Tag: Renaissance

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John Bull: In nomine | Walsingham

Cover Léon Berben John Bull mp3

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

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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

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The Soule of Heaven

CD cover The Soule of Heaven Ferrabosco B-Five

Pavans and Almaines by Alfonso Ferrabosco I & II
B-Five Recorder Consort | Sofie Vanden Eynde lute
63:16
Coviello Classics COV92108

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This lovely CD presents a cross-section of the consort music Alfonso Ferrabosco, father and son, as it might have been heard at the Court of Elizabeth, and later that of James I, played by the five-part recorder consort established in 1609 by the Bassano brothers. The title of the CD comes from the epithet thought up for Ferabosco II’s music by that master of epithets, Ben Jonson. Constantly buffeted by complications of their catholic faith, it is amazing that both Ferraboscos managed to produce such sublime music. It is played with a simply awesome blend, luminous tone and superb musicality by the B-Five Consort and their lutanist, Sofie Vanden Eynde, who contributes an occasional lute solo to the proceedings. Further variety is provided by the consort occasionally migrating up through the smaller recorders to alter entirely the character of the music they are playing. The clinching virtue of this charming CD is the superbly idiomatic virtuosic ornamentation which pervades these performances. Lovely repertoire and stunning performances – so what is not to enjoy about this production? Well, the programme notes. A deeply irrelevant of piece of creative writing by Annemarie Peeters embodying the headings of the pieces in the programme purports to illuminate, but actually just annoyed me – I think I would have been even more annoyed by this stupid squandering of an opportunity to inform if I hadn’t been soothed by the lovely playing. Fortunately a brief biographical sketch of the two Ferraboscos’ lives almost saves the day, although this could have been expanded, with an explanation of the music, into a very presentable programme note. I can’t be the only one driven to distraction by this new fashion of replacing ‘proper’ programme notes with spacey effusions that have little or nothing to do with the matter in hand? Get in a musicologist to write your programme note, and if you’re lucky then you would have something to match the superlative quality of this recording!

D. James Ross

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Recording

Basevi Codex

CD cover Basevi Codex Dorothee Mields Boreas Quartett Bremen

Music at the Court of Margaret of Austria
Dorothee Mields, Boreas Quartett Bremen
61:30
audite 97.783

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The Basevi Codex is a music manuscript associated with the Mechelen Court of Margaret of Austria, produced by the famous Alamire workshop and containing mainly secular music by such big names of the early 16th century as Pierre de la Rue, Loyset Compère, Antoine Brumel, Matthaeus Pipelare, Johannes Ockeghem, Alexander Agricola, Johannes Prioris, Jacob Obrecht, Heinrich Isaac and Johannes Ghiselin. The Boreas Quartett of Bremen are a superb recorder quartet, who give beautifully nuanced instrumental performances of some of the material, while also blending wonderfully with the voice of Dorothee Mields – one of my favourite moments of the whole CD is in the account of de la Rue’s Plorer gemier where Mield’s voice magically emerges from the recorder ensemble texture singing the Requiem cantus. This enchanting blend amongst the recorders and in turn with the voice is a major asset of this revelatory CD. The account of three movements from Obrecht’s Missa Fortuna desperata highlights the expressive potential of this combination of recorders and voice, and makes a very plausible case for the performance of this fine music in a secular chamber context.

D. James Ross

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Prisma: Il Transilvano

CD cover Ambronay Prisma Il transilvano

Musical bridges between Italy and Hungary around 1600
Works from the Codex Caioni and Hungarian folk music
57:55
Ambronay AMY312

