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Kerll: Complete Harpsichord and Organ Music

CD cover Matteo Mesori Kerll Complete keyboard music Brilliant Classics

Matteo Messori
173:05 (3 CDs in a case)
Brilliant Classics 94452

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This 3 CD set of all Kerll’s surviving keyboard works is likely to become the benchmark recording, and was only released in 2021 despite having been recorded in 2012, it appears. There is an excellent and substantial (10 page) essay on Kerll by Matteo Messori in the liner notes, together with details of the instruments on which the recordings were made. As well as being a harpsichordist and organist with many recordings to his name, Messori also founded Cappella Augustana with whom he recorded the complete Schütz for Brilliant Classics: these are fine recordings and established his credentials as a scholarly and musical interpreter of 17th-century German music.

In his lifetime, Kerll was a famous keyboard player and teacher and enjoyed the patronage of the Imperial Court, so spent time in Vienna, where he wrote his Missa in fletu solatium at the time of the plague and the Turkish invasion of 1683. An influential teacher, who probably taught Pachelbel as well as Fux and had his compositions parodied by Bach and Handel, his keyboard music is in the post-Frescobaldi style popularised by Froberger. Having been a pupil of Carissimi in Rome, his operas and much of his church music has been lost. Some masses survive and these keyboard works including the justly famous Modulatio organica, that sets verses of the Magnificat to alternate with the Gregorian chant in all eight modes.

The organ used in this recording is the 1732 instrument built by J. I. Egedacher in the Pfarrkirche in Vornbach am Inn, which was conserved by Kuhn in 2009, having its pitch of A=465 reinstated. It has a Bavarian/Italianate style that matches Kerll’s musical pedigree and is well recorded for this project. Kuhn’s website provides details of the complex history of the instrument and the specification; no details are given in the liner notes of the detailed registration chosen. Of the three harpsichords used, two are copies by Romain Legros – one of an anonymous instrument in the Ca’ Rezzonico museum in Venice and another after Giovanni Battista Giusti (Luca 1681) – and one by Barthélémy Formentelli after a southern French instrument. All three have a full resonance and seem suitable, though no details are provided of the originals.

CD 1 has the toccatas and canzone, CD 2 the four suites with the Ciaccona, Passacaglia, Capriccio sopra il Cucu and Battaglia played on the three harpsichords, and CD 3 the Modulatio organica super Magnificat octo Ecclesiasticis tonis respondens  (1686) played entirely on the organ. The acoustic in the church is not overpowering, so the change from one of the harpsichords to the organ in CD 1 seems perfectly plausible, even though the slight pitch difference provides a little frisson. After the fluent, improvisatory nature of the toccatas the measured part-writing of the canzone provides a welcome contrast and the use of a single 4’ on the organ for the central section of Canzone quarta is a good touch.

Modulatio organica super Magnificat, the work for which Kerll is best known, takes us through the proper transpositions of the eight tones and allows us to experience the clarity of the various registrations of the organ in the contrapuntal part-writing. Each organ verse is preceded by its proper plainsong sung by the male soprano, Lukasz Dulewicz, to fine effect. Messori captures the improvisatory nature of what might often have been the quite short extemporised verses performed by Kerll very convincingly and confirms my belief that this is the definitive performance for this oeuvre.

Anyone who needs to understand the link between the Italian and the German composers for keyboard in the seventeenth century will be rewarded listening to these enlightening performances.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: Concerto à Cembali concertati vol. 4

CD cover Bach Concerto à Cembali concertati vol. 4

Concertos for 3 & 4 harpsichords
Aapo Häkkinen, Miklós Spányi, Cristiano Holtz, Anna-Maaria Oramo, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra
77:45
Aeolus AE-10107
+Müthel: Duetto in E-flat major

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This recording brings the set of four CDs of Helsinki Baroque Orchestra’s recording of Bach’s Concerti à Cembali concertati, with Aapo Häkkinen as the leading harpsichordist, to a conclusion. The first volume was released in 2012.

