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Sheet music

Francesco Barsanti: Secular Vocal Music

Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 197
Edited by Michael Talbot
xxv, 2 + 71pp. $145
ISBN 978-0-89579-867-1

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]erhaps best known for his recorder sonatas and the recently recorded concerti grossi  he published in Edinburgh, Francesco Barsanti’s secular vocal music fills a fairly modest volume. Consisting of five Italian cantatas and six French airs for solo voice and continuo, a four-voice Italian madrigal and two catches in English for four equal voices, it provides another viewpoint from which to consider one of Handel’s contemporaries. With typical thoroughness, Talbot gives as lively a portrait of the composer as is possible, and – as well as comprehensive critical notes – idiomatic translations of the non-English texts are provided. All in all, this is an excellent volume which will be partnered in due course by Jasmin M. Cameron’s versions of the composer’s surviving sacred music. The recitatives are dramatic and the arias tuneful; the three longer French airs might overstay their welcome unless the singer has some impressive ornaments up his or her sleeve; the madrigal might make a welcome and novel addition to an amateur vocal group’s repertoire? Either way, Barsanti’s music deserves to be more widely known, and one hopes that its availability (even if the cost might mean only libraries can afford to buy it!) will encourage performers to explore it.

Brian Clark

Categories
Recording

Handel’s finest arias for base voice ij

Christopher Purves, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen
77:11
hyperion CDA68152

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]uch was the success of the first volume of Handel arias made by this line-up that they have released a second, exploring both opera and oratorio and portraying virtually every human emotion. Purves’s wide-ranging baritone voice has a real presence to it, and – as Handel requires – he pulls off some seemingly effortless wide leaps, and navigates the coloratura without a hint of the bluster that typically accompanies this repertoire. Arcangelo go from strength to strength – their performance of op. 3 no. 4 bustles with energy and the solos (including the bassoon in an aria by Porpora that featured in Handel’s London pasticcio, Catone) are all neatly done. The star of the show, though, is that voice; be it angry or sad, happy or regretful, there is a range of colours and an evenness of quality that must be the envy of many singers.

Brian Clark

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Categories
Recording

Hasse: Arie d’opera

Elena De Simone mezzo-soprano, Ensemble Il Mosaico
61:17
Tactus TC 690801

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here are ten arias from eight different operas on this CD running between four minutes to well over eight, and they amply display Hasse’s gifts both in melodic terms but also in knowing the voice for which he was writing. While the objective of the project is noble enough (to bring Hasse’s music back to wider notice), the realisation may not have the desired effect. The problem is not with the performers, but rather with their number; with the best will in the world, a string quartet with violone and harpsichord cannot recreate the sound world of an orchestra, and a whole disc of just one singer and a string ensemble would struggle to sustain anyone’s imagination beyond a few arias – perhaps a few recitatives, or a couple of sinfonias from the operas with woodwinds and brass might have helped. I mean this not as criticism but as encouragement to continue exploring Hasse’s music but with a broader palette!

Brian Clark

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Categories
Recording

The Art of the Harpsichord: from Cabezón to Mozart

Byron Schenkman
BSF171

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]yron Schenkman has recorded this significant and highly enjoyable disc on eight instruments from the collection at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota. Ranging from a rare anonymous Neapolitan harpsichord of c. 1530 to a 1798 instrument by Joseph Kirckman, the disc covers more than two and a half centuries of the harpsichord’s dominance. Schenkman has made an excellent choice of work to show off each instrument, for the most part eschewing well-known pieces in favour of lesser-known but no less significant ones, which match the chosen instrument extremely well. For example, a Toccata and Passacaglia by the Frescobaldi-influenced Johann Kaspar Kerll, used to illustrate the Giacomo Ridolfi harpsichord of c. 1675, is an inspired choice and Schenkman rises very well to the virtuosic challenges of the extended Passacaglia. The same applies to Gregorio Strozzi’s trill-laden Passacaglia which is played on an octave virginal by Onofrio Guarracino. A spinet by Johann Heinrich Silbermann is put through its paces in a rare piece by Silbermann himself, as well as in a sonata by C.P.E. Bach. It is good to hear three Scarlatti sonatas played on a resonant Portuguese harpsichord by José Callisto, with a particularly exciting rendition of K 427. Schenkman is a versatile player who seems equally at home in this great variety of styles, no small ask in a repertory that ranges from Cabezón to Mozart. Only the Haydn Sonata in D (Hob XVI:24), played on the Kirckman, feels a bit uncomfortable in its overly-fast second and third movements. The disc is accompanied by some excellent notes on the instruments, written by John Koster; there is, however, little information on the actual music which is a pity. In the breadth of its programme, and with some exciting playing, this CD makes an excellent introduction to the harpsichord and its repertory. It also showcases some wonderful historical instruments kept in peak playing condition.

Noel O’Regan