Category: Recording

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António Pereira da Costa: Concerti Grossi

CD cover António Pereira da Costa Concerti Grossi

Ensemble Bonne Corde: Diana Vinagre
70:39
Ramée Ram 2104

Da Costa was one of the myriad composers having their music printed in London in the middle of the 18th century, and in fact almost nothing is known of him apart from his opus 1 Concerti Grossi published by John Simpson in 1741. Some of the few references suggest he was an ordained priest of Portuguese origin and born around 1697, and while it is just possible that he visited London without leaving a trace, it is more likely that he remained in Portugal, part of the time as Chapel Master of the Cathedral of Funchal in Madiera, publishing his music ‘at a distance’. While this may have been a shrewd move commercially as London was riding a wave of published Concerti Grossi, including Handel’s op 3 and op 6, all of which were in turn cashing in on the previous success of Corelli’s op 6, it came with its own hazards. Da Costa would certainly have encountered the latest sets of Concerti Grossi, including those of Corelli in his native Portugal, and certainly used the latter as models. Unfortunately, not being in situ for the publication of his own opus 1 set led to an edition peppered with errors, and while the concertino cello parts for the set would surely have been published along with the ripieno parts, they have subsequently disappeared – they have been expertly reconstructed  for the present recording by Fernando Miguel Jalôto. The circumstances of its publication would surely have doomed this music to obscurity were it not of such high quality. These recordings of half of the set make it clear that da Costa was an important talent with a sound compositional technique but also strikingly original ideas, which one would be tempted to identify as distinctively Iberian – ‘tropical Baroque’ to use the evocative phrase from the CD sleeve. Certainly, the performers are not averse to adding Iberian flavours in the form of lively cross-rhythms and the texture of the guitar. It is doubtful whether da Costa ever heard his opus 1 Concerti performed by orchestral forces, since it seems unlikely Funchal Cathedral would have been able muster the necessary players – intriguing then that he was able to digest the essence of the Concerto Grosso from the sources available to him and then infuse it with such inventive and imaginative elements in his head. 

D. James Ross

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Recording

Giuseppe Agus: Sonate a violino solo e basso

CD cover Quartetto Vanvitelli Giuseppe Agus

Quartetto Vanvitelli
68:20
Arcana A531

The name of Giuseppe Agus was new to me. After a degree of disambiguation, Miriam Quaquero – who wrote the excellent programme note for this CD – has been able to distinguish Gabriel Joseph Antonio Agus and Giuseppe (later Joseph) Agus father and son, musicians from Sardinia who lived and worked in London in the second half of the 18th century. In 1751 the son published his opus 1, a set of six sonatas for solo violin and BC, recorded in their entirety here by the Quartetto Vanvitalli with Gian Andrea Guerra playing the solo violin accompanied by a continuo group comprising cello, archlute and harpsichord. Guerra takes an attractively free and confident approach to Agus’s quirky, individualistic music, exploring fully its elegant nuances and unexpected melodic features, in which he is ably supported by the continuo group. In later years, Agus branched out into larger scale compositions including opera, and by necessity became like Handel an impresario and businessman. Notwithstanding artistic success, not unlike Handel, his musical business suffered bankruptcy, and he fled to France where he spent his final years. It is interesting to see how often 18th-century London provided the impetus for the production of superbly inspired music, but also frequently led to the financial ruin of its performers and composers. These spirited accounts of Agus’s opus 1 Sonatas certainly whet the appetite for more of his music.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Italian Sonatas 1730 – Remembering Naples and Venice

CD cover Italian Sonatas 1730 – Remembering Naples and Venice

Sabrina Frey, Philippe Grisvard
59:05
TYXart TXA 21166

This is a spectacular recital by two of the great exponents of their instruments, recorder virtuoso Sabrina Frey and Philippe Grisvard a leading harpsichordist. Playing a selection of instruments, copies by Ernst Meyer of originals in F , G and D by Jakob Denner, and a lovely descant recorder by Andreas Schwob, Frey demonstrates her simply stunning technique, but also her unerring sense of phrasing and lyricism. This is a masterclass not only in recorder playing but also in musicianship. I am not sure I have ever heard such a clear and firm sound across the whole range of the recorder, even in rapidly moving passages. Frey’s uniformly rounded tone complements perfectly her complete mastery of her instruments, providing utterly persuasive accounts of these 18th-century Italian sonatas and sinfonias. Some are by familiar masters such as Giuseppe Sammartini, Antonio Vivaldi and Alessandro Scarlatti, while others are the work of more obscure composers of the period such as Ignazio Sieber, Giacomo (possibly Lodovico) Ferronati and Francesco Mancini – such is the depth of compositional talent in Italy in the 18th century that the work of these less familiar musicians is still wonderfully accomplished. One of the great joys of the CD is the interaction of these two superlative musicians – Phillipe Grisvard plays a copy by Markus Krebs of an original harpsichord of around 1700 by Michael Mietke which has a very full sound, but the balance is perfect throughout and the two performers move as one and with a shared concept of each piece. I loved this CD and have been inspired to head off to practise my recorders!