The playing is light and bright, and with one-to-a-part strings, the harpsichords – especially in BWV 1065 – are in no danger of being smothered. As in the previous recordings, the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra plays on an interesting array of instruments with violins by Stainer and Klotz, a viola by Leclerc c. 1770 and a ‘cello from Rome c. 1700. The odd one out is a Bohemian double bass dated 1840, and it sounds like it: much too boomy in some places. Clearly, they do not always play with a 16’ – there is a delightfully transparent Youtube video of their performance in Japan of Brandenburg V which not only eschews a 16’ violone but has only two other upper strings alongside the concertante violin! So why use a double bass when a slighter-toned violone would have matched the other strings far better?

The ‘filler’ in this volume – it has included pieces for single harpsichord in the earlier volumes like the Italian concerto – is a quite different piece: Johann Gottfried Müthel (1728-1788)’s Duetto in E-flat major of 1771 is in three movements played here on two closely-recorded clavichords from the very end of the 18th century, reminding us of the continuing popularity of the clavichord as a boudoir instrument, which is just what is right for this piece.

I have quite a few recordings of the complete set of harpsichord concerti: Ton Koopman with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra from the early 1990s, Trevor Pinnock with The English Concert, Lars Ulrich Mortensen with Concerto Copenhagen, and there is Pieter-Jan Belder with the Amphion Consort for Brilliant Classics and Davitt Morony with colleagues on historic instruments – all of which have strong claims as a complete set.

Only the more recent like Concerto Copenhagen, the Amphion Consort and the emerging (but not yet complete) series with Francesco Corti and Il Pomo d’Oro use (rightly to my mind) single strings, so this recording may be a good choice.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach Unbuttoned

Bach Unbuttoned Brandenburgs

Ana De La Vega flute, Ramón Ortega Quero oboe, Alexander Sitkovetsky violin, Cyrus Allyar trumpet, Johannes Berger harpsichord, Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn
62:26
Pentatone PTC 5186 893

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This is a CD of Brandenburgs 5, 4 and 2 with the double concerto in D minor played enthusiastically by Ana de la Vega and Ramón Ortega on modern flute and oboe. ‘Regards to instrumentation,’ writes de la Vega in the liner notes, ’in those days it was usual to play a musical line on the instruments available, depending who was on your castle staff and up to the job. Hence we have taken similar licence, playing Brandenburg no. 4 with flute and oboe (instead of two flutes) and the famous double concerto with two different melodic instruments, that happened to be ‘at hand’. (No mention of the fact that in 4 it was two recorders, rather than traversi anyway.)

As an exercise in enjoying playing Bach, this is a polished and wizzy spree. The players are classy, and once you have got used to the high pitch, it sounds well. BUT – and there needs to be a warning ‘but’ – there are regrettable consequences. First, the balance between the instruments goes up the creek – the accompanying orchestra is many players per part, so it becomes the dominant sound with the bass particularly thumpy – and the harpsichord, even in the first movement of Brandenburg 5 is so reticent – why? Second, the ‘solo’ instruments need to have their volume ‘enhanced’ to compete and they lack the natural fluency of the period instruments and their unobtrusive blendability, which is cruelly exposed in Brandenburg 2.

Perhaps surprisingly, I found the slow movement of the D minor double concerto, with its almost trio sonata quality, the most plausible – it reminded me of playing the same work with just that same scoring in the 1950s before we had period instruments. Most Bach can be played on whatever is to hand with a degree of enjoyment. Viva la musica!

David Stancliffe

 

