Author: EMR2015

Categories
Recording

Arcadia: Paradise in Music

CD cover Arcadia Paradise in music NeoBarock

NeoBarock
64:56
ambitus amb 96 842

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The description on the cover of this CD reads ‘Pastorales inspired by the Christian hope of salvation meet those which take their cue from the dreamlands of antiquity. A musical journey to the myth of Arcadia.’ In fact, the programme is a very effective selection of instrumental pastorals from the Baroque by Schmelzer, Domenico Scarlatti, Tartini and Biber generally attractively and imaginatively performed by the two violins, cello and harpsichord of NeoBarock. I had to focus on the high quality of the music and the excellent and idiomatic performances as I waded through the rather pretentious programme notes – best to sidestep these and just enjoy generally unfamiliar music in this loosely connected but enjoyable programme. The opening extended anonymous chorale fantasia on Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern for violin and continuo is a revelation, while the concluding contribution by Biber, a Pastorella for the same line-up, is predictably flamboyant.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Geminiani: La Forêt enchantée

CD cover Geminiani La Forêt enchantée

Elisa Baciocchi Ensemble
72:42
Tactus TC 680706

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Geminiani’s La Forêt enchantée is a theatrical pantomime inspired by Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata, most famous perhaps as the source of Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. It is an entirely instrumental piece designed to accompany dance and mime, but this presentation interpolates extracts from the Tasso to provide context for the music. This and the addition of a flute to the original string texture seem reasonable liberties in the circumstances, particularly as the recording has the feel of a record of a staged performance. My only reservation regarding this interesting and informative project is that a combination of the recording quality and the standard of the playing suggests a good amateur performance rather than a polished professional one. Nevertheless, this CD opens an interesting window on an unfamiliar Baroque genre, and adds another dimension to our understanding of the enigmatic and prolific Geminiani.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Rainaldi: Cantate e Duetti vol. III

CD cover Rainaldi Cantatas vol 3

Arianna Miceli soprano, Marika Spadafino soprano, Antonio Orsini tenor, RomaBarocca Ensemble, Lorenzi Tozzi
51:21
Tactus TC 611803

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Carlo Rainaldi, an established and admired architect in the Italian Baroque period, underlines the underappreciated links between architecture and music – the precepts of Vetruvius link the two closely. While Rainaldi’s role in the architecture of 17th-century Rome has long been understood, his influence on the Roman Cantata of the same period has only recently been understood. The present series of recordings – this is the third volume – explores his music for solo and duet voices with basso continuo, and reveals a composer of considerable technical skill and imagination. He is the master of the unexpected, with startling changes in harmony and texture, while always maintaining a pleasing level of musicality. The performances here alternate two soprano voices, with the introduction of a tenor for one duet and two duets for both sopranos, with sympathetic instrumental accompaniment from theorbo, gamba/bass and harpsichord. I have occasional reservations about the intonation of both sopranos, although they sing expressively enough and both have a sweet tone. The duets for two sopranos seem to inspire the best music from Rainaldi, although the intonation issues persist. Notwithstanding the superabundance of such repertoire, Rainaldi’s contribution seems well worth exploring, and the present performers are to be applauded for bringing his music to a wider audience.

D. James Ross

Categories
Festival-conference

Early Nights in Orkney

St Magnus Cathedral

The St Magnus Festival 2022

It is such a delight to be able to attend a live festival these days, and a particular pleasure to be back at a full-scale St Magnus Festival in the Orkney Islands. Any concerns that two years of limited performance opportunities might have dulled the edge of the performers were quickly dispelled by the two youthful ensembles presenting three excellent concerts of early music.

My St Magnus Festival opened significantly with the strains of Sibelius, played by the RSNO, but the first of my three concerts with HIP elements was given by Tenebrae in St Magnus Cathedral. Directed by Nigel Short, the six singers presented a jubilee programme featuring music from the times of Elizabeth I and II. The wonderfully focussed sound simply glowed in the cathedral’s rich acoustic, and a first half of Lassus, Bennet, Gibbons, Tallis, Weelkes, Morley and Byrd was beautifully engaging. The Gloria and Agnus Dei from Byrd’s four-part Mass were particularly impressive, and clever use of the two soprano and bass voices allowed for alternating solo and tutti textures. If the two madrigals from The Triumphs of Oriana sounded a little breathless, this was perhaps partly due to the acoustic. I applaud the idea of dispensing with applause until the end of the entire programme, allowing this magnificent music to have a cumulative impact, although the odd decision to sound out the notes on a piano seemed curious – surely some more unobtrusive way of establishing pitch could have been devised?

