Author: EMR2015

Categories
Recording

Telemann: Oratorium zur Einweihung der neuen St.Michaelis-kirche 1762

Oratorio for the dedication of the new St.Michael’s Chruch 1762
Rahel Maas, Marian Dijkhuizen, Julian Podger, Klaus Mertens, Mauro Borgioni SmSTBB, Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens.
71:40
cpo 555 214-2

How fortunate we are to encounter another jewel in the CPO crown! To be able to hear a rather special oratorio following events from Hamburg’s eventful past. This music would probably be on a secret wish list, alone for its splendid panoply of instruments (two corps of three trumpets and drums, plus horns, flutes, oboes etc..), deployed with great inventiveness and impressive musico-pictorial flair; applied too with an ability that belies, defies even, the composer’s advanced age of 81! Added to this are the honed qualities of processional solemnity, religious reflections, and great topographical importance.

Within this fine late work, we find an inspired mind and agile quill wielded with considerable effect. This dedicatory music of just over one hour was placed within a whole series of prayers and readings lasting nearly four! The work in two parts, is split by a stunning instrumental chorale (Track 15) for six trumpets. This special oratorio was written by Joachim Johann Daniel Zimmermann, archdeacon of St.Caherine’s, someone with whom Telemann had already collaborated on several occasions, most notably the John Passion of 1745 (TVWV5:30). The background events to this special piece actually go back 12 years earlier, to the 10th March 1750, when – during a freak, violent storm – the original church was struck by ferocious lightening, hail, snow and rain, the latter seen as particular divine leniency, or possible redemption, dampening the flames, but not preventing the serious destruction of the church. This duality of mixed emotions is caught in the restorative, post-disaster aria (Track 11) “Thus grace and mercy were united” after the vividly portrayed horrors through tracks 7-10. With the wonderful aria (Track 13) the once scattered “flock” returns to the old place of worship. The lengthy (over five minutes) chorale at track 16, is to be sung by one and all of the congregation! This inclusivity is echoed in the finely measured aria (Track 18), “The Amen of your people resounds to your first, in the place consecrated by it!” The resounding “Es schallet” perfectly captured here. Track 20 captures a sense of what this all meant to the faithful Hamburgers to see their beloved and famous (iconic) St. Michaelis Church rise from the ashes and those double-edged lightening strikes; “Shall no adornment be spared…that makes your Hamburg glorious” (again)? In the quite lengthy recitative (Track 21), we hear of the monumental efforts to help bring about the re-building, and also perfectly reflected in the aria (Track 23) expounding the “Tempel” built by love, a labour of love, one could say? The music here has a really delightful, disarming effect, set in supreme contrast to the almost apocalyptic scenes heard before. The superb closing sequence starts with the magnificent aria (Track 27) with some lingering fearfulness of what happened to the previous building, yet exudes a proud sense of steadfastness until the End of days. The final two-verse chorale is adorned with judiciously applied trumpets and drums.

This is, in short, a really top-notch interpretation with Klaus Mertens and all, adding to our understanding of Telemann’s highly productive Hamburg years, through his amazing protean and prismatic musical imagination, tempered by the religious inspirations and impulses of the texts. O how lucky are we to turn a singular musical event into a multiple listening experience at the flick of a switch! Vintage late Telemann to be drunk in!

Just a final remarks:

1. Just the odd little slips in English translation, syntax goes astray (Aria Track 3), “Flock” (Track 13), semantics in line 4 (Aria 20).

2.No mention is given of the horn players? Unless there’s a missing “Horns” for the last named pair of the six trumpeters: Ute Rotkirch, Jaroslav Roucek?

3.Would have liked a touch more brightness in the recorded tone.

4.Booklet notes by Prof. Wolgang Hirschmann are studious and insightful.

