Category: Recording

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Recording

Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine

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Ludus Modalis, Bruno Boterf
Ramée RAM1702

A recording of the Monteverdi Vespers with minimalist scoring and the six-voice Magnificat is a welcome alternative to the plethora of versions with a Praetorius-inspired monumentality that could only have been realised in very few establishments in the early 17th century. While more minimalist versions – beginning with Andrew Parrott’s landmark recording in 1984 – are now the preferred way of hearing performances of the large-scale version that includes the opening toccata, the sonata and the seven-part Magnificat, Ludus Modalis are to be congratulated on providing us with a pared down version, with twelve singers grouped around an organ built by Bernard Boulay after Costanzo Antegnati for the church in Prazac near Angoulême, where this recording was made.

The singers are not random soloists, with little experience of consort or choral singing, but members of the group Ludus Modalis – five sopranos, two altos, three tenors (including Boterf himself) and three basses – formed primarily to sing music of the Renaissance. Their sound is homogeneous, free of modern vibrato and in many ways ideal for the prima prattica. But for some of the singers, the seconda prattica episodes in the psalms as well as in the concerti make demands rather beyond their comfort zone. Like the organ, tuned in a meantone temperament at A=440 with a lot of perfect thirds, the group sing with clarity of sound and clean chording. Their blend with the organ can be heard at its best in Audi Cœlum, where the single notes in the organ bass at cadences can be appreciated.

But there are some question marks in my mind. The first concerns the bassus generalis which Boterf sees as an incipient basso continuo part.  Accordingly he has no qualms in adding to the basic organ two harpsichords (one strung in brass, the other with gut), a bass viol, a bass sackbut and a bass cornett. He uses this array to colour the bass line – and sometimes to reinforce a cantus firmus, as in Nisi Dominus – in a way that seems to me anachronistic and sometimes unmusical: hearing the crochets in the verses with the running bass in Laetatus sum played on a bass sackbut is as odd as using the bass viol with a harpsichord to over-rigidify the fluid bass in Nigra sum. The incongruity is heightened when we hear the ritornelli between the verses of the hymn Ave Maris Stella played on differing combinations of these basso continuo instruments, with the wind and string members taking what are sometimes tenor lines in the ritornelli. Why – since he properly omits the ritornelli in Dixit Dominus – does he choose to retain them in these highly questionable instrumentations in the hymn?

Boterf is aware of the liturgical context of this part of Monteverdi’s 1610 publication and adds antiphons from the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary, repeating them after each psalm. His solution to the gap left by the un-performable Sonata is ingenious. He uses a Recercar con obligo di cantar la quinta parte senza toccarla by Girolamo Frescobaldi, where he gives the wordless sung fifth part to the sopranos, fitting the words: Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis to it; and he doubles the organ tenor with bass cornett and the bass line with the sackbut.

But his treatment of the opening versicle and response is muddled liturgically. He has the opening Versicle: Deus in adjutorium sung by the cantor (officiant) and answered by all the male voices in plain Gregorian tone for Domine ad adjuvandum, but then breaks into the D chords of Monteverdi’s six part Response at Gloria Patri, only to have the Gregorian resume at Sicut before reverting to Monteverdi’s setting at Et in saecula, creating a liturgically unwarranted break up in the lines, presumably to preserve Monteverdi’s setting of Alleluia.

In the psalm settings, Boterf does not always make a clear distinction between the alternating verse structure – a feature of both Dixit Dominus and Laetatus sum; and not everyone will like his rather wooden approach to the tempi and changes in proportion in Laudate pueri and the Magnificat.

As we reach Lauda Jerusalem we realise that he is transposing Lauda down a tone, but when we come to the Magnificat there is no downward transposition at all. This makes a number of the soprano entries in the Magnificat seem terrifyingly high – those on high A in Fecit potentiam and in Sicut locutus est seemed particularly out of the sopranos’ comfort zone. Another curiosity is the relation between the voice-parts in Suscepit Israel where the sextus part, notated in a G2 clef, is suddenly transposed down an octave, so that the voices sing in sixths rather than thirds. It also brings the sextus part well below the organ part in measures 52 to 52. What is the textual (or musical) justification for this rearrangement? But I did warm to the beating rank on the organ from measures 22 to 38 in Quia respexit as Monteverdi stipulated.

