Year: 2015

Skip Sempé, Olivier Fortin
63:38
Paradizo PA0014

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his 1998 recording was, I think, a missed opportunity. Firstly, none of Bach’s works genuinely for two harpsichords is included and secondly there’s no really creative engagement with the originals to create music that looks and sounds like something the composer might have written for these forces. In the organ works, for instance, one player plays the manual parts, the other the pedal. So while, purely as noise, it offers a sumptuous experience, musically this did little for me. Well played, though.

David Hansell

Hannah Morrison, Esther Brazil, Meg Bragle, Kate Symonds-Joy, Peter Davoren, Nick Pritchard, Alex Ashworth, David Shipley SSAATTBB, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner
105:56 (2 CDs)
Soli Deo Gloria SDG722

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is thirty years since John Eliot Gardiner recorded the B minor Mass and this version, as his notes – largely material drawn from Chapter 13 of his Music in the Castle of Heaven – reveal, is a statement of where he and his players have got to after their immersion in the Cantatas over the millennium year and a host of performances since. The most obvious departure from his previous Bach is that the ‘solos’ are sung by members of the choir, so for example there is a lovely and intelligent balance between the Soprano and Alto (rather than a second soprano as asked for) in the Christe, clearly the fruit of having sung together frequently: this is a huge plus over the recordings which have hired-in soloists for these parts. The same is true of the Et in unum  of the Symbolum  too, where we first hear the admirable Meg Bragle. But Gardiner’s new version is still essentially a work sung by a full chorus, the polished and excellently prepared Monteverdi Choir. The attention to phrasing, accentuation and dynamic marks – applied in a somewhat romantic way – are wonderful, yet I couldn’t help wondering whether the effect Gardiner is after isn’t still in the grand heroic mode, rather than being informed by the latest scholarly discoveries and a fundamental desire to discover the layered nature of the music. He uses the 2010 Bärenreiter edition, but there is no discussion in the booklet of any of the critical issues the autograph score and its corrections raised in the light of the variations discovered in the autograph parts. There is no information either about instruments or temperament, so we are left guessing as to what informs and drives Gardiner’s decisions.

For example, all the music, except for the single-voice arias and duets, is sung by the full choir – which is 13.9.7.6, partnered by the band which is 6.6.4.3.2 strings who seem to play tutti thoughout as far as I can judge. This tutti makes a splendid sound, but dynamic contrasts on the whole are made by singers and players increasing or diminishing their volume rather than by adding to or diminishing the number of singers or violins. Perhaps this ‘modern’ view of the orchestra is where Bach had arrived at the end of his life, having witnessed – and helped in – its evolution from those independent cori  of brass, wind, strings, voices and continuo that he inherited from the scoring of previous generations and which is still apparent in cantatas originating in Weimar, like Der Himmel lacht!  (BWV31), into a more homogenous whole. Finding the right texture and tessitura seems to inform the choice of which voice sings which solo rather than a principled decision to present the Missa with essentially a vocal quintet, and adding the numbers of players and singers as required by the volume and texture of the music and how it is scored. Indeed Gardiner, when ruminating on the structure of the mass in chapter 13 of his Music in the Castle of Heaven  contrasts (p.491) ‘public (choral) with private (solo) utterance’. In his mind and on this recording there is no difference in the choral sound between the ‘intonation’ to the Symbolum, with its fugato on the Gregorian chant with a pair of violins and the full sound of the Patrem omnipotentem  that follows: both are delivered at full pelt as ‘public’ choral utterance. But surely a contrast should be made here that reflects the liturgical division between the celebrant’s intonation and the assembly’s response? Public and private are not categories that I recognize in scoring the vocal parts of a work like the B minor mass, even if you could make a case for treating the arias in the Passions in this way.

