Categories
Recording

Napoli 1810

Italian Romantic Music
Pascal Valois
61:26
Analekta AN 2 9195
 
Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links help the site remain alive and FREE!]
 

Pascal Valois presents a programme of music composed by three Italian composers who flourished in the early part of the nineteenth century: Niccolo Paganini (1782–1840), Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829), and Ferdinando Carulli (1770–1841). He plays a guitar by Cabasse-Bernard built c. 1820, and tunes it to A=430. I wonder if the 10th fret is placed incorrectly, because the high d” sounds flat 19 seconds into track 3 – either that, or the string was tuned flat. There is no information in the liner notes about the strings Valois uses, but there are unfortunately loud high-pitched squeaks as he slides his fingers along the three lowest strings which are wound. On the whole I like his interpretation, which I think is appropriate for music from this period. He brings out a clear melodic line which allows the music to sing, and he phrases here and there with tasteful rubato. His performance is enhanced by a pleasing variety of contrasting tone colours.

Valois begins the CD with two movements from Paganini’s Grand Sonata for Guitar M.S.3. Interestingly the original publication has the title “Grand Sonata a Chitarra Sola con Accompagnamento di Violino”. The violin adds little of substance, and it is thought that it may have been included as an afterthought. Valois manages perfectly well on his own without inviting a friend to join him on violin. As to be expected of the great violinist Paganini, his guitar pieces are tricky to play, and it is their virtuosity which makes them attractive to the listener.  In the Andantino variato Scherzando, for example, Valois’ fingers scamper up and down the neck with a variety of contrasting ideas – triplets,  fast scales, parallel sixths, tremolos, the melody in octaves, chords interspersed with flashy flourishes – but the harmonic structure is extraordinarily banal – just tonic and dominant with a modulation to the dominant in both sections, and with the brief respite of a passing subdominant approaching the final cadence.

There follow Six Andantes for Guitar Op. 320 by Carulli: Andante affettuoso con poco moto in G major, starting with the same first four notes as Silent Night, and ending with a 3-octave arpeggio to top g”, echoed by a few fluffy harmonics and a descending arpeggio in octaves; a nicely paced Andante con moto in E major, where a slow, gentle, lyrical theme is followed by an exciting sequence of arpeggios and later by a sudden, dramatic shift to E minor; Andante molto sostenuto in A major with passages of descending triplets, of slow-moving chords supported by repeated notes in the bass, and a rising chromatic scale from low E marked “ritardando” leading us back to the opening theme; Andante giusto in F major, which has many notes clearly marked with an accent in Carulli’s manuscript (see IMSLP) – not consistently observed by Valois; Andante legiero e grazioso in the soft key E flat major, with an exciting run of fast notes including a glissando in bar 23; and Andante risoluto in the bright key of D major to finish.

The history of the guitar – of the 4-course instrument of the 16th century, the 5-course instrument of the 17th century, and the 6-course instrument of the 19th century – has been bedevilled by a lack of bass notes, and compromises involving less than satisfactory inversions of chords have been inevitable. So it is with Giuliani’s Guitar Sonata Op. 15. At the end of the first and last movements he wants a big chord of C major, ideally with a low C in the bass. Unfortunately the lowest note available on his 6-course guitar is a third higher at E. Rather than make do with a root position chord with a high bass c, he writes a first inversion chord using that low E. It may sound odd, but better to finish with a first inversion than lose sonority in the bass.

Other pieces of music by Carulli are Guitar Sonatina Op. 59 No. 1, and Guitar Sonata Op. 159 No. 1. In his liner notes Valois says that both are world premiere recordings. The Sonatina  may have a certain charm, but it is not great music.  It consists of a slow Larghetto and a sprightly Rondo Allegretto. If you removed all the tonic and dominant chords, there would be little left to play. Some relief comes in the Rondo with a brief digression to the minor. The Sonata – just a Larghetto – is more satisfying, and benefits from Valois’ sensitive playing.