D. James Ross

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Recording

La Barre: Pour être heureux en amour

CD cover La Barre Pour etre heureux en amour

Claire Lefilliâtre soprano, Luc Bertin-Hugault bass, Les Épopées, directed by Stéphane Fuget
77:06
Ramée RAM 2302

‘The true character of those who love is composed of tenderness and plaintiveness. They possess a languid air […]. All the words of a true lover, even if he is not unhappy, always have a plaintive tone’. Thus the Abbé Charles Cottin in his Œuvres galantes (Paris, 1665). It’s an eloquent description, perhaps rather more appropriate to what we hear on the present disc than its given title – For Happiness in Love.

The songs here belong to the category of airs serieux, works designed for the salons of Paris and which may be seen as a monodic successor to the fundamentally polyphonic air de cour. They are by Joseph Chabanceau de La Barre, a member of a distinguished French musical family active in the 17th century. Like his father Pierre he was an organist of the chapelle royale at Notre Dame in Paris, but otherwise he appears to be a somewhat shadowy figure. His Airs a deux parties avec les second couplets en diminution were published in 1669, the two parts therefore referring not to the vocal disposition, which is mostly intended for solo voice, but to a form in which the second part, or verse is decorated in a manner designed to allow the singer to display his or her technique. It’s a process that will be familiar to anyone that understands the doubles attached to French dances of the Baroque period, double simply meaning variant.

Perhaps the most important point to stress is that though these may be salon songs, they are mostly of the utmost sophistication, calling as they do not only for refined, sensitive elegance, but equally acute sensitivity and interpretative finesse. It is such qualities that are especially in evidence in these performances, which also employ 17th-century pronunciation. Stéphane Fuget is at the forefront of making us more aware of the importance of expressing text in Baroque music, specifically the operas of Monteverdi, having recorded all three of the composer’s extant dramatic works. Soprano Claire Lefilliâtre, who sings most of the airs, is a thoroughly experienced Baroque specialist who has worked extensively with Fuget and here responds to the interpretative demands of the airs to near ideal effect, singing with exactly the kind of freedom they require. Listen, to the declamatory pain she finds in ‘Forêts solitaires et sombres’ (track 2), the desolate cry of the abandoned lover to the emptiness of the forest wilderness. Here, as throughout, Lefilliâtre uses the text as a springboard to discover the eloquence within the music, bending the music to respond through the use of such devices as rubato and portamento. And it is important to stress that these songs need this kind of interpretative input if they are not to emerge as polite salon music belying their texts. In the songs to which he contributes, bass Luc Bertin- Hugault is also highly effective in his interpretative gestures – listen to his portamento in the anguished pain of ‘Ah! je sens que mon coeur’ – even if his slightly grainy voice is not of the most beautiful quality.

Several of the airs are given instrumental performances by the supporting members of Les Épopées (two bass viols, theorbo and harpsichord) while Fuget himself contributes bewitching performances of three keyboard pieces by La Barre on a lovely unidentified instrument. This is an important issue, one that makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the music and interpretation of French secular music of the 17th century.

Brian Robins

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Recording

From Rome to Vilnius

CD cover From Rome to Vilnius

Canto Fiorito, directed by Rodrigo Calveyra
51:02
Brilliant Classics 97227

This attractive CD is based on sacred and secular music, which is featured in the Sapieha album of music associated with the Vasa Court in Vilnius. The composers were mainly Roman, but many had served at one time or another as Kapellmeister to Sigismund III in Poland and Vilnius. The list of composers includes the familiar and the unfamiliar: Annibale Stabile, Asprillio Pacelli, Giovanni Anerio, Marco Scacchi, Barthomiej Pekiel, Diomedes Cato, Tarquinio Merula and Francesco Rognoni. The repertoire ranges from large-scale sacred settings for voices and instruments to small sets of instrumental variations. The playing and singing of Canto Fiorito is of a very high standard, while the recording venue – appropriately the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania in Vilnius – provides a rich full acoustic to allow the music to bloom. The group’s director has reconstructed a missing bass part for Merula’s Benedicta tu allowing it to be recorded here for the first time. This varied programme reflects the cultural richness of the Baltic states at the end of the 16th century and during the first part of the 17th century. Based in Vilnius, this fine consort is symptomatic of the flourishing early music scene in Eastern Europe.

