Category: Recording

Joanne Lunn, Robin Blaze, Makoto Sakurada, Dominik Wörner, Bach Collegium Japan chorus & orchestra, Masaaki Suzuki
73:17
BIS-2161 SACD

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the areas in which the high standards set by Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan have recently been upgraded is in the brass playing: Jean-François Madeuf has become a wonderfully expert player on both natural trumpet and horn, and on the former without the little vent holes that many players use to ‘correct’ the natural 11th and 13th overtones. The result is an increase in the singing quality of the sound and a richer fundamental tone generated by the natural harmonics.

These incremental improvements – audible too in the balance between voices in the concerted movements – combined with the dramatic presentations that these secular cantatas draw from the performers, especially in the recitatives, mark a step change in their performances. The secular birthday cantatas are the nearest Bach comes to writing opera, and the singers – Joanne Lunn, Robin Blaze, Makoto Sakurada and Dominik Wörner – respond with freer singing than we heard in the sacred cantatas.

I am most familiar with the majority of the music in these two celebratory birthday cantatas dated to 1733 from its substantial re-use in the Christmas Oratorio not much more than a year later, in 1734. As always, there is much to be learned from the way in which Bach altered his material, not just in adapting the music to new texts – he must have worked closely with his librettists – but in altering the pitch and adapting the scoring of many of the arias. For example, the duetto Ich bin deiner (BWV 213 xi) for alto and tenor with a pair of violas becomes a duet for soprano and bass with a pair of oboes d’amore in Part III of the Christmas Oratorio. It is a delight to hear the original of the echo aria from Part IV of the Christmas Oratorio, with an oboe d’amore and an alto singer here, so pitched in A not C. So much of the music in these two cantatas is parodied there, and indeed only one chorus (213.xiii) and one aria (214.iii) have no borrowings, and even that chorus might have become the opening movement of the Fifth part of the Christmas Oratorio.

But as well as being of interest to those who are preparing performances of the Christmas Oratorio this season, the cantatas – however implausible we may find them as drama – are fine performances in their own right. Not often publically performed in my experience, they are a dramatic and musical delight, and certainly up to Suzuki’s high standards. Only some of the string ensemble playing feels a little routine at times, but that is a very small cavil.

David Stancliffe

Dunedin Consort, John Butt
78:00
Linn CKD469
+Gabrieli Hodie Christus natus est, organ music & congregational chorale

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a fine presentation in the tradition of John Butt’s ‘liturgical’ performance of the Bach Johannespassion. It is a reconstruction of what Bach is likely to have produced for his first Christmas Vespers in Leipzig in 1723. John Butt uses not only his fine Dunedin Consort of singers and players, but the Peter Collins organ in Greyfriars, Edinburgh (where the recording was made) for the organ preludes – his performance of the fugue on the Magnificat is particularly fine – using a 16’ based manual organo pleno? – and a crowd of fifty five singers joining in the congregational chorale singing (from the Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch of 1682) sometimes in unison, but sometimes in parts. Some of the preludes, chorales and the liturgical end piece didn’t fit on the single CD, so although they figure in the accompanying booklet, they can only be heard as a free download: there is more of interest in John Butt’s additional material on the web as well, and it is a pity that only seven pages of his excellent material can be fitted into the 44-page booklet among the pictures and hagiography!

In addition to the chorales and organ music, the CD contains the Christmas Cantata 63, Christen ätzet diesen Tag – Bach’s only (?surviving) foray into a score with four trumpet parts, originating in a Weimar cantata from 1714 – and the earlier E flat version of the Magnificat with the insertion of the Christmas Laudes – four pieces in a simpler, rather less sophisticated style. Both the cantata and the Magnificat are played for convincing reasons at A=392 in Werkmeister III (echoes of the Dunedin’s superb Brandenburgs), bringing the E flat Magnificat to sound more like its later version in D – did the trumpeters play this version in D anyway? No parts survive.

This low pitch suits all the singers except for Clare Wilkinson, who nonetheless sings most convincingly of all. It is in her duet in 63.vii with Nicholas Mulroy, a longstanding member of the Dunedin Consort, that I became most forcefully aware of how Mulroy is in danger of becoming a member of the ‘I can, therefore I may’ brigade: he makes little attempt to match her subtle phrasing and delicate tone (though he is much better in the Et misericordia) singing mostly at full throttle. Listen to him in Verdi mode in the Deposuit, and then to the ravishing Clare Wilkinson in the Esurientes with the two recorders, and judge for yourself. A consort of singers implies a group of musicians who listen to one another, to match tone, phrasing and dynamic range. I can not infrequently hear Mulroy loud and clear over everyone else, and think this is unmusical, as well as ungracious. This apart, the singing of Julia Doyle and Joanne Lunn, Clare Wilkinson, Nicholas Mulroy and Matthew Brook is beautifully shaped and balanced and is a delight. For the Magnificat, Butt uses five ripienists with his chosen concertists – four in the cantata – and they manage the difficulties of two to a part convincingly, as do the violin players. Balance and clarity are equally good, and the Linn production team have delivered their usual excellence – save for one extraordinary blot.

