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Resurrexi!

CD cover Resurrexi! The Choir of Keble College Instruments of Time and Truth Mozart Haydn

Easter in Vienna with Mozart and the Haydn brothers
Emily Dickens, Rebekah Jones, Philippe Durrant, Graham Kirk SmSTB, Choir of Keble College, Oxford, Instruments of Time and Truth, directed by Paul Brough
56:05
CRD 3539

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In an amusing and rather winning introductory note Paul Brough, the musical director of Keble College, disarmingly explains that the objective of this recording is not an attempt ‘to give a lesson in history, liturgy, theology or musicology’ but rather to bring to the listener ‘the powerful truth of Easter …’ That, then, is the spirit in which I will try to review it.

Despite the disclaimer, the recording will indeed recall to many the kind of liturgical reconstruction that was fashionable in the closing decades of the last century, especially the pioneering work of Andrew Parrott and Paul McCreesh. It is centred round the idea of how an Easter Mass might have been celebrated in Salzburg in the 1770s, though for some inexplicable reason the CD carries the subtitle ‘Easter in Vienna…’. It is planned around Mozart’s Mass in C, KV 258, which dates from the middle of that decade and takes its name from speculation that it is the Mass given at the consecration of Count Ignaz Friedrich von Spauer as Dean of Salzburg Cathedral in late 1776. Scored with trumpets and timpani, it is therefore a hybrid work, a so-called missa brevis et solemnis that although ceremonial in character conforms to the famous (or maybe infamous) dictum of Archbishop Colloredo that the entire Mass – including plainchant and additional liturgical movements – should not last longer than 45 minutes. Each of its movements is therefore extremely brief – the entire Gloria takes only 2½ minutes in the present performance – with little repetition of text and the brief passages for the four soloists mostly integrated into the choral texture, perhaps, as Stanley Sadie pointed out, most interestingly in the unusual antiphonal exchanges between soloist and choir in the Benedictus. It was a form that, as Mozart wrote to famous theorist Padre Martini of Bologna, required ‘a special study’ and not one that is likely to have appealed to him.

Otherwise choral settings include the opening Marian antiphon, Mozart’s C-major Regina coeli, KV 276/321b, composed in 1779 for an unknown occasion, joyously bright but for a brief appropriately prayerful digression at ‘ora pro nobis’. Of earlier provenance is the concluding Te Deum in C by Haydn, composed for an unknown occasion in the early 1760s during his first years of employment with Prince Nicholas Esterházy, possibly for the Prince’s official entry into Eisenstadt in 1762. It’s an unremarkable work in the somewhat stiff, old-fashioned Austrian style, and rather less striking than his brother Michael’s more modern gradual setting of the sequenza Victimae paschali laudes, composed for Palm Sunday in 1784. It was one of a series of such pieces commissioned by Colloredo to replace the string sonatas traditionally inserted between the reading of the Epistle – hence the commonly-used name Epistle Sonatas – and the Gospel. One of Mozart’s, KV 274 in G, is included here in a disappointingly prosaic performance in which the weedy chamber organ is no substitute for one of the four Baroque organs in Salzburg Cathedral.

It would be idle to pretend that the soft-grained sopranos of Keble College project anything like the visceral brilliance of continental boys, but the choir is a fine, well-trained and balanced body, while the four soloists capably meet the relatively modest demands made on them. Baritone Graham Kirk is an unexceptionable cantor, while the choir’s intoning of the plainchant is effectively if a little too deliberately done. Does it all perhaps sound a little too polite and Anglican? Well, maybe, but to go back to my opening paragraph on its own terms, this celebration of Easter in Mozart’s Salzburg amply succeeds in giving both spiritual and musical satisfaction.

Brian Robins

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Recording

A room of mirrors

A room or mirrors

Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Zachary Wilder tenors, Ensemble I Gemelli
57:56
Gemelli GFA001/1

A Room of Mirrors is the initial release of the Gemelli label, which takes its name from the ensemble co-founded by Mathilde Etienne and Swiss tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro in 2018. He is one of the most stylish and accomplished singers of early 17th-century music, having underlined the point as the Orfeo de nos jours in the outstanding Naïve recording issued in 2020. In addition, Gonzalez Toro is one of the best singers of the haute-contre repertoire in French Baroque opera.

