Categories
Recording

Dessiner les passions

Andreas Gilger harpsichord
74:32
Genuin GEN 22768

Click HERE to buy this recording on amazon.co.uk.
[These sponsored links are the only source of income the site has]

To begin with, I think I should highlight this comparatively rare opportunity to hear a 17th century-style harpsichord (a meticulous copy of a 1681 Vaudry at A400), as opposed to the c1750 Franco-Flemish monsters we often hear even in this earlier music. They are marvellous, of course, but here there is a delicate ‘edginess’ to this timbre which I rather liked. There’s plenty of colour, though, and we do hear it all.

In the booklet (in English and German) the artist gives an account of his background thinking, tells us about the instrument and recording venue but leaves us high and dry with regards to the music. Surely at least the less well-known Du Mont and Geoffroy need a bit of an intro? In this chronologically focussed survey they rub shoulders with D’Anglebert, Chambonnières and L Couperin – the world of the 17th century claveçinistes, both printed and manuscript sources, in a nutshell.

I very much enjoyed this playing, which is both thoughtful and sparkling, with careful management of the style brisé idiom, the ornaments, the brief contrapuntal passages and the dance-based structures. At this time these can still embrace a pavane (curiously familiar and harmonically arresting) and a galliarde, though not as a pair or even by the same composer.

But ma fin est mon commencement, as an earlier age had it. The instrument is the star.

David Hansell

Categories
Recording

William Byrd: Keyboard Music

Friederike Chylek harpsichord
57:02
Oehms Classics OC 1724

Click HERE to buy this recording on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links help keep the site alive – and FREE!]

While listening to this excellent disc, it occurred to me that Friederike Chylek would be the ideal harpsichordist to make another recording of Byrd’s complete keyboard music, a successor and alternative to Davitt Moroney’s boxed set from 1999 (Hyperion CDS 44461-7, reissued 2010). The baker’s dozen of pieces selected here are varied in genre and structure, and in technical and interpretive demands. By now most of these pieces have achieved more than one recording, but it is good to hear less familiar items such as The Irish march, extracted from its home in The battle, and the will o’ the wisp Wilson’s wild amongst the mighty Second ground and the pioneering virtuoso Prelude and Fantasia. One of the finest of the great Nevell pavan and galliard pairs, the Fifth, appears in company with two of Byrd’s most familiar song variations, Sellinger’s round and The carman’s whistle. The programme is completed by two almans – BK 89 (T 437) and The queen’s alman – and is topped and tailed by The Earl of Oxford’s march, and Tregian’s ground aka Hugh Ashton’s ground. The use here of the former title indicates that Ms Chylek is playing the version in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB), which was compiled by Francis Tregian, and not the version in My Lady Nevell’s Book which uses the alternative title; she also defers to the FVB version of the Prelude and Fantasia rather than that left in another manuscript by Byrd’s pupil Thomas Tomkins.

Ms Chylek has made two previous recordings which feature Byrd’s music to a greater or lesser extent: Time stands still (OC 1864 – my review posted in EMR 7 February 2017) and From Byrd to Byrd (OC 1702). I reviewed both of them favourably, noting that she has a unique feel for the English virginalists in general, and for Byrd in particular.

Among discs devoted to Byrd’s keyboard music, this current recording is among the very finest. Her interpretations are penetrating but not quirky, profound but not distracting. This transcendence is best illustrated in Tregian’s ground which, at 8’30, is one of Byrd’s longest keyboard works. The triple time of Byrd’s chosen ground is sustained unassertively but irresistibly while Byrd’s remarkable ruminations continue above and around it. There have been several recordings of this magnificent piece, and a number of performers treat it as a virtuoso work to display their techniques. This works perfectly well, and the music can withstand it. Ms Chylek takes a more contemplative, less frenetic view, so that every aspect of Byrd’s counterpoint and harmony is clearly audible, while the passion of Byrd’s creation still shines through. Her interpretation – and this is the case with every track – is seemingly not so much aimed at exhibiting her own formidable technique, but rather, is placed at the service of the composer and what Byrd himself seeks to express through his music. This is no criticism of other more flamboyant performances, but it is the key to what gives this recording its unique character, which in turn elevates it to such a high level of achievement. She uses a modern copy of a Ruckers from 1624, and her playing on it provides ideal listening: stimulating to the intellect, and delightful for recreation.

