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Recording

Ensaladas by Mateo Flecha ‘El viejo’

Cantoría
54:17
Ambronay AMY 315

We have to thank the Eeemerging programme for introducing the vocal quartet Cantoría to a wider audience, and on the basis of this excitingly dynamic selection of ensaladas by the 16th-century Spanish composer Mateo Flecha ‘the elder’ they are a group deserving of exposure. Eleven ensaladas by Flecha survive of which we have seven here. These extended episodic songs in four and five parts, offer graphic depictions of a wide variety of situations and events, and were hugely popular throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries in the hands of the likes of Clément Janequin, Adriano Banchieri and Orlando Gibbons. While Flecha probably also wrote church music, it is his Ensaladas that have survived and which have established his reputation. With its restlessly changing tempi and harmonies, this is demanding music to perform successfully, and Cantoría find the perfect combination of vocal blend and solistic characterisation, while maintaining an engaging impression of spontaneity. Particularly impressive is their account of La Guerra, a hectic sound-picture of a Renaissance battle complete with sound effects, battle cries and shouts of victory. The war movie of its time, the battle chanson was a way for Renaissance aristocrats to relive their battlefield successes and for their courtiers and partners to share in their experiences. The Joust provides another fine opportunity for a vivid sound representation of more organised combat, and again Cantoría rise to the challenge with some wonderfully powerful fanfaring and some entertainingly jazzy galloping.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Tallis · Byrd · Gibbons

Friederike Chylek harpsichord & organ
78:14
Oehms Classics OC 1727

The succinct title of this recording is a rollcall which names three of the finest English composers for keyboards. Byrd and Gibbons without question, but Tallis? Yes, because his two huge settings of Felix namque are the final pieces in the development of keyboard music in England before the tipping point which led to the sequence of fantasias composed by Byrd: the sacred narrative of the plainsong replaced by the secular narrative of the composer’s own imagination and creativity. Friederike Chylek (FC) bookends her programme with these two pieces, performing both on the organ – primarily a harpsichordist, she is unnecessarily modest about her capabilities on the other instrument. Apart from one rather jarring change of registration in Felix namque #1 her interpretations of both pieces are models of clarity, played on a Swiss instrument of 1715. Many recordings of these two pieces give the impression of imposing some sort of point or “agenda” on them, emphasizing their length, their difficulty and/or their intricacy, whereas FC is content to express Tallis’s own creativity and allow his musical narrative to develop without intrusive gestures.

In three previous recordings – go to Early Music Review website, click on “Search” and type “Chylek” – from 2015 onwards, FC has emerged as a major exponent of the keyboard music of Byrd. Having recorded an entire disc of his music in 2020, she devotes nearly half of the current release to him in this, his quatercentenary. Like Tallis’s pieces, Ut re mi fa sol la is entrusted to the organ, a sound decision since this outstanding work benefits from the organ’s ability to sustain notes, whether maintaining the cantus firmus or affirming a dash of piquancy in some cadences. There are fine performances on the 1699 Neapolitan harpsichord of masterpieces such as the Third Pavan and Galliard, Walsingham and Fortune. Finest of all, and indeed the finest of any commercially recorded version of the work, is O mistress mine – one of Byrd’s gems that should be heard much more often, given here in a performance of perfection encapsulated in the balance and delicacy of the concluding cadence.

Like Byrd, Gibbons is allocated seven pieces. Most of these are lighter works like the modest Whoop do me no harm good man, the significant exception being the Fantasia in C (MB20/14) which illustrates how much Gibbons learnt from Byrd whether the older composer was his teacher, mentor or influence. That said, Gibbons’s compositional voice is clearly audible, especially in his exploitation of the harpsichord’s lower register.

This is an altogether delightful recording, with an outstanding exponent of early English keyboard music performing a well-chosen selection of works by three composers whose individual pieces always provide edification and pleasure.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Byrd: Sacred Works

The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York, conducted by Jeremy Filsell (2022) with Nicholas Haigh, Assistant Organist; and Gerre Hancock (1981)

Recorded in St Paul the Apostle, Columbus Circle, New York (2022) and St Mary the Virgin, Times Square, New York (1981)

Mass for Four Voices, Propers for Corpus Christi (2022),
The Great Service (1981)
1441:01 (2 CDs)
Signum Classics SIGCD776