David Bellinger

Categories
Recording

Vivaldi: Arie e cantate per contralto

Delphine Galou contralto
Accademia Bizantina, directed by Ottavio Dantone
57:47
Naïve OP30584

Three secular cantatas and eight opera arias, mostly either replacements or from incomplete operas, feature on this splendidly performed but musically uneven recital that is one of two new additions to Naïve’s massive Vivaldi Edition. Much the most satisfying is Cessate, omai cessate (RV 684), a late cantata for alto and strings dating from 1734-5. Superbly dramatic, it opens with an extended highly wrought accompanied recitative structured in three parts, the central one forming a contrasting arioso. The opening aria also brings contrast between barely suppressed unhappiness and the outburst of angst at ‘Ah, sempre più spietata’ (Ah, ever more merciless). The following recitative, a dark night of the soul, is given articulation in a final ‘ombra’-type aria of driving, febrile intensity. It is music that begs for performers able to do justice to its histrionic demands. Here it finds them. Since becoming husband and wife Delphine Galou and Ottavio Dantone have benefited mutually and immeasurably, the singer from her husband’s insistence on the importance of textural communication, while the once rather tense Dantone has noticeably relaxed. The results they achieve in Cessate are electrifyingly symbiotic, every word, every bar speaking of a unity of purpose that projects a profound musical and emotional experience. Listen, for example, in the first aria, to the way already mentioned contrast is handled, Galou’s ‘Ah’, expressive of volumes of pain, the fierce string chords a metaphorical blow to the solar plexus. In the second aria Galou’s inflexion on the words ‘Dorilla, l’ingrata, morire potrò’ (my italics) sear themselves into the mind, as does the wonderfully rounded chest note on the words ‘vendetta faro’ at the conclusion of the B section. This is the pastoral chamber cantata at its most potent and highly developed. A word of praise, too, for the stylish da capo decoration which always remains embellishment rather than the re-writing of the vocal line that too often passes as ornamentation

I’ve concentrated on Cessate to an unusual degree simply because nothing else on the CD comes close to matching it. That is no fault of the performers, who are indeed to be congratulated on making as much as possible of the two occasional cantatas (RV 685 & 686) composed during the period spent in Mantua in the service of the imperial governor, Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt (1718-20). Both are crumbs from Vivaldi’s table, notable for little more than the presence of braying horns in RV 686, symbolic of aristocratic hunting – and obsequious ceremonial.

The notes are by no means of the scholarly standard expected from this series, especially as regards the opera arias. We should have been told that La Candace, composed for Mantua in 1720, is a lost work of which only 11 arias survive, three of which are given here. The most winning is ‘Caro pupille’, charming as to both music and text, and here sung by Galou with affectionate fervour. It is also inaccurate to term Damira’s aria from La verità in cimento (Venice, 1720) ‘positive and reassuring’, since it is neither, being a comic aria with asides of insincere mockery. I assume it was an inserted aria, since although the note-writer informs us it comes from act 2, scene 3, it was not included in the Vivaldi Edition complete recording of La verità. And if you wonder about the unfamiliar Tieteberga (Venice, 1717), it too is now lost, the sole remaining fragment being the indifferent replacement aria recorded here.

In the context of my near-unbounded enthusiasm, a couple of minor caveats must be recorded. Although far less aggravating than at one time, Dantone is not beyond irritating mannerisms, the worst of them the mannered slowing up at cadences. His penchant for fussy continuo and intrusive theorbo twiddles remains annoying. Galou’s formidable technical arsenal would be near complete, were she to develop a proper trill. However, make no mistake – these splendidly performed and vividly communicative performances are streets ahead of what we all too often encounter in this kind of repertoire

Brian Robins

Categories
Recording

J.S. Bach: Das wohltemperierte Klavier , Volume 1

Steven Devine harpsichord
111:19 (2 CDs in a card tryptych)
Resonus RES10239

Steven Devine plays a double-manual harpsichord by Colin Booth from 2000 after an 18th-century Johann Christoff Fleischer original (Hamburg 1710) that he tunes in a version of Kirkberger III, ‘gently modified so as to retain the key colours that make the harpsichord sing so much better, but eliminating any extreme dissonances’.