The second half of the concert consisted of music from the lifetime of our own monarch, although My soul, there is a country, probably the finest of Sir Hubert Parry’s remarkable Songs of Farewell which concluded the concert predates even her long life. Walton’s Set me as a seal underline this composer’s underrated skills as a composer of a capella choral music, while Britten’s Dances of Gloriana from the Masque at the opening of Act II of his opera were sung with poise and elegance, with the group’s director contributing vocally at one point to allow for a four-part male voice texture. Two madrigals by Morten Lauridsen, more harmonically edgy than his poignant church music, acknowledge a debt to Carlo Gesualdo, and it was nice to return to the rich and beautifully crafted world of Edwardian harmony for the concluding Parry. In response to a thoroughly well-earned ovation from a substantial audience, the group performed Evening Prayer by Joanna Marsh, a hauntingly beautiful encore – as Nigel Short pointed out, ending a lunchtime concert with an evening prayer may seem perverse, but the Cathedral’s timeless ambience and Orkney’s late June ‘simmer dim’ rendered such niceties moot.

The four-part recorder consort Palisander provided the balance of the early fare this year, and their first concert, You make me feel like dancing, also in St Magnus Cathedral was a superbly slick production featuring music from the Renaissance and more recent times, as well as song, dance and narration. The four young ladies played a wide range of Renaissance and modern recorders from contrabass to garkleinflöte with awesome technical virtuosity and a stunning degree of ensemble, and their enthusiasm for the music was infectious. In the course of their two performances, they gave clear and accessible explanations of their instruments, while the talents of Miriam Monaghan as arranger of much of the music were another decisive factor in the success of both programmes.

The contemporary music, some of which was composed specifically for the group, such as Delyth Naya’s impressively inventive Kagura Suite and Jacob Fitzgerald’s mesmerising Murmuration, made stunningly original use of the recorders and their articulation. The Renaissance music was also exquisitely played. I have some reservations about the group’s penchant for presenting isolated random phrases staccato – we have little idea as to how contemporary performers approached the music, but by contrast the sombre dignity of Pallisander’s no-nonsense account of Thomas Tomkins’ Pavan in F Major was simply spell-binding. Subtle ornamentation enhanced all of these performances, while veritable blizzards of virtuoso passagi, such as those in Merulas’s Canzon Seconda, were simply astonishing.

The group’s second concert, an afternoon event in the atmospheric 18th-century ‘fisher kirk’ of St Peter’s Sandwick spectacularly set on the shore of the Bay of Skaill proved an equally stimulating delight entitled Double, double toil and trouble and incorporating things supernatural. In the smaller acoustic of the kirk, it was easier to hear the individual timbres of the instruments, and again the show flowed with a wonderful lucidity and consummate virtuosity. Once more Miriam Monaghan’s skills as arranger proved crucial, making available a rich variety of musical styles. While a slightly arch rendition of Vivaldi’s Concerto La Notte found me writing ‘poor Vivaldi’ in my programme, other Baroque reworkings including a 7-part account of Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata proved more convincing. Tenebrae had relied on their director to increase the number of parts – Pallisander simply played two recorders each! By this time we were delighted but not surprised at such feats of versatility. A healthy audience had made their way to this atmospheric outpost on Orkney’s wild west coast, and after enthusiastic and sustained applause, at least one audience member made his way to the beach to enjoy the warm sunshine with an impromptu swim in the surf.

Chatting to the Festival Director Alasdair Nicolson in the magnificent setting of Kirkwall’s St Magnus Cathedral before the Tenebrae concert, the courage and enterprise required to restart the festival became apparent. Alasdair and his committee are to be applauded for staging against considerable headwinds such a varied programme of first-class performances. Orkney is a magical place, but in June it is all the richer for the welcome return of the St Magnus Festival.