The title reflects the place played by mirrors, either in a literal or metaphorical sense, in early Baroque thinking, a topic explored in an interesting note by Etienne. She doesn’t mention the importance of the mirror as a familiar trope in Baroque opera and after listening to the CD it would be possible to expand her thoughts. For example, a number of the works here are duets in which Gonzalez Toro is partnered in exemplary fashion by Zachary Wilder, the prevalence of imitation introducing a form of mirroring of the voices. Then the opening track, the familiar and irresistibly catchy ‘Damigella tutta bella’ by the otherwise little-known Florentine court composer Vincenzo Calestani (1589-after 1617) has an first half that is mirrored by the final section as the ardent lover plied with the wine of desire becomes the over-satiated lover who has fallen out of love with the ‘damsel fair and pretty’, the damigella tutta bella. One of Gonzalez Toro’s great strengths as a singer of this repertoire is his ability to colour and interpret the all-important text and the subtle manner in which he contrasts the emotions of ardour and scorn is an outstanding example among many that could be identified in the collection. He revisits Orfeo in a setting of the eponymous hero’s ‘Dove ten’vai’ from act 3, scene 1 by another unfamiliar name, the Prague-born Francesco Turini (1595-1656), who spent most of his career as organist of Brescia Cathedral. Here set as elaborate duet, Orfeo’s rhetorical questioning is paradoxically answered by the second tenor in imitation. The most represented composer is Sigismondo d’India (1582-1629), a prolific composer of vocal music and, with Monteverdi, one of the leaders of the so-called ‘secondo prattica’. Unlike Caccini, d’India’s adoption of the modern style did not mean eschewing counterpoint and the rich dissonant harmony of the duet ‘Giunto alla tomba’, a lament drawn from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, makes for one of the most intense experiences of the recital. A reminder that this was a period of experimentation comes with the extreme, even bizarre dissonance of ‘Intenerite voi’, one of several examples of a lover’s appeal to a haughtily insensitive young woman. Another form of mirroring comes with the judicious contrast of serious with lighter or even comic songs. Among the last named is Biagio Marini’s ‘La vecchia innamorata’, in which the singer contrasts the attentions of an ugly old woman who loves him, with the girl who ‘gives me pains’ in a manner that would shortly become familiar in many a Venetian opera. The comedy is brought off with consummate skill, as is the lavish ornamentation in Frescobaldi’s ‘Se l’aura spira’, perhaps the most graciously enchanting music in the collection.

In addition to the vocal numbers, I Gemelli – which here consists of a continuo group with pairs of gambas and violins, recorder and cornet – contribute extremely well-executed performances of several instrumental pieces, among them Dario Castello’s striking Sonata Quarta and d’India’ s ‘Langue al vostro languir’, for which since the text is published in the booklet comes as something of a surprise. An outstanding recording that serves not only to illustrate the richness of the repertoire but also enhance the reputation of Emiliano Gonzalez Toro and I Gemelli as being in the vanguard of its interpreters.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Concertos pour violon

CD cover Ensemble Diderot Concertos pour violon

The beginnings of the violin concerto in France
Ensemble Diderot, Johannes Pramsohler
70:13
Audax Records ADX13782

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Don’t let the disc’s title fool you into thinking that this repertoire is in any sense less than fully-formed. The names of Leclair and Corrette should inspire some confidence (as should that of the principal soloist and his ensemble) and their colleagues are not so very far behind.

Inevitably, the Italian concerto concept was viewed in France with no little suspicion, but determined and talented composers and the need for material to play at the increasingly popular public concerts (where operatic extracts were not permitted) combined to produce a body of accomplished music, from which we hear well-chosen highlights (though always complete works).

If the Leclair (world première recording, as is the Exaudet – both in E flat, curiously) is the stand-out, I also greatly enjoyed the Concerto in A by Jean-Baptiste Quentin. This is more of a sonata da chiesa with a very florid top line, though the opening contrapuntal largo is really lovely. The strong stylistic contrast of the concluding Corrette concerto comique is a brilliant piece of programming.

