Categories
Recording

Frescobaldi: Complete unpublished works for harpsichord & organ

CD cover Roberto Loreggian Frescobaldi boxed set

Roberto Loreggian
<TT> (6 CDs in a double CD case)
Brilliant Classics 96154

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This collection of six CDs marks the conclusion of Roberto Loreggian’s impressive journey through the complete keyboard music of Frescobaldi, begun back in 2008. While Frescobaldi was a careful preparer and editor of his music for publication, providing a significant canon of authentic pieces, a surprising amount survives in manuscripts scattered all round Europe. This recording has 166 pieces in total, all unpublished during the composer’s lifetime, but issued in 2017 by Etienne Darbellay and Costanze Frey as the final part of their complete edition for Suvini Zerboni. Only a handful are thought to be in Frescobaldi’s hand, but many have been identified as in the hands of collaborators and pupils such as Nicolò Borbone and Leonardo Castellani. Some are substantial pieces; others are short sketches, trial runs for later published pieces, teaching exercises, etc. Authenticating them is a complex business and has occupied scholars over many years, most notably Claudio Annibaldi, Etienne Darbellay, Frederick Hammond, Christine Jeanneret and Alexander Silbiger. Discussion continues about many pieces, and some at least are more likely to be by Frescobaldi’s pupils or followers. Silbiger maintains an online catalogue (Frescobaldi Thematic Catalogue Online (sscm-jscm.org)), hosted by the Journal of Seventeenth Century Music. He has attached F numbers to all pieces attributed to Frescobaldi, published and unpublished, thought to have at least the potential of having been composed by him; for the most part, these F numbers are attached to pieces in Loreggian’s recording, though some have been missed out. Hammond hosts an annotated catalogue of all sources on his website (Girolamo Frescobaldi: An Extended Biography – Frederick Hammond, Bard College), using Silbiger’s F numbers. Between them, these two websites provide the information necessary to contextualise Loreggian’s achievement; the liner notes provide only basic information about the sources.

For those already familiar with the works of Frescobaldi, listening to this recording is at once a disorientating and stimulating experience. Much of the language is familiar and sometimes whole sections are recognisable, but pieces are curtailed, go off in different directions, or use the basic building blocks in an altered way. It is fun speculating whether this or that piece is really by the composer. Above all, the recording provides a crucial insight into the workshop of Frescobaldi, his pupils and followers, and the raw material from which his published pieces emerged fully varnished. There are few surprises here: all the standard genres are found, with lots of random dance movements in particular. There are also sets of partite on familiar themes as well as canzonas, ricercars and toccatas. Some of these last are thought to be late works by Frescobaldi, but might also be by his pupils: they are certainly very accomplished. In particular, a set of three toccatas copied by the musician and engraver Nicolò Borbone in Ms. Chigi Q IV 25, and eleven canzonas also copied by Borbone and now in British Library Add. Ms. 40080, are well worth listening to. There are plenty of other gems too. At the other end of the scale, some pieces are extremely cursory, lasting less than a minute in some cases. Pieces seem to have been ordered by choice of instrument, rather than according to any particular criteria, with no attempt to single out the exceptional from the merely ordinary.

Loreggian has done a very impressive job, taking the pieces equally seriously, and giving them all the same level of attention. He plays on two organs: that built in 1565 by Graziadio Antegnati for the Cappella Palatina in Mantua’s Ducal Palace, and one made by Zanin Organi in 1998 for the Chiesa di S. Caterina in Treviso. He also plays on two modern copies of 17th-century Italian harpsichords by F. Gazzola and L. Patella. All work very well for their chosen pieces and are sensitively registered; recording quality is excellent throughout. There is one surprise in the registration, but I won’t spoil the fun by revealing it! Loreggian has a real gift for making the music sound as if he is improvising it – it is easy to imagine Frescobaldi himself in the room with the listener. As a performer, he is steeped in the musical language of the period and responds with great fluency to the changing declamatory rhythms and affective figures so typical of the composer and his milieu. He is to be congratulated for making all of this music, warts and all, available to listeners. This is a collection to dip into repeatedly for rewarding insights and is a very welcome addition to Frescobaldi discography.

