Author: EMR2015

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Mozart: Sonatas for violin & piano

CD cover Mozart sonatas for violin and piano Hanson Arthur

K. 301, 304-306, 454
Peter Hanson violin, Andrew Arthur fortepiano
79:07
resonus RES10281

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It must be something of a disappointment to violin players that so much of the music that Mozart wrote for their instrument is from his youth, and that these early sonatas and concertos sound a little trivial. This is thrown into further relief by the wonderfully idiomatic writing for violin in his larger-scale chamber music and in the superb Sinfonia concertante. The renowned period violinist Peter Hanson teams up here with the equally celebrated fortepianist Andrew Arthur in effervescent performances of three of the six sonatas ‘for harpsichord or fortepiano with accompaniment for a violin’ K 301, K304 and K305. The balance in interest between the two instruments is not quite as clear-cut as the title suggests, but it does mean that the fortepiano takes a relatively active part in proceedings. Composed for and played by Maria Elisabeth Auguste, Kurfürstin of the Palatinate, with Mozart at the keyboard, the violin part places moderate technical demands on the aristocratic protégé, and yet there is a feeling that this relatively superficial music is designed to present Maria in a flattering light and to promote Mozart’s application for a job. With the fourth Sonata performed here, the later Bb major Sonata K454, we are in a different world entirely. Composed for the professional violin virtuoso, Regina Strinasacchi, a product of the rigorous training at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice associated previously with Vivaldi, this music is much more technically and intellectually demanding. It has a particularly exquisite and inventive Andante, but is generally in a different league from the earlier pieces. As I have suggested, the performances by Hanson and Arthur are impeccably musical and charmingly involving, even in the lighter early material, but they truly come into their own in the K454 Sonata, where Mozart provides them with something to get their teeth into.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Prisma: Il Transilvano

CD cover Ambronay Prisma Il transilvano

Musical bridges between Italy and Hungary around 1600
Works from the Codex Caioni and Hungarian folk music
57:55
Ambronay AMY312

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This beautifully performed CD alternates Italian music of the late Renaissance with traditional Hungarian music. What it doesn’t do, unsurprisingly, is provide ‘musical bridges between Italy and Hungary around 1600’. The Transilvano of the title illustrates the problem. It is borrowed from a famous organ treatise by Girolamo Diruta (Venice 1593) dedicated to Sigismond Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, but of course the music the group plays from this collection, notwithstanding some ‘Hungarianised’ divisions, sounds entirely Italian. So too the music from Codex Caioni which makes up most of the rest of the Italian component. Amongst others, Renée Clemencic has demonstrated that there is Hungarian music from this period, but the Hungarian traditional music here, beautifully evocative as it is, seems not to be from 16th- or 17th –century sources. As long as you are not looking for some magical musical ‘bridge’ between 17th-century Italy and Hungary, there is much to enjoy here, from the plaintive Hungarian violin airs and the lovely singing of Franciska Hajdu in the Hungarian ballad Magos kösziklának, to the imaginative and fresh accounts of the Italian Renaissance repertoire. There is nothing wrong with playing the divisions in this early repertoire with a Transylvanian flair, but to my ear it still sounds entirely Italian.  

D. James Ross

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Recording

Time Zones: Satie, Scheidt

CD cover Satie Scheidt Time Zones Lautten Compagney

Lautten Compagney, Wolfgang Katschner
70:34
deutsche harmonia mundi 1 94398 07952 3

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The wonderfully energetic accounts of the instrumental music of Samuel Scheidt as well as some of his sacred music in instrumental performances are well worth buying this CD for. The very conscious scoring of this music provides a huge number of different timbres and textures from a large consort of wind string and percussion instruments, and while some might doubt whether this degree of processing ever happened in Scheidt’s lifetime, the results are compelling and delightful. The pairing of these performances with the quirky, haunting and slightly weird music of Erik Satie may seem eccentric, and indeed it is. A saxophone is added to the pantheon of early instruments to create equally heavily processed accounts of what in most cases were piano pieces. Due to these clever arrangements by Bo Wiget, these too are constantly intriguing, while the excellent musicianship of the members of Lautten Compagney ensures that they are all utterly convincing. Once the programme gets underway, the juxtaposition of Scheidt and Satie, particularly the former’s motets and the latter’s Pièces Froides, is genuinely uncanny. However, I am not sure that it is a juxtaposition that throws any additional light on either repertoire, and tempting as it is to do something just because it is possible, the eccentricity of mastering 17th-century instruments so completely that you can play 20th-century repertoire seems something of a non sequitur. I don’t want to sound a HIP bore, and this CD is a lot of fun, and all of the arrangements and performances are stunningly effective.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Englishman in Tyrol

CD cover of Englishman in Tyrol

Viol music by William Young
Enemble Art d’Echo, Juliane Laake
64:02
Querstand VKJK 2003