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This beautifully performed CD alternates Italian music of the late Renaissance with traditional Hungarian music. What it doesn’t do, unsurprisingly, is provide ‘musical bridges between Italy and Hungary around 1600’. The Transilvano of the title illustrates the problem. It is borrowed from a famous organ treatise by Girolamo Diruta (Venice 1593) dedicated to Sigismond Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, but of course the music the group plays from this collection, notwithstanding some ‘Hungarianised’ divisions, sounds entirely Italian. So too the music from Codex Caioni which makes up most of the rest of the Italian component. Amongst others, Renée Clemencic has demonstrated that there is Hungarian music from this period, but the Hungarian traditional music here, beautifully evocative as it is, seems not to be from 16th- or 17th –century sources. As long as you are not looking for some magical musical ‘bridge’ between 17th-century Italy and Hungary, there is much to enjoy here, from the plaintive Hungarian violin airs and the lovely singing of Franciska Hajdu in the Hungarian ballad Magos kösziklának, to the imaginative and fresh accounts of the Italian Renaissance repertoire. There is nothing wrong with playing the divisions in this early repertoire with a Transylvanian flair, but to my ear it still sounds entirely Italian.  

D. James Ross

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Sacred Treasures of Christmas

CD cover Sacred treasures of Christmas

The London Oratory Schola Cantorum, Charles Cole
76:30
Hyperion CDA 68358

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This CD is part of a series recording the liturgical music of the various seasons as presented in the round of services in the London Oratory. St Augustine’s Church Kilburn provides just about the ideal acoustic for recording this lavish Christmas music, providing a pleasing bloom but also allowing us to hear the necessary detail. The choral music comes from throughout Europe and the composers represented include Sweelinck, Giovanni Gabrieli, Hassler, Mouton, Scheidt, Guerrero, Victoria, Palestrina, Lassus, Sheppard, Nanino and Tallis, while the choristers also sing some plainchant with the authority of familiarity. In fact the music covers the celebrations of Christmas, Epiphany and Candlemas, and ranges in mood from the overtly showy to the deeply contemplative. The singers capture the full range of moods in their chosen music, and the director Charles Cole does a superb job in marshalling his large choral forces to produce a sound which can be focussed and intimate, as well as wonderfully opulent. I think there is something profoundly different about a ‘working’ church choir from the small specialist ensembles who also perform this sort of repertoire, not just in their use of boys’ voices and their sheer numbers, but in their approach to the music. This is repertoire they sing every day of their lives as a vital element of church services, and they derive an unparalleled authority as a result. This is a thoroughly enjoyable recording which captures perfectly the joys of the festive season.

D. James Ross

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Lorem Ipsum

CD cover Lorem Ipsum

Combo Cam
58:37 (CD1, including dialogue), 54:11 (CD2, just music)
Genuin GEN 21724

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Lorem ipsum is gobbledygook. This dog’s dinner of a production deserves that to be my whole review. The double CD set is presented in such an offhand, arch and downright annoying manner that had I not been impressed with the actual music playing I would hardly have gone in search of the performers’ names, waded through Doris Meeresbüchner’s rambling notes or tried to work out what on earth was going on. I remember when making one of my own CDs insisting that ‘incidental noises’ – wind players and singers breathing, the spinet player changing stops – not be edited out. However, to include tracks of the performers walking in at the start, discussing what they are doing etc etc seems to stretch realism ad absurdum. The repertoire seems to be music from the Renaissance, mainly Spanish in origin, and the performances are dynamic and idiomatic. However, I eventually gave up working out what Doris Meeresbüchner had to do with the whole lamentably presented project, as Viola Blache is credited with the vocals and the phrases ‘hier ist Doris Meeresbüchner dabei’ on CD1 and ‘wo ist Doris?’ on CD2 are less than helpful. There is a deplorable level of arrogance and self-indulgence in making these two fine CDs of music and then releasing them in a format and package which deprives the listener of the supporting information to permit full understanding and enjoyment of the recording. The silly inserted tracks, the obscure presentation and the squandered opportunity to inform nearly drove this reviewer ad distractionem – if you plan to invest in Lorem ipsum, good luck to you.

D. James Ross

Perhaps a German speaker would like to send us an alternative review? Could it be that we’re missing a big joke?