Richard Turbet

Categories
Recording

Händel vs Scarlatti

Cristiano Gaudio harpsichord
71:00
encelade ECL2003

Click HERE to buy this album on amazon
[Doing so supports the artists, the record company and keeps this site available – if no-one buys, no money is made and the site will disappear…]

This disc ostensibly recreates the reputed keyboard competition hosted by Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome in 1709 between Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, both 24 years of age at the time. Reportedly, Scarlatti won the harpsichord leg while Handel excelled on the organ. I say ostensibly, because we do not know what music either composer might have performed, and any reconstruction is at best very tentative: it is more than likely that both composers improvised their contributions to fit the occasion. Scarlatti’s sonatas are difficult to date and choosing ‘early’ ones is tricky. Gaudio gives us ten, including some not so often recorded, which between them certainly give a good indication of the sort of music which the composer might have improvised as a young man in Rome. They do show the composer’s Italian side, less influenced by Iberian music than much of his output.

When it comes to Handel, Gaudio relies firstly on the Suite in F HWV 427 which, as well as having been published by Walsh in 1720, survives in an earlier Neapolitan manscript and shows strong Italianate influence. He also includes four toccatas from a Bergamo manuscript, which seem very unlikely to have been by Handel at all. The track listings say ‘Georg Friedrich Händel, attr. William Babell’ but there is no discussion whatsoever, in the extensive liner notes, of the manscript or its complications. In a 2018 article in Early Music, Andrew Woolley convincingly showed that these toccatas are by Babell, while perhaps reflecting the close collaboration between him and Handel during the 1710s. The fact that they are most likely not by Handel does not entirely rule out their appropriateness to the purpose of this CD. The mixture of German and Italian characteristics actually make them plausible examples of the sort of music Handel might have improvised in Rome – not the Handel of the printed Suites, or his only authenticated Toccata (HWV 586), but earlier Handel. In any case they are good pieces and well worth recording. There is also the more solidly Handelian Chaconne HWV435 (though without the introductory two-line melody and bass from the early 1706 manuscript) and, as a bonus at the end, Gaudio’s own transcription of the opening Adagio from the Sonata for Violin HWV372 (though authorship of this piece, too, is disputed). The 24-year-old Gaudio’s playing is exciting and very clearly articulated, with a strong sense of forward propulsion. It is the approach of a young man, excited by the potential of the instrument and of the musical template and, as such, highly appropriate to this project. He plays on a Mietke copy by Bruce Kennedy and an Italian-style harpsichord by the same maker, mixing and matching between the composers on each instrument. Recording quality is excellent, with a generous acoustic and a bell-like quality to the sound. It is a worthwhile and highly satisfying recording which can be well recommended.

Noel O’Regan

Categories
Recording

John Bull: In nomine | Walsingham

Léon Berben organ
76:45
Lanvellec Editions LE00005
https://www.festival-lanvellec.fr/accueil/boutique

Or click HERE to buy an mp3 on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links are the only way you can actively support this site and keep it alive… and FREE!]

The Robert Dallam organ in the Church of Saint-Brandan in Lanvellec, Brittany, is a unique survival, built while the maker was in exile in Brittany during the English Civil War. Most of the original pipework survives and the instrument was restored to something close to its original condition in the mid-1980s. It is a real treat to hear it in this recital of John Bull’s music by the Dutch organist Léon Berben. It has great clarity, well captured in this recording, with a rich sound and a good variety of registrational possibilities. Some stops come close to the sound of the musette or bagpipe and are put to good use in pointing up the more earthy elements in Bull’s music. Most of the disc is taken up with the composer’s eleven authenticated In nomine settings. These show great variety of compositional techniques, combining a strict harmonic framework (based on part of a melody from the Benedictus of a John Taverner Mass) with repeated figurative writing. The improvisatory basis of this writing is brought out particularly well by Berben, who also enjoys the frequent changes of metre. He rises to the virtuosic challenges caused by the shortening of note values as these pieces reach their conclusion, and always manages to stop repetitions from becoming boring – something not always easy in Bull’s music. At the core of this programme is Bull’s set of thirty variations on the ‘Walsingham’ tune, a great tour de force of late Elizabethan keyboard writing which takes almost twenty minutes here. It shows off the full range of the organ’s registers as well as Berben’s control of the instrument. A couple of fantasias on Palestrina’s madrigal Vestiva i colli and a few other short pieces completes the disc. There are excellent sleeve notes by Berben and Jon Baxendale. This is a stimulating and enjoyable presentation of some of the best of Bull’s music and can be thoroughly recommended.

Noel O’Regan

Categories
Recording

Graupner: Complete Harpsichord Music

Fernando De Luca harpsichord
14 CDs in a card box
Brilliant Classics 96131

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links help the site remain alive and FREE!]