This double album has a bland title, “Sacred Works” but … what wonderful works. We cannot have too many recordings of music this good, and when it is performed as well as it is here, we are all winners. After 2023 marked Byrd’s successful, enjoyable and rewarding Quatercentenary, 2024 is the centenary of the rediscovery of Byrd’s Great Service in Durham Cathedral, by his indefatigable cheerleader E.H. Fellowes, and of its first performance in (probably) three centuries, which took place in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster sung by the Newcastle upon Tyne Bach Choir under W.G. Whittaker, himself no mean Byrd scholar. So it is excellent to welcome back into the catalogue St Thomas Choir’s recording of the complete work made in 1981 and hitherto only available as an LP. What sounds as if it might be intrusive traffic noise from Times Square, outside the recording venue, can be heard but this is a small price to pay for the privilege of having access to this stunning performance. (Credit to the engineers who made the transfer from the original LP, a copy of which I used to own.) Of five other available complete recordings, only two are by Anglican church choirs – King’s College, Cambridge, and Westminster Abbey – and neither of those are, like St Thomas New York, unaccompanied. So this is also a unique recording. The performers set out their stall right from the opening verse passage of the Venite, the first canticle in the Service; this is delivered with crystal clarity, the fleeting dissonance on “strength” distinctly audible in the generous acoustic. The recording was made just too soon to take advantage of Craig Monson’s imminent edition (1982) with its new thinking as regards certain verse and antiphonal passages, but there is still some variety between the verse, antiphonal and full passages as laid down in Fellowes’ edition (1948).

Modern trends in Byrd scholarship also impinge upon the rest of the album, the disc and a half recorded over forty years later, which feature the Mass for Four Voices and Propers for Corpus Christi. And these are proper Propers, as they include not only those items for the Feast which are in book one of Gradualia (1605) but also Byrd’s expansive unpublished setting of Sacris solemniis – all nine and a half minutes of it – composed while he was still influenced by Sheppard, whose mentorship of the fledgling Byrd is unfailingly neglected in favour of Tallis. Current scholarly thinking advocates performances of Byrd’s masses by small mixed ensembles, resembling those documented as performing such music in secret recusant chapels during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, ironically a closet Anglo-Catholic … allegedly. Nevertheless, these masses have now become staples of choral Holy Communion in (protestant) Church of England cathedrals, churches and chapels, as well as in similar Roman Catholic establishments. Also, they are so well composed as to sound as fine in great spaces as in small. The Choir of Saint Thomas Church, New York sings the mass with as much beauty, feeling and expertise as any historically informed ensemble, and I say this as one who favours authenticity so far as it can be achieved in early music. The generously reverberant acoustic takes some getting used to, but once the ears are, so to speak, tuned in, the sound becomes quite ravishing, and although tempi are varied judiciously during the course of the Mass, this is never to the detriment of the clarity of Byrd’s eloquent polyphony, with its sublime melodies, harmonies … and dissonances! In each of his works, Byrd relates a narrative. In liturgical performances, tempi can be varied, subtly or otherwise, but usually in response to musical criteria, such as Classical or Romantic models, or in a perceived need to push on or put the brakes on. St Thomas’s interpretation seems rather to respond to Byrd’s narrative, his response to the text and his inflections in his music that propel his vision. Jeremy Filsell’s subtle pacing does not routinely include sudden bolts after passages of restraint: for instance, in the Credo it is appropriate to show some animation at “Et resurrexit” but he keeps the Choir’s powder drier at the equally tempting “Et unam sanctam” which then allows the singers to wind up over a longer span towards an effective climactic conclusion. Also in the Credo is one of the most sublime passages of singing that I have ever heard in a Byrd Mass on disc, where the layclerks alone sing “et ex patre natum ante omnia saecula”. That said, I must also compliment the boys on their fine singing throughout the entire work, not least those trebles entrusted with the solo passages. A word of congratulation also to the Rector, Revd Canon Carl F. Taylor, who fulfils his roles as Celebrant and Gospeller consummately.

This is a truly radiant recording. As I said of another recent Byrd release, whatever the number of versions you possess of the Mass for Four Voices – many, few, one, none – do, please, give serious thought to purchasing this one … and then buy it! It comes with two priceless bonuses: Byrd’s incandescent Propers for Corpus Christi including that early unpublished setting of Sacris solemniis with its echoes of Sheppard, not Tallis, and its pre-echoes of the treasures to come in Byrd’s music; plus the greatest of all settings of the complete Anglican Service, sung by a Choir as fine in 1981 as it would still be four decades later.