There are two minor criticisms: one is that the digital bleep between tracks 16 and 17, where the end of the soprano aria in the Magnificat Quia respexit spills into omnes generationes, is audible on two of my CD players, though not all. Of course the scoring and key are different, but surely both parts of this verse could share a single track to avoid this? The other thing I noticed is that, in spite of a credit being given to a language coach, there remain some very audible discrepancies in the Latin pronunciation: Matthew Brook slips a very Italianate pronunciation of fecit in the rumbustious aria Quia fecit mihi magna, while in Fecit potentiam there is a more audibly schooled German consonant.

But these are small details in what is a very good example of John Butt’s marriage between arresting scholarship, enormous musicality – the tempi are so naturally right – and pragmatic skills: conceiving and bringing such a complex production to fruition is a huge task, and the whole disc is so coherently musical from the word go. Give it to all your friends for Christmas: this is contextual Bach at its very best.

David Stancliffe

5555

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith only weeks to go until Christmas, Mirare has release four wonderful collections by grouping oustanding recordings from their back catalogue.

In no particular order, they are:

A 3 disc set from La Rêveuse consisting of recitals of Purcell (songs and chamber music, 60:00), Sébastien de Brossard (sacred and secular vocal music and a sonata in C, 64:00) and Henry Lawes (“ayres” for tenor and instrumental music, 69:00).

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Three fabulous discs from the Ricercar Consort, directed by Philippe Pierlot: an immense disc of Bertali instrumental music (80:00!), another featuring Purcell’s Fantazias and In nomines (61:00), and finally François Couperin’s Apothéoses (with texts spoken by François Morel) coupled with Rebel’s Tombeau de Monsieur de Lully (67:00).

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A second set by the Ricercar Consort sandwiches a disc of primarily vocal music by Matthias Weckmann (79:00) between two discs of Bach, the first coupling his oboe d’amore concerto and Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten with Handel’s harp concerto and Tra le fiamme with soprano Nuria Real (64:00), the second of cantatas (BWV 63, 110 & 151, 68:00).

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The fourth set combines a Bach instrumental CD (BWV21 (sinfonia only), 1017, 1066 & 1069, 69:00) directed by Pierre Hantaï with a disc on which he plays arrangements of Rameau’s orchestral music for two harpsichords with Skip Sempé (75:00).

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All of the discs were well received in the pages of the printed Early Music Review, and this chance to grab them at a bargain price should not be missed!

Brian Clark

Erich Höbarth violin, Aapo Häkkinen harpsichord
119:35 (2 SACDs)
Aeolus AE10236
BWV 1014–1019, 1021–1023

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a fabulously recorded set – you can hear every detail of the music without the slightest hint of breathing or other incidental sounds. The balance between violin and harpsichord (huge dynamic range afforded by the variety of sounds available to Häkkinen notwithstanding!) is expertly managed. Bach’s lines are crystal clear throughout without the excessive bite that sometimes spoils recordings of Bach’s music for this combination. While Aapo Häkkinen explores every facet of his 1970 instrument (after Hass[note]He also uses a 2011 copy of Italian models for BWV 1021, 1022[/note]), I did not feel that Höbarth was as interested in varying his colour so much. Another difference of approach was evident in the Adagio of BWV1017 where the right hand keyboard part has triplets, the left hand has even quavers and the violin dotted quavers; while Häkkinen smooths these into triplets, Höbarth tucks his semiquavers in after the third of each group. This may be an interesting effect musically, but I fear it was not what Bach intended. While there is no denying that he is master of Bach’s notes, I was not entirely convinced by Höbarth’s ornamentation either. The thoroughly footnoted booklet essay only lightly touches on the possibility of BWV 1023 having been written for Pisendel, later the Dresden Konzertmeister. In summary, this set has a fine bonus by way of three other sonatas for violin and harpsichord (some may argue that BWV 2012 and 1023 need basso continuo – i. e., a sustaining string bass), and the harpsichord playing is impeccable, but I prefer the sounds made by various other violinists. Try for yourself, though!

Brian Clark

St Florian Sängerknaben, Ars Antiqua Austria, Gunar Letzbor
52:49
Pan Classics PC 10349
+Hugl: Organ works

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hy do musicians have to make outrageous claims for lesser-known composers? Referring to Aufschnaiter as “the Catholic Bach” is not what I would consider helpful in trying to raise the public profile of a composer whose music need only be given air time to acquire his own fan base. Anyone who goes out and buys this CD, expecting to be amazed by fabulous music they cannot believe they have never heard before is likely to be disappointed; neither by the music, nor the performances, I hasten to add, as both are perfectly enjoyable and uplifting. The programme is built around of the first of two sets of Vespers psalms published as his op. 5 of 1709, four years after he succeeded Georg Muffat as Kapellmeister in Passau. I love the sense of big open space and the combination of trumpets and sackbutts with a small vocal group (as is Letzbor’s wont) with a finely balanced string ensemble. I really would prefer just to hear the music on its own merits – it has plenty and they are gloriously realised here!

Brian Clark