At the famous audition process to choose a new Cantor for Leipzig’s Thomaskirche in 1722-3 Christoph Graupner was second choice (after Telemann) but could not obtain leave from his employer at the court of Hesse-Darmstadt and so made way for J. S. Bach. In that context it is thought-provoking to listen through the nearly fifty partitas which make up almost all of Graupner’s surviving keyboard music, recorded here by Fernando De Luca. The only other pieces here are a single short Prelude and Fugue, and an Aria with one variation. Less than half of the Partitas were published during Graupner’s lifetime, the rest surviving in manuscript in Darmstadt. All are attractive works, rich with musical ideas, but ultimately going over the same ground again and again and tending to rely on repeating trusted formulae. They seem to illustrate Andrew McCredie’s comment in the New Grove article on the composer: ‘working on a modest scale, [Graupner] was regarded more for the originality of his ideas than for their working out’. It is as if Bach continued to churn out French Suites and almost nothing else. Might a move to Leipzig have meant a different outcome for Graupner? We will never know. He was certainly amazingly prolific in Darmstadt, with over fourteen hundred cantatas and lots of other works surviving. Like Telemann, musical ideas flowed freely from his fingers and pen. The most extended of his partitas are a set of twelve named after the months of the year, each with from six to ten movements, headed by Preludes which can take a variety of forms, and continuing with the usual standard dances and various galanterien. In other suites the Allemande fulfils something of the function of an opening prelude.

This 14-CD collection is a monumental enterprise for De Luca who seems to relish such challenges.  Together with Marco da Gregorio he runs a website ‘Sala del Cembalo del caro Sassone’ which contains a whole host of recordings of keyboard music by many different composers, all recorded by De Luca.  He is clearly used to big projects and able to learn music quickly. His playing is consistent and faithful to the score, though perhaps motivated more by a desire to leave a firmly mainstream account of the works than to let in any sense of playfulness or experimentation. Fast movements can be exciting, particularly some of the Gigues; slower movements can be a bit heavy-handed and would have benefitted from some more subtlety in execution at times, though there are some fine moments and a judicious use of ornamentation on repeats. He plays on two instruments: a copy of a Blanchet (1754) by C. Caponi and copy of a Christian Vater (1738) by F. Ciocca, both of which provide opportunities for variety of registration and are pleasingly recorded. There is only very slight information in the accompanying booklet – movement lists are only found on individual CD covers; a short essay deals only in generalities with nothing much on individual partitas. The numbering follows that of the Graupner Werkverzeichnis (GWV). (Incidentally, GWV online is a mine of information about the composer and his output, editions and performances of this works.) There is much to admire about this recording project, and it is certainly very useful to have all of Graupner’s authenticated keyboard music available in one place. Listeners will want to dip in and out, perhaps taking one partita at a time, admiring both Graupner’s and De Luca’s facility and being rewarded with some attractive music confidently delivered.

Noel O’Regan

Categories
Recording

The Proust Album

Shana Diluka piano, with Nathalie Dessay soprano, Pierre Fouchenneret violin, Guillaume Galliene speaker, Orchestre de chambre de Paris, Hervé Niquet
81:52
Warner Classics 0190296676253

Click HERE to buy this album on amazon
[Doing so supports the artists, the record company and keeps this site available – if no-one buys, no money is made and the site will disappear…]

There is nothing either ‘Early Music’ or HIP here, but an important aspect of the EM movement has been the research and revival of repertoire that is forgotten/unknown yet worthwhile and it is in that spirit that we give this Proust-themed (ie music he liked) miscellany a brief notice. Reynaldo Hahn’s piano concerto was a welcome surprise, Wagner’s tiny Elegy (solo piano, as is most of the programme) intriguing, and the world premiere recording of Richard Strauss’s elaborately textured Nocturno should draw deserved attention to this relatively recent discovery.

The main essay (in French, English and German) stays on the right side of the informative/philosophical border though there is nothing about the artists. But if you feel like a wander away from your normal HIP path, there is much to enjoy here.

David Hansell

Categories
Recording

F. Couperin: Harpsichord Works

Tilman Skowroneck
80:02
Tyxart TAX20153

Click HERE to buy this album on amazon
[Doing so supports the artists, the record company and keeps this site available – if no-one buys, no money is made and the site will disappear…]

Oh joy! Outstanding music, thoughtfully programmed, a sumptuous and appropriate instrument (also used by Gustav Leonhardt), and disciplined playing that seeks the essence of each piece rather than tries to impose ideas upon it.

For all our delight in his other music, it is the keyboard ordres that are the basis of Couperin’s high reputation and even though we have only a fraction of that repertoire here, it’s enough to prove the point. I particularly welcome the decision, in the context of a stand-alone recital, to play only selections from two of the suites to make space for a third.

The harpsichord is a French-style, two-manual instrument by Martin Skowroneck. Its lush sonorities are an utter delight and its resources expertly deployed (try track 7, La Favorite and track 27, the famous B minor Passacaille). And, although there are those that quite reasonably question the order of the last two pieces in that ordre, this playing makes an eloquent case for the publication as it stands.