D. James Ross

 

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Recording

Christoph Graupner: Christ lag in Todesbanden

CD Cover Graupner Christ lag in Todesbanden

Complete Cantatas for two sopranos and bass
Marie Luise Werneburg, Hanna Zumsande, Dominik Wörner, Kirchheimer BachConsort, directed by Florian Heyerick
78:43
cpo 555 557-2

Best known to history as one of the many failed applicants for the job of Thomaskantor in Leipzig when Bach secured the post, he first came to my attention as the composer of some of the earliest concertos for chalumeaux. The fact that Graupner spent fifty years composing for the court in Darmstadt meant that most of his compositions are on the modest scale befitting a court chapel – one of the main reasons he failed to secure the Leipzig job – while he was largely overlooked by ensuing generations. These cantatas for two sopranos and bass voices with strings and occasionally wind, although sadly not chalumeaux, are charming compositions making imaginative use of their limited forces. The singers on this CD seem to be enjoying Graupner’s idiomatic vocal turn of phrase, and respond intelligently and musically to his innate sense of drama. The strings and wind play one to a part, allowing for an admirable clarity and reflecting the likely custom in the modest context of Darmstadt. Graupner was only J S Bach’s senior by two years, but their music is very different indeed, and this attractive CD of Graupner’s church music underlines the variety of styles employed by German composers at the time. It is interesting to think how a lifetime composing church music in Darmstadt contributed to Graupner’s very sure compositional hand and rich musical vocabulary, and also allows us to engage in some gratuitous what-ifs had the decision of the Thomaskirche committee gone in another direction.

D. James Ross

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Bravura: Repertoire for natural horn and pianoforte

CD cover of Bravura

Louis-Pierre Bergeron horn, Meagan Milatz fortepiano
70:01
ATMA ACD2 2864

Perhaps the only familiar name on this recital of music for natural horn and piano is that of Beethoven, who is represented by his opus 17 Sonata. The other composers, Vincenzo Righini, Cipriani Potter, Nikolaus Freiherr van Krufft are largely unknown, while Franz Xavier Süssmayr is largely remembered as the man who completed Mozart’s Requiem. The common denominator among them all is unsurprisingly Vienna, to which they all gravitated at one time or another. The Beethoven is a recognised masterpiece of the genre, composed for the virtuoso Giovanni Punto, although it was probably Beethoven’s publisher Nikolaus Simmrock, also a horn player, who provided him with the necessary advice on how to write idiomatically for the instrument. Potter’s Sonata di Bravura (which provides us with the eye-catching CD title) is also associated with a horn virtuoso, Giovanni Puzzi, but it is as much the virtuoso piano part, presumably designed to show off the composer’s keyboard skills, that make this piece so attractive. In addition to playing the repertoire with admirable expressiveness and indeed bravura, the performers have made an astute choice of repertoire, and in addition to the Beethoven at least one piece – the Potter – is a considerable masterpiece deserving of further attention. Clearly horn players who have the Beethoven safely in their repertoire need to go in search of further gems in the wealth of repertoire from the same period. Bergeron plays a copy of a pre-classical valveless Viennese horn by Anton Kerner, while for the Beethoven, Krufft and Potter he plays a copy of a slightly later instrument by Lucien-Joseph Raoux, both of which have rich and flexible tone. Milatz plays a fine copy of a Viennese fortepiano of around 1792 by Anton Walter. The extensive programme notes include a fascinating essay by Claude Maury on the valveless horn.

