Category: Recording

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Recording

Light Divine: Baroque music for treble and ensemble

Floral design

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

Modern floral

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

Floral design

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

Dark green flowers

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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Hummel: Complete Piano Sonatas

Pink chrysanthemum

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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A Courtly Garland for Baroque Trumpet

Floral design

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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The Nightingale’s Response

Modern floral

Fontanella Recorder Quintet
43:44
Barn Cottage Records bcr015
Music by Campion, F. Couperin, Merula, Purcell, Van Eyck, Vivaldi & modern composers

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his charming CD of music for recorders ranges from Elizabethan repertoire to contemporary repertoire, taking in music by van Eyck, Purcell, Couperin and Vivaldi on the way. A general rustic theme with particular focus on the nightingale relies to some extent on arrangements of original works by members of the group such as the Vivaldi Concerto ‘Pastorella’ which is played in a lovely arrangement by Rebecca Austen-Brown. Although details are sparse in the programme booklet, it sounds to me as if they use Renaissance instruments for the earlier repertoire and Baroque recorders for the later material. In any case, the playing is beautifully sensitive, the blend and tuning wonderfully focused and the performances delightfully musical and involving. Particularly striking is the group’s account of Volière from Saint-Saens Carnival of the Animals in a brilliant arrangement by Annabel Knight.

D. James Ross

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Porpora: Germanico in Germania

Floral design

Max Emanuel Cencic, Julia Lezhneva, Mary-Ellen Nesi, Juan Sancho, Dilyara Idrisova, Hasnaa Bennani, Capella Cracoviensis, Jan Tomasz Adamus
218:18 (3CDs in a box)
Decca 483 1523

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he recent ‘rediscovery’ of Porpora’s operatic oeuvre has been one of the major events in the world of early opera in recent years. Fortunately, it has been timed to coincide with spectacular developments in the technique of male alto singers, allowing them to do justice to Porpora’s demanding castrato roles. At the centre of this latest project is the male alto, Max Emanuel Cencic, a remarkable singer who has previously impressed with his accounts of music written for the castrato Senesino and who here takes on a role first taken by the celebrity alto castrato Domenico Annibali. Porpora was a singing teacher as well as a composer and so his compositions for voice are intentionally highly technically demanding, and from his first dramatic appearance, Cencic shows that he is the full master of all the vocal fireworks that Porpora’s original virtuosi displayed. Before this, however, the Capella Cracoviensis replete with brass and woodwind instruments have provided stunning accounts of Porpora’s showy instrumental writing, while a superb cast have ensured that all the characters are powerfully represented musically. Particularly fine is Julia Lezhneva as Ersinda whose blizzards of passaggi would have made even Porpora’s jaw drop. She sings with such enormous musicality and assurance, that her remarkable technique seems almost incidental. But this is a cast where virtuoso singers are just lining up to show off their technical prowess and Hasnaa Bennani possesses a similar blend of interpretive talent and stunning technical assurance. The exploration of the world of Neapolitan Baroque opera has led to several major eye-opening discoveries, and this has the feel of another one. With his strategic use of wind instruments, Porpora’s scores are automatically more colourful than most of this period, and when you add to this the technical fireworks he writes into his vocal lines he more than deserves the prominent place he is beginning to be restored to in the pantheon of early opera.

D. James Ross

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Recording

A. Scarlatti: Oratorio per la Sanctissima Trinita

Floral design

Linda Campanella, Silvia Bossa, Gianluca Belfiori Doro, Mario Gecchetti, Carlo Lepore, Alessandro Stradella Consort, Estévan Velardi
83:51 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Brilliant Classics 95535

[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou wait years for a recording of an oratorio by Alessandro Scarlatti and then two come along at once. Recorded for Brilliant Classics by the same forces as Il Dolore di Maria Vergine and also in an edition by Velardi, the present oratorio was probably composed just two years previously in 1715 and therefore probably intended for performance in Naples. Its cast of allegorical characters – Faith, Divine Love, Theology, Infidelity and Time – make it much less appealing to a modern audience, but my feeling is that the music, too, is inferior with rather brief and obvious arias and nothing like the emotional appeal of the Dolore. The present performers do the best for it that they can, with ravishing accounts of some of the arias and some lovely playing from the instrumental soloists. Certainly, with these two recordings, Estévan Velardi and his excellent forces have made a compelling case for Alessandro Scarlatti’s oratorios becoming better known. An excellent and detailed programme note by Mario Marcarini as well as a listeners’ guide helping the unfamiliar to find their way through the score both enhance this package and are an indication of the performers’ evangelising role.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Arte de tanger: Gonzalo de Baena’s New Keyboard Method (1540)

Dark green flowers

Bruno Forst
135:16 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Brilliant Classics 95618

[dropcap]G[/dropcap]onzalo de Baena’s keyboard method involves intabulating polyphonic music from instrumental and vocal sources into a series of letters to allow them to be played easily on the keyboard, and as the first such book to be published on the Iberian peninsula it is doubly important as a window on how keyboard players thought and worked and also as an invaluable source of material. Unfortunately, due (of all things) to misfiling in the Palacio Real library in Madrid, it remained unknown to modern musicology until 1992. Playing the 1685 organ by Joseph de Sesma in the Church of Santa Ana, Brea de Aragón and the modern Gerhard Grenzing organ, based on 17th-century Spanish models, in the Church of San José, Navalcarnero and reading from Baena’s tablature, Bruno Forst presents a cross-section of the material in the book. This includes music by composers such as Morales who were still alive when Baena compiled his collection, as well as music by Baena himself and by his son Antonio, but includes mainly the great Flemish composers from previous generations such as Ockeghem, Compère, Josquin, Obrecht, de Fevin, Brumel, Caron and Agricola. Unlike the Scottish book of composition, “The Art of Music”, from the second half of the 16th century, Baena includes entire pieces rather than relatively brief examples, suggesting perhaps that his Method served the additional purposes of preserving the earlier repertoire and making it available to organists of the mid-century. Forst is an authoritative guide through this repertoire, making intelligent decisions on timbre and providing subtle and appropriate ornamentation.

D. James Ross

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