Stewart McCoy

Categories
Recording

Beyond Beethoven

Anneke Scott horn, Steven Devine 
77:51
resonus RES10267

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

This programme of music for horn and fortepiano represents a cross-section of the music for this combination written in the wake of Beethoven’s op 17 Sonata, premiered in 1800 by the composer and horn virtuoso, Giovanni Punto, and considered the first ever composed for these instruments. The programme, and Anneke Scott’s erudite programme notes, draw fascinating connections between this first horn sonata and the repertoire on the CD. While listeners may well have heard of Ferdinand Ries, represented here by an impressive Grande Sonate, the other three composers – Friedrich Eugen Thürner, Friedrich Starke and Hendrik Coenraad Steup – will be unfamiliar to most. Thürner moved in elevated musical circles, working with the likes of Louis Spohr and his star clarinettist, Simon Hermstedt. Sadly a number of professional setbacks and deteriorating mental health led to his early death in an asylum in 1827. Horn player and composer Friedrich Starke was a close friend of Beethoven’s, also playing the sonata with him, and he draws heavily on the world of the hunting horn calls for his broodingly romantic Adagio and Rondo. Also a pianist, Starke published a method for the “Viennese Piano” in which he explores the various timbres possible using the pedal effects available. Steven Devine’s Fritz Viennese fortepiano of 1815 boasts four pedals and a bassoon knee lever. Finally, Hendrik Coenraad Steup’s links to the Beethoven Sonata are more overt if less direct, in that a note from the composer tells us that the opening six bars recall those of the earlier work. As one of the foremost proponents of period horn today, Anneke Scott provides confident, technically assured and historically informed accounts of this engaging chamber music, and is ably supported by Steven Devine on fortepiano. There is an innate musicality to this pairing, as well as a boldness and flamboyance, which must have been a feature of the original performances of this early repertoire for horn and piano.

D. James Ross

Download the booklet and listen to samples HERE.

Categories
Recording

Bach | Mendelssohn: The organ sonatas


Hans-Eberhard Roß (Goll Organ of St Martin, Memmingen)
141:27 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
audite 23.447

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

Teaching online has become a new art form, and the experienced teacher Hans-Eberhard Roß has hit on the idea of pairing the six Bach Trio Sonatas (BWV 525-530) with the six Mendelssohn Sonatas as a ‘kind of organ school’, interlacing Bach with Mendelssohn sonata by sonata and using the Goll organ in St Martin, Memmingen in June 2020 to demonstrate them.

The Goll organ was built in 1998 and the website www.audite.de gives some of Roß’ further notes on each movement of the Mendelssohn; only the basic specification of this four-manual organ is given in the liner notes. The organ feels as though it was conceived for the 19th-century French symphonic tradition, but Roß assures us that it is equally good for Mendelssohn and Bach.

He uses plenty of upperwork in the outer movements of the Bach sonatas and the generous acoustic in which the organ speaks does not detract from the clarity of his playing. Solo reeds are used to contrast with the flutes in the slow movements and, a chorus reed is even used for the LH of the Allegro in Sonata 2 in C minor, where, after an exceptionally well-registered and eloquent Largo, the 8’ pedal booms unpleasantly. In the Mendelssohn sonatas, it is the overall sound of the fortes that I find the organ lets him down. Here his brisk tempi, the bright trompette tone and the rich mixtures combine to make it feel a long way from Mendelssohn’s Berlin or the London for which his sonatas were conceived. English organs of the 1840s did not sound remotely like this, and Roß seems determined to display all this modern organ’s registrational possibilities as if to prove how much can be done to bring out the voices of the music before him – indeed in a note on the Audite website he specifically refers to the possibility of a large organ equipped with registrational aids being able to do just that: personally, I find it a distraction. It is like playing the 48 on a piano, where you can ‘bring out’ the returning fugue subject in case your hearers can’t spot it.

So although we can applaud the teacher’s desire to set the Bach and Mendelssohn sonatas side by side, I do not find the use of this instrument or the style of playing very convincing for either. Nor, in spite of his obvious skill and his pedagogical zeal, do I learn much from this pairing; except of course to have Mendelssohn’s debt to JSB underlined at every turn. The pedal solos, the complex fugal writing, even the sustained Bachian arpeggios in the Allegro assai vivace that concludes the First sonata (so reminiscent of the passagework that opens Komm, Heiliger Geist BWV 651) bring Mendelssohn’s debt to Bach vividly before us. This is a welcome reminder: but I doubt if that is what many readers of the EMR are looking for.

David Stancliffe

Categories
Recording

Schubert: Piano Trio No. 2, Arpeggione Sonata

Erich Höbarth violin, Alexander Rudin arpeggione/cello and Aapo Häkkinen Graf fortepiano
79:55
Naxos 8.573884

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

Arguably the main talking point here is Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, D 821 played on the instrument for which it was written in 1824. The arpeggione, a kind of bowed guitar with frets and six strings, had been invented only around a year earlier by one of the principal Viennese luthiers, Johann Georg Stauffer. It would enjoy a brief existence, its only noted performer being Vincenz Schuster, a guitarist who was a regular performer at the domestic concerts given by Schubert and his friends. Today the work is usually played on the cello, or, less frequently the viola, but given the greater compass of the arpeggione, it requires transposition and has been adapted for all manner of instruments, not to mention turned into a concerto. Schubert scholars tend to be rather snooty about it, but it is an affable, engaging and substantial piece in three movements, a playful Allegro moderato with a development section that builds a fair degree of tension, a song-like Adagio with some typically felicitous modulations and a good-humoured final Allegretto that sets out as an animated dialogue between the two instruments.

