leading European period instrument orchestras, are technically outstanding and have obviously worked hard to achieve an excellent balance. That is no easy matter in such works, though it does help to have a fortepiano, here a copy of a Viennese instrument made Walter’s firm around 1800, which in the hands Cristina Esclapez produces some beguiling tone in quieter passages. This is especially notable in the beautiful playing of the lovely Beethoven central movement mentioned above. If I’m a little less happy about the Mozart it is because I don’t find the Dialoghis make enough of Mozart’s often extremely subtle dynamic contrasts. Again we can turn to the central Larghetto for an illustration: The first wind motif marked p is immediately answered by a more assertive f for full ensemble before continuing with a dialogue between piano and wind again marked p. Yet we hear little of those contrasts here or throughout the movement, where tension built and released through crescendos answered by piano is too often ironed out by uniformity.

This perhaps sounds hypercritical and many listeners will probably not share my concerns, but I feel there is more to the Mozart than is revealed here. Notwithstanding, there can be no gainsaying the expertise and general musicality of these engaging performances, which have been very well recorded. The notes – which include a somewhat pretentious and unnecessary ‘hypothetical narrative’ for both works – are unusually extensive.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Bach: Concertos for Organ and Strings

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Les Muffatti, Bart Jacobs
79:59
Ramée RAM1804

This is an interesting and beautifully produced CD, combining three elements: ingenious scholarship, a fine organ and excellent playing.

First, what are these organ concertos by Bach? There are none – or rather, none that survive in that precise form. But both Bart Jacobs the organist and Christof Wolff the scholar have hit on the same supposition: that the concert Bach gave on the new Silbermann organ in the Sophienkirche in Dresden in 1725, where a newspaper review says that Bach ‘performed various concertos with sweet underlying instrumental music’, might well have contained movements drawn from earlier instrumental concerti composed at Köthen and Weimar, some of which have survived in later concerti for harpsichord; and another potential source could be movements that found a home in the series of cantatas written in 1726 that feature the organ as a solo instrument either in a concerto-like sinfonia or sometimes as a melodic alternative to a wind instrument in arias. So the prime source for quarrying these ‘concertos for organ and strings’ are the church cantatas BWV 169, 40, 146, 188, and 35; with sinfonias from BWV 156, 75, 29 and 120a. There are just four movements drawn from harpsichord or violin concertos in addition, and some of this assemblage has been transposed up or down a tone to help it fit a group of movements.

Second, this CD was recorded using the fine Thomas organ in the church in Bornem, not far from the Thomas organ-building works in Southeastern Belgium.  This ingenious instrument, after the organ for Rötha near Leipzig that Silbermann built in 1721/2 and which must have been known to Bach, offers a system of jeux baladeurs – a number of ranks that can be played by transmission on more than one key- or pedal-board. Its position on the floor of the north transept allows the 3.3.2.1.1 strings and harpsichord to group around it easily and ensures a unanimity between organ and instruments that is rare – though perhaps unsurprising in view of Bart Jacobs impressive playing in the CD of Bach Cantatas produced under the title Actus Tragicus with Vox Luminis in 2017. A description and full specification together with detailed registration is included, and I can vouch for the quality of the instrument and the excellence of the acoustic as I played it in 2014. I particularly liked the registration for the slow movements incorporating the 8’ Dulcian, the languid tremulant and the versatile Nasat. 

Third, the quality of playing, the balance between the instruments and the apt registration are splendid. The organ is not over-strident, and the registrations provide both blend and clarity: no wonder Bach must have prized Silbermann’s instruments. The only drawback is that the organ’s pitch of A=440 Hz means that no wind instruments playing at 415 can be included, which were a feature of a good number of the cantata movements. And the use of the organ pedal 16’ from time to time seems plausible, though the string 16’ is a robust contrabasso rather than an edgy violone. But that aside, I find the arrangements and performance highly convincing and entirely in the style and spirit of Bach’s own multiple borrowings and rearrangements. I recommend this novel and delightful performance and hope that Bart Jacobs will publish his versions so that others can play them.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: Chorale Partitas BWV 766-768, 770

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Stephen Farr
55:46
resonus RES10234

Stephen Farr, whose scholarship and playing are of equal excellence, has produced another fine CD in his explorations of Bach’s lesser known works. He produced a CD of the Clavier-Übung III on the Metzler organ in Trinity College, Cambridge which I reviewed for the EMR in June 2016, and enjoyed greatly.