Richard Turbet

Categories
Recording

William Byrd: Keyboard Works

Stephen Farr, Taylor and Boody organ of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
66:06
Resonus Classics RES10326

The distinguished and widely experienced organist Stephen Farr already has an impressive discography of early English organ music, and to this he adds the current disc of a dozen pieces most likely intended for the organ by Byrd, the quatercentenary of whose passing is being widely commemorated this year. Four of his great fantasias are interspersed with a mixture of works of comparable substance alongside some miniatures, concluding with a novelty which is, in its own way, a premiere. The great fantasia in A minor precedes two brief Misereres, the second of which has a particularly delightful conclusion. These are followed by the fantasia in C, possibly Byrd’s best-known work in the genre with its opening charge up the C major scale. After the modest Verse we are treated to Byrd’s longest fantasia, in G (BK 62) the opening point of which was later used by both Peter Philips, one of Byrd’s documented pupils, and the Flemish organist and composer Peeter Cornet. After the brief and very early Gloria tibi trinitas we encounter Byrd’s other fantasia in G (BK 63) which is in turn followed by the remarkable hexachord fantasia Ut re mi fa sol la (BK 64). The twists, turns and somersaults which Byrd applies to this basic scale are remarkable in their variety and subject to the guiding hand of his creative genius. The disc opened with a voluntary in C and, after another such work, the disc concludes with the novelty and premiere mentioned above. Keyboard intabulations of six of Byrd’s songs are known to survive, plus a single intabulation of a motet. None of the song intabulations are thought to be by Byrd himself, but recent scholarship has come to the conclusion that the intabulation of O quam gloriosum from his Cantiones sacrae of 1589 is likely to be by the composer himself, and it has been admitted to the canon of his accepted works. It has already been recorded twice on the harpsichord, but this concluding pair of tracks (one each for its two parts) is its first recording on the organ. It sounds sprightly on the harpsichord, while the organ can better sustain the notes and reflect the work’s choral origins.

It is a shame that Stephen has chosen to omit the fantasia in D, with its whisper of “Salve regina” at its outset. Some of his ornaments are distractingly elaborate, for instance in the fantasia in C, while on perhaps a slightly less elevated level of listening, in the fantasia in G (BK 62) Stephen deprives us of the thumping dissonance in bar 72 – though to be fair it occurs only in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, among the work’s four sources … but everyone else plays it! These quibbles apart, this is a fine disc of superb music well chosen to provide a rewarding and enjoyable programme, a veritable feast.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Gratia plena: Hans Memling

Psallentes, The Royal Wind Music, Hendrik Vanden Abeele
71:04
Le Bricoleur LBCD 14

Unusual to have one CD based on a famous old master painting, but along with The Sword and the Lilly, a meditation on van der Weyden’s ‘The Last Judgement’ (Inventa INV 1008), we have another musing, this time on ‘The Annunciation’ by Hans Memling. His exquisitely detailed rendition of angelic musicians has allowed instrument builders to reconstruct instruments which have not survived in any other form, so he is an obvious inspiration for a CD programme. Like the Inventa CD, this CD programmes music relevant to the subject and details of the painting, assembling polyphony by de Ghizeghem, Agricola, Obrecht, Dufay, Compère, Mouton and Josquin played on recorders by The Royal Wind Band and sung by Psallentes, who also provide plainchant. The performances from these splendid Flemish ensembles are, like Memling’s painting, exquisitely detailed and wonderfully evocative. The sounds conjured up by consorts of beautifully tuned and blended Renaissance recorders are a delight, as are the female voices of Psallentes, also beautifully pure and focussed. My favourite tracks are where the voices and recorders combine in the larger-scale polyphony and culminating in a stunning account of the Gloria from the famously demanding Missa Maria zart by Obrecht, given a delightfully transparent performance here. With the imaginative blending of voices and recorders and the sheer musicality of these accounts, I was more persuaded by this painting-based musing, although the rather shallow supporting booklet in which Vanden Abeele writes a ‘Dear Hans’ letter to Memling and offers Gratias agimus tibi to him for the CD’s artwork rather trivialises this excellent project. I am on record elsewhere opining that a serious scholarship-based musical programme, such as this most definitely is, deserves a seriously scholarly programme note rather than some self-indulgent performer’s flight of fancy.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Lovesick