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Recording

Philippe de Monte: Madrigals and Chansons

Philippe de Monte Madrigals and Chansons Ratas del viejo Mundo

Ratas del viejo Mundo
50:59
Ramée RAM2004

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This is a pleasant disc, of pleasant music, performed pleasantly by people who, judging by their photograph, are … well, you get the idea. And to be fair, the notes in the accompanying booklet engage to some extent with the problem, which is that Monte – a Fleming born in Mechelen, which is now in modern Belgium – is a very good composer of very good secular music but, perhaps unlike his more substantial sacred music, it lacks that last atom of identity which causes the listener to exclaim “this must be by Philippe de Monte”, rather than variations upon “this is really good!”. Ratas del viejo Mundo (their name means Rats of the Old World, “a HIP rat pack”, based in Belgium pace the Hispanic moniker) consist of four singers S MS C B, two violas da gamba, and their leader playing lutes and guitar. Given sixteen tracks of music that is mainly of a single genre, for three to five voices, the Rats vary their use of voices and instruments from track to track, from lute solo to all four voices, often with viols added, and a few of the longer pieces encapsulate similarly varied resources from verse to verse. Such a programme makes for agreeable listening, with the corollary that there are no truly outstanding items within the prevailing high standard, but equally, nor are there any turkeys. All the voices are pleasant, and the individual singers take their solos well. The instruments blend with the voices and with one another, and the small dose of the guitar comes in just the right proportion to leave this listener, at least, charmingly sated. Much is made of how Italianate Monte is in his madrigals but these come with a Flemish accent, musically speaking, and of course his few chansons here come in pure Flemish. A full detailed list of sources for each work is provided, of which “Library of the episcopal seminary of Gyor …” (in northwest Hungary) for track 10 is the most intriguing. The music is well presented and, if so desired, the programme can be enjoyed, without a break, from beginning to end.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Bach: Leipzig Chorales, Schübler Chorales, Canonic Variations

James Johnstone Bach organ vol 3

Bach Organ Series vol. 3
James Johnstone (Treutmann organ (1737) Grauhof)
127:46 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Metronome MET CD 1096

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After the success of recording the Clavierübung III on the remade Wagner organ in Trondheim Cathedral and the second volume of James Johnstone’s Bach presenting a number of Preludes and Fugues on the mid-16th-century Raphaelis organ in Roskilde, we move to the theological heart of Bach’s organ music with chorale preludes. For his third volume, Johnstone presents the 18 so-called ‘Leipzig’ chorales and the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch, that Bach had copied into the same manuscript with the trio sonatas, to which the six Schübler chorales – arrangements of chorale settings, arias, and a vocal duet from his church cantatas – are added.

Johnstone’s third volume underlines how important in Bach’s whole project to provide a ‘well-ordered church music’ was the chorale, so central in Lutheran piety and practice. What Luther had grasped was that doctrine is learnt and then internalised through being sung and his writing of rhyming chorales set to memorable tunes was designed to achieve this: it is singing the faith that makes it yours. Reflecting on the central place of the chorale reminds us that Bach’s treatment of the chorale, both in the cantatas – in particular in the second chorale cantata annual cycle – and also in the corpus of chorale preludes for the organ is a core part of his church music project.

Choosing the right organ on which the character of each chorale can be underscored by sensitive registration is a crucial part of how each chorale prelude helps a worshipper to feel the faith being shaped within them. For Bach’s hearers, music wasn’t an illustrative adjunct or mood music: it was another way of hearing the gospel. In today’s world, not all organists understand this: with such mighty instruments at their command, many are tempted to become self-advertising exhibitionists among the solo performers rather than skilled interpreters. But not James Johnstone. Here are a series of carefully prepared and well-thought-through performances that indicate proper preparation and attention to the chorale material on which each prelude is founded as well as faultless execution.

The organ is well chosen. Some organists might choose to play all their Bach on north German Werkprinzip organs, with bright chorus work and that classic distinction between principal-scaled and wider pipes. On this organ, reflecting a rather more developed style with a variety of colourful 8’ registers, subtle grading, and tonal blend is easier to achieve and may well reflect how Bach came to view the developments in organ building that offered him a similarly colourful palate to match Leipzig’s increasingly varied instrumental resources that became available for scoring his cantatas. While a mighty rumble like a thunderstorm is possible, as an 18th-century commentator remarked of the 32’ Posaune, and which Johnstone uses in the full-blooded Nunn komm’ der Heiden Heiland (BWV 661) to evoke the last trump, so is great subtlety and shading.

Appreciating the registration is greatly aided by being able to look up the details on Johnstone’s website, where the organ specification is printed followed by all 29 detailed registrations (even if the grey background does not aid clarity if you print them out). The trio on Herr Jesu Christ (BWV 655) is beautifully balanced and clearly articulated – helped greatly by having the pedal based on 8’, as in BWV 660 and BWV 664, the three trio movements. The way in which the three manual divisions within the single case take over from one another while offering a continuous progression rather than crude competition is expressed in BWV 656 O Lamm Gottes unschuldig when the Oberwerck Principal takes over from the Hinterwerck Gedacht before yielding to the pedal based on the 8’ Trommet with a Hauptwerck chorus. This is elegantly judged. The clarity of the pedal Soubbas and Flachflöte in BWV 659, for example, is a far cry from a woolly English Bourdon and shows just how subtle you can be on an instrument of this quality.

