early music review

Musica Flexanima Ensemble, Fabrizio Bigotti
74:06
Tactus TC 550007
Allegri Missa “In lectulo meo” a8, Salutis humanæ sator a8, Cantata (attrib), 5 Canzone
Anerio 3 Canzone
Bonomi In lectulo meo

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he three sets of partbooks which were copied for Duke Giovanni Angelo Altaemps in the early 17th century constitute the most significant set of sources for early Baroque Roman music, both polychoral and small-scale concertato. They are also a rare source for non-Frescobaldi Roman instrumental canzonas, of which five by Gregorio Allegri and three by Giovanni F. Anerio are included here. All are for two instruments and continuo and show well-developed sophistication and variety, especially those by Anerio; it is good to have them recorded here for the first time. They are played by the popular Roman combination of violin and cornett, or in two cases by two violins (oddly, there is no mention of the cornett player among the list of instrumentalists). These are the unpublished works of the CD’s title and are the only works from the Altaemps partbooks here, apart from the motet by the Flemish Bonhomme/Bonomi which provided the model for Allegri’s Mass. The latter is found in a Cappella Sistina choirbook, as are the lamentations and hymn, while the cantata is attributed to the composer in a Naples manuscript. All are competently sung, though the instrumental performances definitely outshine the vocal ones. The singing is patchy, often pedestrian and with suspect tuning but occasionally rising above that to provide convincing moments. The acoustic is overly resonant and the recording tends to emphasise the choir’s insecurities. The cantata is poorly performed, making it difficult to judge its merits; it needs a more leisurely pace and more attention to the words. There are better recordings of most of this vocal music but this is certainly worth listening to for the instrumental canzonas. The booklet does not provide texts, which is a pity, but they can be accessed on the Tactus website.

Noel O’Regan

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Ensemble Barockin’
56:26
Raumklang RK 3304
Sonatas in d & G (op. 12, 1743), c & D (op. 17, 1756)

[dropcap]E[/dropcap]MR will readers will surely be able call to mind Quantz’s advocacy of the quartet and his admiration for Telemann’s works in the genre. Well, here’s music that seriously rivals GPT and that’s a clause I never thought I’d type. The instrumentation is the same as the ‘Paris’ set – flute, violin, gamba and continuo – and the musical style is much same with a judicious balance of conversation and counterpoint and even a touch of drama. The playing is very accomplished and the straightforward approach to the continuo (as requested by the composer) is more than welcome. There are a few lumps and bumps in the note though I enjoyed the Guillemain biography. Either the engineers or her colleagues could have done the flautist a few more favours in terms of the instrumental balance but overall this is a welcome discovery. Two of the works are claimed as first recordings.

David Hansell

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Mónica Pustilnik lute
62:30
Accent ACC 24193

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]wo books of music by Alessandro Piccinini survive: his Intavolatura di Liuto e di Chitarrone Libro Primo (1623) and Intavolatura di Liuto (1639). The chitarrone (i.e. theorbo) pieces from the first book are one of the few major sources of music for that instrument, and have been recorded frequently in recent years. Piccinini’s lute pieces are less well known, so it is nice to hear some of them in this recording by Mónica Pustilnik. The second book was published a year after Piccinini’s death by his son, Leonardo Maria Piccinini, who collected his father’s music together to create a second volume. Of the sixteen tracks, half are from the first book, and half from the second.

The CD gets off to a slow, gentle start with a Sarabanda all francese (bk.2, p.20). The long third section seems to be a separate piece of music, with a change of rhythm to 3/2, of tonality from C major to C minor, and interspersed with scalic runs of quavers. Pustilnik adds little ornaments of her own here and there.