To be sure, there are moments when the influence of Corelli and Vivaldi is all too apparent, but that is also true in Bach and Handel. And the playing – chamber-scale forces – is absolutely first-class in every respect. This will not surprise those familiar with Ensemble Diderot’s discography.

The booklet essay (in English, French, German & Japanese) actually tells us about the music (a welcome change) as well as its context, though there is no information about the players beyond their names. But the ensemble’s website will tell you all you need to know.

David Hansell

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Recording

Mozart: The Milanese quartet | Lodi Quartet

CD cover Mozart Milanese quartets Lodi quartet

VenEthos Ensemble
92:00 (2 CDs in a card folder)
Arcana A497

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As with most genres to which he contributed. Mozart came early to the string quartet, itself a relatively new form for which ‘father’ is a more appropriate appendage for Joseph Haydn than that of ‘father of the symphony’. What is perhaps surprising is that Mozart’s initial attempts at the form should have taken place on the two Italian journeys he undertook with his father during his teens. Surprising because they were composed at a time when Mozart was concerned with fulfilling opera commissions, but still more so because we know of no commission(s) for the so-called ‘Lodi’ Quartet, KV 80 or the six quartets KV 155 to 160 of late 1772 and early 1773 known as the ‘Milanese’ quartets, all but one having been composed in that city where Mozart would be involved in the staging of his opera seria, Lucio Silla.

With the exception of the four-movement KV 80, which has a Rondo finale added later, Mozart’s earliest essays in the quartet medium all have three brief movements. That the form was still to some degree experimental is suggested by the reversal of the expected order of movements in KV 80, which opens with an Adagio and KV 159 in B-flat, which starts with an Andante. The B-flat Quartet, the fifth of the set composed in Milan in early 1773, is indeed by a fair margin the most striking of these works, showing the teenage Mozart handling his material with a new-found sense of confidence. The gracious theme of the Andante finds room to hint at feelings below the surface, perhaps in the semi-serious style of some of the arias in his early buffo operas. The following Allegro, bright and rhythmically incisive, admits to an enhanced sense of drama, particularly in the development, while the concluding Allegro grazioso is a rondo with an innocent tick-tock main subject and an episode making surprising use of a chromatic glissando.

Of the remaining quartets, odd moments serve to give clues as to the composer the young Mozart would become in the near-future. The opening Adagio of the G-major Quartet, KV 80, dated Lodi, 15 March 1770, is in the fashionable sentimental style and owns to an unexpected depth and concentration, while the opening Presto of the Quartet in G, KV 156 demonstrates an increasing capability in handling the string quartet texture as does the greater interest given to the viola and a generally darker texture in the succeeding Adagio, a movement that replaced a simpler original (both movements are included on the present set). Greater interest in genuine part-writing can be found in the central Andante of KV 158 in F, which lays out imitative entries before reverting to a more homophonic texture.   

In general terms however these are unremarkable works that with the arguable exception of the B-flat Quartet would probably not attract much attention had they a lesser name attached to them. The performances presented here by the Treviso-based VenEthos Ensemble are capable and pleasing enough but bring no special insights to the music and although technically proficient are not constantly tonally ingratiating. Mozart’s double-bar repeats at the end of sonata form movements are not observed but that is probably a sensible decision given that the music is not strong enough to give them purpose.  Anyone wanting to explore Mozart’s earliest essays in a genre to which he would bring so much distinction will not go far wrong, although I seem to recall the Festetics Quartet on Hungaroton brought a little more to these works.

Brian Robins 

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Recording

French connections

Digital download album cover French connections

Jonathan Rhodes Lee harpsichord
No timing information found
Navona Records NV6389

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This might be described as a ‘budget release’: the disc is in a cardboard sleeve with just a single sheet of supporting information in tiny print. Nonetheless, the necessarily concise essay puts the music in its context and explains the rationale behind the programme (Couperin>another Couperin including La Forqueray>Forqueray including La Rameau, but whom we do not hear). I like this kind of thinking and it does produce an interesting recital on an instrument of well-deployed rich colours. The playing is crisp and clean with clear phrasing, though I have to say I did find it inclined to the deliberate side. But as a condensed survey of the claveçinistes c1650-c1750 it does a good job.

