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Recording

Handel : Lotario

Rennert, Lys, Hesse von den Steinen, Navarro Colorado, Perry, Boyce, Festspielorchester Göttingen, Laurence Cummings
187:00 (3 CDs)
Accent Acc 26408

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his live performance of the relatively unfamiliar 1729 opera Lotario by Handel comes from the 2017 Göttingen International Handel Festival. The title role, sung originally by the Italian castrato Bernacchi, is taken by mezzo-soprano Sophie Rennert – Bernacchi was initially poorly received in the role, being unflatteringly compared to the great Senesino, but was deemed to have improved in the face of criticism. In the dog-eat-dog operatic world of early 18th-century London, the opera itself was also deemed ‘very poor’, a verdict which it is hard to understand as this is a piece stuffed with powerful arias, beautiful ensembles and generally music of a very high order of excellence. At a recent performance of the oratorio Samson, I was struck simultaneously by how much superb music Handel wrote and what a small proportion of it is well known. And here is an entire score of music, which is never less than accomplished and often exquisitely beautiful. The libretto is of Byzantine complexity, but as usual with the operas of this period it simply provides a series of scenarios in which characters can sing of love, hate, triumph, desperation and a range of other high emotions. Lotario’s relatively delayed appearance, for instance, gives rise to the lovely aria Rammentati, cor mio, ravishingly sung by Rennert, by which time we have already heard extensively from Marie Lys, whose convincing account of Adelaide is also deeply moving. A strong cast brings this inexplicably obscure music vividly to life, while consistently fine playing from the orchestral forces is also a major factor in this performance’s success. Inevitably there is an element of background noise in this recording of a staged performance, although the one or two startling thumps are restricted to sections of recitative, while the arias are relatively distraction-free. While we might have expected drums and trumpets in the final chorus of a martial opera, Handel eschews this gesture, and in the present performance the ‘chorus’ would seem just to involve the soloists, which may seem a little underwhelming as a conclusion. The informative programme notes include an engaging series of contemporary responses to the opera, and this admirable package has done a fine service in bringing this neglected score to wider attention.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Lully: Dies irae, Te Deum

Allabastrina Choir and Consort, Elena Sartori
59:35
Brilliant Classics 95592

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese performances of two great masterpieces by Jean Baptiste Lully are extremely beautiful in every respect. Concise and beautifully balanced instrumental playing is matched by choral and solo singing of a very high order. The ensembles have clearly digested completely the idiosyncratic style of this music, and their effortless and utterly convincing ornamentation, their smooth alternation between solo and tutti sections and their consistently beautiful tone and blend are simply exemplary. I was not as familiar with the Dies irae  as I am with the Te Deum, but this recording has won me over to the considerable virtues of a fine and powerful funeral composition. Elena Sartori is professor of choral singing at the Claudio Monteverdi Conservatoire in Bolzano, and her expertise both with the scores and with her choral forces is apparent. I am perhaps duty bound to mention a couple of omissions in this package – neither texts nor translations are provided, although of course both are easily accessed online, but curiously the accomplished soloists are also not identified. Perhaps this is a consequence of the Allabastrina ethos in which the group is regarded as ‘an alchemical combination of friendship, vocal and instrumental entente’. Often such mission statements come across as pretentious, but in this case the proof of the pudding is in the listening.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Music in 17th-century Wrocław

Gli Angeli Genève, Concerto Palatino, Wrocław Baroque Orchestra, Stephan MacLeod
77:54
Claves Records 50-1805
Music by Bollius, Buchner, Bütner, Jarbęski, Legrenzi, Lilius, Biagio Marini, Mayer, Merula, Pacelli, Scacchi, Valentini, Zeutschner & Zieleński

