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Monteverdi: Il Terzo Libro de’ Madrigali

Concerto Italiano Monteverdi terzo libro

Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini
64:33
naïve OP 30580

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Monteverdi’s appointment to the court of Mantua in 1590 or 1591 brought to the young composer new opportunities, not the least of which was contact with the Mantuan maestro di cappella Giaches de Wert, one of the great madrigalists of the day, and two of the greatest poets active at of the end of the 16th century: Giovanni Guarini and Torquato Tasso, both occasional visitors to Mantua. Monteverdi’s arrival was also near- coincidental with the recent succession to the duchy of Vincenzo Gonzago, whose expansion of court musical activity included the establishment of a consort of singers modelled on the famous ‘concerto delle dame’ in the rival court at Ferrara.

Put all the above ingredients into the mixer and you arrive at Monteverdi’s third book of madrigals, Il terzo libro de’ madrigali, published in 1592. For Guarini, whose erotic poetry provided the bulk of Monteverdi’s settings in Book 3, and the taste for the sensual combination of high voices established at Ferrara it is necessary to look no further than the delicate tapestry of the first half of the opening madrigal, ‘La giovinetta pianta’, the luminescent texture employed in talking of ‘the tender young plant’ perhaps less potent than in more serious texts but sensuous none the less. All the madrigals in Book 3 are scored for five voices, still of course a cappella at this point in the composer’s development. One of the remarkable features is the manner in which Monteverdi consistently alternates contrasts of colour between high and low voices and texture between polyphony and homophony, nearly always to dramatic purpose. These characteristics are well illustrated in the final madrigal of the collection, the two-part ‘Rimanti in pace’, to a text by Livio Celiano, a pen name for Angelo Grillo. The declamatory poem is part direct speech and part narrative, the composer clearly differentiating the two by giving the parting Tirso’s departing words to his Fillida, ‘Stay and peace be with you’, given to upper voices, while those narrated are darker and more homophonic. The brief cycle comes to a shattering conclusion with the reiteration of Fillida’s unbearably poignant motif, ‘Deh, cara anima mia’ (Tell me, dear heart of mine … who takes you from me?).

Such settings mark a foretaste of the innate dramatic gifts that would eventually lead to Monteverdi becoming the first great opera composer. They are even more in evidence in a pair of three-part cycles in which the text is drawn from episodes in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, the first, ‘Vattene pur crudel’ describing the fury and then torment of Armida deserted by Rinaldo, the second the distress of the Christian knight Tancredi after he has killed the Saracen warrior-maiden Clorinda, a topic to which Monteverdi would return memorably in Book 8 almost fifty years later. The former, again a declamatory alternation of direct speech and narrative, the latter vividly descriptive at the point at the end of part 2, where Armida, faint from extreme emotion, lapses into unconsciousness as quiet dissonance takes over before the third part opens with a magical evocation of ‘nothing but empty silence all about her’ greets the reviving Armida.

The madrigal ensemble of Rinaldo Alessandrini’s Concerto Italiano has gone through several reincarnations since he first started recording Monteverdi’s madrigals. Indeed Alessandro reminds us in a booklet note that it is fifteen years since his last complete madrigal book recording (Book 6). The present ensemble is at least a match for any of its predecessors, with both individuality – the two leading sopranos, Francesca Cassinari and Monica Piccinini, have pleasingly differentiated voices – and an excellent blend that retains enough clarity to allow contrapuntal strands to stand out clearly. Diction and articulation, too, are excellent. Just once or twice I did wonder if Alessandrini was making a little too much of tempo contrasts (‘O primavera’ is an example), but such doubts are rapidly banished within the context of such exceptionally musical performances.

Brian Robins        

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Recording

Josquin: Masses

The Tallis Scholars complete their survey of Josquin's masses

Hercules Dux Ferrarie, D’ung altre amer, Faysant regretz
The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips
71:40
Gimell CDGIM 051