The performance is excellent. The arpeggione sounds (at least here) a little like a cross between a cello and a viol, but the upper register has a distinctive wiry sonority. It blends well with the fortepiano, a Viennese instrument built by Conrad Graf in 1827, the year of the E flat Piano Trio, and just a year before Schubert’s death. It would have been good to have been given more detail on it, for it is an instrument of exceptional tonal beauty, with a silvery top register capable of the most delicate scalic passagework and arpeggiations, but also a strong, firmly rounded bass, as the Finnish harpsichordist and fortepianist Aapo Häkkinen demonstrates throughout both works.

The Piano Trio No 2 in E flat, D 929, is of course one of the great products of Schubert’s last year, a massive four-movement work rich in all that is valued in the composer. The strong opening announcement of the Allegro sets out the stall with striking effect. This, Schubert seems to be saying, is going to be something impressive and of expansive breadth. Yet he is quickly into more lyrical territory with the cello’s statement and the movement will ebb and flow between moments of dramatic tension and flowing lyricism, all splendidly captured here by Erich Höbarth, Alexander Rudin and Häkkinen. Listen, for example, to the beguiling lyrical warmth of the secondary idea. A similarly treasurable moment comes at the same point in the succeeding Andante con moto, and again shortly afterwards with the keyboard’s arpeggiations, a passage marked con Pedale, appassionato, where Häkkinen conjures pure magic from the Graf. But throughout these are performances of the highest calibre, performances that given the bargain Naxos price tag should be snapped up without delay.

Brian Robins

Categories
Recording

La Famille Rameau

Justin Taylor harpsichord & piano
78:41
Alpha Classics Alpha 721

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

Justin Taylor’s La Famille Forqueray now has a sequel of the highest standard. This programme includes a number of Jean-Philippe’s more popular pieces and music by one of his sons, his younger brother and a nephew. In addition there are two tributes: a set of variations on Les sauvages by J-F Tapray and (pause for fanfare and drumroll) Debussy’s Hommage à Rameau. This is played on a lovely 1891 Erard piano, a worthy complement to the fine double-manual harpsichord attributed to Donzelague used for the bulk of the programme.

Such splendid instruments deserve splendid playing and from the multiple-award-winning Justin Taylor they certainly get it. He is not afraid to go his own way with the ‘standards’ (though I did find his tempo for J-PR’s famous gavotte a little ponderous, even if the variations did not disappoint) and unfamiliar repertoire has been well chosen and thoroughly prepared.

Taylor also wrote the contextualising essay (the booklet is in French, English and German) though I doubt that it was his decision to print his biography as a page all in upper case type! This looks quite bizarre and is actually difficult to read.

But the playing and programme are tremendous. Treat yourself!

David Hansell

Categories
Recording

Sainte-Hélène: La légende napoléonienne

Les Lunaisiens, Sabine Devieihle, Arnaud Marzorati, Les cuivres romantiques
62:28
muso mu-044

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

This is a portrait of Napoleon and the Napoleonic era in France, as represented in songs for the salon and the street, fanfares and marches, including one by Cherubini. Musical styles are thus varied and sometimes the successive items are slightly uneasy neighbours, though there is a ‘plot-line’ holding it all together. Sonorities, too, are varied and range from the brass choirs (which use historic instruments as well as modern reconstructions) to voice-and-piano and include one sound which has never occurred in even my wildest early music dreams – the combination of solo baritone voice and serpent!

This isn’t really a CD you can have playing as background. To get the most from it you need to listen with concentration and have the texts/translations in front of you. (It will also help if you know the relevant political history.) Doing this, I found that the concept and the performances drew me into their world and I felt culturally enriched and not merely a diligent reviewer.

The booklet (in French and Englich) just about does its job and does include the sung texts and a translation into English.

David Hansell

Categories
Sheet music

Alice Mary Smith: Short Orchestral Works

Andante for Clarinet and Orchestra, [2] Intermezzi from The Masque of Pandora
Recent Researches in Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 78
Edited by Ian Graham-Jones
ix, 2, 65pp. ISBN 978-1-9872-0452-0. $144

This is the latest of several volumes Ian Graham-Smith has devoted to Alice Mary Smith. An acknowledged expert on the lady and her output, his introduction to these three works is positively bulging with background information.

