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Recording

Resonances of Waterloo

Saint Salvator’s Chapel Choir (University of St Andrews), The Wallace Collection), Tim Wilkinson & Anthony George
Sanctiandree SAND0007
71:22

What? You didn’t know that churches were built to mark the end of the Napoleonic Wars? Or that St James, Bermondsey (one of them) still has its original organ restored pretty much to its original state? Or that Sigismund Neukomm (1778-1858) wrote a Requiem to honour the dead of those wars as well as the memory of Louis XVI? Well, in that case, this CD is for you and you’ll enjoy it! The Requiem is for soloists, choir, organ and brass – keyed trumpet, four hand-horns and three trombones – who make relatively brief but oh-so-telling contributions at key moments. The virtuosity of any brass ensemble led by John Wallace can be taken for granted but the student choir are eminently able co-performers: several of them undertake modest but very capably sung solo passages. The Requiem is complemented by three short but action-packed works for brass ensemble. I really do recommend this, not just as something different, but as something interesting and very well performed. A pat on the back for the recording engineers too, who rise commendably to the challenges posed by these forces. The booklet is pretty much a model of how to do it. This deserves to be an unlikely hit!

David Hansell

Categories
Recording

Schubert: Die Nacht

Anja Lechner violoncello, Pablo Márquez guitar
56:51
ECM New Series ECM 2555

This CD presents a selection of music by Schubert arranged for cello and guitar framed by three Nocturnes actually composed for cello and guitar by Schubert’s contemporary Friedrich Burgmüller. As Schubert himself played the guitar and there was a degree of flexibility about instrumentation at this time, it is perfectly conceivable that Schubert’s songs might have been presented in this way. The arrangement of the ‘Arpeggione Sonata’ is also very effective, and Anna Lechner’s cello fairly sings the lyrical Adagio as it does the Romanze from Schubert’s Rosamunde. The ECM New Series recordings are famous for their clarity and for making listeners rethink standard classics, but in my experience they are also notorious for their rather nebulous programme notes – a note which begins ‘Franz Schubert never felt inwardly secure’ is always going to tell you more about the writer than about the composer or the music. Here we could have done with more background about the prominence of the guitar in Viennese chamber music of this period rather than a lot of psychobabble. Notwithstanding, this is a very pleasant CD providing genuine insights into the music of Schubert, and providing a rare platform for the charming music of Friedrich Burgmüller.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Le cor melodique

Mélodies, Vocalises & Chants by Gounod, Meifred & Gallay
Anneke Scott horn, Steven Devine piano
75:57
resonus RES10228
(Also Bordogni and Panseron)

With this CD and its very readable notes by Anneke Scott, we are dropped into the midst of the mid-19th-century Parisian debate about the relative merits of the natural and valved horn. Active as horn teachers in Paris were Joseph-Emile Meifred and Jaques-Francois Gallay, the former represented here by a set of vocalises from his horn method arranged from the works of Panseron and Bordogni and the latter by a series of very familiar Schubert songs arranged for horn and piano. The CD opens with music by Gounod, who also surprisingly wrote his own horn method, and who writes beautifully for the instrument. Anneke Scott plays natural horn and two- and three-valved piston horns, while her accompanist Steven Devine plays a lovely Erard grand piano. The authentic sounds of both instruments, played by these accomplished specialists, are very evocative and, if some of the music occasionally tends on the trite side, it is never less than beautifully played. The Schubert selection, arrangements by Gallay of lieder for his Horn Method, more than makes up for the musical shortcomings of the rest of the programme. Anneke Scott clarifies which horn she was using for which pieces on the CD, and it was interesting to read that Gounod seems to have recommended a degree of handstopping for certain notes, even when using a valve horn. This seemed to encapsulate the debate for and against valves as advocates of the natural horn felt that it had a unique tone, lost when valves were introduced. Also, listeners had become familiar with the different colours achieved by hand-stopping, so interesting to see that Gounod occupied the middle ground, enjoying the flexibility of the valved horn but retaining the character of the natural horn. A fine illustration of the distinctive effect of handstopping on the natural horn is to be heard in Schubert’s Marguerite (track 22), which turns out to be a particularly desperate-sounding account of Gretchen am Spinnrade. This enjoyable CD usefully illustrates an area of musicological research which is very popular at the moment and which marks an important turning point in the development of a key orchestral instrument.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Verdi: Macbeth

Giovanni Meoni Macbeth, Nadja Michael Lady Macbeth, Fabrizio Beggi Banco, Giuseppe Valentino Buzza Macduff, [Marco Ciaponi Malcolm, Valentina Marghinotti Lady Macbeth’s handmade, Federico Benetti doctor/servant,] Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Chorus, Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi
122:55 (2 CDs in a card box)
Glossa GCD 923411

