Author: EMR2015

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Recording

Nürnberger Lautenschläger

CD cover Nürnberger Lautenschläger Magnus Andersson

 Virtuoso Lute Music from Nuremberg
Magnus Andersson lute
66:02
Klanglogo KL2537

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This interesting CD is an anthology of renaissance lute music from 16th-century Germany. It begins with music by Adolf Blindhamer (c.1450-c.1531), who was lutenist to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459 – 1519). It is possible that Blindhamer is one of the lutenists depicted in the well-known set of woodcuts known as “The Triumphs of Maximilian”. Impressive is Magnus Andersson’s performance of Blindhamer’s jolly Nach-Dancz to Ach Betler, which bounces along with a steady foot-tapping beat, and is not held back by the exceedingly fast flurries of notes which appear from time to time.

There is much interesting information about the composers, the sources of their music, and their connection with Nuremberg, to be found in John Robinson’s liner notes. Blindhamer was awarded citizenship of Nuremberg. One of his pupils may have been Hans Gerle (c.1500-1554), whose books of lute music were published in Nuremberg. Andersson plays four pieces from them, including a particularly attractive setting of T’Andernaken, which he sustains well with effective contrasts of tone.

Nuremberg was the home of Hans Newsidler (c.1508/9-63), who busied himself producing six books of lute music and at least 18 children. Andersson plays three of Newsidler’s intabulations: Tartara by Heinrich Isaac similar in style to T’andernaken, a sober Sancta Trinitas by Antoine de Févin, and a bright Cum sancto spiritu by Josquin des Prez. All three pieces are from Newsidler’s Der Ander Theil des Lautenbuchs (1536), which contains harder, more extensive pieces than those in his first book which was aimed at beginners. Ornate figuration is a feature of the intabulations in Der Ander Theil, but Andersson does not let the apparently mindless divisions obscure the musical integrity of the original.

There follows a Passamezzo and Saltarello pair by one of Hans Newsidler’s lute-playing sons, Conrad Newsidler (1541-1603). The divisions, which have interesting chromatic inflections, float over a static bass, which eventually moves to create some pleasing harmonic clashes. The Passamezzo and Saltarello should be contrasting movements, so I would have preferred to hear the Saltarello played a little faster. In contrast are two short sacred pieces set by Conrad Newsidler, which plod along as do so many Lutheran hymns.

Conrad’s older brother, Melchior Newsidler (1531-c.1595), was an exceptionally skilled lutenist. His Recercar Primo is a particularly fine piece of counterpoint, slow-moving, with unexpected changes of direction, rather like Bakfark on a good day. The CD comes to a peaceful end with Melchior Newsidler’s intabulation of Bewahr mich Herr, over seven minutes long.

The organist and composer Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612) was born in Nuremberg. Andersson plays two canzonas by Hassler which appear in a lute book owned by one Michael Eysertts (c.1580-after 1600), who lived in Nuremberg. It is not clear who made the intabulations, so Eysertts’ contribution may have been no more than owning a book.

Andersson uses three lutes built by Lars Jönsson, which are strung in gut with strings from Aquila and Kürschner. There is a tendency for treble notes to be louder and brighter than those lower down, which is probably more to do with a sound engineer’s switch than the luthier or string-makers. Unfortunately, there are a fair few squeaks and other extraneous noises coming from the strings. That, together with an echoey acoustic makes me wonder if the microphone was placed a bit too close to the lute for the recording.

Stewart McCoy

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Recording

Battle Cry: She speaks

CD cover Battle Cry She speaks Helen Charlston Toby Carr

Helen Charlston mezzo-soprano, Toby Carr theorbo
57:20
Delphian DCD34283

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Since she won the London Handel singing competition in 2018, mezzo Helen Charlston has increasingly shown herself to be on the verge of stardom that seems likely to extend far beyond these shores. This solo CD, her second, provides ample reasons why. She starts with the advantage of a voice that not only owns to rich tonal warmth at times reminiscent of the outstanding French mezzo Lucille Richardot, but one at all times beautifully produced across its range. Cantabile lines are drawn with unfailing security, while attention to text – one of Charlston’s great not to say rare strengths among today’s singers – allows her to colour and weight her voice highly effectively and with real musical insight.

