Author: EMR2015

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Recording

The Topping Tooters of the Town

Modern floral

Music of the London Waits 1580-1650
The City Waits, William Lyons
49:32
Avie AV2364

Improbable as it seems, the title of this CD comes from a 1709 description of the London City Waits, and there is indeed some top tooting here. As the original Waits of the 16th and 17th century would have done, The City Waits play attractive medleys of popular and courtly tunes with enormous skill on a variety of wind instruments including recorders, shawms, dulcians, lysard, hoboy, cornett, sackbut and bagpipes. They have carefully chosen some of the more inventive consort music of the period by Holborne, Adson, Peter Philips, as well as songs by Thomas Morley and psalms by Dowland, Richard Allison, Simon Stubbs and Ravenscroft, for which they are joined by a band of voices who ‘put out’ the psalm tune with period pronunciation before we hear it in harmonised form with instruments and voices. William Lyons’ excellent programme notes paint a vivid picture of the dynamic role played in 16th- and 17th-century musical life by city waits up and down the country, while the CD gives a rich and varied picture of how they might well have sounded in a variety of contexts. My only criticism of this excellent CD is its relative brevity – we could have done with more verses of the psalms, more Valentin Haussman, more Holborne and certainly more of William Lyons’ own imaginative full ensemble arrangements of John Playford. More ‘top tooting’ please!

D. James Ross

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Recording

A due alti

Floral design

Chamber duets by Bononcini, Steffani, Marcello et al.
Filippo Mineccia, Raffaele Pe, La Venexiana, Claudio Cavina
79:29
Glossa GCD 920942

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his interesting CD presents a series of chamber duets for two alto voices from the early 18th century. As the perceptive programme note points out, the chamber duet is a form distinct from any other duet, such as those occurring regularly in cantatas and operas, in that the two parts are not sparring with one another, but are rather two complementary parts of one persona. Many of the composers represented were also writing powerful operatic roles for male altos and sopranos, and so were well acquainted with the technical possibilities as well as possessing a developed sense of drama. Very effectively accompanied by the four continuo instruments of La Venexiana, the two excellent male alto soloists Filippo Mineccia and Raffaele Pe provide something of a masterclass in expressive alto singing, ranging from the powerfully declamatory to the whisperingly intimate. We are currently living in a golden age of male falsetto singing, allowing us once again to appreciate the finest of Baroque music composed for the great castrato singers of the 18th century, and this CD taps into a rich seam of music which reveals a more subtle side of the repertoire than perhaps opera provides. To introduce variety, the performers include two lovely alto solos by Bononcini, while the complex and imaginative duet by the Venetian-born Neapolitan composer Cristofaro Caresana is a revelation, adding to the growing profile of the Neapolitan Baroque scene. As a bonus, the designer of the package, Rosa Tendero, has been allowed to go mad with ‘cut and paste’ on Baroque prints, to hilarious effect.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Clorinda e Tancredi: Claudio Monteverdi

Floral design

Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli soprano, Luca Dordolo tenor, Cantar Lontano, Marco Mencobani
69:56
Glossa GCD 923512

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]n unkind review of some years ago referred to the ‘tweedledum-tweedledee’ style of performance applied sometimes to Monteverdi, and I’m afraid the term sprang to mind when I was listening to this CD of Monteverdi’s madrigals. In his programme note, Pierre Mamou seems to suggest that the performers will be seeking the exaggerated and ugly beneath the beauty of Monteverdi’s music (I oversimplify), and I’m afraid for my part they succeed only too well. Monteverdi’s dramatic dialogues need careful handling to avoid triteness, and I’m afraid if you are going for a comic effect as the singers do here, the result soon becomes tiresome and ridiculous. There is some lovely singing, when the performers temporarily seem to forget their stated mission and engage in lyrical singing and delicate ornamentation, but soon the exaggerated expression returns and the effect is spoiled. The central work, The Battle of Tancredi and Clorinda, receives a more measured account, or perhaps the drama inherent in the work makes this mode of performance more acceptable. Luca Dordolo is an animated testo, while the instrumental forces are also effectively engaged in this powerful tale. Due to the enlightened Scottish Exam Board decision to include Il Combattimento  in the 1970s Higher Music syllabus, it was the first music by Monteverdi I ever came across. As a result, I am very familiar with the multitude of recordings which have been made of it since, and while this is not the best, it stands up rather well by comparison. I should point out there is a bonus track on the CD, a rather ‘contemporary’ realisation of a song by Giovanni Felice Sances, which would not sound out of place in a New York piano bar – perhaps this is where the performers have been longing to be all along…