Her interpretaion of Corrente 9 (bk.2, p.38) is carefully phrased, but lacks the drive one might have expected to keep the dance flowing. Ricercar Primo (bk.2, p.12) – not Ricercare Primo from book 1 – develops a slow, rising, chromatic theme. Pustlinik opts for a somewhat free interpretation, but the result is a speed which keeps changing. The first two bars are at crotchet=76; by bar 6 it has accelerated to crotchet=100; the speed starts to slow down in bar 36 (the first bar with semiquavers), so that by the penultimate bar it is down to crotchet=56, almost half the speed it was, and Piccinini’s climax is emasculated.

Piccinini’s inventiveness may be heard in Aria di Saravanda in Varie Partite (bk.1, p.44), including um-chings with occasional strums reminiscent of a baroque guitar, broken chords, and a variation high up the neck at the 10th fret. Most extraordinary is his Toccata Cromatica 12 (bk1, p.45), with sequences of dotted rhythms, strange chromatic turns, a wide range with a trill up to the 12th fret and a scale down to the 12th course in the bass. Pustlinik sustains it well, bringing out its contrasting moods. She adds some nice touches of her own for the repeats of Corrente 6 (bk.1, p.51), and I enjoyed her sparkling interpretation of Corrente 7 (bk.2, p.30), a piece which to me sounds more French than Italian.

Two of the longest tracks are a Chiaccona… alla vera Spagnola (bk.2, Cappona p.55; Mariona p.49), which consist of a constantly changing set of variations over a simple 4-bar ground.

Pustlinik plays a single-strung archlute by Francisco Hervas. The treble notes are stronger than the rest, but that may be due to the recording engineer rather than the instrument.

Stewart McCoy

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Dan Laurin voice flute, Paradiso Musicale
70:04
BIS-2105 SACD

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman’s twelve flute sonatas were published in Stockholm in 1727, the year in which he was appointed as court Kapellmeister. Telemann advertised that he was the agent for their sale in Hamburg and praised them “for their lively and very charming composition” and for the quality of the printing (which you can see on the IMSLP web site). Roman claimed that they were youthful works so they may have been composed during his prolonged stay in London from 1716 to 1721 where he studied, played the violin for Handel and would have encountered Italian music and musicians. They certainly pre-date his visit to Italy but he owned and translated into Swedish Gasparini’s L’armonico pratico al cimbalo which was first published in Venice in 1708. This fact has been used to justify harpsichordist Anna Paradiso’s colourful and often dissonant continuo playing, which in any case is invited by Roman’s dramatic style of composition. This is flute music of a high quality which works well on the voice flute (tenor recorder in D), avoiding the need for transposition. The SACD sound is so good that you can hear Dan Laurin’s breathing and a faint jingle from the harpsichord but this should not put you off this excellent recording. The disc forms part of a series of recordings of Roman’s music by the same musicians and I look forward to hearing their performances of the remaining seven sonatas in the set.

Victoria Helby

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Charles Daniels Evangelist, Peter Harvey Christus, Yorkshire Bach Soloists, Peter Seymour
153:33 (2 CDs)
Signum Classics SIGCD385

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]eter Seymour’s Yorkshire Baroque Soloists give us a thoughtful, moderately-paced account of the early version of Bach’s Matthäuspassion, helped greatly by a score carefully prepared by Peter Seymour and splendidly sung by Charles Daniels and Peter Harvey. Charles Daniels has that exquisite vocal and linguistic fluency that makes you relish every syllable and hang on to the edge of your seat; and Peter Harvey’s seasoned account of the part of Jesus, where in this performance the halo of single strings led by Lucy Russell have the clarity of a consort of viols, gets better each time he does it. He forms the secure bass of choir 1, so sings the arias too – as is proper: “Mache dich” is as splendid as it could ever be, with plenty of oboe da caccia coming though the texture.

