Category: Recording

Epiphanias-Kantaten
Andrea Lauren Brown, Kai Wessel, Georg Poplutz, Dominik Wörner SATB, Kirchheimer BachConsort, Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch
92:28 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
cpo 555 146-2

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o many cantatas by composers other than Bach are rarely (if ever) performed, let alone recorded, simply because they were not written for either Christmas or Easter. One notable exception was a cpo recording featuring Ludger Rémy. While those were all from the same year (and thus formed a sensible unit), this new recording of five cantatas for Epiphany (otherwise known as the feast of the three kings) selects works from the latter part of Graupner’s working life at the court of Darmstadt. The number of Sundays after Epiphany varies each year because of the alignment of more significant church festivals with the actual calendar. Here, there is one cantata for the feast itself as well as the 2nd and 4th Sundays thereafter, and two for the 3rd Sunday (the GWV numbering system is slightly odd: 1111 is the code for any cantata text written for Epiphany and the two numbers after the slash are the year in which it was composed). The booklet notes explain that these particular cantatas have been chosen because of their colourful instrumentation; Graupner had always been interested in a rich sound palette; here the flauto d’amore, oboe d’amore, chalumeau, viola d’amore and a pair of horns all feature. I have published a lot of Graupner’s music and I am still amazed how much better it sounds than it looks – personally, I would have preferred a programme of his settings for Epiphany itself from his appointment as Kapellmeister until he stopped composing, which might have shown how his style developed and changed over time. That is not to criticise these performances, which are excellent; if Graupner’s recitatives would not be out of place in the Hamburg operas which had brought him to the Landgrave’s attention in the first place, seemingly inappropriate dance elements pervade the arias and chorales, yet I think the latter are actually his most original compositions – each choral phrase is framed and decorated by instruments, much in the way a baroque organist may have done. Maybe we can have a follow-up recording by these marvellous musicians of cantatas for Trinity Sunday, from key points in Graupner’s career?

Brian Clark

SELDOM SENE Recorder Quintet
75:00
Brilliant Classics 95591

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CD arrived in Huntingdon when I was working at Clifford Bartlett’s house. Clifford has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for a couple of years now and, although he still enjoys sitting at his organ sight-reading music, his enjoyment of music has become more restricted; he tends to listen by choice to Vaughan Williams symphonies, resents the fact that BBC Radio 3 play Bach every morning as he is about to get up, and anything unfamiliar is considered “silly”. One thing is not changed: his absolute aversion to recorders! So, when he went to throw this in the bin (!), I decided to rescue it and dupe him into listening to it during one of our many daily car journeys. Suffice to say that the five ladies of Seldom Sene – as I had imagined – overcame his prejudice (both against Bach and the recorder) with their stylish arrangements of this most re-scored piece from the BWV, not to mention their breath-taking performances on no fewer than 21 instruments (right down to one they had CrowdFunded). There is something about involving human breath in the performance of such music that shapes and informs the lines in a way that keyboard instruments and even stringed arrangements would do well to emulate. This is a superb disc that I have often listened to, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who is a fan (or, indeed, not a fan!) of recorders or the Goldbergs.

Brian Clark

Maria Krestinskaya violin, Grigory Krotenko bassetto, Imbi Tarum harpsichord/organ
63:14
Panclassics PC 10378

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he set of sonatas by Dall’Oglio from which the five pieces on this excellent CD come was published in Paris in 1738, some three years after the composer had settled in St Petersburg; they are, in fact, dedicated to a Russian field marshal, who was very much a court insider. The first two pieces have four movements, while the next two have only three (each with a slow opening movement and two livelier ones to follow); then comes sonata XII which begins with a Grave-Allegro pairing, then a theme and variations. While the sonatas are very much Italian in concept, Maria Krestinskaya is quite right in drawing attention in her notes to a definite Russian flavour to some of the music. She draws some beautiful sounds from her Maggini (especially in some excursions to the very upper limits of its fingerboard), and she is nicely partnered by Grigory Krotenko on a bassetto (a photograph of his instrument – also a Maggini, which has survived in Russia – would have been nice!) which Dall’Oglio’s younger brother is known to have played, and Imbi Tarum on harpsichord and organ. Apart from featuring these fine, stylish performances, this disc also shines some light into the obscurity of music at the St Petersburg court; let’s hope that Kretinskaya goes on to record some of Dall’Oglio’s symphonies and concertos, and continues to seek out lost repertoire from Baroque Russia.

Brian Clark

Stefan Temmingh recorders, Capricornus Consort Basel
68:40
Accent ACC 24332

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen I first listened to this disc, I thought the record company had packaged the wrong ones into the sleeves; “no way this can be Vivaldi!” I thought… and I was correct. Had I read the cover correctly, though, I would have seen that, in addition to the “five and a half” authentic recorder concertos from the quill of the Red Priest, Temmingh and Capricornus Consort Basel give us preludes by his great admirer, J. S. Bach. Having spent a few weeks trying to get my head around the logic of such an arrangement, I have just read Temmingh’s booklet notes and find myself utterly convinced by his argument that, in order to admire properly the exuberance of the concerti, one’s brain first needs “cleansing” – the Bach (albeit instrumental arrangements) preludes act as the sorbet between courses. I was not persuaded by two of them (a pairing of psaltery and lute for one, harpsichord and organ for the other), and feel that another would have been better if the chorale melody had been taken by a wind instrument (although I expect it would have been less cleansing if Temmingh had played it on a large recorder…) The Vivaldi itself is fabulous, impressive without being showy, nicely paced and ornamented. Again, it was with the scoring I had problems; suggesting that the use of bass clef in violin parts when they play bassetto justifies using a continuo instrument for those parts (let alone that being a harp!) strikes me as silly – did Vivaldi’s harpist have a part showing the bassline and the bassetto? Has such a thing ever been seen? Still, I don’t want to end what is a very positive review of a wonderful recording on a negative aspect, which is more about my taste than the performances themselves which are first rate.