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One of the most celebrated gambists in his own lifetime and for some time after, the reputation of William Young has since declined into complete obscurity. Spending his life at the court of Ferdinand Karl, Archduke of Innsbruck, Young had probably travelled with his employer from the Netherlands, where he was previously governor, having perhaps sought asylum there earlier in the 17th century from Cromwellian England, where his Catholicism would have made life dangerous. His quirky music for strings, mainly viols, while not as eccentric as that of Tobias Hume, recalls the nonconformity of that itinerant Scotsman – is it possible that the absence of any trace of Young in England may suggest that he too might have been a Scotsman? At any rate, Young proved indispensable at the Tyrolean court, taking centre stage at several large-scale celebrations. The present CD with its excellent programme note and varied and beautifully played programme, presenting a cross-section of Young’s work and peppered with world premier recordings, does much to restore this remarkable musician’s reputation. But what is it about musicians left to their own devices in recording studios? This CD has a bonus track of free improvisation at the end, which turns out to be a riff on Sting’s ‘Englishman in New York’, but which sadly adds nothing to the project. Worse still, was the oddly ungrammatical title substituted for the more natural ‘An Englishman in the Tyrol’ simply to facilitate this bit of self-indulgence? I forgive them, because the rest of the CD and its presentation are so good.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Uccellini: Sonate op. 4 – Michelangelo Rossi: Toccate e Correnti

CD cover Arparla play Rossi and Uccellini

Arparla (Davide Monti violin, Maria Christina Cleary double harp, Alberto Rasi gamba, violone, Rogério Gonçalves dulcian)
79:25
Stradivarius STR 37166

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This delightful programme, thought up and researched during lockdown, juxtaposes sonatas for solo violin and continuo by Marco Uccellini with toccatas and correnti by Michelangelo Rossi, scored for organ and harpsichord but played here on arpa doppia by Maria Christina Cleary. The harp also combines forces with a viola da gamba/violone and occasionally a dulcian to provide the continuo for the Uccellini, and proves a wonderfully effective member of the continuo team. The first seven of the 14 sonatas for violin and continuo of Marco Uccellini’s opus 4 have character names which determines their nature. While Uccellini arrived in Modena in 1630 and stayed for the rest of his life, Rossi is only known to have made a flying visit in 1638, and it is not even known whether the two met, although it seems unlikely that two such renowned violin vituosi would not have sought one another out. The arpa doppia, with its enhanced ability to play the full gamut, comes into its own in Rossi’s daring Toccata settima, with its chains of chromatic scales. This imaginative music from the first half of the 17th century is beautifully and very musically played by the musicians of Arparla, and it comes as a revelation how versatile a consort member the harp can be as well as how pleasing a solo instrument. This project is an encouraging example of how the enforced inactivity of lockdown can bear rich fruit.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Thesauri Inventio 1 & 2

CD cover Thesauri Inventio Kromeriz and Di Martinelli violin music

Furor musicus (Antoinette Lohmann violin, Jörn Boysen harpsichord, Maria Sanchez Ramirez cello)
Globe GLO5279

These two discs of music for solo violin (often mistuned) and continue are some of the positive fruits of the Corona 19 pandemic. From two quite different manuscript collections (one a family affair, the Di Martinelli Collection, which has survived since the 18th century and now resides in the library of the University of Leuven/Louvain, the other the celebrated Prince-Bishops’ music collection at Kroměříž), violinist Antoinette Lohmann has select four sonatas by Sigr. Goor (your guess is as good as mine!), and four anonymous Allemandes and a Balletto for one celebration and two sonatas by known composers (Döbel and Schmelzer) and five further pieces of unknown provenance for the other.

Scordatura (re-tuning the strings) does strange things to the timbre of the violin, especially in the more extreme examples. The instrument becomes more resonant, and the sound a little otherworldly, the gut strings eerily metallic. It’s an acquired taste and I’m not going to pretend that two whole CDs of it wasn’t a challenge. That said, much of the music is recorded here – in very fine performances – for the first time and that in itself is reason enough to acquire this set if 17th-century violin music is your thing.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

CD cover Nevermind C P E Bach

Nevermind
57:27
Alpha Classics Alpha 759

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I have been impressed by Nevermind’s performances before, and from the perspective purely of critiquing the playing, there is nothing here to fault – these are four outstanding musicians in brilliant form and they engage with Bach’s whimsy and caprice 100%.

When then am I not bedecking them with garlands of yet more appreciation? Well, for a start, if the briefest of brief booklet notes tell us that there is no indication of a stringed bass instrument, and that this is later music when Bach had most probably moved on to a piano-like instrument of some sort, why did Nevermind choose to play the keyboard part on harpsichord? And, if I pick up a CD in a record shop and all the cover says is “Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach”, what am I to imagine might it be? One the first point, it’s as if they are coming at the music as a bunch of baroque musicians for whom the classical period has not yet arrived; some of the added ornamentation (for some of us, Bach’s own is quite enough!) don’t work for this old fuddy-duddy of a reviewer. If the three quartets are not enough to fill the disc, I’d rather hear more authentic music rather than some arrangements. And, yes, damn it, I’d like to hear a period piano!