The clarinet solo began its life as the middle movement of a sonata with piano. The dedicatee and original performer, Henry Lazarus, commissioned the orchestration and played it with universal approbation. Whether or not the composer (who had also been the “accompanist” at its premiere) ever produced a full concerto (as it is described in at least some of the press coverage of performances) is unclear.*

The two intermezzi also originated in a larger work, this time a “grand choral cantata” setting words by Longfellow. “After the storm”, an Andante movement moving from common time into 9/8 then back again, was transposed from its original B flat minor down a semitone to facilitate a more gentle segue into “In the garden”, which is in A major and 9/8.

These are, indeed, brief pieces – at 148 bars, the clarinet solo is longer than both of the others put together. Yet, there is a charm to all three (and not a little virtuosity about the Andante for clarinet!) which makes them ideal introductions to the composer and her music.

Brian Clark

* The publisher also lists two parts for clarinet and piano of just this work for $10.

Categories
Recording

Beethoven Arranged

Ilker Arcayürek tenor, Ludwig Chamber Players
71:09
cpo 555 355-2
12 Variations on a theme from Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, Septet op. 20, Adelaide, An die ferne Geliebte

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk

This CD features a performance on modern instruments of Beethoven’s famous and seminal Septet in tandem with modern arrangements for instruments and tenor voice by Andreas N Tarkmann and M Ucki of the Beethoven songs ‘Adelaide’ and the extended ‘An die ferne Geliebte’, and an octet arrangement of Beethoven’s homage to Handel – a set of variations for cello and piano of ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ from his Judas Maccabaeus. The performance of the Septet is delightfully detailed, while the modern arrangements for chamber ensemble use the Septet as their model, and make very effective use of the available combinations of wind and stringed instruments. It is easy forget how ground-breaking and influential Beethoven’s Septet was when it first appeared in 1800, directly inspiring Schubert’s (in my opinion far superior) Octet and much of the larger-scale chamber music of the Romantic period. My favourite track on the CD is the Tarkmann arrangement of ‘An die ferne Geliebte’, possibly because it was the strongest composition to start with, but also I think because of the way the imaginative octet instrumentation enhances the original. Iker Arcayürek is a thoughtful and highly expressive solo tenor, who responds positively to being accompanied by a chamber ensemble rather than the customary piano. My one reservation is that in allocating the original piano part, the arrangements feel free to make demands on the modern instruments (particularly the clarinet) which would simply have been beyond the scope of the instruments of the period. Playing modern instruments, The Ludwig Players make light of this, but these remain obviously modern arrangements for modern instruments.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Chamber Music of Clara Schumann

Byron Schenkman, Jesse Irons, Kate Wadsworth
58:02
www.byronandfriends.org BSF 191

A CD devoted to music by Clara Schumann is always welcome, and there are some genuine treasures here. The most substantial work is her op 17 Piano Trio in C minor, a work of genuine originality and consummate craftsmanship. Unsurprisingly, to us, her music sounds very similar in style to that of her husband with perhaps more than a passing flavour of Mendelssohn, but it is important that more of her music be recorded so that we may begin to identify her unique voice. Her op 22 Romances for violin and piano, composed in 1853 after she had met and been influenced by the young Brahms, hint at the originality she is capable of. The CD concludes with the Romance from the op 7 Piano Concerto, which again gives us a tantalising glimpse of Clara’s potential. After the untimely death of her husband, Clara devoted her life to editing, transcribing and performing his music, a decision which eclipsed her own compositional talents. It is perhaps a pity that the present performers devote about a third of the present CD to Robert Schumann’s op 15 Kinderszenen, music already familiar and which. unfortunately to my ear in its ease of composition and its visionary qualities. slightly outshines Clara’s music. There is a lot of extant and largely unexplored music for solo piano by Clara, including transcriptions of her husband’s music, which could have completed the programme and further informed our understanding of her oeuvre. Having said that, there is an engaging freshness about these performances, with a particularly evocative sound coming from Byron Schenkman’s 1875 Streicher piano. I found the portamento of Jesse Irons’ violin playing a little overdone – the study of contemporary descriptions of performance style will undoubtedly have informed these accounts, but the universal concept of ‘less is more’ might also have been applied. This CD is a valuable part of the current exploration of the music written by female composers which has been unjustifiably overshadowed by that of their male contemporaries – time indeed to let more of the flowers in the garden bloom.