In spite of these caveats, I like the overall feel of this performance, even if the recording in this small church does not quite have either the bloom or the clarity we might hope for. So I hope listeners will gain in understanding, and singers will be encouraged to perform this version, for which you need no more than an organ for accompaniment.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Schubert: String Quartets

Pale green early floral

Chiaroscuro Quartet
62:47
BIS-2268 SACD
D173, D810

I confess that on hearing ‘Death and the Maiden’ now I cannot help but think of Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, where it accompanies the scene in which we see the contract killer on his way to murder the tiresome ex-mistress played by Anjelica Houston. The juxtaposition is done without signalling and I’ve often wondered how many film goers have been aware of the relevance of the apparently incongruous emergence of a string quartet on the soundtrack.

But I digress. The Quartet in D minor, which takes its name from the use of Schubert’s song of 1817 as the theme of the variations that form its second movement, was composed in 1824 – not as the notes claim ‘between 1824 and 1826’ – and is the composer’s penultimate string quartet. A massively proportioned work, it explores a gamut of emotions from fear and stark grief to tender expressions of regret. From the fiercely trenchant opening chords that emotional world is explored by the Chiaroscuro Quartet (Alina Ibragimova and Pablo Hernán, violins; Emilie Hörnlund, viola; Claire Thirion, cello) with an all-embracing totality that is ultimately overwhelming. It is rare to hear period instrument playing of such technical accomplishment and perfect sense of balance. When those fortissimo opening chords are answered with real pianissimo playing, delicately articulated and perfectly chorded, we start to suspect that we might be in the presence of something special. And so it proves to be. Throughout all four movements the listener is treated to a compass of sonority ranging from near orchestral power – try the third variation of Andante con moto for just one of the most spectacular examples – to a Mendelssohnian lightness of touch. The second half of the initial statement in the same movement is an especially magical case of the latter. Neither is lyricism neglected, the profound sadness and sensitive phrasing of the distant, haunted dance in the Trio section of the Scherzo making for yet another unforgettable moment. Yet above all it is the epic drama of this beautifully structured performance that leaves so strong an impression.

The String Quartet in G minor dates from nearly a decade earlier, 1815, a year of extraordinary fecundity for Schubert that witnessed, among other things, the composition of some 150 songs and Symphonies 2 and 3. As might be expected, the quartet belongs far more to the world of Haydn and Mozart than as a relation to ‘Death and the Maiden’. Here the potent key of G minor is used not as a highly personal expression of tragedy as was the case with Mozart, but more as a vehicle for drama in the sense it was employed by Haydn. Indeed, the opening theme of the Allegro con brio first movement introduces a spirit of Haydnesque poise, while the second idea, with pizzicato cello, seems to consist of a passage that might have consisted of discarded fragments from the act 2 finale of Le nozze di Figaro. Not until the development, the most striking part of the movement, do we encounter hints of real discomfort. The performance, naturally scaled down from the heights stormed in the D-minor Quartet, is nonetheless as satisfying in its own right, again being skillfully structured; listen, for example, to the wonderfully graded and nuanced dynamics in the closing pages of the Andantino second movement.

BIS’s splendid SACD engineering enables these marvellously accomplished performances to realise to the full their powerful but also often extraordinarily subtle impact.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Beethoven: Symphony No 3 ‘Eroica’

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Nizhny Novgorod Soloists Chamber Orchestra, Maxim Emelyanchev
64:26
Aparté AP191
+Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Haydn, op. 56a

The most frustrating thing about this beautiful CD is the lack of information about the performers. Typically, readers of these pages would probably not take any notice of it, given that one assumes the orchestra plays on modern instruments, and that they would not expect the Russian school would bring any worthwhile revelations to two such well-known pieces from the repertoire. Yet, from the opening bars, both the sound world and the energy of the performances held my attention and I have ended up listening to the disc several times which, when one has a room full of other things awaiting review, is no small achievement. So often with modern chamber orchestras, the bass parts lack “air”, the wind players find it awkward to fit in with string sections that have turned off their vibrato (because that’s what they think HIP playing means!), and there is just a lack of vitality that overpowers the good intention. The out-of-date website that I found for the group suggests the orchestra is made up of 16 elite students specialising in orchestral playing, the photo suggesting that the figure refers to string players only. This modest number would be about what Beethoven would have expected and allows Emelyanchev to treat the programme more as expanded chamber music, lending their sound a clarity to too often escapes non-HIPsters. I played the “Haydn Variations” with my university orchestra, but I can guarantee it never sounded anything like this! I hope this is not the last we hear of this combination.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Telemann: Chamber music treasures from Dresden and Darmstadt

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64:13
Les Esprits Animaux
Musica Ficta MF8029

