Category: Recording

Trio SR9
51:44
naïve V5426

I have written many reviews of music on instruments which Bach might not have expected to hear, but – much as I, of course, recognise the wealth of talent brought to this project by the three members of Trio SR9 – here, for once, I am obliged to recognize that some of the music (for me at least) just does not work on marmimba(s). I suppose it has something to do with reverberation and the “hanging around” of sound which causes overtones to intermingle, especially in what one might call the “tenor register”, and the delay in the bass notes actually speaking adds to an overall sensation of aural confusion.

If nothing else, Bach’s music is designed in such a way that the voices are an immediate and direct reaction to one another, and, if the dialogue is disturbed or even diffused, then the fabric will begin to disintegrate. Now, I am not suggesting for a moment that this programme of fine music lacks either form or indeed quality; quite the reverse. However, for me, much as I truly respect the talents of these musicians, much as I love Bach, and much as I love the tone of the marimba in other music, I’m afraid the number of tracks I actually enjoyed was smaller than the numbers where my ears sought in vain for harmonic points of reference, so I am afraid I can only advise readers of this review that they should try to find it on a listening post somewhere and try before they buy.

Brian Clark

Cecilia Bernardini violin, Huw Daniel violin, Alfredo Bernardini oboe, Dunedin Consort, John Butt
59:00
Linn Records CKD 519
BWV1041-43, 1060R, 21 (sinfonia)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a fabulous recording of some of my favourite music; Cecilia and Alfredo Bernardini (daughter and father) duet beautifully in the oboe and violin concerto (though I would have welcomed even more freedom of ornamentation, and not only in the slow movement where they do begin to come out of their shells, albeit in slightly different ways), while Huw Daniel matches Bernardini in every way in the “double concerto” (here again I long for the day when the beautiful theme undergoes more imaginative transformations as the slow movement progresses), and she is absolutely flawless in the two solo concertos, bringing a new clarity to the double-stopping string crossing in the final movement of the E major, and imbuing the long notes in the A minor’s middle movement with varying colours. Every note has clearly been thought out in advance but the trick is keeping everything fresh sounding so that the listener is unaware of all that hard work. I have yet to hear a recording by John Butt that is not utterly convincing; with his 22111 Dunedins, he has struck gold once again – this goes straight to the top of my pile for rainy days when I need cheering up! (As an aside, I hadn’t noticed with Linn releases before, but the booklet is only in English; is it unfair of us as reviewers to complain that foreign CDs only come in their native language if domestic companies don’t go that extra mile for their fans overseas?)

Brian Clark

Markus Miesenberger, Ars Antiqua Austria, Gunar Letzbor
51:26
Pan Classics PC 10317

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is the first of two planned discs to explore Speer’s 1688 “Musicalisch-Türkischcher Eulen-Spiegel”, a musical settings of stories from a semi-autobiographical novel. In creating two concert programmes, Gunar Letzbor has chosen to combine war stories with sonatas for brass, and love stories with sonatas for strings (to appear in 2017). So there are various elements to the programme: Lompyn (the hero of the tale) sings songs, sandwiched between two “ballets” (as in dance movements, not the art form) of different national styles (cossacks, Poles, Muscovites, Greeks, Hungarians, Wallachians); between each set we have the brass sonatas (essentially rather simple, given the limited tonal capabilities of the instruments – 2 trumpets and 3 trombones, here with continuo), the sequence rounded off with three movements for strings. The cartoon illustrations in the booklet suggest that the project was aimed at a younger audience, and the singer’s approach to the texts would tend to support this impression, since at times he is virtually talking the words; if you are not a German speaker, it will be irrelevant anyway, since – as well as omitting the brass players’ names (at least, as far as I can see!), the booklet has no translation of the texts). If the CD was produced purely to be sold at performances (and why should it not? musicians need to make a living from their hard work), I wonder that the record company felt it should do on international release, especially with only minimal attention to what foreign audiences might make of such a peculiarity.

Brian Clark

Consortium Carissimi, Garrick Comeaux
71:05
Naxos 8.573257

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his recording dates from 2014 and was intended to mark the 350th anniversary of the composer’s death. The full title of op. 25 is Musiche sagre e morali composte ad una, due, tre e quattro voci (published in 1678, 14 years after his death!), and for this project Consortium Carissimi have mustered four sopranos, and one each of mezzo, tenor and bass, as well as an archlute and theorbo (two players), viola da gamba, sackbut, harpsichord and organ (two players). Having been enthusiastic about their latest CD (also of Graziani), I’m afraid I must resort to type here; I simply do not but the idea of an ever-changing continuo soundscape, and I’m afraid the voices (especially – sorry, ladies – the sopranos) do not blend particularly well, especially when a leap from or to a high note is involved, and there are times when tuning becomes a serious concern, which is a pity as some of the music has the potential to be truly beautiful. Hopefully as their exploration of Graziani’s music progresses these issues will be addressed.