D. James Ross

Categories
DVD

Beethoven: Missa Solemnis (DVD)

Johanna Winkel, Sophie Harmsen, Sebastian Kohlhepp, Arttu Kataja, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Documentary and Performance
71:00 (music), 60:00 (documentary)
Naxos 2.110669

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk

How do we approach the Missa Solemnis in this Beethoven year, 2020? It is not an easy question to ask of a work that is so multi-faceted, a huge structure that both storms the heavens, as if shaking a fist at fallen mankind, and yet also provides that same mankind with the solace and comfort of the Elysian fields. Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s first biographer, noted that from the start of the Mass’s long gestation period (1818-1823) Beethoven was in a condition of ‘oblivion of everything earthly’. The concept of a large-scale celebratory Mass for the elevation of his royal pupil Archduke Rudolf to cardinal and archbishop in Cologne Cathedral – an event long since over by the time the Mass was completed – had been transcended by 1823. I confess to finding it difficult to provide firm answers to the question posed in my opening sentence.

Some help is certainly provided by this new Naxos release featuring a film of a recording made in October 2018 at Alpirsbach Abbey, Baden-Würtemberg. Not only do we see film of the recording itself, but also a fascinating hour-long documentary that includes valuable insights into the work and Frieder Bernius’s approach to it. For that reason, I would recommend watching the documentary before viewing the performance. Bernius is, of course, a long-established conductor and was the founder of the Kammerchor Stuttgart, whose 50th anniversary is also celebrated by this issue. One of the most interesting features of the film is the way in which Bernius works with his choir, often taking just a couple of choristers to give them individual tuition on the work in hand. Even more compelling is to observe that Bernius’s approach, inspired by his many years of working on earlier choral music, is text-based, the results of his insistence on detailed working on such matters as pronunciation and articulation clearly evident in the final performance. In addition to the interviews and rehearsal clips, there are some fascinating archival clips of Bernius at work with earlier incarnations of the Kammerchor, along with interviews with some of the present performers.

Moving to the performance itself it is clear from the outset of the Kyrie that Bernius knows precisely what he wants. Taken at a measured tempo, the music moves with calm assurance, while the solo entries announce a fine young quartet that throughout impresses particularly in the many ensemble passages, obviously encouraged by Bernius to make the most of the madrigalian textures with which the work abounds. Christe is beautifully managed, though the timpani and brass don’t quite achieve unanimity in the quiet transition back to Kyrie. The Gloria, too, sets out at a well-judged tempo, avoiding the feeling of being pushed. Indeed, the whole, vast movement is unfolded by Bernius like an epic poem. ‘Et in terra’ brings a moment of wondrous stasis in the midst of powerful drive, while the prayerful ‘Gratias’ is another memorably placid interlude succeeded by some splendidly incisive orchestral playing in the lead back to the opening tempo and ‘Domine Deus’. And it is worth mentioning at this point that although the period-instrument Hofkapelle Stuttgart is hardly the most illustrious orchestra to undertake the Missa Solemnis, its playing throughout is excellent, with many distinguished moments coming from its wind section. The overall grandeur of the movement is brought to a triumphant peroration in the final doxology.

Credo opens as powerful affirmation, the contrapuntal passages once again luminescent in their clarity of detail.  The start of ‘Et incarnatus’ finds the choral tenors handling this key moment with a real sensitivity complimented by glinting high wind, another treasurable moment. The stabbing pain of ‘Crucifixus’ is tellingly conveyed, as is the mesmerizingly lovely outcome at ‘et sepultus est’.  

Beethoven’s ‘Sanctus’ is not the exultant triple cry of so many settings but a reverential moment on bended knee in contemplation of God’s glory. The choral sopranos have a rare ragged moment of ensemble at the exposed entry on ‘Osanna’, but in general cope with Beethoven’s wickedly high tessitura very capably. The high violin solo a little later is very well played. The opening of Agnus Dei provides a fine moment for bass Arttu Kataja, to distinguish himself and lead his three colleagues into a gloriously sung exposition, while the militaristic flourishes (first introduced into an Agnus Dei by Haydn in his Missa in tempore belli) provide thrilling moments of dramatic extroversion.

As I hope is clear from the foregoing Bernius’s Missa Solemnis impresses by dint of its total integrity. It may not be the most imposing or the most dramatically enthralling version on record, but few will not be moved and touched by it. ‘From the heart, may it go to the heart’, wrote Beethoven of his monumental work. Here that mission is unquestionably accomplished.

Brian Robins