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]on’t worry if some of the composers’ names look unfamiliar – I can guarantee that, if you like 17th-century music, you will totally love this disc. Covering everything from a duet for tenors by Merula to a piece by Pacelli for five choirs and voices and instruments, Stephan MacLeod guides his assembled forces through more than an hour of beautiful music, cleverly interspersing the choral works with slighter chamber pieces. Of many pieces I heard for the first time, my particular favourite was Tobias Zeutschner’s “Der Herr gebe euch vom Tau des Himmels” which is impressive from the opening sonata until the end almost nine minutes later. The performances are every bit as impressive as the music itself, and they are beautifully captured in the recording. My only slight criticism of the whole enterprise is the lack of texts and translations of the vocal pieces. Admittedly the booklet is already quite thick (including Polish amongst the languages!), but a better balance between publicity and useful information could surely have been found, or the texts made available online. That said, with singing and playing of this calibre, they could sing nursery rhyme texts and I’d be impressed! Magnificent recording.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Vivaldi: Concerti per due violini

Giuliano Carmignola, Amandine Beyer, Gli Incogniti
70:01
harmonia mundi HMC 902249
RV505, 507, 510, 513, 527 & 529 (+127)

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]egular readers of these pages (and the printed ones before EMR moved online a few years ago) will know that I’ve been hankering for a good period-instrument account of these concertos for years. I first became aware of them (I think!) on a Deutsche Grammophon LP (remember them?) with Igor and David Oistrakh; brilliant violinists of their type, they made the music sparkle with excitement, the sequences being tossed back and forth between the two of them, often in the musical stratosphere. Here, Carmignola and Beyer, both outstanding violinists of their type, bring the same energy and élan to this effervescent repertoire. If Vivaldi’s solo concertos are showpieces, his concertos for two violins are like play-offs, with each of the soloists seemingly trying to out-do the other. Gli Incogniti feature two pairs of ripieno violins, and one each of viola, cello, violone, plucker and keyboard. (For RV127, a “ripieno concerto”, an extra violinist – coincidentally, the author of the booklet notes – is brought in to balance the sections, so presumably Beyer leads from the front.) These are finely paced and delivered accounts of some sparkling music – bravi!

Brian Clark

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Recording

Tartini: Sonate, op. 1

Evgeny Sviridov violin, Davit Melkonyan cello, Stanislav Gres harpsichord
65:00
Ricercar RIC391

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s well as three sonatas from Tartini’s op. 1 (nos. 5, 10 and 12), this excellent recording features two of the sonate picciole that survive in manuscript and a Pastorale for scordatura violin, all of which clearly demonstrate the composer’s (and Sviridov’s!) prowess as an exponent of the instrument. Indeed, the disc was part of Sviridov’s prize for winning the International Competition Musica Antiqua at the Bruges Festival in 2017. He (and his colleagues) take all of Tartini’s demands in their stride. I particularly enjoyed the sonatas from the manuscript – either unaccompanied (as Tartini notes that he normally played the,) or sometimes with cello (having supplied a bass line to conform with expectations…), but not just a simple bass line; Melkonyan plays chords and ornaments, so these are true duos. Throughout Sviridov is compelling and exciting.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Misterio

Julia Schröder, Lautten Compagney
70:49
deutsche harmonia mundi 8 89853 44082 5
Biber + Piazzola

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]inding suitable bedfellows for Biber’s amazing set of Rosary Sonatas is a real challenge. Julia Schröder and her colleagues have gone about as far as it is possible to go in pairing them with music by the Argentine tango king, Astor Piazzolla. (They also include a funky, violin-free version of the Passacaglia from Biber’s Harmonia Artificiosa no. 5). I confess that my eyebrows did arch when I opened the envelope that brought the disc; after a good few listens, though, this fine quartet had drawn me into their soundworld and, if I’m honest, I didn’t even notice the move from one composer to another on a couple of occasions. For those who like to know such things, Schröder performs sonatas 1-3, 9, 10 and 14. I’m not sure that I would want a second such disc, nor do I think I want a set of all of the Biber which had been given the same treatment, but I cannot deny enjoying (a lot!) what I heard.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Sebastiani: Matthäus Passion

Colin Balzer, Christian Immler, Ina Siedlaczek, Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble, Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs
65:38
cpo 555 204-2

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is an important recording of an important work. Sebastiani’s telling of the passion according to St Matthew is punctuated with judiciously chosen Lutheran chorales which would have been known to the congregation in the Königsburg church where it was presumably first performed, though the score stipulates performance by a solo soprano and viol consort. Elsewhere in the work, singers are joined by a pair of violins. The success of any performance rests on the casting of the two principle voice parts – in this case, Colin Balzer’s reading of the Evangelist balances a rhetorical reading of the narrative with just enough colouring of the voice to bring it to life, while Christian Immler’s Christus is very much a real person, turning Sebastiani’s lines into real believable dialogue. The other parts are taken well and the whole is well paced and nicely recorded.