The distinctive tuning that results can be heard in the opening eight tracks, where the C# major and minor after the C keys sounds delightfully zingy, especially in the great C# minor fugue. Devine spends much of his liner note (where all the quotations from German are idiomatically translated into English) discussing what Wohltemperierte means. The mellow tone of Colin Booth’s harpsichord and Steven Devine’s elegant, unfussy playing make these CDs a delight to listen to. His technique is faultless, his ornaments elegant and the rhythmic playing has give without being mannered. Imitative passages are intelligently articulated and registration is so well chosen that it never obtrudes – it just feels right and how you’d love to be able to play it yourself.

A bonus is the lovely warm acoustic – St Mary’s church, Birdsall in North Yorkshire – and the sensitive recording. The harpsichord sounds caressed rather than hammered and its treble is crystal clear while the bass speaks roundly without being plummy.  This is an altogether delightful pair of CDs, and makes me impatient for the second part. There are other recordings about, including Colin Booth’s own, but Devine’s has a particular seemingly effortless grace, and it’s the one of all I’ve heard in the past ten years that I am happiest to live with.

David Stancliffe

Categories
Recording

J. S. Bach: Wo soll ich fliehen hin

cellini consort
65:44
Ramée RAM1911

For the most part, these transcriptions for three viols are reworkings of keyboard pieces and so are going in ‘a direction which is consciously the opposite of what was typical for Bach as an arranger’. The expert players, based in Switzerland, note that ‘many of Bach’s viola da gamba pieces are in fact rearrangements of his own works.’

They are mindful of the fact that at Weimar Bach wrote extensively for low concertante instruments, and the fugal writing of e. g. the Fantasia and Fugue BWV 905, the organ trio on Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland BWV 660 and the eponymous Wo soll ich fliehen hin (BWV 646) suits the low pitch and sonorous clarity of the viols really well. I was frequently reminded of my favourite version of the Art of Fugue by Fretwork. I find these versions more plausible than for example the Italian Concerto.

What cannot be faulted is the technical and musical skills of the three players, Tore Eketorp, Brian Franklin and Thomas Goetschel. This CD is another example of how Bach can be played in a great variety of ways on many combinations of instruments. No-one who knows the way English chamber music developed from Orlando Gibbons through to Purcell will regret hearing these dedicated players enjoying appropriating Bach’s keyboard music for their own education and enjoyment. The recording is first class and the result is a delight.

David Stancliffe

Categories
Recording

Bach: Cello Suites

Rachel Podger violin
127:38 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Channel Classics CCS SA 41119

The able and delightful Rachel Podger has recorded the six Cello Suites with a dancing fluency and an ease of manner which meant that never for a moment did I question her appropriation of this set of dance suites for the violin.

She describes how she grew up with them as part of her aural landscape, and had never entirely appreciated those classic performances we used to hear until she heard a performance on a Baroque ‘cello with its lighter bow. And began to appreciate that they were sets of dances. Later, when coaching cello players, she often found herself playing along with them. And then one day she decided to borrow them and play them properly, and has never regretted it. Nor do I: they sound fresh and light as the higher pitch and smaller instrument aids her characteristic fluency. She had wondered, she says, about the Sarabandes – would they have enough weight? I found them perfectly acceptable in this medium, and think that these performances are bewitching. Bach was an inveterate borrower and arranger of his own works, and – like Rachel – I can’t see anything wrong when (except for the Sixth Suite) they fit so perfectly.

She plays them, as you would expect from the tuning of a violin with G as the bottom note, up an octave and a fifth, which works perfectly for the first five. But what to do about the Sixth, written for a 5 string ‘cello? After various experiments with five-stringed viola and violin, she settled for playing it up an octave on her own violin, and getting her recording engineers to piece in the lower passages played on her viola. I cannot tell any break in the seamless result.

You may not approve, but I think they are splendid, and have listened to them a lot.

