Tag: Baroque

Opella Musica, cameratata lipsiensis, Gregor Meyer
74:17
cpo 555 021-2

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his third volume with music for Christmastide  begins with one of Kuhnau’s most frequently performed works, his Magnificat  – I heard it paired with the Bach Magnificat  in a concert by Vox Luminis just before Christmas – and it has four laudes, like Bach’s early E-flat version which intersperse the choruses and arias that make up the fourteen movements of this substantial work. The five-part writing calls for two sopranos and for two viola parts like much string writing in late 17th-century Germany, and indeed like some of Bach’s Weimar period writing. Eloquent writing (and playing) for the obbligato oboe signals the relatively late date of composition.

The first setting heard on this CD of O heilige Zeit  is scored for soprano and bass soli, with strings and oboe, and a chorus. In the bass aria that follows the first of the accompanied recitative for soprano, the substantial organ is heard to fine effect defeating the power of the old serpent, and the soprano solo has a very ‘baroque’ feel with an obbligato oboe and strings. The second setting of this same text is a longer and earlier work, more through-composed with less breaks between the sections, but with finely crafted almost operatic setting of the words and dramatic accompanied ariosos. Scored for five-part strings and continuo (here including a lute).

Frolocket, ihr Völker und jauchzet, ihr Heiden  is as substantial a work as the Magnificat, and scored for five-part strings, three trumpets and timpani, with an obbligato organ part. The opening chorus is followed by a recitative and then an aria; in the aria, Kleines Kind, a tenor solo with very florid writing, the solo violin intertwines with the obbligato organ. Another paired recitative and aria follows, this time for alto with a more conventional string band accompaniment. The writing here anticipates a more melodic and tuneful pre-galant style of writing which was to re-emerge in vocal writing from the mid century onwards, and the cantata ends with a contrapuntally orchestrated chorus.

These are stylish performances with one voice per part both vocally and instrumentally, and the music is freshly edited for this project which it is hoped will be completed in time for the 300th anniversary of Kuhnau’s death in 2022. This recording was made in St Georgen, Rotha in June 2016, and there is a useful note on the organ there rebuilt in 1718 by Gottfried Silbermann and his assistant, Zacharias Hildebrand. The organ carefully conserved in 1980 is tune at A=466 to a meantone temperament. The performances are pitched at A=415.

This CD is a fine example of scholarship paired with musicianship. The project is important not just because it illuminates Bach’s antecedents in Leipzig, but because the music is fine in its own right. If we are to understand Bach’s cantatas and discover appropriate ways of performing them, we need this kind of research and performance practice. Unusually for Germany, groups like this approaching the music from a historical perspective perform one-to-a-part, whereas the tradition of performing Bach in Germany is still coloured by the 19th-century assumption that the chorus parts are to be sung by choirs with many singers per part. While the male singers of Opella Musica are splendid, I continue to have reservations about the soprano voices, both of which have an over-produced ‘modern’ singerly quality: it is not needed and can be overcome, as the singers in Vox Luminis make clear.

But this should not deter you from buying this – and the other – CDs of Kuhnau, as wonderful music-making in their own right.

David Stancliffe

Harmony of Nations, Laurence Cummings
75:48
edition raumklang RK3007
BWV1048, 1057, 1063, 1064, 1069

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Harmony of Nations Baroque Orchestra was founded in 2004 by musicians who had met in the European Union Baroque Orchestra as part of a pan-European determination to work across national and historic cultural divides and to share insights.

The music chosen for this CD is from J. S. Bach’s triple concertos of one sort or another, and is introduced by an admirable essay by John Butt. They play the early version of the Ouverture in D, BWV1069 (without the trumpets and timpani added in about 1730), which enables us to hear the fine playing by the three oboes and the fagotto, otherwise silent in the subsequent pieces. This is followed by the concerto for harpsichord and two recorders in F, BWV1057, a version of the Fourth Brandenburg transposed down a tone into F and with a harpsichord replacing the violin, Brandenburg 3, BWV1048, and two concertos for three violins in what is likely to have been their original form, re-adapted from what survives as concerti for three harpsichords (BWV1063 and 1064). Because 1064’s violin version involves a transposition back up into D, this score merits a distinct version in NBA VII/7, which is denied to 1063 in NBA VII/6 which remains in D minor. Following the harpsichord version of 1063, there was one small detail which would have eased the transcription: in measures 40 and 72 of the third movement there are three semiquavers in the bass parts of each of the cembalo parts which link the previous figure to the continuing semiquaver passage work in the first/second concertante violin part. In the absence of a score of this passage, I wonder if the transcription doesn’t need the connecting semiquavers? The ‘cello part in 1064 has some fine moments playing independently of the continuo line, and might that be a solution here?