It is straight away obvious when an ensemble has taken due care and attention over what they choose to present on their recording. Here Javier Lupiáñez and Les Esprits Animaux are to be commended for their smart choices. Straddled by two fairly familiar works, opening with “Concerto alla polonese” (TWV43:G7) tackled with just enough rustic flair, and ending with the beautiful D-minor work (TWV43:d2) here in the earlier string version, composed circa 1711-15 (aka one of the 4th Book of Quartets, Leclerc Paris 1752) we find two of those “deest” works, that is to say, absent, not to be found in any known catalogue listings; the first of these in D major, seems to my ear to contain more departures from Telemann’s usual musical “modii” than commonalities, but the second (in B flat major) seems to passingly quote from one of the cantatas from the Harmonischer Gottesdienst (TVWV1:447) in the 2nd movement “Adagio”. Interspersed we have two fine premieres: TWV43:G8, which brings us back to some familiar fleetness , and dynamic expression; the 3rd movement “Grave” has a kind of vocalised effect, not overdone by the ensemble’s leader Javier Lupiáñez with his embellishments. Finally, mention goes to the quite excellent TWV42:D10, a marvellous five-movement work, which has a typical mellifluence and design we recognize in other Telemann pieces; even the blending of stylistic elements from Italy and France strike the ear, with movements running from Menuet to Balletto, in this accomplished hybrid, all wonderfully captured by this vivacious and alert ensemble. We feel back on firm, idiomatic ground. This is a most worthy exposition, and we can only hope for more insightful, well-researched explorations to appear in the future. On page 10 of their fine CD Booklet, a neat explanation of the ensemble’s name is provided, coming from a philosophical term used in the Baroque period; we live and learn!

David Bellinger

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Recording

Pour la Duchesse du Maine

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ensemble La Française
55:00
Polynie POL 503 314
Music by Bernier, Bourgeois & Mouret

Praise be! A soprano whose vibrato is not the most prominent feature of her sound!! Marie Remandet sings the splendid cantatas by Bernier and Bourgeois with plenty of dramatic commitment but also some welcome self-control so that she does inhabit the same tonal and stylistic world as her instrumental colleagues. Her trills are not always perfect but that’s a price I’m more than willing to pay for what she does the rest of the time. The Duchesse that gives the programme its title was the colourful Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon, who maintained a rich socio-cultural milieu at the Château de Sceaux. None of this music can be directly associated with her, though Berbier’s fifth book of cantatas was entitled Les Nuits de Sceaux and Mouret was for a while ordinaire de la Musique da la duchesse du Maine. His Concert de Chambre is a suite (overture and dances) with unspecified instrumentation which suits the ensemble’s resident flute and violin (I’ll just about forgive them the piccolo in the Tambourin). Here as everywhere else they play with an impressive unity of purpose, with enough life in the continuo when needed, and make a strong case for this relatively unfamiliar repertoire. They do, however, need a better graphic designer (white print on a yellow background is doomed to illegibility) and translator: the English version of the essay struggles.

David Hansell

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Recording

felice un tempo

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Legrenzi | Bononcini | Scarlatti
Paper Kite
61:18
Coviello Classics COV91719

This disc is a first for Paper Kite, an ensemble whose main focus is on ‘the various European traditions of the baroque cantata’. In cantatas the singer is, by definition, crucial but I did not warm to soprano Marie Heeschen. Yes, she does have a focussed sound, engages with the text and adds appropriate ornamentation but I found her frequent portamentos intrusive and her pronounced vibrato when singing high and loud too at variance with anything that the strings did. And while there is always something to be said for the exploration of new repertoire I just didn’t find any of this music especially striking. But it is only fair to say that the instrumental playing itself is very good. This is an ensemble of great promise though I do think there are issues of collective style they need to address. The booklet (Eng/Ger) does its job though there is a mistake in the track numbering on the back of the case.

David Hansell

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Recording

Resonances of Waterloo

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Saint Salvator’s Chapel Choir (University of St Andrews), The Wallace Collection), Tim Wilkinson & Anthony George
Sanctiandree SAND0007
71:22

What? You didn’t know that churches were built to mark the end of the Napoleonic Wars? Or that St James, Bermondsey (one of them) still has its original organ restored pretty much to its original state? Or that Sigismund Neukomm (1778-1858) wrote a Requiem to honour the dead of those wars as well as the memory of Louis XVI? Well, in that case, this CD is for you and you’ll enjoy it! The Requiem is for soloists, choir, organ and brass – keyed trumpet, four hand-horns and three trombones – who make relatively brief but oh-so-telling contributions at key moments. The virtuosity of any brass ensemble led by John Wallace can be taken for granted but the student choir are eminently able co-performers: several of them undertake modest but very capably sung solo passages. The Requiem is complemented by three short but action-packed works for brass ensemble. I really do recommend this, not just as something different, but as something interesting and very well performed. A pat on the back for the recording engineers too, who rise commendably to the challenges posed by these forces. The booklet is pretty much a model of how to do it. This deserves to be an unlikely hit!