This HIP performance of the original 1847 version of Verdi’s Macbeth is an absolute revelation. Already in the overture the more transparent orchestral texture allows the colours of Verdi’s subtle orchestration to come through, while the ensuing choruses and arias are also richly individual in texture, a fact of which I had hitherto been largely ignorant – and I have even played clarinet in a run of the opera many years ago! The solo voices are generally thoroughly impressive, with Giovanni Meoni’s beautifully lyrical Macbeth, Fabricio Beggi’s full-voiced Banco and Giuseppe Buffa’s dramatic Macduff all impressing – the latter a tenor and thus clearly the hero of the opera. Sadly Nadja Michael’s Lady Macbeth, although highly charged, is badly afflicted with such a wide vibrato that it is sometimes hard to tell which notes she is actually singing. This is a tragic bit of miscasting in a performance which is otherwise a model of clarity, as – to my ear – she not only squanders the opportunity for us to hear Lady Macbeth’s solo music more clearly than usual, but also introduces an upsetting degree of vibrato into the ensemble numbers in which she also participates. What a pity! Fortunately the singing of the chorus and the playing of the orchestral forces is thoroughly on-message as they deliver a wonderfully clear account of Verdi’s music. The brass add a punch and poignancy to the texture without overwhelming the balance, the woodwind are allowed to contribute their individual colours without being drowned by the strings, which in turn make a wonderfully incisive contribution. Verdi’s debt to previous masters such as Rossini and even Weber becomes apparent in his deft orchestral writing. I don’t want to cruelly over-emphasise my dislike of Nadja Michael’s performance, but because Verdi wishes to make full use of his dramatic heroine while she is still around, she dominates much of the first half of the opera, and to my mind sabotages the laudable aims of this project. When she disappears on CD II (apart from her mad scene) things are much more comfortable. If you think I exaggerate, just listen to this mad scene, where she takes the opportunity of Verdi’s chromatic idiom to slide all over the place above and mainly below her written notes… How on earth did nobody notice before it came to committing this otherwise excellent performance to CD? So, while this makes the CD something of a curate’s egg, I would still heartily recommend it for the spectacularly new light it casts on this very familiar music, and the way it enhances Verdi’s skills as a composer. Just programme out Lady Macbeth!

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Paris, 1804

Music for horn & strings,
Alessandro Denabian, & Quartetto Delfico
69:15
passacaille 1032
Music by Cherubini, Dauprat & Reicha

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CD is the answer to what was happening in the world of the horn in the early 19th century. The date mentioned in the title marks the self-coronation of Napoleon as Emperor but is also the composition date of two of the works recorded here, the two sonatas by Luigi Cherubini for horn and string quartet. The second Sonata is a more substantial piece with genuine musical merit while the first sounds a bit like a test piece. Although work was already underway to develop the valves which would make the horn truly chromatic, faced with increasingly wayward melodic lines, players of the natural horn had developed a deftness with hand-stopping which in effect allowed them to play relatively chromatic music, and it is the natural valveless horn which Alessandro Denabian employs here. The Horn Quintet, one of a set of three, by the horn player and composer Louis Dauprat published in 1817 was also conceived for the natural horn, although the valved instrument was by now available. Melodically imaginative and making expert use of the horn, this quintet is given a stirring performance by Denabian and the Quartetto Delfico. The lively acoustic of the Auditorium Montis Regalis in Mondovi allows Denabian to produce a relatively uniform tone through hand-stopped and ‘open’ notes, and demonstrates why performers and composers might have been reluctant to abandon hard-won technique in favour of unreliable mechanics – we would recall that much later in the century Brahms and even Ravel sometimes preferred the sound of the natural horn. The finest music on the CD is the Quintet op. 106 by Anton Reicha, composed in 1819 for Dauprat to play. All of the composers represented here were associated with the Paris Conservatoire and would have been very familiar with one another’s compositions and playing. Reicha is primarily famous for his compositions for wind instruments, and in this quintet the horn is very much cast as the virtuosic soloist, while the strings accompany in a more restrained style. Denabian’s technique and warm tone ensure that his performance of this demanding music is both impressive and persuasive.

D. James Ross

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Haydn & Mendelssohn: String Quartets

Consone Quartet
70:41
Editions Ambronay AMY 310
Haydn in G, op. 77/1; Mendelssohn in Eb, op. 12 & Four Pieces, op. 81

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] first encountered the period instrument Consone Quartet, all of whom are former students at the Royal Academy of Music, at Ambronay in 2016. At that time they appeared competitively as part of the Eeemerging project for young musicians. Following that short concert, I wrote that their playing of Haydn’s late op. 77/1 String Quartet ‘showed considerable promise but would eventually benefit from the quartet’s own developing maturity’. Would that my prophetic words were always as satisfyingly fulfilled as they are by this splendid recording, made some 18 months later in the spring of 2018. For here is a performance in which maturity and technical excellence have merged to provide one of the most rewarding performances I have heard of this wonderful product of Haydn’s ageless old age. One of the remarkable features of all the performances here is the near-perfect balance, whether achieved as a result of the players facing each other in the square formation shown in the booklet photo or for some other reason I don’t know. But it is so, revealing part writing in a clear, yet warm ambiance for which the recording engineer also deserves the greatest credit.