D. James Ross

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Chansons musicales, Paris 1533

CD cover Chansons musicales, Paris 1533

Zephyrus Flutes led by Nancy Hadden
58:56
crd 3548

The 50th anniversary of the crd label provides the perfect reason for the rerelease of this 2013 recording by flautist Nancy Hadden and her consort, Zephyrus Flutes. The most groundbreaking aspect of this performance is the fact that it presents a lovely selection of Renaissance French chansons played on a consort of Renaissance flutes or alternatively played on solo flute with lute accompaniment, or consort with lute interspersed with music for solo lute. Where we might be more accustomed to hearing this repertoire played on a consort of recorders, the sound of three Renaissance tenor flutes and a bass flute is strikingly different in texture and timbre, which when I originally reviewed this CD I found instantly attractive. The solo flute playing is beautifully nuanced, while the consort with and without lute achieves a lovely blend. The group’s lutanist, none other than Jacob Heringman, adds his own customary musicality and technical virtuosity to this selection. The repertoire is drawn from Pierre Attaignant’s Chansons Musicales of 1533 in editions for flute consort by Nancy Hadden, while the lute solos are from roughly contemporary collections by Francesco da Milano, Pierre Phalèse, Hans Newsiedler and Vincenzo Galilei. Neither flautists nor lutanist are happy with obvious repertoire, and they all range far and wide through their chosen sources in search of the less familiar. I remember being struck ten years ago by how accessible this repertoire is and the sound of flutes and lute combined has stuck very firmly in my memory. I am not aware of this CD having a lasting legacy in the form of the formation of rival flute consorts, but it is lovely and thought-provoking to have it re-released in 2024.

D. James Ross

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Recording

W A Mozart: Fantasy

CD cover Mozart Fantasy Florent Albrecht

Florent Albrecht
78:24
Trihort 585

Playing a Baumbach pianoforte of 1780, Florent Albrecht presents a programme of Mozart’s four fantasies for solo piano, bringing under the same umbrella three preludes, as well as a further “Mozart Fantasy” reconstructed by himself. There is an interesting record from 1785 of Mozart playing fantasies for his fellow Masons, and it is highly plausible that this exploratory and improvisatory music would have appealed particularly to this inner circle of deep-thinking connoisseurs. Albrecht’s accounts emphasise the spontaneous nature of this music, managing to make it sound as if he is discovering its secrets alongside his audience. He makes imaginative use of the different textures available on his chosen instrument, a remarkable survivor from a bygone age – it was the property of the Abbé of Vermont, tutor and confessor to Marie-Antoinette, and unlike these two people who are very likely to have played it, it survived the French Revolution to be restored to its original state in 2013 by Olivier Fadini. It produces a remarkably rich array of timbres, which Albrecht exploits to the full in these flamboyant accounts of some of Mozart’s most imaginative piano music. With many composers from the Baroque era onwards, we are painfully aware of the wealth of improvised music, which took many composers to the very limits of their creative talents, but which by definition often existed only in the moment. Fantasies such as these are treasures, preserved by random chance, and the main strength of these recordings is the way in which Albrecht expressively unfolds each piece, much as Mozart may have done in the rarefied setting of his Masonic Lodge.

D. James Ross

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Recording

A Bach & Abel Concert

CD cover A Bach and Abel concert

Catherine Zimmer Merlin square piano 1784
Music by K F Abel, J C & C P E Bach, Haydn, Lachnith, [Maria Hester] Park & Stanley
62:00
encelade ECL2401

The year is 1784 and in London the inventor John Joseph Merlin and the Gray brothers have come up with one of the more bizarre offshoots of the development of the piano – a square piano combined with an organ. There was a considerable taste for novelty at this time among the spoiled metropolitan musical public, with an account of one musician in fancy dress and on roller skates performing on the violin before destroying a valuable mirror, his instrument and himself! Remarkably the 1784 Merlin Organised Piano has survived, and it is on this fully restored novelty that Catherine Zimmer presents a recital of music from the time which might just have been played on it. In addition to the promised works by JC and CPE Bach and Abel, we have music by Haydn as well as more obscure repertoire by John Hook, Maria Hesther Park and Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith. Opinions will be divided as to whether a combined sound of piano and organ is even desirable, and some listeners may be distracted by the necessary clanking of the mechanism as Zimmer switches among the various available timbres. I have to say I found this inclusion of the ‘mechanics’ both honest and engaging, particularly when on one track they are joined by the chirping of sparrows, and I even found myself warming to the virtues of the ‘organised piano’. It is perhaps significant that prior to its extensive restoration in 2020, this remarkable instrument had been subjected to ongoing work, suggesting that it had never fallen entirely out of use. At any rate, it is fascinating finally to hear an instrument which hitherto had only been heard about, and particularly when it is in the hands of an expert pianist/organist such as Catherine Zimmer.

D. James Ross