D. James Ross

This PDF version has more photos: St Magnus Festival 2022 

Categories
Concert-Live performance

A Bach Family Concert at the Thomaskirche, Leipzig

Leipzig Bach Festival – 11 June 2022
Christophe Rousset directs Vocalconcert Berlin and Les Talens Lyriques in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig © Bachfest 2022

It was only a fleeting visit. But even a fleeting visit to the Bach Festival in Leipzig is not to be spurned if you’ve not previously visited the city in which the majority of Bach’s greatest sacred works were composed. Their composition of course formed part of his duties as Kantor of the Thomaschule, the choir school that served to provide choristers for Leipzig’s churches, most importantly the Nicolaikirche, at that time the principal town church, and the Thomaskirche.

First impressions of  21st-century Leipzig to a new visitor are likely to be of a city positively seething with life and energy, not so surprising when one learns it is home to one of the largest student populations in Germany. This bustle and vitality spills over into the annual Bachfest, which far from being restricted to the hallowed ground of the churches in which Bach worked or concert halls includes among nearly 150 events popular concerts that take over the central market square.

This year’s festival was held under the theme ‘Bach – We Are Family’, a motto certainly appropriate for the concert I attended in the Thomaskirche on 11 June. It was given by Les Talens Lyriques under their director Christophe Rousset, with the Vocalconsort Berlin and soloists Rachel Redmond (s), Hagar Sharvit (a), William Knight (t), and Krešimir Stražanac (b-bar).  As in Bach’s day, the performers were situated in the unusually spacious organ gallery, doubtless the reason we know Bach favoured the Thomaskirche for larger-scale choral works. The programme was an intriguing one, if curious by modern-day tastes. It took the form of a concert given in Hamburg by C. P. E. Bach in 1786, a concert that would be the last given by Bach’s now 72-year-old son. It appears to have served two purposes, one practical, since it was a charity concert, the other Bach’s desire at the end of his life to promote his own legacy and, unusually for the time, include historical works that served to preserve the heritage of his father and Handel, his father’s great contemporary.

Rousset’s reconstruction made little attempt at pure historical accuracy, not least because he used only the smallish choir possible in the Thomaskirche gallery (three voices per part), when accounts of the Hamburg concert tell us C. P. E employed a large choir that included amateur women singers with Bach’s professional males. Notwithstanding the use of small numbers made the performance of Credo from the B-minor Mass especially interesting to one long ago convinced by the Joshua Rifkin/Andrew Parrott argument in favour of Bach’s use of one-voice-per-part in his choral works. From where I sat in the pews facing the nave near the front of the church contrapuntal sound tended to become confused in quicker music, but sounded much better in slower music and, significantly, at its best with solo passages such as the duet ‘Et in unum’, where the sweetness of the strings was also noteworthy. It would of course be idle to try to draw too many conclusions from such a brief encounter in one place in the Thomaskirche, especially as I’m told there was more wood in the church in Bach’s day; that may well have soaked up more of the resonance. Notwithstanding it made for a fascinating, thought-provoking experience.

Credo, which having been written as part of a work designed for the Catholic court in Dresden could never have been performed in the Thomaskirche in Bach’s day, was in fact the only work of J. S’s to be included, the remainder being devoted to two excerpts from Messiah, ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ and ‘Hallelujah’, given the context incongruously if very well sung in English. The remainder of the concert featured music by C. P. E himself, most notably in his Magnificat in D, originally composed in 1749 as an informal application to succeed his father as Thomaskantor, but here given in the version adapted for Hamburg that added three trumpets. As my illustration shows,Rousset used players employing ‘holeless’ trumpets and to exciting effect (they can be seen to the far right of the orchestra). The performances by choir and orchestra throughout were excellent, though the solo singing was more variable, the best of it coming from the outstanding young Croatian bass Krešimir Stražanac. But this was not really an occasion for detailed critical analysis, rather for this listener at least an intensely moving opportunity to hear the music of Bach and his most talented son just a few metres from where the remains of the great Kantor now lie at rest after their reburial in the chancel after the Johanniskirche was bombed in World War II.