On the plus side, there are quintessential Gardiner moments – the terrific accelerando in the last four bars of the ritornello of the Quoniam  leading to the perilously fast but perfectly controlled Cum Sancto Spirito, which remains clear and in tune and is a tribute to choir’s and orchestra’s technical accomplishment in delivering just what Gardiner sets them. Not everyone will like the highly mannered phrasing in the first Kyrie, or the sharp accents and dynamic changes in the second Kyrie – and it feels a bit laboured, as though there are four beats in each bar rather than the two implied by the alla breve  ¢ time signature. But in the Missa as a whole, the dovetailing of the movements is beautifully managed, and the immediate start of the Qui sedes  as the Qui tollis  ends works for me. I admired the controlled and pent-up emotional control of the Incarnatus  and the choppy Crucifixus  with the darker colour accentuated by using only the 2nd sopranos, but the crescendo of the band in bar 36 before the accented entries in bars 37ff seems wildly anachronistic to me. I like the audible intake of breath before Et resurrexit, and if you think that the bass line et iterum venturus  (bar 74ff) should be sung tutti, you won’t hear a neater and more unanimous choral sound. We have a lighter, more lyrical bass (Alex Ashworth) to sing the Et in Spiritum sanctum, though the bass line of the chorus as a whole is coloured more by the dark voice of David Shipley who does the Quoniam  – it’s a darker, throatier sound than emerges from any other part. As the Confiteor  winds down, we step away from the old-style Gregorian cantus firmus into the almost Beethoven-like chromaticisms of the Adagio of the Et expecto  before subito vivace on the first beat of bar 147. As you would guess, this is managed dramatically in the classical manner. Here is where we see Gardiner at his best: putting into practice the theories he has come to adopt.

The Sanctus  is pretty steady, and the Osanna  continues in exactly the same tempo as the Pleni sunt coeli. The Agnus  allows us to hear Meg Bragle again on her own, and the final Dona nobis  can’t resist a pp start with a gradual crescendo in all the parts.

The playing is very fine, but the decision to avoid extreme temperaments and use tuning vents in the trumpets gives the band a modern feel: it’s safer, even if less exciting. You don’t get those ringing chords re-creating the fundamental so clearly without completely natural harmonics, as Suzuki seems belatedly to have discovered. The trumpets manage well enough – though there are hurried semiquavers in bar 67 of the Gloria, and an unhelpful accent (of relief?) on the final note of the run on the first beat of bar 47 of the Patrem omnipotentem, when it should just tail away. These are really nit-picking comments, but when so much else is so good, it is a pity for tiny details like this to let the side down.

So should you buy this version? I probably wouldn’t, though its technical competence is superb according to its own lights, and I loved hearing the members of the choir sing the solo and duet numbers. The Monteverdi Choir are hugely accomplished, and sing quite wonderfully. But you should certainly listen to it. It’s just that I’m not sure I like even my big-scale Bach like that any more. I prefer the excitement of the clean textures of a group like Václav Luks’ Collegium Vocale 1704, that I reviewed in the December 2013 EMR. But punters will love it – and it’s certainly a winner in the great English choral tradition of which Gardiner and his forces are and have been standard-bearers for so long.

David Stancliffe

Weser-Renaissance Bremen, Manfred Cordes
92:42 (2 CDs)
cpo 777 929-2

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]chütz assembled Symphoniae Sacrae I for publication in Venice in 1629, and the music he selected marks the bridge between the earlier Psalmen Davids (1619) – large-scale choral works in as many as four choirs – and the later more intimate solo and duet works with continuo that formed Geistliche Konzerte from 1636 & 1639. Only in 1650 comes Symphoniae Sacrae III, a further group of large-scale works which signals the renewed possibilities brought by the conclusion of the Thirty Years War in 1648.

In Symphoniae Sacrae I, Schütz writes sacred music that has a suspended, almost timeless quality. Vocal duets with a pair of violins or cornetti, a soprano and tenor with three fagotti, single voices with pairs of violins or a vocal duet with cornetto and sackbut, and David’s lament for Absalom for bass and four sackbuts offer sound pictures far removed from the essentially choral music of the previous generations. Here are highly coloured setting of (for the most part) words from the Psalter or the Song of Songs where vocal parts as well as the instrumental obligati demand a high level of technical virtuosity as well as a developed emotional intelligence from the performers. This isn’t your standard church music, and it certainly owes a good deal to the ideals of the ‘new music’, as well as to rising possibilities occasioned by the development of the newer melodic instruments – violins and fagotti as well as the established cornets and sackbuts.

In this pair of CDs, the performers exhibit a high degree of technical competence married with a desire to let the music speak for itself. The performances are clean but very slightly underwhelming, although that is better than having to endure singers with too much of a soloistic ego: this group includes the distinguished and experienced Hans Jörg Mammel and Harry van der Kamp. The blend and balance between the voices and instruments is good, and only occasionally did I wonder whether I would have varied the organ, harp and chitarrone of the continuo with a regal – a favourite continuo instrument in Germany with brass at this period. In this music, the words of the Latin texts are all-important and are delivered confidently, audibly and fluently. The instrumentalists sound as if they have listened to the singers’ articulation, and make an effort to shape their phrases to it. And it is good to have this marvellous music – so key to Schütz’ long and partly hidden development – presented freshly and scored intelligently.