Such qualities are of course much needed attributes in a recital that concentrates on 17th-century repertoire in general and includes seconda prattica works (two Barbara Strozzi songs and Monteverdi’s ‘Lamento d’Arianna’). In addition, Charlston performs Battle Cry, a short song cycle commissioned for her from the composer Owain Park and the poet Georgia Way. The programme is intelligently planned largely symmetrically, beginning and ending with Purcell, incorporating theorbo solos and placing the Park cycle at its heart. As the mention of the Monteverdi and Strozzi may suggest, its underlying theme is the suffering of women, a topic carried through into the new work and finally alleviated only marginally by Purcell’s ‘An Evening Hymn’. Mercifully no agenda is suggested, though it may be felt that just a little light relief might have been welcome, especially as the CD’s playing time is short by contemporary standards.   

In his notes Jeremy Summerly makes the astonishing assertion that ‘The Baroque Era in music made a virtue of pigeon-holing styles and approaches to musical composition and performance’, citing rationalised national styles. Even leaving to one side the fact that pigeon-holing is a near entirely 20th/21st-century phenomenon, the exact opposite is true. Here, for example, does ‘Dido’s Lament’ – an infinitely touching, simply expressed performance with the subtlest of ornamentation – belong to a part of an English tradition? No, of course it doesn’t. It wouldn’t exist without Monteverdi’s ‘Lamento della ninfa’ and neither would many other 17th-century works by Italian, French, German and English composers. The ‘Lamento’ is in Charlston’s repertoire so it’s perhaps somewhat surprising that it’s not included. But, as noted above, we do get the rather meatier ‘Lamento d’Arianna’ in a performance that is beautifully judged, excellently articulated in a way that captures the emotional ebb and flow of the music, its building and release of tension to near perfection. All this is underpinned by the key reiteration of the words, ‘Teseo, o Teseo mio’, heartbreakingly delivered by Charlston.  Strozzi’s ‘La travagliata’ builds to a sensuous final verse in which the last line here turns from pleading to a hint of anger, an interesting and unexpected interpretive twist.

I’m afraid I don’t listen to enough contemporary music to provide expert comment on Battle Cry, which includes four songs. However, it seems to have been written to Charlton’s strengths, displaying them effectively. Much the longest of the songs is the last, ‘Marietta’, which is not only to my mind the best of them as to both music and the somewhat enigmatic text, but interestingly was written some time before its companions. Here the use of portamento among other facets makes reminders of Britten seem unavoidable. The third song, ‘A singer’s ode to Sappho’ is unaccompanied.

And turning to accompaniments, it would be wrong not to acknowledge fully the part played in the success of the recital by theorbist Toby Carr, whose playing not only admirable supports the singer throughout but whose technique and admirable warmth of tone provide a timely reminder that the theorbo is not the percussion instrument we today hear far too frequently, but a deeply expressive melodic instrument. On his own account, he plays two brief pieces by Robert de Visée.

An outstanding achievement and a richly rewarding experience for the listener.

Brian Robins

Categories
Recording

Schütz: Dafne

CD cover Schütz Dafne Roland Wilson

La Capella Ducale, Musica Fiata, Roland Wilson
75:15
cpo 555 494-2

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Readers of reviews on a site devoted to early music are likely to know something of the history of Schütz’s Dafne, an “opera” performed for the wedding festivities of the daughter of his employer the Elector of Saxony in 1627. Given at the castle theatre in Torgau it then disappeared and remains lost. Given Schütz’s place as the greatest of German 17th-century composers, the notion of a lost  Schütz opera has of course long intrigued music historians, but so far as I’m aware this is the first time anyone has attempted to reconstruct Dafne.

