Category: Recording

Gian Andrea Guerra violin, Nicola Brovelli cello, Matteo Cicchitti violone, Luigi Accardo harpsichord
77:00
Arcana A111
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Mascitti: Sonate a violino solo e basso, Opera Nona
Quartetto Vantivelli (Gian Andrea Guerra violin, Nicola Brovelli cello, Mauro Pinciaroli archlute, Luigi Accardo harpsichord)
68:43
Arcana A473
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By the time he published his 12 sonatas for violin and continuo, opus 8, in Paris in 1731, Michele Mascitti was 67 years old and already well established in the Parisian musical scene as a composer and performer. Originating in a musical family in Naples, Mascitti had found his milieu in Paris in the early 18^th century, where his playing won him considerable acclaim in courtly and then mercantile circles. The sonatas are pleasantly tuneful, and effortlessly combine elements of the French and Italian schools. Here we hear eight of the original set of twelve, played stylishly in the mannerist manner by the Quartetto Vanvitelli, who, in recording the majority of both these printed sets of sonatas, have clearly become very familiar with Mascitti’s rather laid-back but entertaining idiom.

Michele Mascitti’s opus 9 sonatas are something of a summing-up of the composer’s varied career to 1738 – he would live a further twenty years dying at the extraordinary age of 96. These sonatas, again eight of a set of twelve, speak of melodic assurance and originality – perhaps the secret of their enduring popularity is that they are essentially never too demanding on performers or audience, and yet never seem to lapse into cliché or formula. They are played here with considerable elegance and musicality by violinist Gian Andrea Guerra, ably supported by his continuo team. Towards the end of his long life, Mascitti gave up composition – perhaps, like Sibelius, he had just said all he wanted to say, but I would like to think that, like Rossini, he simply found time for the many other pleasures of life. That is certainly the frame of mind that this avuncular, easy-going music seems to suggest. It is this relaxed ambience, which the Quartetto Vanvitelli captures perfectly in their performances on both these CDs.

D. James Ross

Elinor Frey with Mauro Valli cello, Federica Bianchi harpsichord, Giangiacomo Pinardi archlute
62:27
passacaille PAS 1069

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Although Giuseppe Clemente Dall’Abaco’s sonatas for unaccompanied cello have enjoyed something of a revival in cello circles, these charming and inventive sonatas with continuo are still not widely appreciated. These beautifully poised performances by Elinor Frey and her continuo team should certainly rectify that. The opening D-minor Sonata has movements in imitation of the gamba and archlute which are simply beguiling, while later we are treated to an evocation of the Italian rustic bagpipe, the Zampogna. Dall’Abaco’s varied career saw him briefly visit the crowded musical setting of early 18^th-century London, before retreating to Verona to pursue a career in performance and composition. The wider dissemination of Dall’Abaco’s music for cello has been complicated by the publication by Martin Berteau, the father of the French cello school, of some of his music in versions decorated by Berteau for his own performances, which has led to confusion regarding their authorship. Work by Ulrich Iser has served to clarify the situation, as well as differentiating the work of Dall’Abaco and his father, and the works recorded here are all in their original versions by Dall’Abaco ‘junior’ and labelled with Iser’s catalogue numbers ABV 18, 19, 30, 32 and 35. The playing here is beautifully detailed and effortlessly virtuosic, while the occasional use of a second cello and an archlute in the continuo line-up provides some enjoyably rich textures.

D. James Ross

Anne-Suse Enßle recorder, Reinhard Führer harpsichord
67:46
Audax Records ADX13719
Music by Albinoni, J. S. Bach, F. Couperin, Goldberg & Telemann

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This is a delightful ‘what if?’ of a CD. What if an 18^th-century recorder virtuoso had happened into Leipzig in the 1730s and inevitably drifted into the orbit of J. S. Bach and his Collegium Musicum at the Caffe-Hauß Zimmermann? So impressed would the great master have been that he would have devised a programme around the player, incorporating and arranging his own music as well as that of his contemporaries and pupils, much as we know that he did in other contexts. While this may well never have happened in reality, there is no reason to rule it out, and the recorder player Anne-Suse Enßle and her harpsichord accompanist Reinhard Führer have devised a splendidly entertaining and entirely plausible programme. Compositions and arrangements by Bach rub shoulders with original recorder music by Albinoni and Bach’s student. Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, doomed to be forever associated with the eponymous variations by Bach, but a fine composer and virtuoso in his own right. The final work on the CD is the enigmatic Sonata BWV 1033, known as ‘The Patchwork’ as it appears to have been cobbled together from various Bach sources. Barthold Kuijken first proposed the idea that it might be a homage by his pupils to the great master, compiled precisely perhaps for performance in Zimmermann’s. Anne-Suse Enßle employs a battery of six different recorders in her bravura account of this imaginative and musically satisfying programme, and she is superbly supported by Reinhard Führer on a 1981 Kroesbergen harpsichord based on Flemish models. If the context is something of a fantasy, then we are surely entitled to conjure up an enthusiastic Zimmerman’s audience, who between cups of steaming coffee would have thoroughly enjoyed this rich and varied programme and this stellar performance.

D. James Ross

Johannes Pramsohler, Gulrim Choï, Philippe Grisvard
68:40
Audas Records ADX13720

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Pieter Hellendaal’s immigration to England in 1751 from Rotterdam, after a period of training in Padua, comes at the end of a long period which saw continental composers, and in particular violinists, flocking to London. Whether Hellendaal found London already too crowded with musicians and therefore competitive for his taste, he continued into the provinces, coming to rest in Cambridge, which seems to have suited his nature much better. Either due to his provincial environs or through natural inclination, his surviving music is rather conservative for its time and two sets of violin sonatas (published in Amsterdam in the 1740s) and a set of Concerti Grossi (1758), judged to be the equal of Handel’s and bold and confident compositions indeed (available on Channel Classics CCS3492), must have seemed a little ‘old hat’ as the 18^th century advanced. A later set of Cello Sonatas (1780) shows little concession to modernity. The present sonatas, the first six of a set of eleven preserved in manuscript in Cambridge, are imaginative and display a thorough understanding of the violin. Perhaps living and working in Cambridge allowed Hellendaal to ‘do his own thing’ rather than being overshadowed by the growing reputation of Handel in London. These performances are wonderfully expressive, and soloist Johannes Pramsohler’s virtuosic violin playing is sympathetically supported by his excellent continuo team. There is a feeling that this is music at the end of a long and noble tradition, but it constitutes a rich, late flowering of a school of violin playing and composition, which had begun in Italy more than a century previously and spread so fruitfully throughout Europe. These are all world premier recordings, and perhaps provide a gateway into the composer’s neglected oeuvre – I note with sadness a lost clarinet overture and a clarinet trio.

D. James Ross