October 2020!
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This is the final disc in The Tallis Scholars’ complete recording of Josquin des Pres’s masses. Perhaps it is just as well, because this reviewer is running out of superlatives for the music itself and for this choir’s performances of it. Peter Phillips makes substantial claims for these works in his accompanying notes, and it could indeed be said that, so varied is Josquin’s treatment of the Mass text throughout the entire series, many of the eighteen works could almost seem to have been composed by different composers. (Indeed, the Josquin canon has come under intense musicological scrutiny in recent decades, and Missa Da pacem, included in the series, is more likely to have been composed by Bauldeweyn, notwithstanding conflicting attributions to Josquin. This is clearly stated in the recording’s booklet.) This final disc provides some of the knottiest music in the series, and some of the most challenging for the listener. Much of it is music of obsession, with Josquin’s repeated use of one particular motif of four notes in Missa Faysant regretz set beside the egomania of Ercole I d’Este of Ferrera, dedicatee of Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie. To illustrate this one can do no better than to quote Peter Phillips’s note in the accompanying booklet: “To understand how this Mass is constructed it is necessary only to remember that Duke Ercole liked to hear his name sung obviously and often. To this end Josquin took his name and title, HERCULES DUX FERRARIE, and turned their vowels into music by way of the solmisation syllables of the Guidonian hexachord, giving a very neat little melody: … re ut re ut re fa mi re … He then writes these eight notes to be sung 47 times …” The remaining piece Missa D’ung aultre amer is the antithesis of such constructions, being an essay in brevity and simplicity based upon one of Ockeghem’s finest chansons, no doubt as an act of homage by Josquin to the man who might have been his teacher.

A digression. Having seen the British gentleman I am about to mention with his wife at a concert of music by Byrd in the Wigmore Hall, London, a few years ago, I will of course no longer hear a word said against him, but I cannot resist mentioning the resemblance of Ercole, whose portrait is reproduced on the front of the accompanying booklet, to the prominent politician Lord Heseltine. I draw no conclusion other than that they share an ability to appreciate great Renaissance composers.

And as Byrd said of his own music in 1611, “a song that is well and artificially made cannot be well perceived nor understood at the first hearing, but the oftner you shall heare it, the better cause of liking you will discover.” Repeated hearings of the music on this disc keep revealing its felicitous qualities. The obsessive aspects of the music become part of a bigger, broader musical picture as Josquin manipulates them to support the overall construction and rhetoric of his masses. As Peter Phillips notes in his booklet, approaching the point from a slightly different direction, this is strikingly illustrated in the third Agnus of Missa Faysant regretz where, for the only time in the work, Josquin has the sopranos sing the complete superius line from the rondeau by Walter Frye (one source has Binchois) on which the mass is based, over the intricate counterpoint in the three lower parts. Missa D’ung aultre amer is eccentric. A remarkably brief Gloria clocks in at below two minutes, with a motet Tu solus qui facis mirabilia replacing the Benedictus, the final section of which, “Audi nostra suspiria”, begins with a striking passage in the style of mediaeval faburden, comparable with a similar briefer moment at “qui locutus est” in the Credo of the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie, and the entire mass concludes with an exquisite cadence.

For all Ercole’s entitled narcissism, it is mountainously to the credit of Josquin that his mass can be appreciated on its own terms as a piece of music without an awareness – or at least without taking any notice – of the repetitions of the autarchic Ercole’s name, no more than one needs to focus upon the plainsong while listening to an In nomine. In the accompanying booklet, Peter Phillips notes favourite passages in this and the other masses. These are the insights of someone who has conducted and indeed lived these eighteen works, experiencing them profoundly from the inside. From the humble outside, I would particularly mention the many wonderful passages in two parts in this mass, particularly “pleni sunt caeli” from the Sanctus, and all the duets in the first Agnus. Overall it is one of the major masses in this remarkable series.

The series began with what was even then almost frighteningly fine performances of the Missae Pange lingua and La sol fa mi re. The former gained all the attention, but for this listener it was the latter which left me even more astonished at both the music and the performance: I expected Pange lingua to be great, but was taken aback at the quality of a work more from the margins of Josquin’s output, its qualities laid bare by the forensically beautiful singing of The Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips. And here they still are, 34 years later, doing a major work full justice and laying bare the glories of two more of those marginal masses.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

C F C Fasch: Works for Keyboard

Philippe Grisvard plays keyboard music by Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch Audax Records

Philippe Grisvard fortepiano attrib. Stein (c1790)
64:46
Audax Records ADX13725

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Anyone who knows me knows my reputation as a Fasch scholar; that is to say that I am considered something of an expert on the music of Johann Friedrich Fasch, who took half a dozen gap years after his studies in Leipzig before accepting the position of Kapellmeister to the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, which he held until his death in 1758. Only two years before he passed away, his son – whose keyboard music is recorded here for the first time – moved to take up the position of second harpsichordist at the Prussian court of the king we English speakers call Frederick the Great, where he alternated with C. P. E. Bach in accompanying the monarch’s performances on flute. But he did much more besides, primary among his achievements being the foundation of the great choral society, the Berlin Singakademie.