The word opera appeared in the opening sentence in inverted commas advisedly, since there is some debate as to whether or not Dafne can be termed an opera. New Grove Opera thinks not: ‘Dafne, Zwo Comoedian and Orpheo und Euridice (two other lost dramas of Schütz) are spoken plays with vocal inserts, usually in the form of strophic lieder’. Roland Wilson disagrees, making the apparently reasonable point that if Schütz was not writing an opera why would he turn to an adaptation (made by Martin Opitz) of an Italian libretto by Rinuccini that had already been set as operas by Peri (in 1597) and Marco da Gagliano (1607). Wilson points out that Opitz’s rather dismissive comments about the piece stemmed from the fact that he did not understand recitative, himself missing the point that no German drama of this period employed anything other than spoken dialogue. I strongly suspect that what Wilson has set as recitar cantando would have remained spoken dialogue

Wilson’s methodology fundamentally involves setting the libretto to other works of Schütz he believes to have some relevance, though his working methods are not clearly set out. It goes without saying that any assessment of Wilson’s reconstruction is going to involve subjective views, hopefully informed by such points as that made in the previous paragraph. I have immediately to say that I remain unconvinced both by his arguments and the aural results. Opitz’s libretto casts the work as a prologue (declaimed in recitative by Ovid, from whose Metamorphosis the story of Dafne and Apollo is taken) and five brief acts, thus suggesting Monteverdi’s Orfeo, on which Wilson leans heavily in various ways, often wrongly in my opinion, especially as to instrumentation. There is a strong sense of symmetry, each act ending with a madrigalian chorus for the three shepherds, in one case augmented by a soprano. All these choruses –and many of the solo lieder – are cast in extended strophic form and it is a fatal flaw of the performance that there is little or no convincing attempt to vary the verses, as would certainly have been the case with 17th-century performers. Many of Wilson’s choices as to instrumentation and its deployment also strike me as highly questionable. His use of wind and brass is surely far too extensive for a work of this kind, the solemnly lugubrious trombone chords that open act 1, for example, more suggestive of a scene in Hades than an introduction by the shepherds to Apollo’s slaying of the Python. More importantly, and a-historically, instruments not infrequently mask voices, either as continuo that frequently reminds the listener of a ‘flock of noisy sparrows’, to borrow the composer and theorist Agostino Agazzari’s delightful phrase, or, worse, melodically, as in act 2 where Cupid is at one point drowned out by cornetti.

The singers are competent enough, but none show much awareness of the principles of ‘prima le parole poi la musica’ that form the basis of the seconda prattica, leaving some of the extensive passages of recitative lacking any sense of dramatic articulation and, frankly, often being tedious. I’m sorry to sound so negative about a brave project to which Wilson has obviously devoted much time and energy. Others may well be less concerned about some of the historical points raised and should perhaps investigate the disc for themselves.

Brian Robins

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News

The proof of the pudding

Amazon earnings 2022

THIS SITE has been live for seven years now. In that time, I have spent literally hundreds (possibly thousands?) of pounds, paying for web space, and mailing CDs, DVDs and books to reviewers, as well as MANY thousands of hours, uploading reviews, tracking down images of the products, and all the mundane bureaucratic stuff that goes into such a venture. In return – in the year to date – you can see above that the site has generated the princely sum of £11.53 from Amazon, the only loyalty scheme that we operate. It should not come as any surprise that it is vastly disappointing to me that the time freely given by our generous critics for your enlightenment goes largely unrewarded and that I am (once again) wondering if – at a time in my life when there are other (much more intellectually stimulating) things to which I would rather devote myself – there is any point in continuing to waste time, energy and money.

If anyone would like to take over the site, please contact us: bc16661 (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) com

Otherwise, the domain will expire at the end of its current contract with Ionos.