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Cipriano de Rore: Portrait of the artist as a starved dog

Dark green flowers

Graindelavoix, Björn Schmelzer
75:22
Glossa GCD P 32114

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]egular readers of my reviews will have charted my growing disenchantment with the recordings of Graindelavoix, and this latest album does nothing to buck the trend, although perhaps some of the more obnoxious features of previous releases are not as pronounced. In his frankly rambling and idiosyncratic notes to this programme of madrigals by Cipriano de Rore, the group’s director Björn Schmelzer states that they will be presenting the music in its ‘simple form’ as defined by the Renaissance musician Luigi Zenobi. It is certainly the case that they generally eschew extended decorative passagi, but in some of the accounts there is scarcely a note which isn’t bent, wobbled or swooped up to or down from, creating a most unpleasant and unsettling effect. A very close and dense recorded ambiance with a curious tinny after-echo, which recalled Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody or Sting’s unfortunate brush with Dowland, serves to exaggerate the wealth of self-indulgent mannerisms in the singing to the point of obscuring the original music. Rather than ornamenting according to any sort of historical precedent, each of the singers just seems to be doing whatever comes up their back, while vocal production seems to be allowed to range wildly from a pure focussed sound to raw shouting. All this would be more than enough to put me off these accounts, but there are also regular examples of uncomfortable intonation and lack of rhythmical unanimity. On the instrumental front, Floris de Rycker’s ceterone is much too closely recorded, giving it an unpleasant tinny tone, and only the cornett of Lluis Coll I Trulls seems to escape the generally inept recording. The completely bonkers title of the CD, which seems to rely entirely on a link in Schmelzer’s fevered imagination between Dylan Thomas, a portrait of a rather gaunt Cipriano and the starving dog featured in the corner of Dürer’s engraving of Melancolia, seems like an excuse to distort the rather happy world of de Rore’s music into a nightmare of the group’s own warped imagination. I can only hope that only Graindelavoix fans – and there must still be some, I suppose – will invest in this grotesque distortion of the music, while the general listening public will be warned off by the macabre title.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Pedro Ruimonte in Brussels

Floral design

Music at the archducal Court of Albert and Isabel Clara Eugenia
La Grande Chapelle, Albert Recasens
114:35 (2 CDs )
Lauda LAU017

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his double CD highlights the music of Pedro Ruimonte, a composer new to me, but also very usefully casts an additional spotlight on an unsuspected musical golden age in the early 17th-century Low Countries. Following the popular uprising against Habsburg rule, music was in a parlous state, and it seems to be due almost entirely to the arrival of the new culturally engaged Habsburg rulers – the Albert and Isabel of the CD title – that a spectacular blossoming of the arts ensued. Side by side with the painters Brueghel the Elder and Rubens, the court employed the English composers Peter Philips and John Bull, as well as the Fleming Gery de Ghersem and the Spaniard Pedro Ruimonte. Considerable Habsburg financial resources allowed a great flourishing of music-making, while the renewed urgency of the Counter-Reformation provided impetus. The voices and instruments of La Grande Chapelle provide a rich and varied programme of music by Ruimonte and Philips but also including works by Pieter Cornet, Richard Deering and Frescobaldi. Grafting the Flemish tradition on to the more adventurous Venetian style, this repertoire is on a grand scale and of a very high standard of craftsmanship. Peter Philips’ music, so often presented in purely vocal accounts, receives rich and very effective performances here, combining voices with brass and stringed instruments, while there is also a lovely and unexpected motet for two solo voices and continuo. Ruimonte’s rich church music stands up very well in comparison with that of his English contemporary, but he is also represented by some attractive madrigals and villancicos, suggesting a composer of considerable versatility. Ruimonte is a fascinating discovery, and fine performances by La Grande Chapelle both of the large-scale works and the more intimate material help to re-establish his reputation, but also help to paint a picture of an obscure musical flourishing and its full artistic context.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Haydn: “per il Cembalo Solo”