A further mark of growing maturity can be found in the freedom the players have come to allow themselves in the use of rubato and touches of expressive portamento, the latter particularly effective in the gentle affection they bring to the youthful, yet understated romanticism of the opening movement of Mendelssohn’s early E flat Quartet, op. 12 (1829). This and sometimes bold decisions regarding contrasts of dynamics and tempo are a dangerous course if the results sound contrived or simply imposed, but here they invariably seem to stem from the players’ collective inner thoughts and feelings. Also admirable is the light, buoyant touch and perfect chording the Consones bring to the Canzonetta: Allegretto of op. 12, the quartet’s scherzo and trio. Here, at the ripe old age of 20, are reminiscences of those teenage miracles, the string Octet and the Midsummer Night’s Dream overture. And should you still doubt that Mendelssohn wrote nearly all his best music before he was out of short trousers, the Four Pieces published posthumously as op. 81 after the composer’s death provide further evidence. They date from across his career, the best being a veiled Fuga constructed of magical filigree strands of aural thread written just after the completion of the op 13 String Quartet in A minor in 1827. There is a Scherzo, too, dating from much later (1847) and a poor relation of those gossamer-like pieces mentioned above.

Finally, we must briefly return to the Haydn and a performance that has grown so immeasurably since I first heard it. Now the opening Allegro sets out with a deliciously jaunty but never rushed step, the counterpoint of the second idea in the development exposed with revelatory clarity. The following Adagio, one of the most profound of Haydn’s quartet movements, is graced especially by the exquisitely played solo arabesques and roulades of first violinist Agate Daraskaite. Both Menuetto and the final presto bubble over with spirit, good humour and poignant reminders of the old man’s humble peasant beginnings. ‘Old man? Age is just a figure’, Haydn seems to be saying in this infectiously joyous playing. The last word goes to Marc Vignal’s notes, a model of what such things should be. A well deserved – and from me rare – five stars all round.

Brian Robins

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Festival-conference

Early Nights in Edinburgh

D James Ross at the Edinburgh International Festival 2018

A Pair of Period Pianos

To be able to host two of the four ‘big beasts’ of the early piano world within four days of one another is the prerogative of an international festival, and we were uniquely privileged to be able to compare recitals by Ronald Brautigam and Robert Levin at Edinburgh’s attractive Queen’s Hall. Brautigam was playing a beautiful Erard piano of 1837 from the collection of Edwin Beunk, an instrument which was a feast for the eyes much admired by the audience before the recital even started. It turned out to be an equal aural treat, when Brautigan opened his performance with Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso. A full tone in the middle register, with an added edge in the bottom range and a delightfully light upper register allowed the instrument to reveal the innermost secrets of the works by Mendelssohn and Chopin which made up the programmne, while Brautigam’s stunning technique and deft pedalling provided further revelations. Chopin’s B flat minor Scherzo  op. 31 provided a brilliant introduction to the two Nocturnes  of opus 27, where I have never heard the distinctive undulating arpeggios performed with more clarity and eloquence. Mendelssohn’s impressive Variations sérieuses  op 54 brought the first half to a spectacularly virtuosic conclusion.

The Six Songs without Words  op 19 proved a wonderfully melodic opening to the second half, with the venerable Erard fairly singing out Mendelssohn’s lyrical melodies, while Chopin’s op 60 Barcarolle  and op 57 Berceuse  continued in a similarly gentle vein. Brautigam’s wonderfully compelling and flamboyantly executed performance concluded appropriately with Chopin’s showy Polonaise-fantaisie  op 61 – a compositional and performance tour de force. A further delightful Barcarolle  provided a suitably calming encore.