Why then do I not feel more enthusiastic about this production? Partly I suspect because Symphoniae Sacrae I is so evidently ‘work in progress.’ Schütz has come a long way, but there is further to go – and while he has absorbed much of the language of the seconda prattica, there has yet to emerge his mature synthesis, his true voice; and this take reflects this to some extent. But partly also because some other performances – I discount the older version by the Leipzig Capella Fidicina under Hans Gruß, preferring that of the complete Schütz Edition (Vol I) with Capella Augustana under Matteo Messori (now issued complete by Brilliant Classics) – feel as though they have a more committed approach and are recorded more brightly. The acid test for Symphonie Sacrae I is the tripping rhythm of the tenor in In te Domine speravi on the word “libera”. Cordes’ singer doesn’t quite have the rhythmic abandon required to convince listeners that it is for freedom that you are praying. So while I am glad to hear this version, it is not automatically my first choice for this enormously attractive and significant music.

David Stancliffe

Joanne Lunn, Robin Blaze, Makoto Sakurada, Dominik Wörner, Bach Collegium Japan chorus & orchestra, Masaaki Suzuki
73:17
BIS-2161 SACD

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the areas in which the high standards set by Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan have recently been upgraded is in the brass playing: Jean-François Madeuf has become a wonderfully expert player on both natural trumpet and horn, and on the former without the little vent holes that many players use to ‘correct’ the natural 11th and 13th overtones. The result is an increase in the singing quality of the sound and a richer fundamental tone generated by the natural harmonics.

These incremental improvements – audible too in the balance between voices in the concerted movements – combined with the dramatic presentations that these secular cantatas draw from the performers, especially in the recitatives, mark a step change in their performances. The secular birthday cantatas are the nearest Bach comes to writing opera, and the singers – Joanne Lunn, Robin Blaze, Makoto Sakurada and Dominik Wörner – respond with freer singing than we heard in the sacred cantatas.

I am most familiar with the majority of the music in these two celebratory birthday cantatas dated to 1733 from its substantial re-use in the Christmas Oratorio not much more than a year later, in 1734. As always, there is much to be learned from the way in which Bach altered his material, not just in adapting the music to new texts – he must have worked closely with his librettists – but in altering the pitch and adapting the scoring of many of the arias. For example, the duetto Ich bin deiner (BWV 213 xi) for alto and tenor with a pair of violas becomes a duet for soprano and bass with a pair of oboes d’amore in Part III of the Christmas Oratorio. It is a delight to hear the original of the echo aria from Part IV of the Christmas Oratorio, with an oboe d’amore and an alto singer here, so pitched in A not C. So much of the music in these two cantatas is parodied there, and indeed only one chorus (213.xiii) and one aria (214.iii) have no borrowings, and even that chorus might have become the opening movement of the Fifth part of the Christmas Oratorio.

But as well as being of interest to those who are preparing performances of the Christmas Oratorio this season, the cantatas – however implausible we may find them as drama – are fine performances in their own right. Not often publically performed in my experience, they are a dramatic and musical delight, and certainly up to Suzuki’s high standards. Only some of the string ensemble playing feels a little routine at times, but that is a very small cavil.

David Stancliffe

Dunedin Consort, John Butt
78:00
Linn CKD469
+Gabrieli Hodie Christus natus est, organ music & congregational chorale

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a fine presentation in the tradition of John Butt’s ‘liturgical’ performance of the Bach Johannespassion. It is a reconstruction of what Bach is likely to have produced for his first Christmas Vespers in Leipzig in 1723. John Butt uses not only his fine Dunedin Consort of singers and players, but the Peter Collins organ in Greyfriars, Edinburgh (where the recording was made) for the organ preludes – his performance of the fugue on the Magnificat is particularly fine – using a 16’ based manual organo pleno? – and a crowd of fifty five singers joining in the congregational chorale singing (from the Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch of 1682) sometimes in unison, but sometimes in parts. Some of the preludes, chorales and the liturgical end piece didn’t fit on the single CD, so although they figure in the accompanying booklet, they can only be heard as a free download: there is more of interest in John Butt’s additional material on the web as well, and it is a pity that only seven pages of his excellent material can be fitted into the 44-page booklet among the pictures and hagiography!