Brian Robins

PHOTO CREDIT: Christophe Rousset directs Vocalconcert Berlin and Les Talens Lyriques in the Thomaskirche, Leipzig © Bachfest 2022

Categories
Recording

Mouton: Missa Faulte d’argent & Motets

CD cover Mouton Missa Faulte d’argent & Motets

The Brabant Ensenble, conducted by Stephen Rice
72:53
Hyperion CDA68385

Proclaiming Jean Mouton as one of the finest Franco-Flemish composers in the musical era between Josquin and Palestrina – which he is – does not make him outstanding. It merely renders him equal with a substantial number of similarly fine composers from that era who have enriched the canon of sacred vocal music with their works. Thanks to advances in scholarship and in performance practices, we can now also appreciate the intense distinctiveness of each of these composers, and that same singularity in each of their compositions. This second recording of Mouton’s music by The Brabant Ensemble (following CDA67933; acclaim also for The Tallis Scholars with another Mass and motets on CDGIM 047) introduces yet more hitherto unmined riches from his oeuvre with only one brief item having been commercially recorded previously. These wonderful tracks simply roll out one after another, individually varied while combining to create a disc that is both enjoyable and at the same time rewarding, spiritually and aesthetically. Characteristics of Mouton’s personal style include judicious use of reduced scoring, often employing pairs of voices successively; passages showing the influence of faburden; and the dramatic use of dissonance, not just at cadences. All these are in the context of the finest melody and harmony imparting a sense of spaciousness and yet an uncanny knack to give the impression that more voices are singing than is actually the case: there was more than one point at which I needed to confirm that a particular work was indeed in four parts throughout and not what had begun to sound like five (at least!).

The seven motets that form the first half of this programme all exhibit the edifying and excellently wrought features mentioned above. Subsequently they all appear in the Mass, to such an extent that it emerges as one of the finest from this remarkable generation of supremely gifted – and presumably well-taught – composers. Settings of the Agnus from Josquin, culminating in those for five and (especially) four voices by Byrd composed during the early to mid 1590s, can rise to sublime levels, not only here in Mouton’s Mass, but also in so many of these Masses by so many of these composers. Meanwhile today we are blest with choirs who understand this music, not just reproducing the notes accurately, but doing so with comprehension and empathy, both for the meaning of the music and for the manner in which that music, and the knowledge of that music, can best be dispensed. The entire performance of the Missa Faulte d’argent, which forms the second half of this programme, epitomizes all that is currently best in the performing and recording of Renaissance choral music. Every note is clear. Every melodic line is audible and can be followed in each part without difficulty by the listener. Every harmonic interaction, be it in the weaving and occasional clashing of melodic lines or in homophonic passages, is perfectly weighted. Tempi and volumes are calibrated to respond sensitively to the text and to the sound made by the music itself, so that there is never bland perfection nor emotional exaggeration, and the music and its text can be expressed as rhetoric or narrative, to inform, edify and delight the listener. Mouton has done humanity an enormous favour by composing this Mass. The Brabant Ensemble has done Mouton an enormous favour by selecting this Mass, and by recording it so eloquently. And the great thing is: there is so much more of this quality of music, by composers of this quality, still waiting to be rediscovered, and so much that has already been rediscovered that is waiting to be performed and recorded. And this is besides all the works we know already by (randomly adding to names already dropped) the likes of Fevin, Phinot, Gombert, Manchicourt, Crecquillon, Clemens and a heavenly host of others. In conclusion, I should like to make a plea to The Brabant Ensemble to consider making a disc like this one, consisting of the music of Lheritier. His few commercially recorded sacred pieces are spread over several discs; these motets are superb; he was respected by Palestrina … Meanwhile we can be grateful for this second recording by The Brabant Ensemble of motets and a mass by Mouton – he has proved more than worthy of their (exceptional) further attention.

Richard Turbet

Categories
Sheet music

Nathaniel Giles: English Sacred Music

Nathaniel Giles English Sacred Music Joseph Sargent

Early English Church Music [volume] 63
ISBN 978 0 85249 965 8 | ISMN 979 0 2202 2643 4 (Hardback)
xxx, 130pp. £70
Stainer & Bell

This second volume dedicated to the few surviving works of Nathaniel Giles (1558?–1634) contains service music. While presenting an edition of the First Service is straightforward, the Second Service can only be reconstructed from the surviving sources to within a certain degree of completeness and the editor Joseph Sargent has had to put his creative hat on for passages where the solo parts are not available, and the Short Service is very fragmentary indeed but both Sargent and the series editor, David Skinner, recommend their contrapuntal possibilities to would-be reconstructionists. After a detailed biography of the composer, Sargent surveys the sources and lays out his editorial approach. Then come detailed descriptions of the sources and a meticulous editorial commentary on the three services. Then to the music itself, laid out on pages larger than A4 size that can accommodate the up to ten voices (two five-part choirs – cantoris and decani, according to Anglican tradition) and the organ part(s). I had to do some brain juggling when systems were compressed and a voice from the lower group appeared in the middle of the combined groups, but generally the approach works. The added parts are printed in smaller notation. The paper is slightly shiny – I did not find that a problem but I have heard others complain about using such paper for music because it can sometimes catch light awkwardly and become difficult to read. I hope more than anything else that this marvellous tome (at another bargain price of only £70!) will encourage performances of the music – it very much deserves to be heard!