The Queen’s Hall also hosted an all-Mozart recital by Robert Levin, this time on a modern copy by Paul McNulty of an 1805 fortepiano by Anton Walter & Sohn. The contrast in sound between this instrument and the 1837 Erard was striking, as Robert Levin conjured wonderfully silvery tones from an instrument which turned out to have a wonderfully percussive bass register and a charmingly rapid decay. In his witty verbal introduction, Levin cited a keyboard tutor by CPE Bach in which he advocates lavish ornamentation of repeats and valuably provides examples, which prove to be radical departures from the originals. Levin pithily explained why he was playing from printed music – ‘I need to know what not to play in the repeats!’ With improvisation high on the agenda, Levin had compiled an ingenious programme juxtaposing three Mozart sonatas with the composer’s flamboyant Four Preludes K284a. The recital opened a short piece reconstructed by Levin from a liminal fragment notated in a manuscript of the composer’s Grabmusik. The cascades of scales and arpeggios in the Preludes seemed to prefigure the keyboard fireworks of Chopin, and surely provide us with a rare window on Mozart’s much-admired skills as an improviser. Levin’s own stunning powers of improvisation in the repeat sections of the Sonatas were nothing less than breathtaking, surely showing the way for future performances of these concert staples. Mozart’s own piano arrangement of the overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail gave full rein to the clashing bass register, seeming almost to beg for one of the pianos of the time which featured Turkish percussion effects! If Levin’s laudable decision to group the pieces together and his slightly annoying mannerism of rushing to cadences led to a slightly breathless impression, this was a recital which was never less than exciting and frequently absolutely thrilling. An enthusiastic ovation elicited an unusual encore – Levin had transcribed the music from the famous portrait of the boy Mozart in red livery and looking hauntingly straight at the viewer. It turned out to be a youthful showpiece, surely designed to advertise the boy’s precocious compositional skills.

A Biblical Epic

If you will forgive the innuendo, Samson  uncut is surprisingly huge. This became apparent as we sat down to the Dunedin Consort’s performance of Handel’s oratorio, which was projected to last no less than four hours. Written around the same time as Messiah, Samson has never enjoyed the success it deserves, and with the exception of the last two numbers, the spectacular show-aria Let the Bright Seraphim  and the ensuing chorus Let their Celestial Consorts all unite  little of the music has entered the standard repertoire. As I sat through a series of very fine arias and choruses I found myself musing upon why this vintage Handel isn’t more mainstream. One problem is that all the drama happens off-stage – Samson is already blinded and defeated when we first encounter him, and the concluding destruction of the temple is reduced to ‘noises off’. The unrelentingly melancholy subject, only very latterly transformed to triumph, also makes for painful listening. I found myself tearing up as Samson considered his blindness, singing heartrending words by blind Milton to moving music by Handel, already losing his sight, and who also would be blind within a few years. Paul Appleby’s account of the air Total Eclipse, as indeed his interpretation of the complex character of Samson, was immensely powerful, while his vocal technique in a long and demanding role was stunning. Sophie Bevan in the dramatically thankless role of Delila was simply superb as she purred, trilled and cooed her way through her seduction aria With plaintive notes, earning her the only individual ovation of the evening. Matthew Brook’s well-gauged Manoa, Samson’s father, was a powerful presence. Alice Coote, by contrast, seemed less comfortable in the role of Micah, composed by Handel for Mrs Cibber, although she did grow into the part as the piece advanced. Mhairi Lawson was an excellent stand-in second Philistine/Israelite Woman, and Hugo Hymas was vocally well cast as Israelite/Philistine Man. Of course, Louise Alder gets the best music in the show, Let the Bright Seraphim, a wonderfully sparkling show-stopper of an aria with obligato clarino trumpet, which is a gift to a soprano with the technique to enjoy it to the full. Wisely employing the Harry Christophers solution of segueing from the b-section of the aria straight into the concluding chorus ensured that the piece came to a terrific climax, and a deafening and extended ovation from the Usher Hall audience

As always with the Dunedin forces it seems, the orchestral playing was consistently superb under the detailed direction of John Butt, with wonderfully expressive string playing and fine contributions from bassoon, oboes, trumpets and a pair of wonderfully rumbustious horns, not always pinpoint accurate but infectiously energetic. Thomas Pitt and Stephen Farr provided unerringly supportive continuo playing, while the latter was also the organ soloist in the movements from Handel’s organ concertos that graced the intervals. This was a fascinating Dunedin experiment, copying Handel in filling intermissions with instrumental works, on this occasion on a copy by Goetz and Gwynn of an organ owned by Handel’s librettist Jennens, during which the audience was encouraged to walk around and chat. You will be pleased to hear that your reviewer selflessly eschewed a visit to the bar to move to the front to hear the organ more clearly! Perhaps the ultimate jewel in the crown of this superb performance was the singing of the Dunedin Consort chorus, twenty-four young singers who produced an impeccably accurate and wonderfully gleaming sound throughout. This was a lot of Handel to take in at one go, but it was very good Handel and wonderfully performed by Edinburgh’s local Baroque heroes, the Dunedin Consort.

A Beggar’s Opera for our times?

As the late great Nikolaus Harnoncourt said in a verbal introduction to a period performance of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony, ‘What would musicians have to do to surprise an audience to the same degree as an audience of the time was surprised by a loud chord?’. Leaving the question hanging, he started the piece, letting off a loud indoor firework at the relevant moment in the slow movement, smiling conspiratorially as the audience, aware of the recent terrorist bombings, screamed in shock. In many ways it is depressing how easily Gay and Rich’s social satire, The Beggar’s Opera  transfers to our own times. However the version performed in the King’s Theatre by the instrumentalists of Les Arts Florissants and the actors of Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord used a modernised edition by Ian Burton and Robert Carson in which much ‘f-ing and blinding’, street dancing, drugs deals, texting and social networking sought to place the piece in the same shocking relationship with a modern audience as the original work had enjoyed with the 18th-century public. And I think with a few reservations that it succeeded very well.