Brian Clark

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Recording

A German Christmas

17th-Century Music for the Time of Advent and Christmas
Margaretha Consort, Marit Broekroelofs
78:15
Naxos 8.551398

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his recording follows a pattern familiar from several other recent releases, presenting various settings of the same text within single tracks. Thus, for example, we have the Lord’s Prayer (Vater Unser…) by Hans Leo Hassler, Johann Steigleder and Jacob Praetorius. The performances are given by nine solo singers (SSSAATTBB), a congregation and a group of instrumentalists playing viols, a cornetto, drums and bells, a chamber organ and the church organ. Taking the aforementioned track as an example, the Lord’s Prayer is performed instrumentally, but the first version (Hassler) is noticeably quicker than the second (viol consort) and the third (bass viol playing the melody under organ ornamentation) is at another speed; then comes a mysterious “Part 4” which appears to be an arrangement (of what?) featuring some beautifully executed, incredibly intricate ornamentation on the cornetto. All of this is wonderful and provides a rich, varied and valuable insight into the world of musicians of the time, but ultimately it is artificial since no 17th-century performance could ever have actually been like this. The booklet notes explain this away convincingly enough, but they do not mention the (to me, at least) unnecessary and unnecessarily polyrhythmic percussion parts added at various junctures – they’re just a needless distraction (again, my opinion). In short, this is a nice recording of fine performances in a variety of styles of popular music for the festive period.

Brian Clark

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Handel: Abbandonata – Italian Cantatas

Carolyn Sampson, The King’s Consort, Robert King, director
75:08
Vivat 117

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]y last encounter with Carolyn Sampson was at the Saintes Festival, where she gave a fine recital of 20th c English song (interested readers will find a report in the ‘Festival-conference’ section). Here she is on more familiar ground, singing the kind of repertoire with which she is more usually associated. The results are variable, or to borrow a sporting metaphor, something of a game of two halves.

As with the vast majority of Handel’s chamber cantatas, the four works included all date from the composer’s Italian sojourn (1706-10). The best known is Armida abbandonata, which addresses one of the most familiar topics of the genre, the woman (usually) abandoned by her lover, a conceit that allows for the expression of widely varied emotional responses. The affecting opening aria of Armida, for example, is an expression of the sorceress’ grief at the loss of Rinaldo, the emotion not without a sensual element. Not that you would know that in this performance. The excessively slow tempo adopted, coupled with Robert King’s ill-advised use of chamber organ rather than harpsichord gives the aria a pseudo-religious sentimentality closer to the English oratorios than the youthful Handel’s Italianate spirit and passion. And while nothing can detract from the familiar tonal beauty and the musicality of Sampson’s phrasing and ability to float a line, there is now too much vibrato for the voice to sustain such a funereal tempo. Throughout the CD I am disappointed, too, by the lack of ornamentation (especially trills) at cadence points, leaving far too many ‘blunt’ endings, while ornamentation in da capo repeats is not always judicious, as some ill-advised leaps above the stave testify. To return to Emanuela Galli’s beautifully fresh and committed performance of Armida in the outstanding Fabio Bonizzoni’s traversal of the Italian cantatas (Glossa) – that opening aria taken at only two thirds of King’s timing – is to enter the Ruspoli palace in Rome after a visit to the oratorios at Covent Garden some 30 years later.

I’ve concentrated in some detail on Armida and its opening aria in particular since much of what I have written applies equally to the two succeeding cantatas, Tra le fiamme and the least known on the disc, Figlio d’alte speranze, which has a moralizing text on the trope of the shepherd king and the beauties of the simple life. To be fair, no subsequent aria is treated to quite such an extreme tempo as ‘Ah, crudele’, but throughout King’s choice of a richly-textured continuo has to my mind resulted in performances that are too often plodding and wanting in rhythmic lift. Sampson does capture something of the playful spirit of Tre le fiamme, while the aria ‘Sia guida sia stella’ from Figlio is one of the joys of the CD, the simple sentiment conveyed without affectation, the slightly veiled tone utterly exquisite.