David Hansell

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Recording

Lully: Grands motets, vol. 2

CD cover Lully Grands motets vol. 2 CSV059

Les Épopées, Stéphane Fuget
66:14
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS059

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This release is part of two ongoing series from Versailles: No. 4 of Collection Grands Motets and Vol. 2 of a Lully series. The performing forces are large and I admit that I couldn’t resist counting the string players! There are indeed 24 of them, though not, perhaps, disposed exactly as Lully might have done. However, this was not as cast in stone as we are sometimes led to believe. The strings combine with a similarly sized choir and various winds and continuo to present the recording engineers with something of a dilemma. Several recordings from this chapel have been quite close, with little sense of the venue. Here, we have something closer to what a listener in the building might hear: quite a lot of resonance, though some loss of detail in the rich textures. However, I did appreciate hearing the soloists more as part of the overall sound, with less highlighting than is often used. On the performance practice front, I found myself wondering about the presence of a harpsichord in these pieces.

Texts (usually from the psalms) were chosen for motets with some care and with an eye to their potential for dramatic settings. Here we have Psalms 50 (Have mercy on me, O God), 2 (Why do the heathen rage) and a Jubilate Deo (of which the text source, a compilation from several psalms, is not given – one of several editorial shortcomings in the booklet). If you are new to Lully’s sacred music, these three works are a good way in: they are truly splendid. And the performances are also very good, with thoughtful integration of the soloists with the choir and good continuity between sections. The v-word is less of an issue, too: such a relief.

The booklet (in French, English and German) is quite reasonable in content, though not comprehensive in its detail, and I continue to question the grouping of essays by topic. Wouldn’t it be more reader-friendly to put them together by language?

David Hansell

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Recording

Dessiner les passions

CD cover Dessiner les passions Andreas Gilger harpsichord

Andreas Gilger harpsichord
74:32
Genuin GEN 22768

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To begin with, I think I should highlight this comparatively rare opportunity to hear a 17th century-style harpsichord (a meticulous copy of a 1681 Vaudry at A400), as opposed to the c1750 Franco-Flemish monsters we often hear even in this earlier music. They are marvellous, of course, but here there is a delicate ‘edginess’ to this timbre which I rather liked. There’s plenty of colour, though, and we do hear it all.

In the booklet (in English and German) the artist gives an account of his background thinking, tells us about the instrument and recording venue but leaves us high and dry with regards to the music. Surely at least the less well-known Du Mont and Geoffroy need a bit of an intro? In this chronologically focussed survey they rub shoulders with D’Anglebert, Chambonnières and L Couperin – the world of the 17th century claveçinistes, both printed and manuscript sources, in a nutshell.

I very much enjoyed this playing, which is both thoughtful and sparkling, with careful management of the style brisé idiom, the ornaments, the brief contrapuntal passages and the dance-based structures. At this time these can still embrace a pavane (curiously familiar and harmonically arresting) and a galliarde, though not as a pair or even by the same composer.

But ma fin est mon commencement, as an earlier age had it. The instrument is the star.

David Hansell

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Concert-Live performance Recording Sheet music

Paradise regained

If you are lucky enough to be in or near Lyon on 21 March, you shouldn’t miss the first performance in modern times of an oratorio by Luigi Mancia, who was maestro di cappella in Mantua at the end of the 17th century. If you like to find out more about its re-discovery in an anonymous manuscript in Lyon’s municipal library and hear extracts (including an amazing aria accompanied by three concertante cellos!) follow this link (in French!) The performance is expected to last one and three-quarter hours, not including the interval. Tickets are available here.