This time it is the four Chorale Partitas, which he plays on a Bernard Aubertin house organ of 2015 in Fairwarp, East Sussex. There are photographs of Aubertin’s instrument, and the full specification and details of the registration for each of the 38 tracks of these four works.

It is a treat to have sensitive and intelligently registered performances of these works, which are probably among Bach’s earliest to survive. They are modelled on the style of Chorale Partitas popularised by Georg Böhm and Johann Pachelbel in the generation before Bach, and probably date from his time at Arnstadt (1703 -1707), or even possibly when he was at the Michaelisschule in Lüneburg from 1700 to 1703 where Böhm was organist at the Johanniskirche and taught the young Bach.

Farr’s sensitive registration and neat playing gives us a well-judged balance and tonal variety – I like for example his use of a 4’ flute for Partita VI of Christ, der du bist der helle Tag, followed by the full chorus on the Positif, with the 8’ Trompette on the Grand Orgue coupled to the Pedal for the final partita (tracks 16 & 17). Overall the registration gives us the benefit of a small-scale organ in a domestic acoustic so that we can hear the complex figuration combined with occasional flashes of a grander sound for the culminating partitas. The elegance of registration (with a soft reed (the Voix Humaine) in the LH) of Partita VI followed by the rhythmically complex Partita VII (my favourite of all) in O Gott, du frommer Gott is beautifully balanced.  This fine judgement is especially evident in the final Partitas with their complex part-writing at the end of Sei gegrüßet.

Both the choice of instrument and the playing are highly commendable, and the sense of relaxed control, where tempi and articulation match each other excellently, make this a splendid performance. The notes provided by David Lee and the details of the organ are excellent as well: Resonus produce finer liner notes than many of their glossier (and more expensive) rivals.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Giacomo Facco : Master of Kings

Turino, Boix, Matsuoka
51.03
Cobra 0063

One of the myriad Italian composers who travelled throughout Europe in the first half of the 18th century, Giacomo Facco seems to have specialised in music for and featuring the cello. The present recording alternates cantatas for soprano and continuo from throughout his life with three of his Sinfonias for solo cello. If Eugenia Boix’s singing in the cantatas occasionally sounds a little detached emotionally, it is always technically impeccable, while cellist Guillermo Turino and harpsichordist Tomoko Matsouka provide a wonderfully imaginative continuo support. The Sinfonias for cello and continuo are to my ear more musically interesting, and are beautifully played by Turino and Matsouka. Most intriguing is the Spanish cantata Cuando en el Orient, dating from Facco’s years in Madrid, which is in a markedly more advanced melodic style than the other cantatas and which features a prominent obligato cello part throughout. It is always fascinating to see a spotlight shone on an individual composer, who represents the lives and work of so many, whose reputations and compositions have sunk into obscurity. Facco’s mature work is as good as anything being composed in Europe at the time, and it is a shame to think that it has been squeezed out of the familiar canon.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli : Sonate, Roma 1669

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Opera Quinta
61:29
Tactus TC 621602

This collection of 17th-century instrumental music provides a cross-section on strings, continuo and percussion of dances from Mealli’s 1669 publication. Like most of these dance collections, Mealli’s is pleasantly melodic and rhythmically engaging – it has to be said that the present performance is a little rough around the edges, over-resonant in its recording and uncomfortably dominated for no particular reason by a bewildering variety of percussion instruments. The brief episodes where the percussion drops out and the strings are more clearly heard are the most effective parts of this account. The effectiveness of the package is also not helped by the almost unintelligible English translation of Fabrizio Longo’s programme note – it looks as if he did it himself, a foolish saving which largely deprives English readers of the details of what sounds like an excitingly colourful life-story. I think what emerges from this programme is that Mealli’s music probably deserves wider attention, but that this presentation raises interest rather than satisfying it.