When the focus of conferences held in Zerbst has shifted from the father to the son, I must confess that I have not had much enthusiasm; where the older man’s music speaks directly to me, the little I had heard of the younger Fasch’s music always seemed to start well but not have enough to sustain it. This new CD has forced me to challenge that opinion. Grisvard presents a composer who is full of ideas, and clearly an excellent keyboard player! The three three-movement sonatas each have their own character, and the shorter character pieces are full of wit and drama; they are not quite as arresting as some of his colleague Bach’s more daringly chromatic music, but they do sometimes surprise the listener, which can only be a good thing! Anything they could do, Grisvard can, too – this recital (ending with what was the composer’s most celebrated keyboard piece, am Ariette with 14 variations) is an outstanding display of virtuosity, but also a demonstration of commitment, drawing out a profundity to some of the darker music that I had thought Fasch incapable of. The fact that he studied with Johann Wilhelm Hertel, whose chamber music, in particular, reveals a similarly melancholic streak, is telling; he was also praised for his stylish improvised accompaniments by the violinist Franz Benda, showing that he was spontaneously brilliant. These might equally describe Grisvard’s approach – and cause us to regret Fasch’s decision later in life to destroy many of his manuscripts. As usual with Audax, the presentation is classy and meticulous.

If M. Grisvard felt inclined to follow this recording up with a disc of sonatas by J. W. Hertel (especially with the same recording engineer), I for one would not complain.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Music is the Cure

La Ninfea's Musical Medicine Chest

Or La Ninfea’s Musical Medicine Chest
Minko Ludwig tenor, La Ninfea
67:10
Perfect Noise PN1904

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Music by Henry Purcell, Anthony Holborne, Giles Farnaby, Lully, Marais, Charpentier and Tobias Hume is linked here by traditional tunes and improvised divisions in a regular chemist’s shop of sickness and cures. La Ninfea have trawled far and wide through the music of the Renaissance and the early Baroque to find pieces with medical resonances and have come up with a pleasing programme on their theme, which includes some familiar and unfamiliar songs and instrumental music, ranging from the predictable Purcell glees to unanticipated dips into French Baroque opera. There is an engaging contemplative quality about their accounts here, particularly in the very free divisions, which almost take on the ambience of improvisatory jazz. The playing is generally very convincing, and the blend between the instruments and with the voice pleasant and persuasive. I like the way the improvisatory quality of the divisions seems to spill over and pervade all of the tracks. The dance movements have an involving swing to them, while the performers seem to enjoy exploring the textural potential of their instruments.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Mascitti: Sonate a violino solo e basso, opera ottava

Mascitti violin sonatas on two discs op 8 and op 9

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 18th 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

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Recording

G C Dall’Abaco: Cello Sonatas

Elinor Frey plays cello sonatas by G C Dall'Abaco

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 18th-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

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Recording

Caffe=Hauß Zimmermann

CD cover Caffe=Hauß Zimmermann

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 18th-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

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Recording

Draghi: El Prometeo

CD cover of Draghi El prometeo

Fabio Trümpy, Scott Conner, Mariana Flores, Giussepina Bridelli, Borja Quiza, Zachary Wilder, Ana Quintans, Kamil Ben Hsaïn Lachiri, Victor Torrès, Anna Reinhold, Alejandro Meerapfel, Lucía Martín-Cartón, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo Gracía Alarcón
128:34 (2 CDs in a card tryptych)
Alpha Classics Alpha 582