In terms of vocal quality, Choir 2 has better blend, with the admirable Matthew Brook a violone-like bass, utterly gripping in “Gibt mir”, and the clarity of Julian Podger’s splendid tenor line (only heard on its own, alas, in “Geduld”) well-matched by Nancy Cole, a very promising young singer. Peter Seymour is well-known for searching out and nurturing local talent, and Nancy has studied at York, as has the more experienced Helen Neeves. Choir 1 has another young local, Bethany Seymour, on the top line. In Part 1, I found her rather tight vibrato, apparent even in the chorus numbers, unattractive and her lack of breath control in “Ich will dir mein Herze” distracting; however, in the recit and “Aus Liebe” we hear a totally different singer! Here her clarity and ability to float the lines are winsome. But it is Sally Bruce-Payne who is of star quality throughout; she combines a real rich, deep vocal quality with a clarity and verbal flexibility that is not always evident in real alto voices. By contrast, Charles Daniels’ sub in Choir 1, Joseph Cornwell, sounds rather strained in “O Schmerz”. Peter and Pilate are sung convincingly by Johnny Herford, and Bethan Thomas, singing the soprano bit parts, has the kind of voice I like.

The single strings have the advantage of letting us hear all the woodwind detail with even greater clarity. All the flutes are from the North East, and we hear their detail even in the turba choruses. The opening chorus is unhurried and well balanced, and I like the way the recording – in a relatively small space in a York church – is so clear and immediate. But we have a vocal line for the chorale in the very first chorus: is this right in this early version? I thought that it was most likely to have been played on the organ – but then this is a small box organ, and almost certainly has no sesquialtera.

The occasional accidentals that are different in the early version are intriguing, and of course the major differences from the 1736 version are the simple chorale to conclude Part 1, and a lute instead of the later gamba in “Komm süßes Kreuz” which gives it a less tortured, more domestic feel. Here I’d have preferred an organ to the lute stop of a harpsichord as providing a better contrast to the lute.

But overall, this is a musical and coherent performance, as you would expect from a group who have played together a good bit, made distinguished by some fine singing by many of the singers and lovely playing especially by the strings.

David Stancliffe

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Dmitry Sinkovsky violin & countertenor, la voce strumentale
61′
naïve OP30559
Le quattro stagioni, Cessate omai cessate, Gelido in ogni vena (Farnace)

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat might one not like in this issue? Well, for me top of the list are the ‘silly [and unnecessary] pluckers’. I also wonder about the need for more than single players on the ripieno parts and the presence of a double bass in the concertos. And the more I listened and studied the booklet the more I kept wondering. Should the concertos be continuous (yes, for me) rather than have a vocal item after each of Summer and Autumn? Surely a recording of the Seasons needs to include the ‘libretto’ in the booklet? Is the string articulation rather too contrived? Is this a baroque violin player or Nigel Kennedy? So approach with caution (as you might a CD from Red Priest), but amid all the questions I am quite certain that dmitry sinkovsky (sic – booklet title page) is a wonderful player and not far behind as a singer.

David Hansell

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Epoca Barocca
73:03
cpo 777 910-2
da Chiesa in F & d; da Camera in D, E flat, F & g

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]here previous releases of discs devoted to Janitsch’s gorgeous chamber music have concentrated on quartets that highlight winds, the emphasis here is slightly on the string family, and divides the programme equally between quartets and the less often heard trios (one of which is taken one step further by having one of the treble lines played by the harpsichordist’s right hand). While I have no problem with that, and it was always going to be a pleasure to hear the trios, in a perfect world I would have preferred the order to have avoided grouping the quartets at the beginning of the disc. The da chiesa and da camera tags are here taken to indicate a change of continuo keyboard from organ to harpsichord, but there is surely no less “churchy” indication than that of the first of the two da chiesa sonatas – “ala [sic] siciliana ma un poco largo“. Unlike his rather shapeless sinfonias and his mundane concertos, Janitsch’s chamber music has remained popular as it gives everyone in the group a chance to share the melody, and it is not often in pre-20th century music that one is asked to pull off even quintuplets and septuplets in the same bar! And for an example of just how original Janitsch could be, try Track 4… Even despite the use of the lute stop on one track, I’m happy to recommend this CD for some exceptionally fine playing.

Brian Clark

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