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Routes du café

Cantatas by bernier and Bach on the theme of coffee's arrival in Europe CD cover

Ensemble Masques, Olivier Fortin
71:39
Alpha Classics Alpha 543
Music by Bach, Bernier, Locke, Marais & Nâyi Osman Dede (+Tanburi Cemil Bey & Kathleen Kajioka)

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This clever CD charts the spread of coffee through Europe, starting with the original cafés in Turkey and then finding music associated with its arrival in France, England and Germany. The famous coffee cantata by Bach finds an equally witty contemporary French counterpart in the cantata Le Caffe by Nicolas Bernier, while France is also represented by the viol piece Saille du caffé by Marin Marais. In London Matthew Locke’s Consort of Fower Parts, we have the sort of music he and Pepys might well have played together when they met in the Turk’s Head coffee house around 1660. The rest of the music is Turkish traditional music played either by a Turkish instrument ensemble or by Kathleen Kajioka on the violin to the accompaniment of Turkish percussion. The Bernier with its obbligato flute part is charming, while the Bach, also with obbligato flute, is very effectively dramatised by the three singers. Soprano Hana Blažíková sounds a little taken by surprise by some of the more eccentric musical phrases in the Bernier and doesn’t sound entirely comfortable in the higher passages in the Bach, but the two men help to keep things on the rails. The mixing of Baroque music and the traditional music of the east doesn’t always work, but here I feel it does so very well. In particular, Kathleen Kajioka’s violin Taksim and Wahda sound very much like the sot of music that might have been played in the cosmopolitan London coffee houses of yore!

D. James Ross

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Oratorio by Perti on French music label CD cover

Maria Cristina Kiehr Anne de Bretagne, Lucile Richardot Louise d’Angoulème, Valerio Contaldo Charles VIII, Stephan MacLeod St Francis de Paola, Concerto Soave, Jean-Marc Aymes
75:30
Lanvellec Editions LE00002

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Such is the embarrassing abundance of gifted Italian composers in the 17th and 18th centuries that the likes of Giacomo Antonio Perti, a composer of operas and oratorios, could be completely forgotten until virtually our own times. Boasting probably the longest career in the history of music, he began composing in 1678 at the age of 17 and was still composing when he died in 1756 at the age of 95! The musicologist Franco Lora has been able to ascribe this anonymous and rather curious oratorio to Perti on the basis of circumstances, style and sheer quality. Three of the four vocal parts are French Royals and the fourth is St Francis, and the music is democratically divided between all four with each receiving the same number of recitatives and arias. Surprisingly each half concludes with a duet, seemingly a convention which allowed the audience to prepare their exit! The piece demonstrates Perti’s inventive sense of melody and skill with his voices and orchestral forces. For me, the highlight of the casting is the presence of alto Lucile Richardot, whose lovely full contralto voice and innate musicality I noticed immediately before consulting the cast list. Unfortunately, the singing is not uniformly of this superlative standard – the two men are fine, but soprano Maria Cristina Kiehr sounds a little uninspired and vocally lazy by comparison. Perti’s reputation is slowly returning in the light of performances of his work, and if this piece is by him, it further enhances the reputation of a man much admired as a composer and teacher in his own very long lifetime. A star pupil of Celano, in turn the star pupil of Carissimi and in turn the teacher of Torelli and Padre Martini, he occupies a pivotal position in the development of Italian music, and like Clementi a century later, his sheer longevity and constantly evolving style ensured that he was extensively influential. 

D. James Ross

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Haydn: Organ Concertos

Haydn Organ Concertos Quinn Gent Arcangelo Cohen Chandos CD cover

Iain Quinn organ, Sophie Gent violin, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen
69:41
Chandos CHAN 20118

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These works date mainly from early in Haydn’s career and were probably written for performance at Esterházy. The modest demands on the organ, just manuals not pedals, mean that the works are all eminently playable on the harpsichord or fortepiano, although the pieces recorded here sound nicely at home on the organ. Particularly charming is a concerto Hob. XVIII:6 for violin, organ and strings in which the two soloists share the spotlight very equally. As the programme note suggests the plausible total of six concertos for organ by Haydn, it is odd that while we have three recorded here, a fourth is available for download – surely we were looking at a potential double album with all the concerti? Arcangelo play modern instruments, although the strings are gut-strung and the bowing and phrasing are of the period. Although this music is very affable, as with much early Haydn I’m afraid I find it rather bland and notwithstanding fine playing from the soloists and the ensemble I found myself drifting off. Lovers of Haydn’s music will warm to this more than I did, and it does fill a useful gap for me in my appreciation of the composer’s early output.