The stage was filled with a sheer cliff face of cardboard boxes at the foot of which slept a beggar, and through the action the boxes provided a very serviceable set of props and settings for the action. An onstage band of period instrumentalists sat at boxes with tablets propped up on them with their music, and provided beautifully energetic accounts of the ballad airs and dances. The singing actors of the cast coped generally very well with the musical aspects of the show, although just once or twice the geography of the set led to timing or tuning going a little adrift. Evoking a mixture of Eastenders  and TOWIE  (Google it…), Robert Burt as Peachum and Beverley Klein as his wife provided wonderfully sleazy central characters, always teetering on the edge of violence. Kate Batter’s vulnerable but equally sleazy Polly and Benjamin Purkiss’s dashingly macho Macheath were strongly characterised, while the host of whores, gangsters and corrupt officials that seethe around them were vividly brought to life by a gifted and versatile cast. The athletic street dancing of the behoodied gang was particularly effective.

To my mind, it was a mistake to cut the Beggar and his prologue, as the lack of framework left a problem at the end, not convincingly solved by a change of government and all the beggars becoming cabinet ministers – ironically not as preposterous a conclusion as Gay and Rich’s original cynically contrived ending. Indeed the wit and cynicism of the 18th-century original shone through this performance, which remained almost entirely true to the narrative and many of the resonances of the text, while retaining the original song texts with just a few minor tweaks. As promised in the promotion, the musical dimension did have a fine improvisatory quality, in which the two Baroque violins, viola, cello and double bass joined by a recorder, an oboe, an archlute and percussion all directed from the harpsichord by Florian Carré sounded wonderfully spontaneous and energetic. If the band occasionally came across as a little underpowered against the ‘mic’d up’ voices in the theatre acoustic, the playing was always wonderfully expressive and imaginative, with very effective elaborations and ornamentation.

This riotous outing at the end of my Festival visit seemed a million miles away from the world of the elegant period piano recitals with which I have begun, but this has got to be the chief joy of an international festival, which can offer such variety even within the realm of early music. And bear in mind that while I was attending events in the ‘official’ Festival, on the Fringe elsewhere in town the Edinburgh Renaissance Band were wowing the crowds with innovative early programmes, and Cappella Nova were filling Greyfriars Kirk with the distinctive tones of Robert Carver!

D. James Ross

Categories
Festival-conference

Itinéraire Baroque 2018

Dordogne, France 26-29 July 2018

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]f many surprising features of the summer of 2018, few have excelled the strange experience of travelling from a parched, sun-scorched Britain basking in (or suffering from) an extreme heat-wave to the lush green of the equally sun-blessed woods and rolling hills of the Périgord vert, the most northern region of the Dordogne. It is there that the Itinéraire Baroque festival founded 17 summers ago by Ton Koopman takes place in the villages and hamlets of the area, invariably utilising the many Romanesque churches that adorn the Périgord vert.

The programme for my third visit to Itinéraire Baroque (my account of the 2016 festival can also be found on this site) had Spanish culture as an overarching theme, although no Spanish music featured in the opening concert on 26 July at the Romanesque (although much altered) abbey church of St Cybard in Cercles. Given by members of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Koopman, it did, however, adhere to what was virtually a subtext of the festival – music for exotic instruments or unusual instrumental combinations. Thus this concert included concertos by Telemann for oboe d’amore and two chalumeaux, by Gregor Werner (Haydn’s predecessor at Esterhazy) for two organs and two chalumeaux and a concerto for trombone by Albrechtsberger, the Classical style of which stood in stark contrast to the surrounding Baroque repertoire. In addition, the pleasingly light-voiced tenor Tilman Lichdi sang a folk-like strophic song of Werner and an undistinguished extract from one of his oratorios. Neither tested him to anything like the same extent as Bach’s Cantata No.55 ‘Ich armer Mensch’, where technical fallibilities were at times cruelly exposed. Nonetheless, the concert made for an enjoyable start to the festival, especially in the well-played Telemann concertos and Alessandro Marcello’s well-known Oboe Concerto in D minor.

St Cybard is very much ‘home base’ of the Festival, its delightful linden- shaded square filled during its course by ‘Café baroque’, where food, drink and stalls selling local bio produce are located. Such facilities proved much in demand at the lunchtime concert the following day, played by the chamber ensemble L’Astrée, who with soprano Julia Wischiewski gave a programme of Vivaldi trio sonatas and chamber cantatas. The instrumental part of the concert provided for me the most satisfying music making of the festival, with vital, well-articulated playing by violinist Paola Nervi and cellist Rebecca Ferri in quicker movements and truly eloquent playing in slower movements such as the exquisite Sarabanda of the Sonata in D minor, RV27, where the interplay between the two was totally engaging. I much liked, too, the tasteful ornamentation added to repeats. Despite some expressive singing and confident execution of passaggi, the cantatas were less satisfying. Wischiewski’s soprano was too often unevenly produced, her diction less than clear, while her ornamentation was often waywardly unstylish.