D. James Ross

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Antonio Vivaldi : Concerti per violino ‘La boemia’

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Fabio Biondi, Europa Galante
68:47
Naïve OP30572

Well, the hugely ambitious Naïve project to record the around 450 works by Vivaldi in the National University Library of Turin has reached volume 57 and the composer’s Bohemian concertos. The delight of any attempt at a complete recording of a composer’s oeuvre is the discovery of work that has fallen into obscurity, and these fine concerti surely come into that category. Composed during the composer’s year-long sojourn in Prague, it is interesting to listen in these works for any influence of a native Bohemian style, and it has to be said that there is a freedom of melodic line and a couple of harmonic progressions which suggest that the composer was open to local influences. The other great joy of this Naïve series is the superlative standard of the performances, and Fabio Bondi and his excellent Europa Galante offer sparkling accounts of these concerti. They subscribe to the current school of thought which presents Baroque string music with a degree of percussive attack which not everybody approves of, but which I enjoy when it is not overdone. Meanwhile, Bondi’s virtuosity and wonderful singing tone make him the perfect soloist in this repertoire. I think it is only fair that Europa Galante read a fair amount of Bohemian influence into these scores, and without overdoing it, I think they cleverly bring out the central European flavour of these unusual works. I have to confess to having slightly lost track of this epic endeavour, and it is good to find, on dipping back in, that all is progressing well with the project and that standards are as high as ever.

D. James Ross

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Recording

From Byrd to Byrd

Friederike Chylek harpsichord
Oehms Classics OC 1702
67:24

This is the second recording by the German harpsichordist Friederike Chylek of early English keyboard music. I gave Time Stands Still a warm welcome (7 February 2017) and so I began listening to its successor with a sense of eager anticipation. The programme is built around a fascinating conceit, somewhat in the form of a rondo, featuring Byrd as fons et origo of harpsichord music, with forays into the works of his pupils and, further afield, to composers from the seventeenth century all of whom benefited from his pioneering. The disc is given a particular significance for including a rare Byrd premiere, of sorts.

The programme begins with four varied pieces by Byrd himself, beginning with The Bells. There are over twenty versions of this classic currently available, and more than one of the recent procession of releases featuring Byrd’s keyboard music have included it. Nevertheless, even a jaded palate will be stimulated by Chylek’s superb performance. I was brought up on Fritz Neumeyer’s version (on a 10” LP from 1957!) which pulled off the trick of being metronomic while allowing Byrd’s music to express how he had been inspired by the sound of pealing bells. Frau Chylek goes further, maintaining an ideal balance between the disciplined requirements of campanology, and a subtle ebb and flow as Byrd revels in the ringing. Some recordings tend to over-interpret this piece. Chylek confirms that the only requirements are the composer’s notes, allied to the performer’s momentum and sensitivity. The other three items in this opening section are Byrd’s first setting (of three) of Monsieur’s Alman; Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home – always welcome (sic) especially when played as vivaciously as this; and the Prelude in G which is the first item in the volumes of Musica Britannica devoted to the composer.

It might seem perverse to conclude what is obviously a separate section of a recording with a prelude, but in fact it leads fittingly to an anonymous setting of Dowland’s Piper’s Pavan & Galliard (MB 96/28) which is in the same key. This is followed by the disc’s significant premiere. There is an LP recording of the setting of Piper’s Galliard aka If my Complaints, played by Paul Maynard, from 1962, but this is the first version on CD, providing an interesting comparison with the anonymous setting of the same galliard that is the previous track. The attribution to Byrd in its unique source is now universally rejected (BK 103, MB 96/38) not least because yet another anonymous setting (Tuttle 26, BK 118, MB 55/20) is now regarded as likely to be by Byrd, and has been recorded as such by Davitt Moroney on his boxed set of Byrd’s complete keyboard music (Hyperion CDS44461-7) and by Aapo Hakkinen on William Byrd: Late Music for the Virginals (Alba ABCD 405) which I reviewed appreciatively for EMR (published 20 November 2017 q.v.). Although Frau Chylek makes the best possible case for the amiable setting now rejected from Byrd’s keyboard canon, it is not difficult to agree with Oliver Neighbour’s dismissal of it as “a thoroughly amateurish version” of Dowland’s galliard, even going on to call the attribution to Byrd “impertinent”. The piece is not mentioned by Martin Hoffmann in the booklet, and is described accurately and with restraint on the sleeve as “arr. attributed to Byrd”. Incidentally, according to Stephen Tuttle and pace Moroney, the now accepted anonymous setting was first attributed to Byrd as early as 1929, by Hilda Andrews in part II of the Catalogue of the King’s Music Library (London: British Museum).