Noel O’Regan

Categories
Concert-Live performance

ST JOHN’S SMITH SQUARE EASTER FESTIVAL – VOX LUMINUS

St John's Smith Square logo

For obvious reasons, St John’s Smith  Square is an ideal venue for a festival of sacred music for Holy Week. This Easter Festival, which took place between 10 and 17 April, featured a broad mix of repertoire from across the centuries, the concert on 14 April with the vocal ensemble Sansara and Fretwork illustrating the eclectic nature of the festival by including works by the Tudor composer Robert White and Arvo Pärt. Unsurprisingly early music was well represented, with concerts including Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (Anna Devin and Hugh Cutting), Handel and Vivaldi (his Stabat mater, RV621 with Hilary Cronin and Cutting again, the former a Handel Festival prize winner, the latter a Ferrier award winner). Perhaps the most ambitious event was the candlelit late-night concerts by Sansara of Gesualdo’s tormented Tenebrae Responsories, given in a candlelit liturgical context over three nights. More traditional Easter fare featured in a Bach St John Passion (Polyphony and OAE under Stephen Layton), before the festival was brought to a conclusion by the Belgian-based ensemble Vox Luminus, under the unobtrusive direction of bass Lionel Meunier.

It was this concert that we were able to attend along with an audience that was disappointingly sparse given Vox Luminus’s present eminence among vocal ensembles. I suppose Westminster is perhaps not a place of choice for many potential concert-goers to be on an Easter Sunday afternoon. Sadly, too, the level of Schütz’s box-office appeal in this country is far from commensurate with his greatness as a composer, so that his profoundly affecting Musicalische Exequien was the centrepiece of the concert may also have proved a deterrent. A German requiem, the work was commissioned from Schütz for his own funeral obsequies by a German nobleman. In this performance, it was given within the context of a funeral, including the opening chorale ‘Mit Fried und Freud’ that accompanied the funeral procession into the church, and to conclude the exquisite German setting of the ‘Nunc dimittis’, which employs evocative in lontano effects, here most atmospherically brought off. It was an award-winning recording of the work in 2012 that first brought Vox Luminus to wide notice. With its alternation of tutti ensemble movements and Favoriten passages for one or more soloists, the Musicalische Exequien is ideally suited to the strengths of Vox Luminus, which over the years have cultivated the individuality of the singers, all of whom are required to undertake solo parts, within integrated ensemble singing in which the personality of each singer remains paramount. At St John’s, ensemble was further tested by a visitation to Vox Luminus of the Covid curse, necessitating several late replacements. It barely showed, the rare odd slip being of the kind that can occur at any time. Far more importantly, with the slight caveat that the ensemble’s principal soprano slightly tended to dominate the texture in ripieno passages, this was overall a deeply sensitive and moving performance that so obviously came from the heart.

Much the same can be said of the two Bach cantatas that made up the programme. Both ‘Christ lag in Todes Banden’, BWV4 and the so-called ‘Actus Tragicus’ (‘Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit’), BWV106 are among the earliest cantatas Bach wrote and works that owe more to 17th-century predecessors such as Schütz and Buxtehude than the more modern type of Italianate cantata adopted by Bach in his later Leipzig cantatas. BWV106 is a funeral cantata probably composed during Bach’s brief Mühlhausen period (1707-08) for obsequies the details of which are unknown. Scored for minimal forces – SATB ‘choir’ – here of course rightly single voices per part – with solo interjections and just pairs of recorders (instruments associated with death during this period) and viola da gambas, and continuo. More consolatory than dramatic, the performance achieved a wonderfully intimate and inward-looking perspective on death, particularly touching in the exchange between the bass and the alto soloist’s chorale that immediately precedes the final chorale.