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Recording

Bruhns: Cantatas and Organ Works, Vol. 1

CD cover Bruhns Cantatas and Organ Works Yale Suzuki

Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Masaaki Suzuki
86:14
BIS 2271 SACD

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The prospect of all Bruhns’ surviving cantatas and organ works being recorded – and by such a good team – is very welcome. An additional bonus is that the recordings – or this first one at any rate – are made in the Marquand Chapel at Yale using the substantial Taylor and Boody organ there, built in 2007 and pitched at A=465Hz at a ¼ comma meantone tuning. This produces some delicious sounds, especially in the richly registered fantasia on Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland. It is a pity that we are not given the registrations – or have I missed a link to a website?

Suzuki’s team at Yale, where he was on the faculty from 2009 to 2013, includes an outstanding bass-baritone, capable of a wide range in De profundis, Paul Max Tipton. He is joined by two experienced tenors, Dann Coakwell and James Taylor, professor of voice at Yale: they are experienced in a wide range of music but  – and I nearly wrote ‘therefore’ – do not have quite the same vocal purity and period style as Tipton. Nonetheless, together with one-to-a-part strings, two violins, two violas, two gambas and a continuo group of ‘cello, dulzian, theorbo and organ, the ensemble is excellent, and the clarity combined with the bloom of the YDS chapel’s acoustic gives a sheen as well as blend to this welcome CD.

Nicolaus Bruhns died young: he was 31. He had been a pupil of Buxtehude, and then was sent to Copenhagen, where he came into contact with Italian music and made a reputation as a virtuoso on the violin. He was famously able, according to Mattheson, to perform double-stopping on the violin while playing the bass line on the pedal organ. The solo cantata for bass, Mein Herz ist bereit, exhibits some of this remarkable violin writing, with double stopping suggesting more than the single violin that is scored.

While there are no discernable influences on Bach, his style – bridging the small-scale works of Schütz to the cantatas of the AlteBach-Archiv – marries the Italian concerto with the German choral tradition. These recordings were made in 2016-7, and there is a good liner note on the music by Markus Rathey.

I welcome this recording – over 80 minutes long! – and hope that the second volume appears soon. The more we understand the music of Germany in the final third of the 17th century and learn to appreciate its texture, the better we shall appreciate Bach; and the more likely we will be to make good decisions about performance practice.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Virtuosi

CD cover Virtuosi Bach Johann Ernst

J. S. Bach | Prinz J. E. v. Sachsen-Weimar
Thüringer Bach Collegium
66:54
audite 97.790

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The Thüringer Bach Collegium, an ensemble of two violins, viola, violoncello and contrabass, with cembalo and lute, are directed by the veteran violinist Gernot Süßmuth. They play the concerto for three solo violins in D (BWV 1064); for organ in D minor by Johann Gottfried Walther on a theme from Torelli; for oboe and violin in C minor (BWV 598); for organ in C (BWV 595) a fragment from Prince Johann Ernst; a concerto in B flat for violin (arranged by Prince Johann Ernst from BWV 983 and reconstructed by Gernot Süßmuth); a concerto for organ in G after Prince Johann Ernst (BWV 592); and finally the double violin concerto in D minor (BWV 1043).

The Italian concerto had found its way into the princely courts of Germany by the end of the 17th century, and its arrival in the court of Wilhelm Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Weimar is well-documented thanks to his musical nephew’s – Prince Johann Ernst’s – return from his grand tour which included bringing the latest Vivaldi scores from Amsterdam.

This recording traces Bach’s making the Italian concerto his own, adapting the originals for a variety of instrumentation that seem to have been encouraged by the young Prince’s passion for the violin as well as keyboard. The (earlier) solo instrument versions reconstructed here survive in many cases in later versions as concertos for harpsichord, as we know them best; but here is a programme worked out to illuminate Bach’s evolving technique.

The exercise is instructive, and that it its prime purpose. Not all of the music is of the very highest quality. Now based in Arnstadt, several of the players have played for many years in the Staatskapelle in Weimar. They clearly enjoy their period instrument life, even if their playing sounds more full-blooded than we often hear from one-to-a-part ensembles. I commend it as with their other recordings of music off the beaten track that can help illuminate the criss-crossing of influences and variety of instrumentation as Germany absorbed the instrumental concerto into the mainstream of its music-making.

David Stancliffe