We remain with Byrd for his second setting of Monsieur’s Alman which is the longest of the three (the brief third is on Hakkinen’s disc mentioned above; Neighbour was wrong to be dismissive of these settings, as Chylek and Hakkinen give thoughtful performances that answer his criticisms) before setting off for the Baroque. Here we are treated to a Suite in D by Matthew Locke from Melothesia, then a Symphony and Saraband in g by William Lawes, numbers 48-49 from Playford’s Musick’s Handmaid of 1663 (numbers 343 and 345 in the Viola da Gamba Society’s Thematic index of music for viols under William Lawes), followed by the Suite in d (Z 668) by Purcell; the subtitle of the almand “Bell-barr” refers to Bell Bar, a hamlet in the parish of North Mimms or Mymms in Hertfordshire, close to Hatfield and St Albans. Chylek’s touch in these tuneful Baroque items is as sensitive to her material as it is in the earlier pieces from the Renaissance.

And then it is back to Byrd again for three more works. The Pavan & Galliard pair “Bray” is thought to be dedicated to the expatriate Jesuit priest Fr William Bray. It is one of Byrd’s less recorded pairings in its original version for keyboard, the pavan being more likely to crop up on disc, minus its exquisite varied strains, in its arrangement for lute by Francis Cutting. The third work in this section is Byrd’s Fancy for My Lady Nevell aka Fantasia in C (BK 25) which begins with an upward scale of C major which, as I have suggested in previous reviews in EMR,echoes Byrd’s setting of the word “lux” in his motet Descendit in coelis from his second book of Cantiones sacrae 1591. Her execution of “Bray” captures the character of what is among Byrd’s more pensive, and most beautiful, pavans, while she captures the sheer tunefulness of the galliard, not least in its second strain where there is one of Byrd’s delightful sleight-of-hand key-changes towards the end. Nor is her response to what is one of Byrd’s most performed fantasias at all like the usual cavalry charge with which it can be despatched, again preferring a pensive approach to show the piece in a different light.

After this return to Byrd, we are off again, this time to his more immediate successors. First, Gibbons’ Mask: The Fairest Nymph, a miniature that transcends it miniaturity, if there be such a word. Dowland is then revisited, in two settings by Bull of Piper’s Galliard, both of them effervescent, the second like a shower of musical meteorites. Chylek abides as distantly as possible by Thurston Dart’s pronouncement – solemnly echoed by most subsequent performers and editors of this piece – that “the formidable brilliance of this setting enforces a slow tempo”, without sacrificing any musicality, a thrilling account. Morley’s very C-major Alman goes some way towards slamming the brakes on, though even here the varied strains throw caution bracingly to the winds, as the disc approaches its final item, Byrd’s Hornpipe.

In Byrd’s day the hornpipe was a dance in triple time that could be either fast or slow. It had no nautical connotations until the eighteenth century, when it seems also to have begun to be danced in quadruple time. Byrd’s piece is structurally a ground, and incorporates both the slow and, from bar 121, fast manifestations of the dance. From a staid start, Byrd subtly winds up the musical action using syncopation and varied note values, until the change of tempo at bar 121, when it seems as though some source of extra creative energy bursts forth, such as younger and more energetic dancers taking over from more mature performers, with increasing terpsichorean elation. Or so Friederike Chylek’s playing could persuade one to believe.

This disc is a luminous justification of the concept of the long-playing record and the compact disc. It is beautifully constructed on two levels. First, it provides a programme in which interesting individual pieces are juxtaposed, meaning, for example, that the listener with a penchant for Byrd can be introduced to the superb music of Matthew Locke, who was born two years before Byrd died, with which they might not be familiar. Secondly the programming is inventive and sensitive. Byrd’s Prelude in g BK 1 concludes the opening section devoted to his music but it leads decorously into an anonymous setting, in the same key, of Piper’s Pavan & Galliard by Dowland. The galliard is followed by another setting, attributed – albeit probably wrongly but nonetheless interestingly – to Byrd. Later in the programme there are two dazzling settings by Bull of the same galliard, the second an even more spectacular “variatio” of the first. There are two settings of Monsieur’s Alman by Byrd to compare, and a hornpipe by him and another by Purcell also to compare. As I mentioned at the outset, the entire programme keeps flowing from Byrd to Byrd, interspersed with forays to those who were his pupils, and further afield to those influenced by him more distantly.

The booklet’s notes are an object lesson in informed enthusiasm. It seems churlish to mention that they still give the date of Byrd’s birth as 1543 (recte 1539/40) but this can be excused in view of Martin Hoffmann’s appreciative, almost evangelistic, focus on the repertory of this recording. 