The six Schübler Chorales show Bach turning music conceived vocally into an entirely instrumental medium. Again, the registration used to achieve both clarity and a singing quality is highly instructive; and it was good to hear the 16’ Fagott used as the LH register in BWV 646, as Bach recommended when reporting on the organ in St Blasius in Mülhausen in 1708. And the single Principal rank is so good for the violoncello piccolo line in BWV 649 drawn from BWV 6, where the chorale was given to the soprano. The only minimal error in the registration notes is on the beautifully played BWV 650, Kommst du nun, where the LH is described as being played on the OW, where it should surely be the HW, where the 16’ and 8’ Viola da Gambe ranks are located.

The canonic variations on Vom Himmel hoch let us hear the Cymbelsterne in the course of allowing us to appreciate this complex but inventive work that shows Bach’s extraordinary imagination and technique at work. They make a fitting climax to an entirely splendid volume in Johnstone’s wonderful Bach series.

Both the playing and the recording show this amazing Treutmann organ to much greater advantage than a previous recording of Buxtehude that I reviewed in Oct 2020, so the producer and the engineers (who cannot have had an easy time in this acoustic) are to be congratulated. A video clip accompanying this project in Johnstone’s website reveals his exceptionally neat footwork – a nice touch.

If you have yet to be converted to the possibility of two hours of Bach on the organ being one of the greatest aural delights possible, then this outstanding volume should do it for you: avoiding those splashy toccatas and fugues, it is pure gold.

David Stancliffe

A second review has arrived:

As a non-expert in the specialised world of pipe organs, I am very much in the hands of the organists when it comes to a choice of instruments, but it strikes me that the 1737 Christoph Treutmann organ in the Stiftskirche St Georg in Grauhof sounds just about ideal for this selection of chorales and variations by J. S. Bach. As we hear from the very opening track of this comprehensive 2 CD set, in full cry this is an impressive instrument which would have delighted the composer, a man who not only composed for and played the organ to a superlative standard, but who was also a connoisseur of organs, spending much time touring the country ‘trying out’ new instruments. While the Grauhof Treutmann was not one of them, James Johnstone points to a number of features the instrument has which Bach would have loved. Indeed, with its ravishing range of timbres from the subtle and quirky to the strikingly magnificent, it is the real star of his accounts of this music, although (of course) this presupposes a player with the perception and virtuosic technique capable of realising these performances. Johnstone brings a wealth of experience in period performance to these intelligent and dignified accounts of some of Bach’s most personal and appealing compositions, music which you feel he was writing for his own pleasure and satisfaction – and, indeed, Johnstone brings these qualities to his playing, too. It is easy to listen to these CDs and imagine Bach improvising this music, and thoroughly enjoying putting the Treutmann organ through its paces.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Byrd 1588

CD cover Byrd 1588 Alamire Fretwork David Skinner

Psalmes, Sonets & songs of sadnes and pietie
Grace Davidson soprano, Martha McLorinan mezzo-soprano, Nicholas Todd tenor, Alamire, Fretwork, David Skinner
157:14 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Inventa INV1006

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It is a pleasure to report that everything about this double album is excellent. The music, the concept, the soloists, the ensembles and the recording quality are all outstanding. Byrd simply does not “do” duff, and some of these works are masterpieces even by his standards. The album consists of the whole of Byrd’s first collection of songs, published to provide accurate versions to counter those that had begun to circulate in copies unsatisfactory to the composer. Many were initially composed for a single voice with an accompaniment for four instruments: unspecified, but contemporary evidence confirms viols. Here they are all arranged for five voices, though single parts in several of the songs are labelled “the first singing part”. There are also a number of these songs which survive in their original versions for a soloist with four viols (also arrangements for lute, for which Byrd never composed) in contemporary manuscripts. Just one piece, La verginella, lacks the label for a first singing part in the print but survives as an accompanied solo song in manuscript. There is also a phrase in Byrd’s introduction which can be interpreted as allowing for performances of the songs solely by instruments. Of the 35 songs, fourteen are sung by Alamire, seventeen are sung by one of the soloists accompanied by Fretwork, and four are played by Fretwork alone.