D. James Ross

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Makaris: Wisps in the dell

Makaris Classical arrangements of Scots and Irish folksongs CD cover

Classical era arrangements of traditional Celtic folk songs
67:54
New Focus Recordings FCR916

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This delightful CD offers a selection of Scottish and Irish folksongs in arrangements by classical composers. As part of the vogue in things Celtic which followed the Jacobite rising and the Ossian craze, a number of enterprising publishers in London secured the services of leading continental composers to ‘set’ mainly Scottish folk songs. In this process of ‘setting’, the angular modality of the melodies was generally ironed out, while the texts often had to be ‘civilised’ too – this would seem to us to water down the original appeal of the traditional music and powerfully raw folk texts, but this was the price of capturing the attention of the large amateur market which would make this enterprise viable. The settings by Haydn and Beethoven are relatively familiar, but the Makaris have spread their net wide and trawled in settings by Schubert, Pleyel, Hummel, Neukomm, Weber, Kuhlau, Kozeluch and Clementi. They take a free approach to the realisation of these settings, both from the point of view of instrumentation and elaboration of melodies and counter-melodies. In some accounts, a heavy fortepiano backbeat sounds a little bit of an indulgence, but elsewhere their approach definitely enhances their material. Vocalist Fiona Gillespie opts for a distinctly folky voice production, but her delightfully pure voice and subtle ornamentation represent a winning combination. Knowing many of these original folksongs, it is fascinating to hear the fingerprints of the better-known composers on their settings. Particularly striking is Beethoven’s uncompromising approach – his publisher worried that the settings would be beyond the amateurs he was targeting, but Beethoven refused to compromise! Equally charming are settings by Hummel and Weber, who fresh from the triumph of his ‘Freischütz’ is thoroughly imbued with folk melody. In a delightful touch, the band have commissioned their bass player to add to the repertoire with his own setting of ‘The Bonnie House o’ Airlie’ which takes this 18th- and 19th-century tradition firmly into the 21st century!

D. James Ross

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Schubert: Lebensstürme

Lebensstürme Schubert music for piano four-hands

Music for piano four-hands
DUO PLEYEL (Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya, Richard Egarr)
77:11
Linn Records CKD 593

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As with most other mediums in which he worked, Schubert left a large legacy of music for piano four-hands, extending as it does to some sixty works. Largely little known today, most were composed for domestic use at the ‘Schubertiads’ hosted by the composer’s Viennese friends. The present selection includes two works dating from 1818, the Rondo in D, D. 608 and the Sonata in B flat, D. 617 along with three from 1828, the year of his death: the Rondo in A, D. 951; the so-called ‘Lebensstürme’ Allegro in A minor, D. 947; and his undoubted masterpiece in the form, the Fantasie in F minor, D. 940. They are performed by the Duo Pleyel (Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya and Richard Egarr) on a beautiful Pleyel fortepiano of 1848, an instrument capable of a range extending from the massive quasi-orchestral sonorities at times asked from it in D. 947 and D. 940 to pearl-like pianissimo cascades descending from high in the treble register, D. 951, in particular, providing exquisite examples. Above all, it demonstrates across the range a variety of colour and nuance not possible to achieve on a modern piano

In the course of a brief but interesting note, Egarr quotes Schubert as claiming that there is ‘no such thing as happy music’, a highly romantic concept that the 21-year-old composer himself contradicted to a considerable extent in D. 608 and D. 617. The Rondo is founded on a perky theme with the character of a German Dance and if there are later disturbed interludes, it is the warm, poetic glow of the final episode that lingers more in the mind. Likewise, the B-flat Sonata opens with an innocuous flowing theme, played here with beguiling, unaffected charm, even if the modulations of the development do wander through unsettled, briefly stormy territory. The main theme of the central Andante con moto occupies sad, ambiguous territory temporarily assuaged by the lovely lyrical secondary idea, while the animated Allegretto offers up the opportunity for Duo Pleyel to demonstrate virtuosity with their fleet and agile fingerwork.