Neither the excellence of the programming nor of Dr Hoffmann’s notes would be worth much without the superlative quality of Friederike Chylek’s playing. With this recording her mere name becomes self-recommending. Her tempi are unerringly judicious, her faultless interpretations exuding profound sensitivity expressed lightly. She is aided by a fine instrument, copied by Matthias Griewisch from an original of 1624 by Ruckers. It has an almost silvery tone yet is strong when required, and depicts every note with clarity and appropriate emphasis, revealing individual lines within the more contrapuntal pieces while blending them into the totality of each piece. This is of course a compliment to Friederike Chylek’s technique.

I cannot recommend this disc too highly. Anyone familiar with some or all of these works will find them interpreted in so many new lights. It is also an ideal disc for someone setting out to discover early English keyboard music – a wonderful repertory complimented by this wonderful disc.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Monteverdi: Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria

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Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, directed by John Eliot Gardiner
185:50 (3 CDs)
SDG 730

Those looking for a HIP recording – and I assume that would apply to most readers on this site – of this marvellous product of Monteverdi’s old age should be warned this is not it. In a long and to me at times pretentious note John Eliot Gardiner makes clear that he views Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria not as an up-to-date opera in mid-17th century Venetian style, but as a continuation of that encountered in his earlier operas and works. This surely contradicts not only practicalities, but also the changed ethos of opera. Monteverdi cannot have been unaware of developments that had taken place, particularly since the advent of public opera in Venice three years before Il ritorno was first produced in 1640. Moreover the libretto, based on Homer’s Odyssey, with which Giacomo Badoaro had tempted him to the public theatre presented a totally different approach to the operas of the early years of the century. It is, for example, quite unthinkable to image the comic glutton Iro in Orfeo or any other opera of the first decades of the century.

Gardiner’s contentious proposal enables him to do two things. Firstly, to indulge in some tenuous comparisons with Shakespeare, who had not only died a quarter of a century earlier, but belonged to a different milieu and culture. Secondly, and more importantly, it allows him to indulge his preference for inflated and unidiomatic performing forces. So here, rather than the modest forces found in Venetian opera houses, Gardiner unapologetically fields a sizable orchestra including not only 6-4-1-1 strings but cornetti, recorders and dulcian in addition to a sizable continuo group that includes four archlutes (or guitars), harp, organ and harpsichord. Experienced Monteverdians will thus at times find themselves thinking they are listening to Orfeo rather than Il ritorno. This may to some sound pedantic. In fact it is not, because the use of such substantial forces tends to obstruct clear projection of text, crucial in works of this kind. Neither is the non-continuo contribution always restricted to ritornellos, as was customary in 17th century Venetian opera. Among a number of examples the worst is the addition of a tasteless violin solo to the sensuous duet at the conclusion of the delightful scene (act 1, sc 2) between the young servant lovers Melanto and Eurimaco.

It’s an unnecessary and vulgar intrusion that jars, especially as the scene is one of the best performed episodes in the opera. Otherwise there is much to be questioned, particularly in the treatment of the stile recitativo that still dominates the opera. In his notes Eliot Gardiner makes much of the work that was put into making sure both singers and instrumentalists understood the fusion of the all-important text and Monteverdi’s music. Yet to my mind much of the recitative is delivered in far too deliberate a manner, with much fragmentation, exaggeration of rhythmic flexibility and unnatural dynamic extremes. The result is not only self-indulgent and mannered but paradoxically also stilted and at times lugubrious.

The multi-national cast assembled by Gardiner has both strengths and weaknesses. I have mixed feelings about the Penelope of French mezzo Lucile Richardot. The voice itself is disconcertingly unusual, with an almost masculine quality in the chest register contrasting with pleasingly feminine head notes, the break always too apparent. Yet she brings a strong dramatic sense to the role and it is probably not her fault if the great opening monologue at times sounds more like whinging than the dignified distress of a queen. But she sings ornaments with greater conviction than most of the cast and the final, long-delayed reunion with her Ulisse is intensely moving, not least since Gardiner here allows text and music a more natural flow, enabling the drama to speak for itself. Her Ulisse is capably sung by the veteran baritone Furio Zanasi, who brings authority and long-established understanding of musical and textural syntax to the role. The voice may no longer be free of the odd rough edge – he was superior in a performance under Rinaldo Alessandrini given at the 2010 Beaunne Festival – but overall this is an impressive assumption of the role. The outstanding performance here is that of the Polish tenor Krystian Adam, whose Telemaco is perhaps the finest I’ve heard. The youthful fervency he brings to his relations with both his mother and father coupled with excellent articulation of text is totally compelling. Mention has already been made of the fine performances of the servants Melanto and Eurimaco, sung with appealingly youthful vivacity by Anna Dennis and Zachary Wilder. The remaining roles are filled with varying degrees of success.