In addition to the chorales and organ music, the CD contains the Christmas Cantata 63, Christen ätzet diesen Tag – Bach’s only (?surviving) foray into a score with four trumpet parts, originating in a Weimar cantata from 1714 – and the earlier E flat version of the Magnificat with the insertion of the Christmas Laudes – four pieces in a simpler, rather less sophisticated style. Both the cantata and the Magnificat are played for convincing reasons at A=392 in Werkmeister III (echoes of the Dunedin’s superb Brandenburgs), bringing the E flat Magnificat to sound more like its later version in D – did the trumpeters play this version in D anyway? No parts survive.

This low pitch suits all the singers except for Clare Wilkinson, who nonetheless sings most convincingly of all. It is in her duet in 63.vii with Nicholas Mulroy, a longstanding member of the Dunedin Consort, that I became most forcefully aware of how Mulroy is in danger of becoming a member of the ‘I can, therefore I may’ brigade: he makes little attempt to match her subtle phrasing and delicate tone (though he is much better in the Et misericordia) singing mostly at full throttle. Listen to him in Verdi mode in the Deposuit, and then to the ravishing Clare Wilkinson in the Esurientes with the two recorders, and judge for yourself. A consort of singers implies a group of musicians who listen to one another, to match tone, phrasing and dynamic range. I can not infrequently hear Mulroy loud and clear over everyone else, and think this is unmusical, as well as ungracious. This apart, the singing of Julia Doyle and Joanne Lunn, Clare Wilkinson, Nicholas Mulroy and Matthew Brook is beautifully shaped and balanced and is a delight. For the Magnificat, Butt uses five ripienists with his chosen concertists – four in the cantata – and they manage the difficulties of two to a part convincingly, as do the violin players. Balance and clarity are equally good, and the Linn production team have delivered their usual excellence – save for one extraordinary blot.

There are two minor criticisms: one is that the digital bleep between tracks 16 and 17, where the end of the soprano aria in the Magnificat Quia respexit spills into omnes generationes, is audible on two of my CD players, though not all. Of course the scoring and key are different, but surely both parts of this verse could share a single track to avoid this? The other thing I noticed is that, in spite of a credit being given to a language coach, there remain some very audible discrepancies in the Latin pronunciation: Matthew Brook slips a very Italianate pronunciation of fecit in the rumbustious aria Quia fecit mihi magna, while in Fecit potentiam there is a more audibly schooled German consonant.

But these are small details in what is a very good example of John Butt’s marriage between arresting scholarship, enormous musicality – the tempi are so naturally right – and pragmatic skills: conceiving and bringing such a complex production to fruition is a huge task, and the whole disc is so coherently musical from the word go. Give it to all your friends for Christmas: this is contextual Bach at its very best.

David Stancliffe

5555

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith only weeks to go until Christmas, Mirare has release four wonderful collections by grouping oustanding recordings from their back catalogue.

In no particular order, they are:

A 3 disc set from La Rêveuse consisting of recitals of Purcell (songs and chamber music, 60:00), Sébastien de Brossard (sacred and secular vocal music and a sonata in C, 64:00) and Henry Lawes (“ayres” for tenor and instrumental music, 69:00).

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Three fabulous discs from the Ricercar Consort, directed by Philippe Pierlot: an immense disc of Bertali instrumental music (80:00!), another featuring Purcell’s Fantazias and In nomines (61:00), and finally François Couperin’s Apothéoses (with texts spoken by François Morel) coupled with Rebel’s Tombeau de Monsieur de Lully (67:00).

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A second set by the Ricercar Consort sandwiches a disc of primarily vocal music by Matthias Weckmann (79:00) between two discs of Bach, the first coupling his oboe d’amore concerto and Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten with Handel’s harp concerto and Tra le fiamme with soprano Nuria Real (64:00), the second of cantatas (BWV 63, 110 & 151, 68:00).

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The fourth set combines a Bach instrumental CD (BWV21 (sinfonia only), 1017, 1066 & 1069, 69:00) directed by Pierre Hantaï with a disc on which he plays arrangements of Rameau’s orchestral music for two harpsichords with Skip Sempé (75:00).

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All of the discs were well received in the pages of the printed Early Music Review, and this chance to grab them at a bargain price should not be missed!

Brian Clark