Then in Agrippina condotto a morire everything changes. Although listed as one of the chamber cantatas, it is in fact a work that is sui generis. This is not only because it has string orchestral accompaniment, but because the taut, flexible and dramatically potent alternation of recitative, aria and arioso gives an impression of an extended operatic scena more than anything else. The performance is on a different level to anything that precedes it, with Sampson especially effective in Agrippina’s often bloodthirsty outpouring of bile against her son, Nero, yet quietly heroic in the empress’ final acceptance of death. The expanded forces of the King’s Consort seem freshly energised, with playing of a vitality and rhythmic élan seldom evident elsewhere.

So, as made clear earlier, an oddly mixed bag, probably more of a draw to committed Carolyn Sampson fans than the general listener, who will find better all-round performances of most of these cantatas elsewhere.

Brian Robins

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Categories
Recording

Cappus – Le Dijonnais oublié

(The forgotten Composer from Dijon)
Premier Livre de Pieces de Viole (1730)
97:50 (2 CDs in a wallet)
Astres Records As1

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here is no greater musicological frisson than to be able to present something brand new to the world of Barqoue music, from a completely unknown source, or by an unknown composer, expanding both our knowledge and the specific repertoire. This is the intended mission of Jonathan Dunford and his highly capable and expressive entourage of musicians in revealing the works of Jean (Baptiste) Cappus. He was born in Dijon on the 6th October 1689, in the parish of St Medard, which six years later saw the birth of a one Jean-Philippe Rameau. His father, François, was a singing master, said to have been a good organist, and sang at Dijon cathedral; he died in 1716 after a full life. His mother, Anne Hervelin, passed away when Jean was three years old in 1692. Some of the early collections of “ Livres d’Airs” and Airs à boire” from 1690-1700 were most likely by his father; however, due to the context and location, the 1722 cantata, “Le Temple de la gloire”, given in honour of the illustrious house of the Counts of Saulx, at the Jesuit College in Dijon, seems to be the work of the son, following in his father’s footsteps. In 1728 we see the divertissement mis en musique, “Le retour de Zéphire”, published in Dijon and given at the same Jesuit College. In 1729 his divertissement, “Les Plaisirs d’hiver”, was performed before the queen at Versailles. The following year we see the publication of the “Premier livre de Pièces de Viole”, divided into four suites: the two major key suites are performed on CD1 and the two minor key suites on CD2 (D, G, d, a). They each open with a fantasie or prelude, moving through the common dance forms, yet sprinkled with some movements imitative of hurdy-gurdy or musette, and delightful character vignettes, plus topographical references all firmly seated in the Burgundy region. The Duke and Duchess feature, too, this collection being dedicated to Charles Henry Gaspard, Duke de Saulx, Lieutenant Commander of Duchy of Burgundy, Brigadier-General of the king’s army. The musicians on this recording embrace and deliver the requisite French elegance with deeply resonant “tawny” tones on their period gambas. We hear a comparable musical filigree and approach to that of a Ste. Colombe, and adhering especially to that of a Marais. The transition through the movements admirably displays the compositional prowess of Cappus, and perhaps belies sometimes a flowing violinistic agility. These special qualities obviously struck the right noble spheres and ears of music making, as these Suites received a mention in the November Mercure de France 1730. The well-rounded and responsive musicians on these discs have opened up the trail to this neglected composer and his works from Dijon, who deserves to join the bright constellation of the famous, as a most accomplished master in his own right. CD pull-out pamphlet only in French, tant pis! (See an article on Cappus by Jonathan Dunford by clicking HERE). One hopes, too, to hear more of this composer’s noteworthy works, perhaps his 1732 cantata, Sémélé  (also known as “La naissance de Bacchus”), to further attest to the merits of this Dijon based composer, who rubbed shoulders with Rameau, and may have had lessons with Marais.

David Bellinger

To buy the CDs and find out more about Jonathan Dunford and Cappus, visit the website.