The recording was made at live performances given in 2017 in Wroclaw, Poland, coming at the end of an extensive and, as I understand, highly successful tour of Europe and the US, during which the three extant Monteverdi operas were given in semi-staged productions. I regret not being able to add my endorsement, but feel that, as with his continued refusal to countenance Bach performances that conform to those of Bach’s own day, Sir John simply has this wrong. My recommendation remains the considerably more idiomatic performance by La Venexiana (Glossa).

Brian Robins

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Tilting at Windmills

Dark green flowers

Mico Consort
74:58
Son an ero 12

The Mico Consort, based in France, consists of three violists and an organist. This would not seem an ideal combination for playing a programme such as this, a proportion of which consists of music for viols, much of it in four or five parts, by Byrd and his English contemporaries Tye and of course Mico. Of these only Tye’s Sit fast is performed by the forces, three viols, for which it was composed. They also play pieces by Locke, Coprario, Jenkins and Baltzar appropriate to their personnel, and the organist Anne-Marie Blondel plays four pieces.

Three of Byrd’s five-part In nomines and his Browning are played by 3 viols and organ. Why? The textures are all wrong, impeding and unbalancing Byrd’s narrative. The same is true regarding the two fantasias and, especially, the pavan by Mico. Byrd’s two In nomines in four parts fare better, because the organ plays the cantus firmus and the three viols the contrapuntal parts. Gibbons’ fantasia a6 (MB48/33) is played on the organ. Again, why? Is it because a short score survives and is interpreted by the musicians as indicating the possibility of contemporary performance on the organ alone? Mme Blondel follows this short score in places, and expands upon it in others. The number of surviving fantasias for keyboard by Gibbons runs well into double figures, and their textures differ from this example. Some of them have had all too few recordings. The other three performances on the organ are a vivacious rendition of Tomkins’ Ground (MB5/40); an impressively engaged version of Byrd’s The Bells,surprisingly one of the first commercial recordings of the work to be played on the organ; and to conclude the disc, a radiant performance of Bull’s Salve regina (MB14/40). Here is also a modern piece by Geraud Chirol which gives the disc its title, an incongruous work for the forces of the ensemble.

The presentation is unsatisfactory. Some works are identified merely as ”Ground”, “Fantasia/e” or “Ayre”. There is also a weird piece of translation in the booklet, where a Pavane en la mineur by Jenkins, played on the instruments for which it was intended (see below), is described in the English translation as “a rather tamely written piece” while the original French says “une piece de facture assez sage”. Sage = tame? And if it is tame, why record it? Jenkins’ pavan is not tame, nor is anything in his vast and distinguished oeuvre. This piece also provides a good illustration of the inadequate identifications mentioned above. A search of the Viola da Gamba Society’s thematic index under Jenkins for a pavan in A minor among his hundreds of works proved initially fruitless. By sheer good fortune, on the Presto website there is a “Pavan for 2 bass viols in A minor” listed on a disc of Jenkins’ music performed by Fretwork, with recorded incipits of each track. This turned out to be the same piece. Returning to the VgGS thematic index, I went again to the section on music for bass viols and, having previously scanned the index looking for pieces titled “pavan”, I found the work under the title “[Ayre]”. This took the best part of an hour. It was interesting before it became frustrating, after which I emerged triumphant, albeit rather fortunately, but it was also a huge waste of my time. The item is no 1 in the VdGS listing of Jenkins’ music for two bass viols, and is available from Fretwork Editions and Dovehouse Editions.

This is a curate’s egg of a disc.  Performances by the ensemble tend to be uninspiring and, in the case of the works by Byrd and Mico, are unnecessary. One of the pieces played as an organ solo is a waste of a track but, to conclude on a positive note, the other three organ solos are all estimable.

Richard Turbet