The main theme of the A-major Rondo, too, offers up a mood of contented innocence, perhaps redolent of one of the happier early songs in Die Schöne Müllerin, though the first episode moves to fantasia-like uncertainly. The magnificent ‘Lebensstürme’ (the storms of life) movement, cast in sonata form, displays both instrument and performers at their grandest, the big, immensely impressive sonority matched by playing of magisterial authority. The magnificent Fantasie opens with one of those heaven-sent Schubertian melodies that occupies a fragile place between nostalgic, sad reminiscence and the Elysian fields. Thereafter the work becomes an epic, twenty minutes of continuous music that veers from dance to chords as fierce and jagged as bleak mountain peaks, from playful shimmering scalic showers to a contrapuntal development of the opening theme as uncompromising as anything Bach wrote.

It should already be apparent from the above that the performances are richly rewarding. Technically near-flawless – I noticed tiny moments of blurring of texture – with a judicious choice of tempo and highly sensitive to the wide emotional range, they can be recommended without reservation. And if you don’t know the music, especially the late works, then it is high time you made its acquaintance!

Brian Robins

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The Food of Love

The Baltimore Consort perform music related to Shakespeare

Songs, Dances and Fancies for Shakespeare
The Baltimore Consort
68:04
Sono luminus DSL 92234

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It really is quite surprising that no music contemporary with Shakespeare’s plays which can be directly associated with them has survived, but this has not prevented musicians from compiling programmes based on music from the playwright’s lifetime which ‘relate’ to his plays or from just after his lifetime which reference the plays. There are some old friends here, played with imagination and sensitivity by the Baltimore Consort. They are at their most convincing when creatively riffing on some of the more traditional related material, but I found the same shortcomings as with another recent CD by the revived Baltimore Consort. Compared to the wonderful spontaneity of the vintage Baltimore recordings, the tempi here seem a bit ponderous, the ‘riffing’ a little contrived. Sadly, this may just come down to the change in personnel, and the departure of a couple of truly remarkable musicians. Even in ‘the golden days’, the group’s account of vocal music seemed its Achilles heel, and this still seems to be the case. Soprano Danielle Svonavec has a pleasantly pure voice and ornaments delicately and idiomatically, but there is something mannered and laboured about her pronunciation and presentation of the texts which makes the songs sound a little twee. I can’t help feeling that in my eyes these new Baltimore recordings suffer largely from comparison with the group’s own remarkable back-catalogue, which is possibly a little unfair, and it could be that listeners coming fresh to these recordings will be perfectly happy and, indeed, charmed by the group’s undoubted affinity with and creative approach to this repertoire. The playing and singing are technically impeccable and the recording admirably vivid.

D. James Ross

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Haydn : String Quartets opp 71 & 74

London Haydn Quartet play opp 71 and 74 complete

The London Haydn Quartet
155:52 (2 CDs)
hyperion CDA 68230

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Haydn’s opp 71 and 74 sets of string quartets were composed in Vienna in 1793 between his two London visits, and with London performances very much in mind. It is not too fanciful to speculate that the earlier London performances of some of Haydn’s op 64 quartets, the first time the composer had witnessed his quartets being presented to large audiences, may have influenced the style of the two later sets of quartets, which may sometimes seem to sacrifice intimacy in favour of a more public musicality, with boldly declamatory melodies and occasional flamboyant gestures. The London Haydn Quartet’s choice of acoustic, the relatively intimate ambience of Potton Hall, may seem to be at odds with this, and (to begin with) I found the relatively cramped sound a little off-putting. The Quartet’s superlative playing soon helped to overcome this, and the smaller bloom allows the listener to focus on their impeccable technical prowess, warm tone and perfect balance. Playing period instruments, the Quartet has also returned to the original 1796 publications of both sets, but more importantly, like their fellow period-instrument quartet the Quatuor Mosaïques, their freshness of approach allows us to experience this music as if it was new. The group was founded in 2000 with the specific aim of exploring the chamber music of Haydn on period instruments, and this delightful and packed double CD set provides wonderfully eloquent accounts of some of Haydn’s most satisfying string quartets.