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Antonio Draghi’s opera on the Prometheus legend sets his own libretto and was first performed in Vienna in 1669 in honour of the birthday of the Queen of Spain, a member of the House of Habsburg. In addition to translating his libretto from Italian into Spanish for the occasion, Draghi introduces several Spanish features into his setting, but essentially he is transplanting the Venetian operatic tradition to Vienna, where it will flourish and flow so successfully into the classical operatic masterpieces of the late 18th century. This important opera has been prevented from taking its proper place in the operatic canon by dint of the shocking fact that Draghi’s music for Act 3 has disappeared without trace! The present ‘complete’ recording has been possible only after the intervention of the director Leonardo García Alarcón, whose Promethean ‘recomposition’ of the missing music has brought the opera back to life. Recorded in the Dijon Opera house as part of an extended tour, the CDs manage to capture an authentic ambience without any extraneous noises. As is so often the case when works are reconstructed, the most remarkable passages turn out to be in the original score, and this is definitely true here as in the remarkably adventurous chorus which concludes Act II. Here and elsewhere, Draghi shows himself to be a harmonically daring composer, as well as a considerable master of the lyrical melody and the dramatically charged ensemble. Alarcón has assembled an excellent line-up of soloists and a splendid chorus for this recording, and you can tell that this recording has matured as a staged production. They are ably accompanied by the instrumental Cappella Mediterranea in a recording which should do much to restore this overlooked opera and its remarkable composer to their rightful place in the operatic pantheon.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Vivaldi: Concerti per flauto

CD cover Antonini plays Vivaldi Concerti per flauto

Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico
59:45
Alpha Classics Alpha 384

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These are tempestuous and stunningly virtuosic performances of Vivaldi’s RVs 433, 441, 442, 443, 444 and 445 by one of the finest Baroque ensembles of the moment and one of the most impressive recorder virtuosi. Giovanni Antonini employs a sopranino recorder for the  ‘flautino’ concertos and a treble recorder for the ‘flauto’ ones, both of which he plays with eye-watering skill and musicality, ably supported by Il Giardino Armonico, which he also directs. The playing is so deft and expressive from soloist and ensemble that the listener’s attention is seized at the very opening of the CD and never allowed to wander. The famous concerto ‘La Tempesta di Mare’ has never sounded more exciting, but neither have any of the others! Antonini’s photo on the cover is consciously or unconsciously reminiscent of the younger Franz Brüggen, and none is more entitled to associate himself with this earlier recorder virtuoso. Almost as an afterthought, Antonini takes to the chalumeau for a contrasting account of the rather lugubrious ‘Cum dederit’ from the ‘Nisi Dominus’ RV 608, and annoyingly he’s a pretty good chalumist too! This is an impressive CD in every respect and a useful antidote either to the type of lackadaisical approach you hear sometimes to Vivaldi, or worse still the recent vogue in ‘mucking about’ with his music. These are thoroughly honest accounts and yet breathtakingly effective.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Divertimenti Viennesi

CD cover of Divertimenti Viennesi Dittersdorf Michael Haydn Vanhal

Musica Elegentia, Matteo Cicchitti conductor
88:15 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Brilliant Classics 96127
Dittersdorf: Six string trios; Michael Haydn: Divertimento in C; Vanhal: Divertimento in G

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The name of the ensemble playing this Unterhaltungsmusik pretty much sums up its style and content – this is elegant but trivial repertoire, intended as background music to social occasions or to be played by amateurs primarily for their own entertainment. So there is nothing terribly intellectually challenging on this 2-CD set. What is interesting, is that this sort of light chamber music provided the everyday soundtrack for late-18th– and early-19th-century Vienna, which in turn provided the backdrop for so much ground-breaking composition. In addition to boasting one of the best names in the whole of classical music, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf also has the distinction of having played in a string quartet with Vanhal, Mozart and Joseph Haydn, so it is clear that the great masters happily rubbed shoulders with their lesser contemporaries, and even made music with them. Vanhal was a student of Dittersdorf, while Michael Haydn was, of course, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn. The first CD of the set features trios for two violins and violone by Dittersdorf – the programme note makes the valuable point that the violone was seen as the default string bass instrument in Vienna at this time. The yawning gap in pitch between the two violins and the violone seems a little odd to begin with, but you soon get used to it. The performers try to inject as much wit and energy as possible into Dittersdorf’s music, but it did eventually all begin to sound the same to me – perhaps this is not a criticism of music intended as ‘background’, the ‘muzak’ of its time. I have to say I preferred the two Divertimenti on the second CD by Vanhal and Michael Haydn, where a viola replaced the second violin and helped to bridge the chasm between the violone and the upper strings. This was generally more imaginative repertoire, perhaps slightly later in provenance than the Dittersdorf, although I did still find the occasional ‘violone thrash’ moments a little comedic.

D. James Ross