The booklet (in German, English and French, the last much abbreviated!) won’t win any prizes for graphic design but we are offered a solid, old-fashioned essay that really does tell us what we need to know, as well as artist and instrument information, even if the English is not always perfect. TS’s biography suggests that he ‘defended’ his dissertation on Beethoven. The German original has the anti-climactic though rather more likely ‘submitted’!

But all in all, a solid, old-fashioned and enthusiastic recommendation is amply justified.

David Hansell

Categories
Recording

Field: Nocturnes

Florent Albrecht de Meglio piano (1826)
65:14
Editions Hortus 197

Click HERE to buy this album on amazon [digital only]
[Doing so supports the artists, the record company and keeps this site available – if no-one buys, no money is made and the site will disappear…]

Long-time BBC listeners may remember Anthony Hopkins Talking about Music. One of those programmes explored a Field piano concerto (he wrote seven) as well as including the usual ‘inventor of the nocturne’ credit. Well, here are those nocturnes, played on a piano that Field certainly had the opportunity to play, even if we are not absolutely confident that he did so. The instrument has had only deliberately ‘light touch’ restorative work but retains great tonal charm, including the ability to deliver more HIP sustaining pedal use than we often hear (broadly, leave it down for longer).

As well as being the performer, Florent Albrecht has also undertaken the complex task of establishing a credible version of the musical texts and his deep involvement with the overall project results not only in playing of great technical accomplishment and musical judgement, but also and above all, of love. The piano also sounds very happy: its fragile treble positively glitters through all the filigree writing and we hear this most emphatically as ornamentation rather than ornate melody.

The booklet (in French and English) gives a comprehensive account of the project, including comments on the piano and the composer. I wouldn’t class myself as a ‘romantic piano music’ fan, but I absolutely loved this!

David Hansell

Categories
Recording

Bach: The Art of Fugue

Filippo Gorini piano
97:11 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Alpha 755

It is a little odd to find this series of performances of Bach played on the modern grand piano by a succession of young players on the Alpha label, the home of impeccable historically informed (occasionally controversially so) performances. For my full views on Bach on the modern piano, please see my recent review of Bach: The Well-tempered Clavier Book 1, played on the piano by Aaron Pilsan also on Alpha. I won’t rehearse old arguments here, except to point out again that The Art of Fugue constitutes something of an exception to my HIP preference for period instruments. This enigmatic collection, as far as we can understand conceived by its composer as truly abstract music for the appreciation of connoisseurs and not tied in his mind to any particular instrument, transcends its time. As a result, it is played in our times on a variety of instruments and by different ensembles and still has the power to mesmerise. Thus too, these beautifully understated accounts on two CDs by Filippo Gorini beguile and charm in equal measure. I almost found myself admiring Gorini’s ability to bring out individual lines in the texture, something which Bach could not have done on any of the keyboard instruments of his time, but which a small chamber ensemble most certainly could and would have done – and which of course the eye, and the mind’s ear, of the educated connoisseur would also naturally have accomplished. If you like your Bach on modern piano, this surely must be the sort of performance you would want – wonderfully free from pianistic effects, elegantly understated and technically perfect.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

KeyNotes

Early European Keyboard Music
Corina Marti
65:54
Ramée RAM1916

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links help the site remain alive and FREE!]

For her performances of early European keyboard music on clavisimbalum, claviciterium (clavicytherium), organetti and medieval organ, Corina Marti raids the usual 14th- and 15th–century sources : the codices of Faenza, Buxheim, Las Huelgas, Florence and Peruggia, as well as a new one for me, the Robertsbridge Manuscript, two pages of 14th-century keyboard music bound together with another manuscript associated with Robertsbridge in Kent. From this last manuscript Marti plays a setting of Tribum quem non obhoruit, which unfortunately turns out to be a reworking of familiar music by Phillippe de Vitry – how much more exciting to have heard a wholly original English keyboard work from this period. I find 14th- and 15th-century keyboard music, with its mixture of rawness and fluidity, utterly compelling, and I enjoyed these accounts by Corina Marti, although I did wonder just occasionally about some of the mannered hesitations in the performances, which I suspect may not have been entirely for musical reasons. So while this CD perhaps lacks the jaw-dropping virtuosity and sheer bravado of the accounts of similar repertoire by Tasto Solo, Marti plays her selection of instruments idiomatically and persuasively. The medieval organ on which many of the tracks are performed is the wonderful Altenbruch Organ, an instrument embodying pipe-work from its original construction by Johannes Koch before 1497, which has survived a number of later reworkings, including one by Johann Hinrich Klapmeyer in 1727. It has the real and rare sound of a voice from the past, and truly brings this fine music to life.

D. James Ross