Following an afternoon devoted to a lecture on Spanish Baroque music and a concert devoted to music and dances in period costume from Spain and southern France – neither of which I attended – the evening concert found Koopman and his wife (and former pupil) Tini Mathot giving a recital for two organs and two harpsichords entitled ‘The Master and his Pupil’. Thus we heard music by, among others, J. S. Bach (the Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 547, curiously played on harpsichords rather than organ) and W. F. Bach (a solo Concerto in F), Armand-Lous Couperin, who was taught by his father Nicholas, one of the great Couperin dynasty, and Antonio Soler, the most famous pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti. It was Soler who provided the meat of the programme, in quantity, if not substance, too much of his music being inconsequential, at times to a degree of banality. Both here and in organ works by Cabanilles and Perez de Albeniz the portative organs used by Mathot and Koopman were a monochrome substitute for the colourfully exotic sound of Spanish organs of the period.

The Saturday of the festival gives it its name and (to the best of my knowledge) unique feature, the day consisting of staggered visits to six venues, in most cases a small rural church of Romanesque origin. At each of these a short concert – preceded by a brief introduction to the building – is given by performers who remain in the same location for the day. It however started in the town church of Mareuil, where before being divided for the tour a large audience assembled to hear a selection of solo recorder music from Jacob van Eyck’s ‘Der fluyten lustof’ (well played by Reine-Marie Verhagen), music with which I confidently expect to be punished for all eternity should I end up in one of the circles of Dante’s Hell. Our first stop was the little church at Graulges, Romanesque at heart, but much restored. Judging from reaction I heard, the concert of 17th-century Italian and Dutch sonatas played by the gifted Ensemble Clematis was probably the most popular of the day. To me, however, it was a further depressing example of how young players still ignore the difference between all-purpose period instrument string playing and the special demands of 17th-century music. This applies especially to an ensemble like Clematis that specializes in this repertoire, when it can only be viewed as the lazy option that is to be deplored.

© Jean-Michel Bale: Fred Jacobs

If this was a disappointment, the following event in the beautiful little chapel of St John the Baptist in the village of Puyrénier came as a pleasant surprise. Here Fred Jacobs, one of the doyens of the lute world, played a beguiling recital of works by Sor (mostly) and Giuliani on a Romantic guitar built in 1820. This is not repertoire I have explored in any depth, but here was struck by the sheer inventiveness of Sor in particular and the beauty of tone Jacobs produced throughout, especially in more contemplative pieces like the Cantabile, op 42/1.

Following a lunch break, the first of the afternoon concerts took as back to the outskirts of Mareuil and the church Saint Sulpice, where the Swiss ensemble Albori Musical played works by Vivaldi and Telemann and a sonata by Pierre Prowo formerly attributed to Telemann. Moderately accomplished playing failed to disguise the fact that the rhythmically four-square and often somewhat inexpressive performances rarely caught fire.

© Jean-Michael Bale: Franziska Fleischanderl

There was nothing inexpressive about the penultimate visit to the charming simplicity of the little church of Connezac, once the chapel of the eponymous chateau. Within its intimate surroundings the Austrian dulcimer player Franziska Fleischanderl illustrated with captivating charm its capabilities both in her playing and introductions. Particularly interesting was the great difference in sonority dependent on whether the instrument is plucked or struck with hammers, while the range of subtly modulated sound that can be cajoled from it in the hands of an obvious expert was strongly projected.

© Jean-Michael Bale: Capella Trajectina

The final concert took place en plein air  alongside the walls of the largely 15th-century Chateau D’Aucors. Given by Dutch group Camerata Trajectina, it introduced a programme based around the 16th-century struggle of the Netherlands to free itself from Spanish domination. Much more interesting historically than musically – it included a number of what we would today term protest songs – it was entertainingly projected by the experienced Heike Meppelink (soprano) and Nico van der Meel (tenor).

An early flight the following morning determined that I missed the final concert, a typical Koopman mix of Bach Orchestral Suites and Brandenburgs. But once again Itinéraire Baroque, with its loyal and enthusiastic audience playing a full part, had proved a captivating experience that can be enthusiastically recommended to anyone seeking an unusual musical holiday in one of the most beguiling parts of the Dordogne. https://www.itinerairebaroque.com/

Brian Robins

Categories
Festival-conference

The Saintes Festival 2018

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]lthough a veteran of French music festivals, particularly during the decade-plus one we lived in France, Saintes is one I had never previously visited until this year. Situated in the south-west in the departement  of Charente-Maritime, Saintes dates back to the days when it was the first Roman capital of Aquitane, a past still in evidence today in the shape of the imposing Arch of Germanicus (AD18-19) and an amphitheatre dating back to AD40-50. Other architectural treasures include the late-Gothic cathedral of Saint-Pierre, which lies to one side of the attractive old town and the Abbaye aux Dames, originally the site of a Benedictine order of nuns founded in 1047.