And for the benefit of future programme note writers, the presence of the viola in such a prominent role is NOT unusual here; Madame Levy (who commissioned the work from Bach) also commissioned viola duets from his brother Wilhelm Friedemann. In the Berlin of Janitsch and Graun, there was no shortage of music for viola…

Brian Clark

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Recording

Stölzel: Ein Lämmlein geht

Veronika Winter, Franz Vitzthum, Markus Brutscher, Martin Schicketanz SATB, Rheinische Kantorei, Das Kleine Konzert, Hermann Max
110:28 (2 CDs in a box)
cpo 555 311-2

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This recording was made in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig during the 2019 Bachfest, with support from other bodies primarily interested in Bach’s music. Indeed, most of the booklet note (which is shorter in length than the combined biographies of the performers!) is devoted not to Stölzel at all, but to Bach.

Stölzel’s passion oratorio takes a different approach than Bach’s own works for Easter. The story is told mostly in groups of three movements as if in real time, with a recitative featuring the narrator using the present tense and then the soloists reflecting on what they’ve heard first in more recitative, then an aria, followed by a chorale setting sung by everyone. There are 18 arias, one duet and two choruses. Stölzel was essentially a miniaturist; each aria is based on a single idea – most of them earworms, since the man had an unerring gift for getting under one’s musical skin (think “Bist du bei mir” and how difficult that is to shake off!) The one thing missing from this work is counterpoint; with no monumental structural choruses, there is no need for them – anyone who doubt’s Stölzel’s ability in the field need merely look through any of the hundreds of surviving cantatas and masses. If only one of his glorious works for Easter Sunday had been tagged on to the end of this recording – it would have transformed it!

Hermann Max paces the piece well and draws fine performances from his soloists, choir and orchestra alike. That said, György Vashegyi with his Hungarian soloists, Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra put a little more energy into their performance on Glossa.

Brian Clark

 

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Recording

Sonatas for three violins

CD cover Sonatas for three violins Ensemble Diderot Johannes Pramsohler

Ensemble Diderot, Johannes Pramsohler
79:56
Audax Records ADX 13729

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In days of yore, when I enjoyed occasionally playing the violin, there was no repertoire I derived greater fun from that the (mostly 17th-century) music for three trebles. There is just something maigcal about adding another voice to the more usual trio texture; the harmonies can become richer, the texture more complex, and the resonance of your instrument just goes up a notch.

This, of course, is not the first time that a disc has been devoted to such music. But (and it’s a big but) HIP playing has come such a long way since the last one of real quality that this disc seems to signal a changing of the guard. All of the favourites are there: Gabrieli, Fontana, Buonamente, Schmelzer, Purcell and, of course, Pachelbel. But Messrs Pramsohler, Bernabé and Pirri also bring new delights: an arrangement of Psalm 8 by Johann Sommer (published in 1623, this is the earliest work in the programme), a fabulous sonate en quatuor by Dornel (the latest, published in 1709), a very modern sounding sonata by Giuseppe Torelli, and – one of my old favourites – the Fux sonata for just three violins! The playing is superb, the recorded sound clear as a bell, and the production standards just incredible (I can’t rate the Japanese translation, but I enjoyed practising my French and German!) What impressed most was the way music from different places was instantly distinguishable; while some groups take a “one-size-fits-all” approach, Ensemble Diderot invest as much of their considerable talent and seemingly limitless energy in making the music feel genuine.

Time after time, Audax Records just keep the stunning releases coming. If we still had the old “five stars” system, this would be a six. And they do it all while maintaining a healthy sense of humour: click HERE if you don’t believe me…

Brian Clark

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Recording

Centorio : Vocal and instrumental music

CD cover Centorio Vocal and instrumental music

Cappella Musicale della Cathedrale di Vercelli, Denis Silano
60:42
Brilliant Classics 96242

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This CD is part of a broader exploration by Italian musicians of their local heritage, and this ensemble based in Vercelli in northern Italy has come up with Marco Antonio Centorio, a local composer of not inconsiderable charm, whose oeuvre remained in manuscript form. This selection of instrumental and vocal music presents a picture of an accomplished local musician of the early 17th century with a solid grounding in polyphony but also with distinctive elements of individuality and originality. There is some fine period instrument playing here, as well as a pleasing contribution from vocal soloists and small choir, the boys’ voices of the latter ensemble making a distinctive and idiomatic contribution. Denis Silano, the mastermind behind the project and who directs proceedings, makes a powerful case for Centorio’s music being more widely known, and it is clear from this CD that he is of more than local significance. It is good to see this ongoing exploration of regional Italian music-making in the 16th and 17th centuries by Italian ensembles, at the same time allowing us to witness the high standard of historically informed performance throughout Italy.

D. James Ross