 

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I Diporti della villa in ogni stagione 1601

CD cover I diporti della villa Venezia 1601

Gruppo vocali Àrsi & Tèsi, Tony Corradini
65:06
Tactus TC 590005

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The madrigal collection ‘The pastimes of the Villa in each season’ published in Venice in 1601 consists of settings by eminent composers of the day, some better remembered than others – Giovanni Croce, Lelio Bertani, Ippolito Baccusi and Filippo de Monte – of verses by the aristocrat Francesco Bozza. Each composer takes a complete season, treated in five parts and interestingly each referred to in the dedication as a single song. The parallels with the almost exactly contemporary ‘Triumphs of Oriana’ are interesting and point at an urge towards the encyclopaedic at the time. The balance of the music on the CD is made up with sundry other madrigals which mention the seasons by the familiar Nanino, Marenzio, de Lasso and Schütz, and the rather more obscure and interesting Rinaldo del Mel and Mogens Pederson. The quality of the madrigals in the collection as well as the added material is high, and they are beautifully sung by the vocal ensemble. This could well have been just an aristocratic vanity project, but the fact that the composers clearly liaised, not to say competed, with one another ensured a consistently high compositional standard. The structure of the publication and its title makes it very clear that it was viewed as a single large four-part work, and was intended to be performed in its entirety, as it is here. The astute choice of complementary material makes this CD thoroughly engaging and entertaining, while the expressive and technically flawless performances ensure that the attention never wanders.

D. James Ross

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Regnart: Missa Christ Ist Erstanden

CD cover Regnart Missa Christ ist erstanden hyperion

Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal
64:45
hyperion CDA68369

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Having been poleaxed by the way Cinquecento’s excellent singing complemented the excellence of Isaac’s music on their previous release but having been less impressed by their previous disc of Regnart (2007), I approached this recording with circumspection. None required. Like the former, it is another superb recording of revelatory music. Regnart’s praises were being sung over four hundred years ago by none other than Lassus. Like the rest of us, the greatest creative artists can reveal lousy taste, or speak up for an untalented friend, or favour someone inferior to make themselves seem even better, but Lassus, about ten years Regnart’s senior, was bang on the money when he came to recommending him for advancement.

The two masses that take up most of this programme are best heard after the little hymn tunes on which they are based. In both cases, Regnart’s varied treatment of the tunes within his masses makes for two outstanding compositions; listening to them is spiritually rewarding and an aesthetic pleasure. This is well exemplified in the Gloria of Missa Christ ist erstanden. There is some fine sequential writing approaching the movement’s first close at “Patris”, followed by a well-judged slowing of tempo to a sumptuous cadence on “miserere nostri”, and an extended Amen brings the movement to a close with another gorgeous cadence. There are fine moments in other movements, with an excellent passage for three of the five voices in the Credo at “et iterum …”, and another striking cadence in the Sanctus at “tua”. Missa Freu dich is no less distinguished. The Credo is notable for some animated syncopation in the “Crucifixus” section, with further rhythmic vitality approaching the end of the movement. The Sanctus ends with a climactically high note on the last word “tua” for the countertenor. Perhaps most to be relished is the Agnus, with exciting dissonance at “peccata mundi” and a lovely cadence on “nostri”, repeated, to round off the entire disc, on “pacem”.

The three fillers are well chosen. Maria fein, du klarer Schein is a beautiful sacred song in five parts, while the other two works are later contrafacta of what were originally “light Italian love songs” according to the excellent notes by Erika Supria Honisch. She informs us that Ruhmbt alle Werck was originally “Vorrei saper da voi”. For those who are interested, the original of Wann ich nur dich hab was “Tutto lo giorno”, 1574.