Brian Clark

Categories
Uncategorized

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Purcell Society Edition, volume 3
Edited by Bruce Wood
ISBN 978 0 85249 966 5 | ISMN 979 0 2202 2644 1
xlv (including 6 plates), 112pp. £60 (Hardback)

This beautiful volume contains the most comprehensive appraisal of the sources and review of the current thinking on the work’s genesis you will find in one place. Bruce Wood has a long association with Dido and here, as well as the superb musicology, he makes two musical contributions – he has composed the missing chorus, “Then since our charms have sped”, and adapted a movement from Circe for the ensuing “Groves dance”. I’m surprised – given that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – that he (and The Purcell Society) didn’t go further and supply even more of the missing music; for example, why print an overture almost certainly from the Prologue without any music for the prologue? One excellent feature of the edition is the inclusion of the Tenbury version of the Sorceress music (where the words are sung by a mezzo-soprano rather than a bass, but the string parts are also subtly different) in parallel with the more familiar setting. The inclusion of a realisation of the figured bass makes this also a valuable performing resource. At this price, this impressive volume is an absolute bargain, and I commend it to anyone planning a production of Dido.

Brian Clark

Categories
Sheet music

Kusser: Serenatas for Dublin

Kusser Serenatas for Dublin ed Samantha Owens

Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 210
Edited by Samantha Owens
xxi, four plates, 262pp.
ISBN 978-1-9872-0450-6

This is Samantha Owens’ latest contribution to the (long overdue!) rediscovery of Kusser’s music. It contains the three surviving serenatas (of 21!) that the composer wrote during his time in Ireland: “The Universal Applause of Mount Parnassus” (1711 for Queen Anne’s birthday), “An Idylle on the Peace” (1713 on the Utrecht settlement), and the rather oddly named “No! He’s not dead” (ca. 1707-14, again for Queen Anne). After a French overture, each is a sequence of recitatives, arias and choruses, many with colourful scorings displaying the versatility of the musical establishment in Dublin. The state pomp of the serenata on the Peace inspires the use of three trumpets, while the 1711 work calls for no fewer than nine solo sopranos. Many of the arias are built on dance forms, and Kusser reveals himself to be quite the tunesmith. He was also a self-borrower, here recycling arias from operas he had written in Germany. Two of the serenatas have recorded in full on Hungaroton, and portions of the other by the Irish Baroque Orchestra under Peter Whelan, both groups drawing out the charm of these neglected pieces. Hopefully the publication of this magnificent volume will inspire others to take up the challenge.

Brian Clark

Categories
Book

The Baroque Violin and Viola

The Baroque Violin and Viola Walter Reiter

A fifty-lesson course, volumes I & II
Walter Reiter
Oxford University Press, 2020
ISBN 978-0-19-092270-2 (vol. 1) 978-0-19-752512-8 (vol. 2) £29.99 each (paperback; hardback available)

When Walter Reiter and I discussed his plans to write a book on how to play the baroque violin, I had absolutely no idea of the gargantuan scheme he had hatched! 50 lessons over 600 pages, from making sure that you’re holding the instrument comfortably, and understanding how different bow pressures and speeds impact the sound you make, to a detailed analysis of dozens of pieces and hints on how to play them in a style that the composer would have recognised, from Fontana to Bach with every conceivable bass in between thoroughly dealt with. While the first volume predominantly explores all of the technical sides of the beast, the second gives almost bar-by-bar advice on how to play it, with excellent explanations of why a particular approach should be taken to certain figures. Throughout, there are 118 exercises that force you to think about these things for yourself. As well as the impressive books themselves, there is a dedicated website from which almost all of the music can be downloaded, along with video demonstrations from Walter, all of which enhances an already impressive package.

This project has clearly been a labour of love and I congratulate Walter on a fantastic achievement. If I was starting out again and felt I perhaps should have kept up my violin playing, this would absolutely be my constant companion. I recommend it without the slightest hesitation to anyone embarking on a musical career!

Brian Clark