David Stancliffe

Categories
Recording

Opus 1 – Dandrieu, Corelli

Le Consort
61:45
Alpha Classics Alpha 542

If, like me, you’ve only ever heard keyboard music by Jean-François Dandrieu, you are in for a treat – especially if you are a fan of the baroque trio sonata! Le Consort (2 violins, viola da gamba, cello and keyboard) play all six of his op. 1 (hence the CD’s title), alongside three trios by Corelli (op. 2/8 & 12, op. 4/1) and an instrumental version of the French composer’s “La Corelli”.

Published almost 20 years before Couperin’s Les goûts ré-unis, Dandrieu’s trios are so Italianate that honestly, if I didn’t know the Corelli pieces from two years of keyboard harmony classes at university, I should have had trouble knowing who wrote what. Walking bass lines, chains of suspensions, clever counterpoint – they are all here in abundance, but they are not mere imitation; rather, it is as if Dandrieu has turned off his “Frenchness”, preferring to simplify the range of harmonies in order to achieve Corellian “perfection”, and it is quite wonderful to listen to. (Geek alert!)

The five players of Le Consort produce a lush sound – suave violins with lithe bow work and a sensuous approach to dissonance, supported by an unobtrusive continuo team whose string players drive the music forward as required. The recorded sound is first class (as you’d expect from Alpha!). Essentially there is absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t want this fabulous disc in your collection.

Brian Clark

Categories
Recording

Sonatas for two violins

Johannes Pramsohler, Roldán Bernabé
63:04
Audax Records ADX13714
Guignon, Guillemain, Leclair & Mangean

Any new release on the Audax label is going to be more than worth hearing – the level of performance and recording engineering are astonishing. For this recent recording, the two violinists of the “house band” (Ensemble Diderot) enjoyed some continuo-free time in a programme of frankly daunting duet sonatas. The “usual suspects” are there – Leclair (op 12/6), Guillemain (op 4/2) and Guignon (Les sauvages et La Furstemberg, a worled premiere recording, and his Folies d’Espagne), as well as the little-known Etienne Mangean (op 3/6, also a first outing on CD). Pramsohler and Bernabé are perfectly matched – for proof, listen to Track 13, where the bow strokes of their détaché chords sound as if they’re played by the same person, then marvel as they toss phrases back and forth, swapping roles absolutely effortlessly. Of course, it is anything but effortless – these guys must have invested hours, practising this until they agreed on how each passage should be and then there’s the remarkable feat of pulling off such captivating performances. This is a disc I have enjoyed for months and am only now able to put into words how gorgeous it all is! If you haven’t already acquired it, or you worried that a whole disc of duets might not be your thing, please do your ears and soul a favour…

Brian Clark

Categories
Recording

Telemann: Kommt, lasset uns anbeten

Inauguration Cantatas for Hamburg and Altona
barockwerk hamburg, Ira Hochman
65:44
cpo 555 255-2

The cpo label hasn’t sat on its laurels as one of the world’s top labels bringing some quite excellent and extraordinary music to our ears, whilst exploring lesser-known corners of lesser-known composers’ works. Over the last few years we have seen a wonderful string of high quality recordings leading us back the highly versatile baroque master Telemann’s output, often centred around his considerable and multifarious duties in and around Hamburg.

This recording starts with the consecration work for the smaller St. Job Hospital Church TVWV2:5 that gives the disc its title, and was intended for performance on the 16th February 1745; however, this piece was officially cancelled on the death of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VII,* which demanded a four-week period of mourning, prohibiting any polyphonic music or organ playing! So this work was duely consigned to a dusty slumber on a shelf until Jürgen Neubacher discovered the manuscript and Wolfgang Hirschmann identified its purpose in 2001. The work dispenses with the usual trumpets and drums (which would have been overpowering in the original, tiny performance space) and uses a very modest instrumentation (flute, oboe, violins and continuo). We should never, however, underestimate these sparse forces in masterful hands! The sheer scope and imaginative handling of the text brings out some quite incredible melodic twists and turns, with music that seems to presage the vintage style of the later oratorios. The noble tone and exquisite vocal contours of the Aria a2 “Vereinigte Seufzer” (Track 4) sweeps you away to another place; so too, the sensational, operatic writing in the soprano aria “Der Himmel, die Erde, die Menschen, die Tempel” (Track 6); equally so the tender, disarming beauty of “Höre, Vater, deine Kinder” (Track 9).  If asked to name the performers at a blind listening, you’d swear it was probably Hermann Max and Co; not so – Barockwerk under Ira Hochman and these superb soloists are in full artistic flow, shaking the dust off some amazing works.