Eight of the songs are new to disc: Although the heathen poets, As I beheld I saw a herdman wild, Even from the depth, Help Lord for wasted are those men, If that a sinner’s sighs, Mine eyes with fervency of sprite, O Lord who in thy sacred tent and Where fancy fond. (Even I had never before heard If that a sinner’s sighs which is one of the four allotted here to Fretwork alone.) It is astonishing that these had not previously received commercial recordings, all being up to Byrd’s usual standard. This neglect can partly be explained by a preoccupation with a handful of other pieces from the collection, notably Lullaby (35 recordings currently available), Though Amaryllis dance in green (sixteen) and Come to me grief for ever (thirteen), plus others in high single figures. Tempting as it is to comment on all these hitherto unrecorded pieces individually and in detail, suffice it to mention a few. Even from the depth is a sonorous psalm well worthy of starting the second disc complementing O God give ear with which the album begins. Two others are perhaps the strangest items in the collection. Although the heathen poets lasts barely a minute and is anyway made of one phrase repeated. That said, it makes an impression which is out of all proportion to its brevity. Provoking even more thought is As I beheld I saw a herdman wild which, while certainly describing a destructive act of amorous despair, sounds almost hallucinatory, as Byrd gets inside the mind of the distraught rustic. Typically of the greatest composers and writers, Byrd creates a profoundly democratic work, crediting an ostensibly primitive person with profound feelings without in any way patronising, demeaning or deriding him.

Several of the songs already recorded exist in versions alternative to those selected by David Skinner, rendering Alamire’s renditions all the more welcome for comparison and variety. This is best illustrated by what is arguably the greatest song in the collection, the concluding lament for Sir Philip Sidney O that most rare breast sung here with controlled intensity by the mezzo Martha McLorinan. There are, or have been, four other recordings of this masterpiece (and should be at least four times that number). One is sung by five voices, the others by a soloist with viols etc. My “etc.” is loaded, because, well though Robin Blaze sings on his version, as a matter of personal taste and preference I cannot abide the distracting presence of Erica Clapton, aka the estimable Elizabeth Kenny and her lute plucking alongside the viols in the accompaniment. Emma Kirkby gives as fine a performance as one would expect, with Fretwork, on William Byrd: Consort Songs (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907 383). Even outshining these two distinguished ladies is the soprano Annabella Tysall with the Rose Consort of Viols on the – for now – frustratingly unavailable Ah, Dear Heart … Songs, Dances and Laments from the Age of Elizabeth I (Woodmansterne 002-2). She manages to impart the sombre text radiantly, while the accompaniment is crystal clear in every detail, each note being so important in any work by Byrd. Finally, among the solo versions, possibly even capping this wonderful recording, is the version by the countertenor John York Skinner on a disc of selections from this very collection, performed by The Consort of Musicke under Anthony Rooley (Decca 4750492). It is a cliché to refer to the otherworldliness of this voice, but not all stereotypes are always wrong, and this quality, besides Skinner’s engagement with the words, his accuracy in tuning, the steady tread as of a funeral march, and the immaculately clear accompaniment of the Consort’s viols, make this a claimant to be the finest recording of this exceptional piece. But … we are not finished yet: there is the version by five singers which I mentioned. This is by the Trinity Consort led by Clare Wilkinson (Beulah 1RF2) and in every way it complements the Decca recording which I have just mentioned, the pacing, tuning and interpretation immaculate and profoundly moving. All of Byrd’s songs, and this one, in particular, deserve nothing less.