Brian Clark

 

 

Categories
Recording

Elizabethan Organ Music

CD cover Elizabethan organ music Leonhardt

Gustav Leonhardt at the Schnitger organ, Zwolle, Holland
Paradizo PA0019
48:34

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For goodness’ sake do not do what I initially did, and dismissively assume that this is another re-hash of Leonhardt’s greatest hits. It is a unique recording, it is an historically significant recording, it is a superb recording, and anyone with an interest in early keyboard music will be delighted that this recording has been resurrected and made generally accessible. As Skip Sempé explains in the booklet, it was originally made for a niche American recording company in the spring of 1962, in a pressing of only a few hundred copies, available only in the USA. Now anyone and everyone can buy it, and the quality of the music and of the performances makes this a cause for rejoicing.

Sempé states that Leonhardt subsequently re-recorded only three of these eleven pieces: two for harpsichord and one for organ. The two harpsichord works are Farnaby’s Fantasia, and Gibbons’ Fantasia MB XX/6, both currently on Philips 4381532. The third re-recording that I have traced is Byrd’s Clarifica me pater III (on the CD it retains the superceded title that was current back in 1962) which Leonhardt plays on the claviorgan (Alpha 073); either Sempé has taken this performance to be on an actual organ, or I have missed a commercial recording of one of these pieces, played on an organ by Leonhardt. Either way, this is a release additionally to be treasured for these unique renditions by Leonhardt of eight fine Elizabethan pieces.

The organ which Leonhardt uses is in San-Michaelskerk, Zwolle, Netherlands, built by Arp and Frans Caspar Schnitger, 1721. Some Elizabethan music ostensibly composed for the virginals or harpsichord can sound strident at one extreme or reedy, even weedy, at the other when played on early organs. The Zwolle instrument sounds beautiful, though it does of course date from over a century after the repertory on this disc was composed. The choice of music is excellent, intermingling folk material with the rigours of plainsong fantasias, and free fantasias (and a prelude) with the discipline of a ground. The fantasias by Byrd and Philips are particularly well chosen, not only because they are both masterful compositions, but also because Philips, a pupil of Byrd, uses the same theme as his teacher. Their respective working out of the material makes for an enthralling comparison.

These compositions from a golden age are performed superbly. Leonhardt had a particular respect for Byrd, and there is the added frisson in hearing works of the first great composer for the keyboard being played by arguably the greatest modern performer on early keyboard instruments: it would be hard to imagine finer performances of either piece. The same can be said of the other nine pieces. Whether you own one, some, most, all, or none of these tracks, this is a recording that simply recommends itself: it is a major discographical event.

Richard Turbet

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Uncategorized

Mondonville: Grands Motets

CD cover Mondonville Grands motets Jarry

Choeur & Orchestre Marguerite Louise, directed by Gaétan Jarry
67:39
Versailles  Spectacles CVS 063

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This continues the invaluable Versailles Spectacles series devoted to the grand motet, large-scale psalm settings for soloists, chorus and orchestra that were the principal form of sacred music in the France of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Those of Mondonville belong among later examples, succeeding and indeed vying in popularity with those of Rameau, whose small output was the subject of the previous release in the series, performances given by the same ensemble. My review of that outstanding CD can be found on this site.

Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville was born in 1711, a member of a poor but aristocratic Languedoc family. At the age of about twenty, he went to Paris, quickly establishing himself as a composer of instrumental music and a violinist. The cover portrait of him by Quentin de la Tour depicts an agreeable and handsome man in his late 30s whose social skills won him favour at court from the likes of Mme de Pompadour. Mondonville gained a number of posts in the Chapelle Royale, including in 1739 that of master (Intendant) and his music was so successful at the famous Concert Spirituel in Paris that he became its most frequently performed composer of all time. A number of his motets were first performed there. Although Isbé (1742), his first work for the Paris Opéra, was a failure, Mondonville’s later operas achieved considerable success, the ballet-héroique Le carnaval du Parnasse (1749) in particular opening with a run of no fewer than 27 consecutive performances.