The second offering, “Geschlagene Pauken, auf!” (Strike up, ye thundrous drums) TVWV13:14, was written as a festive piece for the Royal Academic Latin school (Christianeum) in Altona in 1744. Nearly a dozen of these “festive” works for Altona between 1741 and 1764 have now been identified. As the title to this work openly suggests, trumpets and drums come right to the fore! The exuberant flourishes of celebratory music are carried over to the final aria a4 “Erfülle die Hoffnung”.

Finally, we have a modest, compact motet written as a school exam piece in 1758 for the Johanneum, Hamburg’s Latin school. It has a sprightly finish to round off its slender four minutes.

The first two works presented here are quite revelatory and display more glistening strings attached to the giant golden bow which arches across the years of Telemann’s highly productive tenure in Hamburg. These excellent musical forces and soloists under Ira Hochman will hopefully be back to us soon with more scintillating gems of baroquery!

David Bellinger

* Telemann’s superb funeral music for Charles VII (TVWV4:13) is found on cpo 777 603-2

Categories
Recording

Theile: Seelen-Music

Sacred Concertos
Dorothee Mields, Hamburger Ratsmusik, Simone Eckert
68:35
cpo 555 132-2

There is more to this disc than meets the eye; for a start, half of the music is not by Theile! There are two substantial vocal pieces by the rather more obscure Christian Flor (1626-97), as well as three four-part instrumental suites by the (to me, at least!) totally unknown Gregor Zuber (c. 1610->73).

The five gamba players of Hamburger Ratsmusik are complemented by theorbo and keyboard continuo. They produce a bright consort sound, each of the lines clearly (though not artificially so!) delineated. I was reminded at various points of William Lawes and John Jenkins. The singing is gorgeous – no-one who visits the site very often will be surprised, as Dorothee Mields (certainly in this repertoire) can do no wrong; crystal clear pronunciation, delicate phrasing and shaping of individual notes. In short, the ideal performer for this music which drew even a heathen like me into its soul. I imagine gamba players will be familiar with Zuber’s suites – if they are not, they should seek them out. Christian Flor may nowadays be deemed obscure, but his two contributions (one in Latin and one in German) are no mere padding – they well deserve a place on this very enjoyable recording.

Brian Clark

Categories
Recording

Selichius: Opus novum

Sacred Concertos
Weser-Renaissance, Manfred Cordes
73:00
cpo 555 223-2

For the third volume of their Musik aus Schloss Wolfenbüttel series, Manfred Cordes and Weser-Renassaince Bremen have chosen extracts from Daniel Selichius’s enormous Opus novum collection, printed there in 1623/24. Selichius succeeded the far-better-known Michael Praetorius as Kapellmeister in 1721, and, although much of the music published in the set had probably been composed years before, it is clear that their musical styles were very similar.

As Carsten Niemann’s note points out, Selichius makes clever use of instruments (he draws attention, for example, to the low winds in one piece symbolising imprisonment and the high winds which immediately follow as representing the exhiliration of gaining freedom).

The seven singers (who never all join together!) and 14 instrumentalists (six strings, six-part wind ensemble with chitarrone and organ continuo) are outstanding and the recorded sound is glorious. The psalm settings amply demonstrated Delichius’s musical talents, and range from a duet for soprano and tenor to three words for ten “voices” and one for 11. If you love Gabrieli or Praetorius, do not hesitate to add this gem to your CD collection.

Brian Clark