This is a disc of glorious polyphony, especially memorable for its undulating phrases, sung superbly by Cinquecento, with not only a feeling of bracing air between the individual parts, but also, where appropriate, concentrated warmth during deeper sonorities.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

In Umbra Mortis

CD cover In Umbra Mortis A chromatic journey Cappella Amsterdam

Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss
Rihm – De Wert
57:32
Pentatone PTC 5186 948

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This programme alternates music by the contemporary German composer Wolfgang Rihm (b.1952) with that of the Renaissance master Giaches de Wert (1535-96). As the programme note observes, the music is ‘intertwined’, as we pass rapidly from early to contemporary music, inviting direct comparison. The choice of composers is inspired – Rihm’s idiom is firmly rooted in the Renaissance, while Wert’s seems to exhibit a prescience of modern harmonies. Rihm’s music is his Sieben Passions-Texte (2001-6), a considerable masterpiece, powerfully sung here by an ensemble of 24 voices. With a choir of this size, one of the main issues is blend, and this is achieved with an astonishing consistency here. The added power of the relatively large number of voices is palpable, and it is interesting that while the overlap in personnel with the smaller ensemble who sing the de Wert is considerable, the latter is not simply an offshoot of the former. The five- and six-part motets by de Wert, also penitential in mood, demonstrate his daring use of chromaticism and consummate mastery of structure. Such juxtapositions of repertoire are not always successful, but this one has been so carefully considered and superbly executed that both repertoires benefit from the encounter. I have one tiny reservation – there is a degree of background ‘clomping’, which may annoy some listeners. I found it distracting to start with, but soon forgot it in my enjoyment of this remarkable music.

D. James Ross

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Veggio · Rodio · Bertoldo: Complete Organ Music

CD cover Veggio Rodio Bertoldo Luca Scandali

Luca Scandali Lorenzo da Prato organ, San Petronio, Bologna
98:42 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Brilliant Classics 95804

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The recent untimely death of Liuwe Tamminga has deprived us of a fine organist who spent many years officiating at the Lorenzo da Prato organ in the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, the instrument at the centre of these two CDs of music by three little-known Italian composers from the middle of the sixteenth century. One of the oldest surviving organs, it was built in 1471-75 and added to in 1531. Luca Scandali studied with Tamminga and with the latter’s predecessor and mentor, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, so he knows the instrument well and makes very good use of its full range of stops. It can make a very big sound and the Basilica’s acoustic is also big – the reverberation continues long after final chords are released – but the recording engineers have coped very well here. Scandali shows a keen affinity with his repertory, maintaining a good sense of flow while showing considerable flexibility in individual lines and sections.

Not much is known of Claudio Veggio, the earliest of the three featured composers; all his surviving keyboard music can be found in a single manuscript housed in Castell’Arquato (situated between Piacenza and Parma). Scandali plays six ricercars (one of which he has also completed), as well as an attractive canzona intabulation. The ricercars are impressive pieces, two of them quite extended in length. They tend towards imitation by homphonic blocks, rather than by single voices, and come across rather more like intabulations than ricercars.

Rocco Rodio came from Bari but worked in Naples, where he was a contemporary of composers such as Diego Ortiz, Bartolomeo Roy and Jean de Macque in what was a cultural melting pot, leading to a flourishing school of keyboard composition. His only volume of keyboard music, published in 1575, is the first known to have been printed in open score. It contains five extended ricercars, interspersed here with three fantasias on well-known plainchant themes, plus one on La Spagna. The ricercars are imaginative pieces which go in some unexpected directions. For the fantasias, Scandali is joined by sackbut player Mauro Morini who plays the long note cantus firmi. I am in two minds about this: while it does help to bring out the chant for modern audiences not familiar with it, it gives an undue emphasis to the cantus firmus, which was not necessarily intended to be heard, with the sackbut at times overpowering the other voices in the texture.

Sperindio Bertoldo came from Modena but spent most of his life as organist at the Duomo in Padua. He has left just three ricercars, more conventionally imitative than those of the other two composers here. They are interspersed with two toccatas and five French chanson intabulations. The toccatas are a particularly good showcase for full organ, while the canzonas are rich with sprightly figuration and are used to exploit its range of stops. This recording represents an attractive compilation of music by three relatively unknown figures, serving to showcase what was already a flourishing Italian organ music scene between c. 1540 and c. 1575, before Claudio Merulo and the Gabrielis came into their stride. Scandali’s enthusiasm for the repertory shines through and I enjoyed listening to it very much.

Noel O’Regan