It is this last that is of the most interest to this report, for today it is the home of what is known as ‘la cité musicale’, a complex centred around the abbey church, a building that has survived many a vicissitude during the course of its long history, and the 17th century residential block. Today, as at Ambronay, that is put to service for the accommodation of visiting performers and other visitors, while its ground floor also incorporates an auditorium used for smaller-scale concerts.

A constant feature of the annual festival, held this year over nine days in the middle of July, is a focus on the music of Bach, while 2018 also paid special attention to British composers and artists, among the latter Carolyn Sampson, to whose concert we’ll return below. On most days large audiences, most of whose members appear to come for at least several days (we constantly saw the same people during the three days we were there), have a choice of four concerts. While the emphasis is on Baroque music or that of later periods played on period instruments, the festival is not exclusively devoted to early music, as names such as Debussy, Kurtag, Ligeti and Xenakis readily testify.

This applied, too, to the first concert we attended after arriving on 19 July. Carolyn Sampson has long been one of the treasures of the British early music scene, but here, capably accompanied by the pianist Joseph Middleton, she was on rather less familiar territory in a programme of 20th century English song. I have to confess it is a long time since such repertoire formed part of my regular listening and I fear that even Sampson failed to win me over to Walton’s Songs for the Lord Mayor’s Table or three of the Façade settings; indeed in the case of the latter I’m still wondering what the audience made of the French translations of Edith Sitwell’s bizarre verse. Groups by Bridge and Quilter fell pleasingly on the ear given Sampson’s consummate artistry, but it took Vaughan Williams’ ‘Orpheus with his lute’ and a dreamy ‘Silent Noon’ (some exquisite mezza voce  here – and indeed elsewhere) to strike at the heart.

The later evening concert, a free performance of Handel’s Water Music and the Harp Concerto, op 4/6 arranged for flute by conductor Hugo Reyne, had been scheduled to take place in the abbey gardens, but doubtful weather necessitated it being moved to the abbey. Given by Reyne’s orchestra La Simphonie du Marais and accompanied by the conductor’s introduction (he appeared wearing a yachtsman’s cap) and commentary – we were shown what horns and natural trumpets look like – the concert would doubtless have worked much better outside. As it was the juxtaposition of Reyne’s childish jokes, some hair-raisingly fast tempos and some less than persuasive playing (some of the wind playing was rough enough to sink the barge) made for an irritating end to a long day. To be fair, it has to be recorded that the capacity audience loved it all.

Ronald Brautigam & Le Jeune Orchestre de l’Abbaye aux Dames, dir. Michael Willens © Sébastien Laval

One of the most admirable features of the Saintes Festival is the encouragement it gives to the development of young musicians. Since 1996 the festival has had its own period instrument orchestra, Le Jeune Orchestre de l’Abbaye aux Dames. Formed to perform Classical and Romantic music, its membership is international and it has had the advantage of working under conductors such as Christopher Hogwood, Marc Minkowski and, especially, Philippe Herreweghe, who from 1981 to 2002 was artistic director of the Festival. This year it gave three concerts, the one we heard at the early afternoon concert on 20 July being devoted to composers who existed ‘in the shadow of Beethoven’ and the great man himself, represented by his Piano Concerto no. 4, magisterially played on an unidentified large grand fortepiano by Ronald Brautigam. The quasi-recitative central movement came off especially well, while the Rondo finale was launched with great verve. The young orchestra, some 60-strong played with a youthful panache and splendid finish under the baton of Michael Willens. Earlier the orchestra responded with engaging fervour to the early romantic freshness of E T A Hoffman’s Ondine  overture with splendidly alert playing, the wistful reprise of the principal subject lingering particularly in the mind. An immensely satisfying concert concluded with another rarity, the Symphony No. 4, op 60 by Jan Kalliwoda. Dating from 1835, the work explores all the typical gestures of the full-blown romantic symphony: the mysterious slow introduction rising from the bass, the long sustained horn calls in the Romanze second movement, while also paying due homage to the composer’s native Bohemia in the Harmoniemusik  writing of the finale. If the work carries a suggestion of déjà vu, it nonetheless makes for agreeable listening, particularly when played with as much vitality as it was here. The evening brought an even greater rarity, a performance of Issé, the first opera – and in the view of many of his contemporaries the best – of André-Cardinal Destouches. Originally composed in 1697, it was heard here in a revised version dating from 1708. Since I’ve reviewed the fine performance by Les Surprises under their director Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas elsewhere, I’ll here merely record that regrettably it was done with significant cuts and that there will be an opportunity to hear it again with a more starry cast at Versailles in October.