D.James Ross

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Beethoven transformed volume 1

Boxwood & Brass Volume 1 of Beethoven Transformed

Boxwood & Brass
61:40
Resonus Res10249

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This is the first volume of a projected exploration of Harmonie-Musik, including original music by Beethoven, as well as arrangements of his music by his contemporaries – hence the ‘transformed’. Thus it is that we have an arrangement for the standard Harmonie ensemble of two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons of Beethoven’s celebrated Septet, originally conceived for strings and wind. I have always struggled slightly to like Beethoven’s Septet – a disgraceful admission for a clarinettist – and remember vividly my heart sinking when, during a performance by the BPO Soloists, it dawned on me that they were going to do all the repeats… So it came as a surprise to hear the piece afresh in Czerny’s clever arrangement. To cover the violin part, he takes the first clarinet into risky and exciting altissimo territory, realised with enormous skill and panache on her boxwood clarinet by Emily Worthington. Perhaps it is precisely Beethoven’s rather cautious writing for the wind instruments in the original op 20 that failed to charm me – whatever the reason, Czerny’s arrangement is a valuable rediscovery, which to my mind enhances the original. The Septet’s companion piece on this CD is one of Beethoven’s actual Sextets, a later work (op 71), by which time the composer felt free to be more adventurous with the wind instruments. Both works are given charming performances by Boxwood and Brass, and indeed the distinctive sounds of their period instruments help to bring this music vividly to life. I have enjoyed very much both of the previous CDs by this enterprising group, and await with interest the continuation of this promising series.

D. James Ross

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D. Scarlatti: Alio modo

Scarlatti alio modo CD Amaya Fernandez Pozuelo

Amaya Fernández Pozuelo harpsichord
67:28
Stradivarius STR 37140
+ de Albéniz, de Albero, López, Soler

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This is an impressive recording of keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and four of his Spanish followers: Antonio Soler, Sebastián de Albero, Felix Máximo López and Mateo Pérez de Albéniz. The last three were new to me, though I did recognise what is the sole surviving sonata by Pérez de Albéniz. López’s variations on a ‘Minué afandangado’ are an entertaining fusion of French and Spanish dances, played here with panache. De Albero’s Sonata no. 12 is very much in Scarlattian mode. Fernández Pozuelo is a persuasive advocate for her ‘alio modo’ of performing this repertory: it involves considerable flexibility in tempo, lots of added ornamentation and variation in phrasing, as well as more than unusual asynchrony between the hands. This allows her to explore the rhetorical possibilities of the music successfully and to provide a greater level of contrast than is customarily found in performances of this repertory. This is particularly the case in her fine performance of the extended D minor Scarlatti Sonata K213. Other pieces show bravura and a real joy in the music. Her interpretations are helped considerably by some fine recording engineering, which gives her copy of a Hemsch harpsichord by Fernando Granziera of Milan real presence, highlighting the richness of its sound. My only disappointment is with the booklet, where some informative notes on the composers and the music are printed only in Italian and not translated into other languages. There are translations of some summary notes and a lengthy rumination on the instrument used, but these are not so useful and the English translator struggles to convey the rather flowery sentiments of the original Italian. However, the recording itself is highly recommended.

Noel O’Regan

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Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Book Two

Bach Well Tempered Clavier book two played by Colin Booth

Colin Booth harpsichord
147:34 (2 CDs)
Soundboard Records SBCD 219

David Stancliffe gave a warm welcome on this site to Colin Booth’s recording of WTC Book I when it appeared nearly two years ago and I am happy to confirm that his follow-up recording of Book II is equally fine. Booth uses the same harpsichord (his own copy of a double-manual Nicholas Cellini instrument of 1661) and tuning system (Kirnberger III) as before, and the recording displays the same clarity in the part-writing in what is a warm and chamber-like acoustic. This harpsichord is particularly good at projecting all the lines in dense contrapuntal textures and Booth uses this very effectively. He eschews virtuosity for its own sake, and these are generally straightforward accounts, falling somewhere between the recent recordings by John Butt and Richard Egarr as regards tempo and reflectiveness. Booth adds many judicious ornaments while never letting them interfere with the line. I particularly like his rhythmical flexibility in the preludes which allows him to negotiate some of the trickier notational corners with ease, as in both F sharp preludes. His astute ‘swinging’ of the beat here and elsewhere produces convincing results. In contrast, the fugues can seem a bit rigid at times, particularly those in the more old-fashioned style, though the more modern ones certainly bounce along nicely. There is a very comprehensive set of liner notes with information about the instrument and the rationale behind Booth’s choice of tuning system, in the light of Bach’s understanding of the term ‘well-tempered’. There are also some perceptive notes on the musical qualities of the second book. Overall, this is an excellent and very welcome recording which showcases Booth’s thoughtful interpretations, and much will be learnt from a careful listening to it.

Noel O’Regan