Brian Clark

Elinor Frey cello, Suzie LeBlanc soprano, Lorenzo Ghielmi harpsichord, Esteban La Rotta theorbo
74:38
passacaille 1026

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s well as presenting Angela Maria Fiorè (1660-1723)’s output for cello, this disc introduces a fairly recently discovered repertoire of opera arias featuring solo cello by such composers as Pollarolo and Marc’Antonio Ziani, in addition to less well-known names like Monza, Sabadini, Magni and Ballarotti. Beautifully recorded with a total of just four musicians, the programme is balanced between instrumental and vocal pieces, and shows not only that there is no need for a stringed bass for such repertoire, and how, even at this early stage in its development, late-17th-century Italian cellists (and composers) already recognised the exceptional singing quality of the instrument. Frey and LeBlanc display both warm lyricism and agile virtuosity – neither the arias nor the sonatas are lacking in technical demand. Ghielmi and La Rotta’s continuo realisations are richly inventive; I especially enjoyed the simple sounds of cello and theorbo alone, the elegantly shaped bowed lines contrasting with the gently pointed bass notes and occasional flourished chord – simply exquisite. Full marks then for discovery and execution!

Brian Clark

I Musicali Affetti, RossoPorpora
73:33
Tactus TC 591304

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]iagio Marini’s is one of those names most fans of 17th-century know, but only for a handful of chamber works. This recording of an entire publication (only now possible because the missing continuo part has been reconstructed) is extraordinarily rare, and this all the more welcome. Widely travelled and sought after, Marini’s vocal music (as the brief but informative notes tell us) accounts for by far the majority of his output. His opus II broadly alternates instrumental and vocal pieces. I find his music for more than one melody part vastly superior to that for solo voice or instrument. The duets for tenors stand out on this recording and would have been worthy companions for similar pieces by his boss in Venice, Monteverdi. For the most part, the singing is good to very good, sometimes (Track 7, Perché fuggi na’ salti, or Track 17, Deh non coglier più fiori, for example) much more than that – the soprano’s passaggi  and gorgie  are fabulous (it’s a pity the sleevenotes don’t identify individual singers to allow me to give full credit). The set also includes a DVD which has a short documentary on Marini and the history and contents of the publication with nice literary insight, as well as some musical extracts and demonstrations.

Brian Clark

Rose Consort of Viols; Choir of King’s College, Aberdeen; David J. Smith, harpsichord
Vox Regis VXR0004
66’32

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his outstanding disc derives from David Smith’s edition of the consort music of Peter Philips and Richard Dering (2016) for the series Musica Britannica, in which it is number CI. As part of the volume’s launch in 2016 the Rose Consort visited Aberdeen and gave a recital from the contents, and also recorded their contribution to this disc. Additionally, David Smith provides a few pieces for keyboard by Philips, and yet another Choir of King’s College, besides those from Cambridge and London, this time Aberdeen, sings two motets by Philips. The consort works by Dering are particularly striking, not only for their unfamiliarity, but also for their sheer quality. Stylistically midway between Byrd and Jenkins, audibly parallel with, but distinctive from, Gibbons, the two fantasias in six parts, numbers 1 and 3, are well-wrought, substantial works with their own unique narrative rhetoric; those in five parts, numbers 2 and 5, are less philosophical but have more in the way of striking themes. Best of all is the second of Dering’s six-part In Nomines, which has a singular take on this briefly fecund form. Both the keyboard and consort versions of Philips’s Paget pavan and galliard  are included, as are both of his settings for keyboard of Dowland’s Piper’s galliard, one version quite plain and true to the original, the other more varied right from the off. There are also Philips’s settings for keyboard and consort of dances by Morley and Holborne. The programme is bookended by two motets in eight parts by Philips: Hodie in monte  and Beata Dei genetrix; both works are for double choir, and in either case one choir consists of voices in four parts, while the other choir consists of respectively one and two soloists and viols. Although it is known that instruments participated in the performances at the court in Brussels where Philips, a pupil of Byrd, worked in exile, the precise nature of this participation is not certain, so this distribution of forces is one hypothetical reconstruction of how such works might have been performed. One other uncertainty on this disc surrounds the authorship of Dering’s third fantasia in six parts: it is anonymous in both of its sources, but is within a sequence of four such fantasias, one of which is attributed to Dering in another source. It certainly sounds convincingly like the work of the other six-part fantasia on the disc, which is the one attributed to Dering.

With the Rose Consort listeners know that they will be hearing consummate performances. David Smith is not only the world expert on Philips now, but is also himself a fine harpsichordist. The Choir of King’s College lives up to its illustrious name, with the Canadian soprano Frauke Jürgensen in fine solo voice. The selection of material for this programme is excellent, and judiciously organized. The more familiar music by Philips is its own recommendation, but the disc is worth buying for Dering’s music alone.

Richard Turbet