Pink chrysanthemum

Pierre Gallon harpsichord
65:00
Encelade ECL1701
HobXVI: 6, 12, 24, 27; HobXVIa: 17, 23, 24; HobXVII:1

[dropcap]G[/dropcap]allon makes a convincing case for playing early Haydn keyboard music on the harpsichord, in this recording on an instrument by Jonte Knif, generically based on German 18th-century originals. He has chosen eight works composed over a sixteen-year period from c. 1765 to 1781. Two sonatas (Hob XVI:24 and 27), a partita (Hob XVI:6) and a divertimento (Hob XVI:12) – both essentially also sonatas – are contrasted with a Capriccio (Hob XVII:1) and transcriptions of three Lieder.

Gallon produces exciting but controlled playing, whose pacing is always well-judged and comfortable to listen to. He makes effective use of agogic accents and rubato to compensate for the lack of weight on the harpsichord, but also uses the registration possibilities of his double-manual instrument very effectively. It has a particularly mellow sound and is closely recorded to provide an intimate atmosphere appropriate to music composed, as pointed out in the accompanying booklet, for amateurs rather than as a showcase for a performing composer. The comprehensive booklet includes an informative discussion by C. Himelfarb about Haydn’s place in keyboard music history and the instruments he would have known. I enjoyed this recording very much and am happy to give it the highest recommendation.

Noel O’Regan

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Categories
Recording

The Art of the Harpsichord: from Cabezón to Mozart

Modern floral

Byron Schenkman
BSF171

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]yron Schenkman has recorded this significant and highly enjoyable disc on eight instruments from the collection at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota. Ranging from a rare anonymous Neapolitan harpsichord of c. 1530 to a 1798 instrument by Joseph Kirckman, the disc covers more than two and a half centuries of the harpsichord’s dominance. Schenkman has made an excellent choice of work to show off each instrument, for the most part eschewing well-known pieces in favour of lesser-known but no less significant ones, which match the chosen instrument extremely well. For example, a Toccata and Passacaglia by the Frescobaldi-influenced Johann Kaspar Kerll, used to illustrate the Giacomo Ridolfi harpsichord of c. 1675, is an inspired choice and Schenkman rises very well to the virtuosic challenges of the extended Passacaglia. The same applies to Gregorio Strozzi’s trill-laden Passacaglia which is played on an octave virginal by Onofrio Guarracino. A spinet by Johann Heinrich Silbermann is put through its paces in a rare piece by Silbermann himself, as well as in a sonata by C.P.E. Bach. It is good to hear three Scarlatti sonatas played on a resonant Portuguese harpsichord by José Callisto, with a particularly exciting rendition of K 427. Schenkman is a versatile player who seems equally at home in this great variety of styles, no small ask in a repertory that ranges from Cabezón to Mozart. Only the Haydn Sonata in D (Hob XVI:24), played on the Kirckman, feels a bit uncomfortable in its overly-fast second and third movements. The disc is accompanied by some excellent notes on the instruments, written by John Koster; there is, however, little information on the actual music which is a pity. In the breadth of its programme, and with some exciting playing, this CD makes an excellent introduction to the harpsichord and its repertory. It also showcases some wonderful historical instruments kept in peak playing condition.

Noel O’Regan

Categories
Recording

Obrecht: Missa Grecorum & motets

Dark green flowers

The Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice
74:13
Hyperion CDA68216
+ Agnus Dei (attrib.), Cuius sacrata viscera, O beate Basili, Mater Patris, Salve regina a6, Sancta Dei genitrix

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hanks to a stunningly vivid portrait by Hans Memling, Jacob Obrecht is one of the very few early church composers we can put a face to. This is particularly pertinent in the case of Obrecht, whose distinctive music makes his stand out anyway in the generation of Josquin. Mainly represented by some 26 masses, a considerable total for the period, Obrecht also composed many motets, four of which are represented here, along with an isolated motet attributed to him by Rob Wegman.