The present recording includes three of Mondonville’s nine grands motets. Of these Dominus regnavit (a setting of Psalm 93), composed in 1734, is the earliest and indeed the first of the motets, while Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei (Psalm 19) and In exitu Israel (Psalm 115), dating from 1749 and 1753 respectively are late works that represent his final examples of the genre. Of these, In exitu is an outright masterpiece, a superbly dramatic work that fully captures the grand sweep, colourful diversity and rich harmonic texture of a text that tells of the flight from Egypt. The passages narrating the miraculous crossing of the Jordan are vividly depicted, the seething swirling river parted to the stuttering wonderment of the chorus alternating between declamatory homophony and contrapuntal writing. Perhaps even more remarkable is the succeeding haute-contre solo, later with chorus, coloured by dark bassoon sonority, ‘Montes exultaverunt’ (The mountains skipped like rams’) and following rhetorical bass solo, ‘Quid est tibi, mare …? (What aileth thee, O thou sea). Also noteworthy is the Italian influence of a passage such as the soprano ariette ‘Qui timent’ (Ye that fear the Lord). The entire work bears more than eloquent testimony to Mondonville’s mature style.

Unsurprisingly neither of the other motets quite matches this quality, though the colourful text of Psalm 93, which also speaks of floods, evokes a powerful pictorial response to ‘the surges of the sea’ and praise of the ‘voices of many waters’. Coeli enarrant, planned on a less ambitious scale, opens more conventionally, but is elevated to near transcendence in a wonderful passage that speaks of God’s creative handiwork, the setting of a ‘tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber’. There is a marvellous sense of mystery in Mondonville’s setting, a bass solo, rising from the darkest pianissimo to full glory and the restrained entry of the chorus.    

I gave the highest praise to the performances of the Rameau motets by Gaétan Jarry and his supremely talented forces, praise that can be fully reiterated in the present case. On every level, this is another issue that demands to be heard by anyone remotely drawn to the music of the French Baroque.

Brian Robins

Categories
Recording

Enigma Fortuna

CD cover Enigma Fortuna

Zacara da Teramo : Complete Works
La Fonte Musica, Michele Pasotti
237:00 (4 CDs in a card box)
Alpha Classics Alpha 640

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Zacara of Teramo, AKA Antonio di Berardo di Andrea, is a kenspeckle figure who has only recently coalesced out of a number of shadowy figures of the period as a result of scholarly research into the early Italian Renaissance. (The ‘new’ Zacara now incorporates all of the first three entries under Z in J and E Roche’s excellent 1981 ‘Dictionary of Early Music’!) Active in the Brescia region, Zacara (‘Tiny’) probably acquired his nickname due to his restricted growth, while further deformities meant he had only ten digits altogether on his hands and feet, a fact unshrinkingly demonstrated in a surviving portrait. Now that a larger body of music by this one composer has been identified, he has emerged as an extremely important link between the ars subtilior of the 13th century and the music of the early Renaissance. This comprehensive 4-CD account of his complete sacred and secular oeuvre, including many premiere recordings, is a revelation, both sacred and secular works receiving very fine performances indeed on convincing blends of voices and instruments. It is perhaps easier to identify a specific individual style once a body of work has been confidently ascribed to one composer, but it is hard to see why it wasn’t clear all along that this was the work of a single distinctive and highly talented musical mind. There is also satisfaction for us nowadays in the discovery that a man coping with considerable physical challenges could be so successful in his chosen career and lead such a long and fruitful life in the 14th and 15th centuries. The sacred music (recorded on the first two CDs) in particular is among the finest I know from the period, and these superb idiomatic accounts by La Fonte Musica go a long way to re-establishing Zacara’s seminal role in the development of sacred Italian music. This is not to diminish the attractiveness of the two CDs of Zacara’s secular music, which open with his splendid Cacciando per gustar with its vivid evocation of a busy marketplace.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