David Hansell

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Recording

Francoeur: Sonates à violon seul et basse continue, Livre I

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Kreeta-Maria Kentala, Lauri Pulakka, Mitzi Meyerson
124:12 (2 CDs in a wallet)
Glossa GCD921809

As both listener and performer I’ve encountered and enjoyed isolated sonatas by Francoeur before, so I wasn’t at all surprised by the entertainment provided by the whole of his Livre 1. After a period of study the composer (1698-1787!) joined the ‘24 violons . . .’ in 1730. Further honours followed and he was a close colleague of François Rebel in several prestigious enterprises, though his career had a less happy end. In general, the slow movements of these sonatas are broadly French in character, contrasting most effectively with the more Italianate allegros, and the many skilful nuances in the playing reflect this diversity. Being really picky, I did wonder whether or not the gamba would have been a more likely bass continuo instrument, but I absolutely applaud the unfussy scoring (all harpsichord and cello) and the sensitivity of the playing in support of the spirited top line. The booklet’s essay (Eng/Fre/Ger) is concise but nonetheless tells us what we need to know about the music and instruments, though there is no information about the players.

David Hansell

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Recording

Tallis: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal

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The Gentlemen of HM Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, Carl Jackson
68:22
resonus RES10229

The Enigma Theme in Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations remains an enigma because Elgar never divulged what the theme was (if indeed there ever really was one) although he used to taunt his friends about how obvious it is. Innumerable solutions have been put forward, and in the April 2013 number of the Elgar Society Journal Martin Gough proposed that the theme is Tallis’s Canon, aka the Eighth Tune which Tallis provided for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter of 1567. It is interesting that these two composers are associated in this (albeit improbable) way as, above all other composers, they are hailed as possessing a peculiar but indefinable Englishness. Yet both were heavily influenced by their European predecessors: Gombert amongst others upon Tallis, Wagner, Dvorak and others upon Elgar. In this spirit of Englishness, it can be comforting to listen to one of Tallis’s most Continental works, his majestic Missa Puer natus est nobis a7 sung by the Gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, an ensemble equivalent to one, with Tallis among them, that would have sung this very piece during the reign of Queen Mary I. But even in such circumstantial decorum there is no certainty that such an appropriate choir would nowadays perform Tallis’s music to a standard that would transcend such comfortable Englishness. In this instance such concerns can be discarded. The Gentlemen of Hampton Court give excellent performances of every piece on this disc. Another concern might be about how clearly adult male voices in seven parts would project Tallis’s intense music in the Chapel at Hampton Court Palace, the acoustic of which might not be the most resonant. Again there is, in the words of a famous blues song, “no need to worry”. Each line, with two voices to a part, is audible, clear, and well blended with its fellows. Besides the singers themselves – the six regular Gentlemen and the full complement of eight supernumaries – credit must go to Carl Jackson for his judicious tempi, occasioned by his extensive familiarity with every aspect of the recording location.

What of the music itself? Even without the Credo, most of which has been lost, the Missa Puer natus est nobis for seven voices is Tallis’s grandest work, apart from the small matter of Spem in alium in forty. The booklet’s notes by Christian Goursaud, one of the six Gentlemen, competently sets out the competing ideas concerning the circumstances of the work’s composition. It is not only, as he so rightly says, majestic, but it is also seminal, providing in the second Agnus a prominent theme for Byrd’s second consort In nomine a4 besides, at “[Patris] miserere nobis“ in the Gloria, pre-echoes of passages such  as “everlasting“ in Tomkins’ Turn unto the Lord and “auxiliare nos“ as late as Blow’s Salvator mundi; both composers knew Tallis’s music and, while this is not necessarily to say that they deliberately or consciously borrowed this passage or aspects of it, nevertheless it is interesting that Tallis’s plangency was being replicated over a century later. No less musically rewarding is the differently plangent Mass for Four Voices, and it is of further interest because, as Stefan Scot discovered, and has noted in his erudite booklet notes for Priory PRCD 1081 (volume 1 of The Collected Vernacular Works of John Sheppard, sung by The Academia Musica Choir), the Credo is identical, with a few adjustments and details, to the Creed of Sheppard’s First Service.  Stefan will discuss this further in his forthcoming edition of Sheppard’s Anglican music for Early English Church Music.