Brian Clark

L’Archicembalo
65:26
Tactus TC 672259

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he thirteen works on this recording are organised by key; after four pieces in C (two each in major and minor modes), there are two in D (one each), one in F, five in G (one and four respectively!) and one in B minor. The strings of this small period instrument group (22111) play stylishly, with bouncing basses (perhaps a little too much violone?), and I have to confess that I was only not entirely happy with the slow movements, where the harpsichord has too much time on her hands and starts adding distractive countermelodies (try Track 2, for example); this may, in fact, be how they were performed, but I’ve always imagined that Vivaldi the supremo violinist would be filling in any gaps, not the continuo player… That reservation aside, this is a fine survey of this part of the composer’s output, and the contrapuntal movements are especially worthy of exploration (try Track 7 for a taster).

Brian Clark

Lorenzo Cavasanti recorder/transverse flute  Sergio Ciomei harpsichord/organ
51:20
Dynamic CDS 7739

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hree of the works on this recording are better known as organ trio sonatas; there have been several attempts to “recover lost originals”, using all sorts of instrumental combinations, and this is no different, since each of the three uses a different line-up (in BWV525 they use flute and harpsichord, 526 flute and organ, and 529 recorder and harpsichord); the latter instrumentation is also used for the duo’s transcription of the lute suite BWV997. Although the pair play most stylishly throughout, I found the timbre of the flute and treble organ stop too close for comfort; the combination of recorder and harpsichord was far more successful. I love the repertoire and was impressed by these interpretations of it.

Brian Clark

Cyril Auvity haute-contre, L’Yriade
59:32
Glossa GCD 923601
+ F. Couperin, Lambert & Morel

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is an attractive programme of comparatively rare vocal repertoire. Airs de cour  by Charpentier (including verses from Corneille’s Le Cid) and Lambert are interpersed with instrumental movements from Couperin’s Les Nations. Regular readers will know that I do not enjoy the continuo combination of harpsichord and theorbo but the bowed string playing is consistently very good. Cyril Auvity is an experienced advocate of the haute-contre  repertoire and draws on all that experience to engage fully with the texts of these miniature dramas. His tone in the higher register can verge on the harsh, though this is a rare event. The booklet note is strong on the context of the music but says little about its content. We do, however, get the full French texts with English translations though, strangely, no information about the artists.

David Hansell

Dan Laurin, 1B1, Jan Bøjranger
70:03
BIS-2035 SACD
RV92, 108, 441–5

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]an Laurin made two previous recordings of Vivaldi recorder concertos in the 1990s but now rejects these, as well as most other recordings of them, as being insufficiently operatic. Following his recording of The Four Seasons (BIS-SACD-1605) he identified similar dramatic writing in RV441 and in RV 443-5 (the concertos for flautino) and his aim on the present recording is to bring out this operatic quality with the freedom and spontaneity often found in modern recordings of the “Seasons” with solo violin. In this he is greatly aided by the Norwegian ensemble 1B1 (short for Ensemble Bjergsted 1) who play with tremendous verve and precision, driven along by the vigorous continuo playing of Anna Paradiso (harpsichord) and Jonas Nordberg (theorbo and baroque guitar). Dan Laurin has chosen to play two of the flautino concertos (RV443 and 445) down a fourth on the soprano recorder, on the grounds that they are marked ‘alla quarta bassa’ in the original scores, and for the first of these he plays a specially made copy of a descant recorder by Domenico Peroso, one of the few surviving examples of recorders by Venetian makers.

There are many recordings of Vivaldi’s recorder concertos but this is certainly one that stands out, not just for Dan Laurin’s exciting and seemingly effortless recorder playing and his wonderfully imaginative ornamentation of the slow movements, but also for the magnificent ensemble playing of the whole team. Laurin’s interesting and informative booklet notes are the icing on the cake.

Victoria Helby

17th-century music for recorder and harpsichord
Piers Adam, David Wright
d’Anglebert, Bull, Castello, Corelli, van Eyck, Falconieri, Fontana, Pandolfi Mealli, de Selma y Salaverde & Uccellini

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]iers Adams and David Wright are pictured on cover and throughout the booklet of their new CD looking like a couple of slightly dangerous outlaws returning from the California Gold Rush without any gold. It turns out though that the wild men of the title are actually the experimental composers of the seventeenth century whose compositions, full of drama, passion and florid ornamentation, give the players ample scope to display their expected virtuosity and imagination. If anything some of these performances are even more over-the-top than usual, notably in Biber’s extraordinary Sonata 3, originally for violin like much of the other music on the CD, which is surely the culmination of the fashion for rapid changes of mood and tempo more usually associated with Castello and his contemporaries.

Piers Adams’s bravura playing is what immediately strikes the ear, with his use of a range of modern (and loud) recorders, but it would be a mistake to ignore David Wright’s wonderfully varied accompaniment which helps to create every change of mood and achieves a remarkable range of dynamics. His harpsichord solos, by D’Anglebert and John Bull, are less obviously adventurous but are to be enjoyed even if they don’t fit in so well with the title of the CD.

Perhaps this is not one for the purists, but as usual with these performers there is plenty of historically informed performance practice underlying the fun and flamboyance.

Victoria Helby