A 14th-century Salmagundi

CD cover A 14th-century Salmagundi

Blue Heron
40:04
BHCD 1011

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How lovely to see the enterprising Bostonian vocal ensemble Blue Heron back in the recording studio, albeit for this rather brief CD of music earlier in period than their previous impressive discography – particularly memorable was a ground-breaking series of CDs of music from the Peterhouse Partbooks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Blue Heron prove superbly in tune with this 14th-century music, which I notice they have approached through recordings of the secular music of Johannes Ockeghem. The voices are occasionally joined by instruments for music by Machaut, Cruce, Vitry, Landini, Jacob Senleches and Jacopo da Bologna. Incidentally, this CD has nothing to do with psalms, the title coming from Rabelais’s Pantagruel and denoting a hodgepodge, and its contents consisting of secular songs! The performances are as I have suggested entirely enjoyable, although I noticed some unfortunate mic popping on a couple of tracks. It is interesting to hear the voices of Blue Heron sounding so natural one-to-a-part and with instruments, including a fine idiomatic contribution on bray harp by the group’s director, Scott Metcalfe. 

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

“A Cembalo certato e Violino solo”

CD cover Bach Scheibe Graun Schaffrath Telemann Grisvard Pramsohler

Bach, Scheibe, Graun, Schaffrath, Telemann
Philippe Grisvard, Johannes Pramsohler
208:45 (3 CDs in a card box)
Audax Records ADX13783

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The standard description of this genre, for obbligato harpsichord with solo violin, underlines the true democracy at work in the earliest compositions for solo violin and keyboard. While Bach only wrote one set of six such sonatas (BWV114-9), recorded here in its entirety, his complete mastery of the form is striking – as so often in the master’s life his concentration on specific genres reflects demand rather than the composer’s ability or interest. Two further such works BWV 120 and 122 are attributed to Bach, and being of equally fine quality are probably his. In recording all of these pieces, harpsichordist Philippe Grisvard and violinist Johannes Pramsohler would easily have overrun a standard CD, but they go the extra mile here by recording 3 full CDs including a selection of such sonatas by Bach’s contemporaries. Notwithstanding the rather intense gaze of the two performers from the front of the booklet, these are performances packed with wit, ingenuity and imagination, technically stunning and wonderfully engaging. This is reflected in the more informal photos throughout the booklet! Grisvard plays a 2020 copy by Matthias Griewisch of an original harpsichord by Michael Mierke of Berlin of around 1710, while Prahmsohler plays a Rogeri vilolin of 1713. Both instruments sound to me just about perfect for this repertoire, and are played with enormous authority here. The works by Telemann and CPE Bach are predictably very fine, but perhaps the big surprise are the premiere recordings of sonatas by Bach pupils and admirers Scheibe and Schaffrath, two composers unknown to me, whose pieces are of a very high quality indeed. Whereas from the point of view of originality the hands-down star of the whole boxed set is surprisingly the sonata by JG Graun WV Av.XV:46, also receiving its premiere recording here. Context is all, and the prime virtue of this set is the rich context into which the performers place the Bach sonatas, although the uniformly fine playing and musical imagination is a further factor in its success.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Banchieri | Giulio Cesare Croce: Festino del Giovedi Grasso (1608)

CD cover Banchieri Festino del Giovedi Grasso Tactus

Dramatodía, Alberto Allegrezza
78:36
Tactus TC 550008

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This performance of extracts from sequences of music and texts for Carnival time by Banchieri and Croce is presented with the irony and humour essential for this celebration of the reversal of the normal order of things. Like the comedic tightrope walker whose technique must be flawless, the singers of Dramatodía adapt their singing style to a range of parody productions, but at the same time demonstrate that they can sing beautifully too. If I found this element of the CD slightly outweighed by caricature and narration, and felt occasionally that we needed a visual element to bring the programme fully to life, the more seemly performances were entertaining and enjoyable. This is one of the many musical elements in early Baroque Italy, which eventually aggregated into the first operas, and it is intriguing to hear this fine music put into something of a dramatic context. The highlight is undoubtedly Banchieri’s Contrapunto bestiale alla mente!

D. James Ross