Exploiting the presence of the supernumaries, the disc begins and ends with motets also in seven parts. Suscipe quaeso starts proceedings in the best possible way, the choir setting out its stall for the rest of the disc with excellent blend and a wonderful fullness of sound, while Loquebantur variis linguis brings it to a jubilant close as Tallis lets his hair down for once. Exquisite performances of the smaller In pace and Miserere nostri separate the two masses.

This disc captures Tallis’s elusive Englishness, being sung by a choir to which he once belonged, in the same way as the recording of his earliest Latin music by The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral (Metronome MET CD 1014), another in which he is known to have sung. All other recordings of Missa Puer natus est nobis have been by adult chamber choirs, such as the self-recommending Stile Antico (Harmonia Mundi HMU807517), but the best of those and the most intriguing version might be the very first, by The Clerkes of Oxenford (Calliope CAL 6623) which, besides seeming to penetrate to the soul of Tallis’s inspiration, also includes what can be retrieved and reconstructed of Tallis’s Credo, which is omitted from all other recordings. The current version of the Missa Puer natus est nobis by the Gentlemen of Hampton Court is unique in being sung by a liturgical choir which has the Mass in its repertory, and it is also superb in every detail: one of the great recordings of music by Tallis.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Haydn: String Quartets op. 64

Pink chrysanthemum

The London String Quartet
145:21 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
hyperion CDA68221

This is the seventh in a series that on completion will be a complete cycle of the Haydn string quartets played by the London Haydn Quartet (Catherine Manson and Michael Gurevich [violins], John Crockatt [viola] and Jonathan Manson [cello]). The second of two sets originally issued with a dedication to the Esterháza violinist Johann Tost, the six quartets of opus 64 were composed in 1790, being the last Haydn produced before the first of his London visits. To the great Haydn scholar H C Robbins Landon they represent the composers’ ‘greatest single achievement’ of the period, being ‘six flawless masterpieces’ and I for one am not inclined to disagree. Like the previous set composed for Tost (op 54 and 55) they are characterised by the prominence of the first violin part, and in particular the frequent examples of high lying writing, for the playing of which Tost was apparently especially noted. The famous example here is of course the imitation of the song of the lark in the opening movement of the eponymous D-major quartet (no. 5). It is therefore odd to find Richard Wigmore’s note asserting that there is no evidence to suggest that the first violin part was designed with Tost in mind.

There are, however, many more equally remarkable features in these wonderful quartets. The invention throughout maintains a remarkably high level, suggesting that even as he approached high maturity as a composer Haydn was still probing and experimenting with new ideas. One notes for example the extensive use of chromaticism, not infrequently combined with contrapuntal writing, or the greater freedom of continuing to develop themes in the recapitulation of sonata form movements – a characteristic more usually associated with Mozart than Haydn – as in the opening Allego con brio of the G-major quartet (no. 4), where the further variation of the opening motif is actually more interesting than the development itself. Equally noteworthy are the sublime cantabile movements of the same quartet and the ‘Lark’, the first a hymn-like tune later lovingly embellished, the latter another ineffably lovely movement that moves from its opening serenity to explore darker regions.

That movement, played and phrased with quite exquisite sensitivity, is one of the highpoints of a set of performance notable above all for their consistent musicality, a musicality that throughout eschews extremes of dynamics and tempo. They are indeed performances that stand at the opposite pole to such as those of the Chiaroscuro Quartet, to whose attention-grabbing and excitingly insightful Haydn I have devoted several reviews on this site. That is certainly not intended as criticism of the London Haydn Quartet, though there are occasions when they might have made rather more of the composer’s dynamic contrasts. But there is certainly no lack of character, as the witty, fleet playing the Presto finale of the E-flat quartet (no. 6) or the Mendelssohnian lightness of touch and precise articulation of the final Vivace of the ‘Lark’ convincingly demonstrate.

The use of a set of parts from an 18th century edition by the London publisher Forster is curious, not least because the notes tell us nothing about it, not even its date. It is not among editions mentioned by Robbins Landon, who lists as an ‘authentic British edition’ only a publication of the quartets published by Bland in 1791. Obviously I have no means of comparing it with my version of the quartets (Dover). I did however note several instances where second half repeat indications of sonata form movements vary, for example in the Quartet in C (no. 1), where no repeat is called for at the end of the opening movement, but given here, while the final movement does call for one in the Dover score, but it is not given here.

Ultimately, of course, such things are of little concern, particularly in the face of such quietly rewarding performances, recorded with the same refreshing lack of ostentation that is a principal feature of the playing.

Brian Robins