Like his older contemporary Ockeghem, he seems to delight in mathematical complexity, and in the Missa Grecorum  the unidentified cantus undergoes a particularly tortuous series of treatments. Also like Ockeghem, Obrecht is capable of writing music of surpassing lyricism, but just occasionally I feel both men get a little bogged down in their own cleverness. This is certainly the case with the present mass, and it has to be said the performance by the Brabant Ensemble also doesn’t seem to be quite up to their normal transcendent standard. Whether by design or lack of it, extended passages of the mass seem to be sung without much passion or expression and there are uncharacteristic moments of dodgy intonation. I would be interested to read Rob Wegman’s reasons for attributing the anonymous Wroclaw Codex Agnus Dei  to Obrecht – it sounds rather formulaic and frankly too dull to me to be by a composer of the first rank such as Obrecht. I am normally a huge Brabant Ensemble fan, admiring the passionate and illuminating performances they have given in the past of often wholly neglected material, but I’m afraid this recording didn’t entirely do it for me.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

5[five]

Modern floral

Flanders Recorder Quartet & Saskia Coolen
64:25
Music by J. S. Bach, Boismortier, Lully, Schein, Schein + 20th/21st-century music

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his recital CD mixes contemporary and early music, the former written for recorders the latter generally arranged from a variety of sources. From its hip title to its pixilated picture of the players, this CD is almost trying too hard to make recorders cool, but – having said that – there is some truly lovely recorder playing here with warm, exquisitely blended tone, exemplary articulation and a high level of musical intelligence. The modern music often demands a hair-raising level of individual and group virtuosity, and is imaginative, catchy and wonderfully idiomatic for recorders. Unfortunately, by comparison, much of the Renaissance and Baroque music sounds a little staid by comparison, but the playing by the expanded quartet is never less than deeply artful, and the accounts of consort music by Johann Hermann Schein, which could conceivably have been played on recorders at the time, are particularly beautiful. Primarily this type of programme is simply a recital put on disc, and none the worse for that – and they say variety is the spice of life. For stunning unanimity of purpose in a recorder consort listen to track 19, the Allegro of a Boismortier concerto, but who would imagine that even an expanded quartet would need to employ twenty-nine instruments? OK, recorder playing is cool after all, and, from the impressive list of top instrument makers, apparently rather lucrative too.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Luther: The noble art of music

Modern floral

Utopia Belgian handmade polyphony, InAlto
51:23
Et’cetera KT1577

This imaginative CD groups treatments by a number of composers from the period immediately following the Reformation of specific texts which were particularly admired at this time, namely: Aus tiefer Not, Vater unser  and Christ lag in Todesbanden. Introducing several of these with settings by Josquin of equivalent pre-Reformation texts, they usefully draw attention to the continuity of the early Reformed tradition rather than its radical differences from the music of the previous generation.

Prominent composers such as Eccard, Othmayr, Praetorius and Lassus feature, but perhaps more interesting are the obscure composers such as Matthaeus Le Maistre, Arnoldus de Bruck and Johann Walter. The Reformation was a great leveler, and it is interesting that the rather simple harmonisations which its philosophy encouraged set the great and the frankly mediocre on an equal footing. The alternation of the wind instruments of InAlto with the unaccompanied voices of Utopia, occasionally mixing the two in various combinations, maintains textural interest, but unfortunately I found a lot of the music on this CD just rather dull. This is not helped by the rather unrelentingly close recording of the voices, which cruelly emphasizes slight indecisions in intonation. Having said that, some composers such as Lassus’ pupil Balduin Hoyoul vividly stand out from the crowd. Worthwhile alone for the unknown composers represented, this CD does cast an interesting light on the music which flourished in the early days of the Protestant Church in Germany.

D. James Ross

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