The playing is engaged and exciting, but balanced when it needs to be to enable us to hear the delicate figuration in BWV1057, for example. The technical skills of the principal violinist in the D minor concerto, Huw Daniel, are amazing, and I was conscious all through of the extremely fine viola playing, where I often find this line too weak to sustain the harmonic gap between multiple violin lines and a strong basso continuo section.

I have the greatest respect for Laurence Cummings and the work he does with young musicians. This CD was recorded in 2010, and I would dearly like to hear companion discs exploring some of the other concerto transcriptions using wind like 1044, 1055 and 1060, for example. But I suspect that the players may have dispersed now, and anyway will the United Kingdom still take part in such fine examples of cross-boundary cultural initiatives after next March?

There are not that many recordings of these works available – I only know the one by Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque, and the version by the Freiburg Orchestra – so I am very glad to have it: get it while you can.

David Stancliffe

Juliette Hurel flute, Maïlys de Villoutreys soprano, Ensemble Les Surprises, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas
67:31
Alpha Classics Alpha 358
BWV1013, 1038, 1067 + extracts from BWV82A, 211, 244 & 249

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] reviewed a CD of keyboard music played on interesting period instruments by Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas in May 2017, and admired his elegant playing, but this CD will be somewhat of a disappointment to readers of the EMR, and I doubt if many will wish to buy it.

While the playing is gracious, this assemblage of flute music and soprano arias that contain obbligato flute parts is not what I was expecting. As the photograph of Juliette Hurel at the front of the booklet reveals, she plays a modern ebony flute, and the two oboists brought in for “Aus Liebe” from the Matthew Passion  play on cors anglais rather than oboi da caccia because this performance is at 440, and was recorded in the Abbaye aux Dames – perhaps in the outskirts of the festival last year? – in Saintes.

The performances are fine, although the singer is not one that I would choose for the three arias (from the Matthew Passion, the Easter Oratorio  and the Coffee Cantata) with her full voice and post-baroque style. The choice of music has the feel of a programme put together by a group of friends for a particular concert, and I am not quite sure why Alpha chose to publish it. Read what it says on the tin carefully before you think of buying it.

David Stancliffe

Hélène Schmitt violin, François Guerrier claviorgan, Massimo Moscardo archlute/theorbo, Francisco Mañalich viola da gamba, Jan Krigovsky violone
145:38 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Aeolus AE-10256

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]egular readers will know that I am an admirer of Hélène Schmitt’s violin playing. Here, using only two violins for the entire cycle of five joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries and the peerless final Passacaglia, she lives up to everything I expect of her; a ringing clear tone (where the torturous scordatura permits), deliberate bow strokes that manage to make the strings sing out without delivering that sharp rasp that can mark some less subtle performances of this repertoire, and above all a great sense of where the music is going. The temptation in recording this set is to over-egg the continuo contribution; why the ever-changing timbre of the violin should not be enough puzzles me. I find this set satisfying in this respect because, although the colour of the accompaniment does change, it does so within distinct sections. It still does not quite accord with the fact that, in all the years I have been editing 17th-century music, I have yet to come upon a set of performing material with four copies of the continuo part. Yet, I do understand performers’ concerns that two full CDs of this music may be harder listening if the sound palette is restricted. Personally, I could listen to Hélène Schmitt playing these wonderful pieces even without accompaniment for hours. As well as an excellent essay by Peter Wollny on the historical background to the survival of Biber’s masterpiece, the booklet also includes a personal reflection on playing it by Schmitt herself. It is well worth reading.

Brian Clark