BWV4 could not have been a more appropriate choice to round off the programme, it being a cantata for Easter Sunday, the exact year of composition also not established, though it probably dates from his Weimar period (1708-13). It is cast in the form of a set of chorale variations, the melody retained throughout the seven verses which are varied both melodically and in their scoring and vocal disposition. Meunier here went with a larger-scale reading, employing three voices per part, doubtless so as to include all his performers, which caught the vibrant celebratory nature of the cantata effectively. This richly rewarding concert was rounded off by an encore in the shape of Buxtehude’s cantata, termed ‘aria’ in manuscript sources, ‘Jesu meines Lebens Leben’, BuxWV62, which is set over an ostinato bass. The timeline between Schütz and Bach was thus neatly bridged.

Brian Robins

Categories
Recording

Monteverdi: Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria

CD cover Monteverdi Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria

Charles Workman Ulisse, Delphine Galou Penelope Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone (cond)
158:46 (3 CDs)
Dynamic 7927.03

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The opening of the notes provided with this set read, ‘The first opera composed by Monteverdi for a Venetian theatre [SS Giovanni e Paolo, 1640], at the time when in Venice the system of paying public theatres was being consolidated, is miles away from Orfeo.’ Indeed it is. In every sense. So one wonders why Ottavio Dantone decided to drag Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria back fifty years into the sound world of Orfeo rather than recreate one appropriate to mid-17th century Venetian theatres? Recorders pipe, cornetti add their agile roulades and a rich continuo section includes a plonking harp. All that is lacking is sackbuts and half a dozen chamber organs of differing kinds.

Dantone’s recording stems from a production by Robert Carson given at Florence’s Teatro della Pergola as part of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino season in June 2021. For those interested, a DVD has been simultaneously released. Illustrations in the booklet suggest a drab-looking modern production with the occasional nod in the direction of period style. As is well known, the score as it has come down to us is incomplete, most notably in the absence of musical settings for several scenes. The edition prepared by Dantone is what would be considered ‘complete’, although some of his musical decisions, such as his treatment of the strange chordal introduction to Penelope’s opening lament, might be thought odd.

My admiration for Dantone’s work in later Baroque music and opera is near boundless, in particular his recognition, rare among conductors, of the dramatic importance of recitative. Here, where we are still very much in the province of prima le parole, poi la musica, that takes on still greater importance. It is one of the great strengths of the performance that it is obvious that much work in this respect has been done by Dantone and his music staff on the 21(!) named soloists, whose diction is largely exemplary. Paradoxically this laudable emphasis on the rhetorical rather than the lyrical also has a downside. From the outset, Dantone’s handling of the continuo group is exceptionally vigorous, excitable, even in places trenchant. At points such as the slaughter of the suitors that pays dividends, but it also encourages singing that is too forced, that at its most extreme encourages the shouting in which some of the cast at times indulge. Leaving aside the two principals, to whom I’ll turn shortly, the cast is in general disappointingly ordinary. The majority are seemingly unfamiliar with the demands of mid-17th century opera – stylish ornamentation is at an absolute premium – and are pushed by Dantone’s approach to sing with too much force and vibrato. I’ll excuse from the general criticism the Minerva of the excellent Arianna Vendittelli, one of the few soloists with a recognisable name, and to a marginally lesser degree Miriam Albano, whose Melanto conveys a certain lively charm.