The final morning of the Festival brought further uplifting evidence of the encouragement offered to youthful music making, in this case at an even earlier age. During the week-long course of the Festival, some 60 children aged between 7 or 8 and adolescence rehearse a programme presented twice to audiences in the Auditorium on the last day. It is not a repertoire for faint hearts either, several of the items requiring part singing and one very much in a contemporary idiom. But what is especially heartening was the introduction of the great classical repertoire, so, for example, the older children sang Purcell’s ‘Sound the Trumpet’ (with very good English diction), and two extracts from the Pergolesi Stabat Mater. Given the timescale, the results the tutors achieved were little short of astounding.

Early afternoon found us back in the abbey for performances of two of Bach’s Missa breve’s, BWV 234 and BWV 236. They were given by the ensemble Vox Luminus, here comprising three singers per part and directed from among the basses by Lionel Meunier. The orchestra, Andrew Parrott would be pleased to learn, numbered slightly more than the singers, though not on the scale of his ratio. One of the advantages of being directed unobtrusively from the choir is the special need for the singers to be fully aware of what is happening in the other parts. Here that paid off in performances that were at their best in the choral sections, where balance was also excellent. The opening entries of the Kyrie of BWV 234, for example, were beautifully judged, the succeeding chromatic writing splendidly exposed. With the exception of the ‘Domine Deus’ duet in the same Mass, beautifully done by soprano Caroline Weynants and alto Jan Kullmann, solo sections were less satisfying, several soloists displaying weak tone and poor articulation of ornaments. The orchestra played admirably throughout.

If revisiting repertoire long neglected was something of a theme of my visit to Saintes that was never truer than at the last concert, given by Herreweghe and his outstanding Orchestre des Champs-Élysées. Never anything like a perfect Wagnerian, I have reached that stage of my life when I’m not that concerned about listening to his music. So I faced the prospect of a performance of the Wesendonck Lieder  with, shall we say, muted expectation. How wrong I was! Given by the Dutch soprano Kelly God, this was a glorious performance of these Tristan und Isolde-related songs, with their glutinously decadent poetry. The overwhelming beauty of God’s singing was that it avoided totally any such viscous implications, the tone soaring with a purity and lack of intrusive vibrato that made for endlessly engaging and enthralled listening. The final act of the 2018 Festival was a performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4. Bruckner’s symphonies, with massive organ-inspired sonorities, huge unisons and constant ebb and flow of extremes of sound are of course made for just such a building as the Abbaye aux Dames. Herreweghe’s breadth of conception, allied to the sharper focus possible with period instruments made this a performance as memorable for the delicacy of the string playing in the Andante (ii), for the thrilling horns in the Scherzo (iii) or the overwhelming climaxes of the opening and last movements. It made for a fitting climax to what I hope was the first of many visits to the hospitable Saintes Festival.

Brian Robins

Categories
Recording

The Romantic Clarinet in Germany

Pierre-André Taillard, Edoardo Torbianelli
65:53
Pan Classics PC10381

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]laying a copy by eminent Swiss maker Rudolph Tutz of a nine-keyed clarinet by Heinrich Grenser, Pierre-André Taillard gives us fine performances of four major chamber works of the Romantic period. It is perhaps ironic that the work by the best-known composer, Mendelssohn, is possibly the least impressive of the four pieces. By contrast, Franz Danzi applies a profound knowledge of woodwind instruments to his tuneful and dramatic Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, while Carl Reissiger’s Duo Brillant  is sparklingly virtuosic, and stretches the nine-keyed clarinet to extremes. The big discovery of this CD though is the op. 15 Duo  by Norbert Burgmüller, a talented composer much admired by Mendelssohn and Schumann whose early death at the age of twenty-six undoubtedly deprived the world of much fine music. The Burgmüller and Reissiger call for some highly virtuosic playing from both clarinettist and pianist, in this case, Edoardo Tobianelli playing a lovely 1824 Conrad Graf piano. The instrument’s clearly defined tone is beautifully captured, and Torbianelli is in many ways the perfect accompanist, responding sympathetically to the expressive clarinet playing, but also rising to considerable heights of virtuosity himself when the part demands it. Taillard finds a warm vocal tone and responsive articulation in his B-flat period clarinet, which he generally manages to maintain throughout the challenging passages in all four works. Clarinettists generally dismiss the Mendelssohn Sonata as juvenilia – a mistake with this famously prodigious composer – and while Burgmüller’s Duo is occasionally performed, it rarely sounds as effective as it does here! This lovely recital disc makes a powerful case for all four of these impressive works to be more frequently featured in concert programmes. This is a lovely CD and not just of interest to clarinettists!

D. James Ross

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