So this present recording is a triumph. The music itself is from the top drawer. Do not be surprised if, after you will have listened to it a couple of times, you wake up of a morning and find any one of several songs running through your head. “Catchy” might not be a word that instantly springs to mind apropos of Byrd, but it is part of the success of many of these songs, and I am not sure that the old fellow would have minded the word too much. Of the more cerebral songs, the metrically sophisticated The match that’s made is memorably performed by five voices which, besides being executed superbly, is a great relief after the fussy hybrid version on the disc of 1588 selections mentioned above. On this complete recording, there are simply no duff tracks, and there is something for everybody, for every mood. The three soloists acquit themselves admirably. If I have a criticism it is that occasionally Fretwork’s inner parts are too modest or understated: the consecutive sixth with the voice in the final cadence of O that most rare breast is almost inaudible, likewise Byrd’s crucial consecutive thirds under the soloist’s first “heavy” and a few spicey passing notes in other pieces. Also, the two verses accompanied pizzicato sound twee. That said, I have never heard the dissonances delivered so deliciously in the conclusions to the burden of Lullaby and at the first “if such on Earth were found” towards the end of Why do I use my paper, ink and pen, while the accompaniments to Who likes to love and most especially the premiere Where fancy fond are bracing, buoyant and effervescent. Indeed, the latter, sung enchantingly by Grace Davidson, epitomises the excellence of this double album, a discographical benchmark.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Avondano: Il mondo della luna

Avondano Il mondo nella luna

Fernando Guimarães tenor, Luis Rodrigues bass, Susana Gaspar soprano, et al
Os Músicos do Tejo directed by Marcos Magalhães
137:17 (2 CDs)
Naxos 8.660487-88

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During the first half of the 18th century, opera in Portugal pursued a somewhat fitful course, a mixture of local genres such as zarzuela and the Italian opera that swept Europe during the latter half of the previous century. Only after 1750, with the accession of the opera-mad King José I, was there a truly flourishing operatic scene in Portugal, though that was severely disrupted by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which destroyed the recently built Casa da Ópera just months after its inauguration.

Pedro António Avondano’s Il mondo della luna was given its first performance at another royal theatre, Salvaterra de Magos in 1765. Avondano was the son of an Italian violinist who had found employment in the lavishly appointed royal chapel of Jose I’s immediate predecessor, João V. He followed in his father’s footsteps, serving in the chapel between 1754 and 1782, writing both secular and sacred music. Il mondo della luna, based on a libretto by Carlo Goldoni first set by Galuppi in 1750 and subsequently by a number of composers including Haydn (1777), is his only opera. A three-act comic opera, it follows the usual format for a Goldoni opera of including a number of duets and, crucially, the act finales with continuous musical and often hectic dramatic development that the Venetian writer played such a large role in establishing as an essential component of opera buffa. All are employed in Il mondo, the plot of which concerns the efforts of the suitors of Clarice and Flaminia, the daughters of Buona Fede, a rich, but naïve old man, to fool him into believing he has been transported to the moon, where he has been duped into believing that women live according to the strict moral code he would impose on his daughters. Delighted with the lunar world, Buona Fede then has to watch the farrago that has been planned for him unfold, ultimately leaving him little option but to accede to the marriage of both girls and his shrewish maid, Lisetta, who he had hoped to marry himself.

Avondano’s music reveals him to be not only thoroughly conversant with buffa style, but melodically gifted and capable of orchestral writing that makes extensive use of the wind band. Arias are mostly brief and while few are memorable, there are several in the sentimental style that leave an impression, Clarice’s act 2 ‘Quanta gente che sospiri’ being perhaps the stand-out example, while his handling of the act finales is assured.

The present recording stems from performances given in the Teatro Thalia in Lisbon and omits some scenes and arias. It is curious, indeed unique in my experience, that while recitatives were recorded in live performance, the musical numbers were not, though there is little difference in acoustic. More fascinating is the experimental manner in which the recitatives were prepared, the cast learning the text but fitting it to music only after hearing the accompaniment in rehearsal. It certainly works in part, for the recits have an immediacy and lively point that is not always the case. Against that there are places where it feels over-played, in particular the silly voices adopted for what is presumably intended as ‘moon-speak’, which soon becomes irritating on record, particularly when no text or translation is available with the set.