That brings us to the protagonists. Penelope is one of the great creations of not just early opera but opera of any period, the benchmark immediately laid out in the extended and magnificent opening lament for her long-absent husband. My high hopes of Delphine Galou – for whose work my admiration runs as strongly as it does for her husband (she is Signora Dantone) – were sadly not realised. Although Galou sings with the commitment and conviction she brings to all she does, she somehow does not sound fully at ease with a style that is not her familiar territory, neither does the part seem to lie well for her. Certainly when one thinks back to some of the great Penelopes, Janet Baker and Sara Mingardo, for instance, this cannot be accounted one of Galou’s most successful roles. To check my memories, I went back to Mingardo’s singing of ‘Di misera regina’ (the lament). Mingardo sounds like a singer that has lived with the role, Galou doesn’t. The versatile tenor Charles Workman is to an even greater extent than Galou a stranger to this repertoire. While again his commitment is not in doubt and he is certainly a strong and forceful Ulisse, his at times overwrought singing is not especially appealing and he somehow fails to move the listener even in the tender final pages of the opera. His performance of the Ulisse’s opening scene, his drowsy awakening and subsequent bleak mood (act 1, sc 7) lacks the quality of that of Anizio Zorzi Giustiniani for example in Claudio Cavina’s Glossa set, currently my first choice for a commercial recording. Finest of all but sadly not available commercially is the Rinaldo Alessandrini performance from the 2010 Beaune Festival, which not only incorporates Mingardo’s wonderful Penelope but also conclusively proves that the modest forces intended in Venetian operas of the period work supremely well.

A final thought on that topic. Dantone’s Florence performances were lavishly praised by the critics, not one of whom – to the best of my knowledge – even mentioned the anachronistic instrumental forces employed. That (and much else) is a sad reflection of the invariable ineptitude of most current early opera criticism.

Brian Robins

Categories
Festival-conference

Les Traversées 2022

If you happen to be anywhere near the Abbaye Noirlac in central France on any Saturday between 18 June and 16 July 2022, be sure to check out this festival schedule: Les Traversées 2022 – with three events on each date and the option to include a picnic in your ticket price, this sounds like a marvellous way to spend a summer’s evening. Highlights for early music fans will be Aliotti’s “Il Trionfo Della Morte” on 25 June, and a St John Passion by Les Surprises on 16 July.

Categories
Recording

Adriatic Voyage

CD cover Adriatic Voyage Marian Consort Illyria Consort

Seventeenth-century music from Venice to Dalmatia
The Marian Consort, dir. Rory McCleery | The Illyria Consort, dir Bojan Čičić
58:26
Delphian DCD34260

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The premise behind this excellent recording is simple: it traces the musical connections between Venice and its dominions on the Dalmatian coast. The detailed booklet describes the historical background and the music presented. And what music! The five singers of The Marian Consort are individually very stylish singers, not afraid of using vibrato ornamentally but never allowing it to impact the tuning of their faultless ensemble singing. The aptly named Illyria Consort provides both the harmonic support the singers need in their solos and duets, and the glitter in the larger pieces, with Čičić’s violin and Gawain Glenton’s cornetto stylishly improvising around their lines. I was surprised to discover that only four of the 18 tracks are premiere recordings, but then with music of this quality (and there are some stunning pieces, such as Jelich’s beautiful tenor duet, Bone Jesu) it should not have come as a shock. Topped an tailed by arguably the best-known Dalmatian composer of the day, Francesco Usper (aka Sponga), this disc deserves all the awards it will undoubtedly garner.

Brian Clark

Categories
Recording

Unsung Heroine | Vision

CD cover Unsung Heroine Vision Beatriz de Dia Hildegard of Bingen the telling

The Imagined Life and Love of Beatriz de Dia
The Imagined Testimony of Hildegard of Bingen
The Telling
74:37
First Hand Records FHR123

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The genesis of this CD is by no means simple, so it is important to give an outline of it here. In May 2021, one of the two singers of the ensemble The Telling, Ariane Prüssner, died prematurely and unexpectedly. The Telling had specialised in touring dramatisations of narratives compiled from early musical sources, and their latest two projects had been Unsung Heroine and Vision (detailed above). The soundtracks to arthouse films, these performances were recorded mainly in single takes and never intended for release in CD form. The music on the CD is extracted from larger works and verses are omitted, and where Hildegard left more than enough music to speak entirely with her own voice, Beatriz left only five songs, and her ‘life’ is eked out here with music by various other more familiar male troubadours. Fine musicians all, The Telling provide dynamic and convincing performances of this music which need no apology, and – notwithstanding the unusual and sad circumstances surrounding it – this is a very worthwhile project and a suitable testimony to the remarkable individual talents of Ariane Prüssner, but also to the combined dynamic of this distinctive ensemble. These two imaginative and dramatically effective sequences of vocal and instrumental music shed a valuable light on two musically gifted women, one very familiar and one still relatively unknown.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Ou beau chastel