Randall Scotting countertenor, Stephen Stubbs lute
57:29
Signum Classics SIGCD736

The musicians have ranged far and wide for the repertoire for this collection of music on the general subject of lovesickness. There is the anticipated music of Purcell, Lawes, Dowland and Blow, though by no means the most obvious repertoire by these masters, and interleaved with this we have traditional ballads from the Scottish, Irish and English traditions as well as songs by Marc Antonio Cesti, Danielle da Castrovillari and Pierre Guédron. Scotting has a flexible and rich countertenor voice, deft in ornamentation with a not unpleasant regular vibrato, which he applies intelligently and expressively to his chosen repertoire. Stephen Stubbs provides sympathetic accompaniments on lute and Baroque guitar, although his instrumental set from King Arthur as well as his brief account of Packinton’s Pound, both thematically a little at odds with the lovesick contents of the rest of the CD, are slightly puzzling choices. I found the accounts of the ballad material the least satisfying of the repertoire – it really belongs to another world from the earlier material and to my ear didn’t entirely suit Scotting’s refined vocal production. However, this CD is obviously a very personal project, and these two fine musicians’ enthusiasm for this wide-ranging repertoire communicates itself very well.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Louis Couperin: Complete Harpsichord Music

Massimo Berghella harpsichord
329:00 (5 CDs in a cardboard box)
Brilliant Classics 96238

There is a disparate cabal of musical individuals united in the belief that Louis Couperin is a greater composer for the keyboard than his more famous nephew Francois, and/or that Louis is the greatest of the French keyboard composers of the Baroque era, and/or that Louis is the greatest of all composers for the harpsichord. Given this degree of acclamation, it is appropriate that there should now be no fewer than three commercial recordings of his complete music for that instrument (numbering over 130 pieces in the 2022 Lyrebird edition by Jon Baxendale) of which the one under review is the most recent. It is also the best.

Even among those unfamiliar with the sheer extent of his oeuvre Louis Couperin is famed for his unmeasured preludes, and this recording goes off to the best possible start with the astoundingly beautiful example in G minor, number 3 in the collected edition by Davitt Moroney (whose numbering will be used in this review). This work also proclaims Massimo Berghella’s manner of performance, in which, like Pieter-Jan Belder in his recent complete recording of Byrd’s music for keyboard, he restrains himself from imposing overly elaborate interpretations on these already eloquent works, while still showing a cogent awareness of the appropriate playing style. Disc 2 begins with an equally memorable prelude, number 2, in D. Other keyboard genres in Louis Couperin’s output include chaconnes and their close relations the passacailles, with sarabandes, allemandes, courantes, a few gigues and gavottes, plus the legendary and very great pavane in F sharp minor. Two of the passacailles are quite the equals of the two preludes which I have cited: number 98 on disc 1, and number 27 concluding disc 3, both of which flaunt examples of Louis’s rare and discerning employment of the false relation; any English Tudor composer would have been immensely proud of either.

While every piece in this collection has been created fastidiously, they each exude a sense of inspiration which mere compositional technique has to accommodate, rather than technique circumscribing the inspiration. There is a wonderful inevitability about the stately progress of the sarabandes numbered 48, 49 (exquisite conclusions), 50, 51, 87, 109, 110 and particularly 65, in which Berghella unpicks some notably subtle rhythms towards the end. Along with the preludes already mentioned, number 7 shows a fine sense of momentum without excessive reliance on elaboration exhibited in other recordings. Also worth pointing out is the allemande number 58, sprightly but with an irresistible inner logic. And no discussion of music by Louis Couperin is complete without an admiring reference to his powerful yet poignant Tombeau de Mr Blancrocher, the admired lutenist so unfortunate to fall to his death, yet his memory so fortunate to be celebrated by two of the finest works ever composed for the keyboard, the tombeaux by Froberger and this one by Louis Couperin. Both pieces piteously depict his actual falling, and Louis Couperin includes a tolling motif which is wonderfully affecting in its sonorous and sombre dignity.