The performance is dominated by the splendidly rounded bass of Luis Rodrigues’s Buona Fede, who also turns in a master class in vocal acting, relishing the foolish old man’s gullible antics. There is also some fine singing from the principal young couple, Ecclitico (Fernando Guimarães) and Clarice (Susana Gaspar) and another excellent bass, João Fernandes as the servant Cecco. The period-instrument orchestral playing is decent, if not of outstanding quality and the whole idiomatically directed with considerable verve by Marcos Magalhães. If a certain provincial air hangs over the project, that is more than outweighed by its infectious exuberance, a case of the heart being very much in the right place.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Music for the King of Scots

Inside the Pleasure Palace of James IV
The Binchois Consort, Andrew Kirkman (conductor)
55:17
CDA68333

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This disc consists of the anonymous “Catherine Wheel Mass”, a modern nickname for the Missa Horrenda subdenda rotarum machinamento (previously known as Missa Deus creator omnium) and a Magnificat, also anonymous, both from the Scottish Carver Choirbook, plus Cornysh’s Ave Maria, mater Dei from the later English Eton Choirbook, prefaced by two chants, “Horrendo subdenda” itself and “Dilexisti iustitiam”. As such it is a logical successor to the Consort’s preceding release Music for St Katherine of Alexandria (Hyperion CDA68274), which I reviewed in EMR posted 31 May 2019. A seemingly huge amount of technological, architectural and scientific preparation has gone into the making of this recording, in order to give the listener an experience as close as possible to what it is thought would have been the case in the Chapel Royal at Linlithgow Palace during the 1490s, in the reign of the doomed James IV, killed by the English on Flodden Field in 1513. The project is described in detail in the accompanying booklet.

Now for the small matter of the music. During the week before the arrival of this record, I had the joy of listening to the masses and Lamentations of Alonso Lobo. The Catherine Wheel Mass is of course much earlier and is as audibly mediaeval as Lobo is audibly Renaissance. During a ruminative passage such as the opening of the Sanctus or the conclusion of the Hosanna to the Benedictus with its brief but effective moment of three against two, the Mass can sound as intense as Lobo, but some of its other music sounds clinical and mathematical. Lobo’s consistently ardent works include many passages which are intricately canonical and could also be called mathematical but in comparison, the Catherine Wheel Mass can at times sound like music which could be attractive perhaps more to musicologists, theorists and performers than to rank and file listeners. That said, there are also the likes of two stunning passages near the beginning of the Agnus: a wonderful sequence in two parts around 0’40” and the fabulously warm entry of all four parts around 0’50”. But Ockeghem it is not.

Nor is it Carver. As a member of the Carver Choir of Aberdeen throughout its existence, which included commercial recordings of two of the great man’s masses, I was bitterly disappointed to see that none of his music is included, given the presence of two works from his eponymous Choirbook. At only 55 minutes of music, there was scope for more, and the reason given for the inclusion of Cornysh’s famous motet seems like special pleading when perhaps one motive was to include a well-kent work to partner the premiere of the mass. There is nothing wrong with the recording by Cappella Nova (Gaudeamus GAU 124/6/7) of the complete surviving works of Robert Carver (1487-1565) – still the finest of Scottish composers with all due respects (and there are many of them) to Sir James MacMillan – but such is the quality of Carver’s music that there is room for more interpretations by different sorts of ensembles: for instance, it would be exhilarating to hear the Choir of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh, tackle his Missa Fera pessima a5, not to mention the ten-part Missa Dum sacrum mysterium quoted by Sir James in his excellent fourth symphony (Hyperion CDA68317). Obviously, an ensemble such as the Binchois Consort with seven members was not going to perform O bone Iesu with its nineteen parts, but Carver’s other surviving motet Gaude flore virginali a5 could have replaced Cornysh, which receives a wiry, almost muscular performance with some quirky musica ficta, or better still it could have been added.

The Magnificat is probably English, or it could have been influenced by contemporary English style. There are two such works for four voices in the Carver Choirbook. (The other has been recorded by The Sixteen on their fine disc of Carver’s ten-part mass and O bone Iesu both mentioned above, Coro COR16051). It is an alternatim setting with the chant “harmonised” a4 according to the contemporary Scottish “fourth kind of fabourdoun”; these sections sound enjoyably like mediaeval barbershop … though of superior quality.

Scientifically this is a remarkable project and music has been chosen that is appropriate to it. The singing is technically as good as it could be. Just when the performances seem to be becoming slick, as in some frenetic sections of the Credo, this tendency is trumped by sensitive passages such as the “Dona nobis pacem” concluding the Agnus, besides others in the Credo, plus those also in the Agnus and in the Sanctus, already mentioned. Unlike the unerringly high standard of performance, the quality of the music is uneven, seeming to vary between routine note-spinning and breath-taking inspiration. “The pleasure palace of James IV” sounds somewhat tacky, but the project is driven by an admirable aspiration, at odds with this subtitle, to enable us to hear the music in the way that the monarch would have done. It is a fascinating glimpse of sacred music in Scotland between the famous Scottish Lady Mass c. 1230 (Red Byrd, Hyperion CDA67299) and the phenomenon that was, and is, Robert Carver. As such it is a project well worth investigating.

Richard Turbet

Categories
Recording

Lamento

CD cover of Lamento Damien Guillon Cafe Zimmermann

Damien Guillon countertenor, Café Zimmermann
69:06
Alpha Classics Alpha 626
Music by J. C. & J. M. Bach, Bernhard, Biber, Froberger & Schmelzer

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Few chamber ensembles play the music of Baroque Germany with more authority than Café Zimmermann, and in their latest release they have unearthed some superb music associated with death and mortality – little can they have realised as they recorded the programme in May 2019 how relevant it would have become by the time of its release. The most remarkable aspect of the project is the discovery of so much unfamiliar music of superlative quality, in some cases by composers who are also virtually unknown. Principal amongst these are the two ‘regional’ Bachs, Johann Michael (1648-1694) organist at Gehren, and Johann Christoph (1642-1703), organist at Eisenach. The former is represented by an eloquent strophic aria and the latter by a powerfully expressive lament, both sung expressively by Damien Guillon, who also graces the setting of Psalm 42 by Schütz pupil Christoph Bernhard, as well as a quite mesmerising setting of O dulcis Jesu, attributed to Heinrich Biber. While, as Peter Wollny’s programme note points out, the writing for the obbligato violin in this striking piece is thoroughly Biberesque in style, the vocal writing bears no resemblance to any of Biber’s surviving oeuvre that I know of, and indeed I would be cautious of the attribution of this anonymous piece. And if we are tempted to think cynically of the relationship between Baroque patrons and composers, Schmelzer’s deeply heartfelt “Lamento sopra la morte Ferdinandi III” provides a useful antidote. This is a CD packed with unanticipated melancholy delights, and Café Zimmermann, with their ideal blend of authority and genuine lively curiosity, are the perfect ensemble in whose company to explore it. Perhaps the bravest decision of many is to conclude the disc with Biber’s extraordinary unaccompanied Passacaglia from the Rosenkranzsonaten for solo violin – it is a testimony to the superb technique and musicality of the group’s first violinist, Pablo Valetti, that we are riveted to the last!

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

La revolta de les Germanies

CD cover of Revolta de les germanies Carles Magraner

Revolt of the Brotherhoods: War and peace in the Renaissance
Capella de Ministrers, Carles Magraner
76:47
CdM 2049

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This CD,  marking the 500th anniversary of the uprising of the Guilds in Valencia (the ‘Germanies’ of the title), the Spanish equivalent of the roughly contemporary Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, proves to be a celebration of battle music from the Renaissance. All the old warhorses are here – Isaac’s Alla Battaglia, Susato’s Battle Pavane, the Gervaise Pavanne and Galliarde de la Guerre, Andrea Gabrieli’s Aria della Battaglia (for which the programme note erroneously claims a period instrument premiere performance!) and Hassler’s Battle Intrada and Gagliarda. The rather cavernous acoustic of the church of Sant Miquel dels Reis in Valencia proves problematic for this repertoire. The rather dominant drumming has a tendency to ‘jam’ the other wavelengths, and in tandem with some rather ‘coy’ playing of the wind instruments, the impact of this martial music is dissipated – surely it is clear that this secular battle music for instruments just wouldn’t have been performed in this kind of bathroom acoustic! Things don’t really improve, however, with the addition of the singers, who seem to inhabit an artificial space both too close to the microphones and simultaneously swimming in the larger acoustic. These recording idiosyncrasies cannot be ignored, and this is a great shame, as the repertoire and performances seem generally good, expressive and idiomatic, and the copious supporting notes are fascinating and comprehensive. Some listeners will take exception to the over-busy percussion, including deep drums, cymbals and some sort of tubular bells, but I have to say I found the acoustic more troubling. I would love to have heard these performances by what are clearly fine musicians of intriguing repertoire in a more stable and clear acoustic, where I could have enjoyed their musicianship more thoroughly.

D. James Ross