Massimo Berghella plays throughout with clarity and insight. It is as though he acknowledges that we were not there at the time, and he relies on Louis Couperin’s notation and the surviving evidence of his contemporaries plus the best of modern research for his interpretations, without resorting in them to exaggeration or swagger. It is of course possible to listen to “a little but often” from this recording, but such is the variety and quality of Louis’s oeuvre and such is the judiciousness and sheer excellence of Massimo Berghella’s playing that listening to an entire disc is both pleasurable enrichment and spiritual illumination.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Senfl

Singer Pur, Ensemble Leones
66:30
Oehms Classics OC 1726

This collaboration between the vocal group Singer Pur and the instrumental Ensemble Leones presents a programme of motets with a block of Senfl’s secular music in the middle. This latter element consists largely of no fewer than seven settings of the song “Ich stund an einem Morgen” and three of “Was wird es doch” – perhaps as much of both as one could wish for. While, with the exception of the extended consort piece ‘Das lang’, Senfl’s secular idiom is perhaps quite familiar and ultimately pretty conventional, his sacred music is altogether more complex and interesting and generally underperformed and recorded. A student of Heinrich Isaac, Senfl found employment with the Hofkapelle of Emperor Maximilian I in Vienna and Munich, so it is hardly surprising – with considerable musical resources at his disposal – that Senfl wrote such demanding and richly textured sacred music. Singer Pur present most of the sacred music unaccompanied, and produce their usual lovely vocal blend and intelligent readings of the music. The rich combination of voices and stringed instruments in the opening “Sancta Maria virgo”, such as would have been commonplace in the Munich Hofkapelle, home of the Bavarian State Orchestra, made me wish that both groups had combined forces in more of the sacred music on the CD. Be that as it may, this CD makes a strong case for Senfl’s sacred music being afforded more attention and respect than it is currently. His setting of “Media vita in morte sumus” is a masterpiece.

D. James Ross

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The sword & the lilly

15th-century polyphony for Judgement Day
Fount & Origin, James Tomlinson
67:57
Inventa INV1008

This CD of choral music from the 15th century is – in the words of the programme note – ‘a meditation on van der Weyden’s The Last Judgement’, a magnificent painting in the ‘doom’ tradition, dominated by a wonderfully winged St Michael. Rather than exploring the theme of the Last Judgement in music, the programme takes us on a tour of the painting in the manner of the Radio 4 “Moving Pictures” series, finding works or movements from works which reference its various visual elements. Thus we open with an episode from Ockeghem’s Requiem before moving on via a number of anonymous motets to the Missa L’Homme armé/Dum sacrum mysterium by Johannes Regis, a Magnificat by Johannes Martini and the Dies Irae from Brumel’s Requiem. The singing is elegantly idiomatic and expressive and perhaps the greatest virtue of the recording is the high percentage of anonymous pieces, works which tend to be overlooked when choirs are selecting repertoire for recordings. I am not a natural admirer of picking and choosing movements from larger works and combining them with a fairly random selection of shorter pieces from throughout Europe, and I found myself wanting the rest of pieces such as the Ockeghem, Regis and Brumel. As a taster for these larger works, I suppose this programme may serve to draw listeners unfamiliar with these pieces into exploring them further, while also offering the parts in a wider context of anonymous smaller works. Ultimately for me, this CD seemed a rather unsatisfying random selection of works, which had at best a tangential connection with one another.

D. James Ross

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Septem dies: Seven Days with Music at Prague University (1360-1460)

Schola Gregoriana Pragensis, Corina Marti
63:51
Supraphon SU 4282-2

In their efforts to provide a snapshot of the complete musical lives of students at Prague University in the century from 1360-1460, Corina Marti and the Schola Gregoriana have drawn on the work of a number of musicologists on the University’s considerable collection of musical manuscripts to provide sacred and secular monophony and polyphony for this varied and beautifully executed programme. The singing is wonderfully idiomatic, the singers sounding equally at home in plainchant and polyphony, while Marti provides instrumental interludes and accompaniments on the clavisimbalum. In this way, liturgical music relevant to the seven-day round of religious services is punctuated by student songs and instrumental pieces of the sort they would have played for entertainment. A lavish book of background information provides an intriguing context for the music, and the whole package is a testimony to the very fruitful interaction of scholars and performers. Much of the music here has been freshly transcribed and is receiving its first performance in modern times. The whole team behind this admirable and vivid recording, made in the generous acoustic of the Basilica of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary in Milevsko, has more than achieved its stated aim of representing the musical landscape that would have confronted a student at Prague University in the 14th and 15th centuries.

D. James Ross