CD cover of Leuven Chansonniervol. 2 Ou beau chastel

Leuven Chansonnier vol. 2
Sollazzo Ensemble
53:50
passacaille AMY059 | PAS 1109

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The Sollazzo Ensemble return to the Leuven Chansonnier for a second selection from the 62 works it records. Alongside the established composers (Ockeghem, Caron, Frye, Morton, and Busnoys), there is anonymous music which has not been found in any other source, and which supplies the title for their CD. The Ensemble provides convincing and musically engaging accounts of this important music, although just occasionally I felt that some of the songs were a little over-interpreted, with some unidiomatic vocal swooping and portamenti. This is living music, and performers who are undeniably very familiar with the repertoire must be permitted to interpret it meaningfully, but I felt that some of the mannerisms in the vocal contribution sounded disconcertingly out of period. That aside, these are bold and effective interpretations, and it is good to report that the ‘new’ anonymous material is every bit as fine as the established, ‘named’ music – but for the whim of the copyist, we might be adding to the output of one of the familiar masters here, or perhaps more intriguingly even adding to the panoply of the masters of the period. I found it particularly exciting to hear a very persuasive account of Walter Frye’s ubiquitous three-part setting of Ave Regina performed by voices and wind instruments – the performances in the 1980s (by, amongst others, René Clemencic) of the music of this period combining wind instruments and voices were often dismissed as eccentric at the time, but with the welcome challenging of the ‘a cappella orthodoxy’ may prove to have been a perfectly viable and plausible performance option. 

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Mirabilia Musica

CD cover of Mirabilia Musica

Echoes from late medieval Cracow
La Morra
61:05
Ramée RAM 2008

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In a fascinating programme note, La Morra’s director Michal Gondko draws attention to an account of around 1470 by Filippo Buonaccorsi (aka Callimachus) of music in Cracow, at that time the capital of Poland, as well as the two seminal manuscripts from which the music on this CD is extracted. The major discovery is the composer Mikołaj Radomski (fl c1425), who contributes an impressive polyphonic Gloria and a Magnificat, and who may also be ‘Nicolaus’, the composer of keyboard pieces and whose Nitor inclite is performed here. Also impressive is music by Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudenz, given a stunning performance, as well a strikingly original Gloria by Antonio Zacara da Teramo. The singing and playing of La Morra is of a very high order throughout, and they give very persuasive performances of this unusual repertoire. It can scarcely come as a surprise that an important kingdom such as Poland would at this time have boasted a thriving musical culture, but it is exciting to have this confirmed in these excellent performances of superb music from the period, which was either composed in Cracow or certainly performed in it. 

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

La leggenda di Vittore e Corona nei codici del mediovo

CD cover La leggenda di Vittore e Corona InUnum ensemble

InUnum ensemble
53:04
Tactus TC 220002

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The magnificent Renaissance and Baroque music associated with St Mark’s Basilica in Venice can overshadow its earlier repertoire, and this liturgical music from the 13th century, associated with the legend of the martyrs Victor and Corona is a revelation. The template for Christian martyrs from Roman times who were made the subject of Medieval cults consists of them expressing their beliefs in ways incompatible with the pagan Roman Empire and then undergoing unspeakable tortures before their faith is vindicated. This is the case with Victor and Corona, although they are unusual in suffering in parallel with one another – twice the bravery and twice the suffering. The versatile InUnum Ensemble mainly sing unaccompanied – monody with drones and simple polyphony – as well as playing a variety of instruments. The singing is absolutely beautiful, expressive and clear as a bell, with perfect intonation. The instruments – percussion, harp, organistrum, organ, vielle and recorders – are judiciously and cleverly employed to enhance the power of the textual narrative, and I found myself drawn into these extended legends. Understandably, the extensive texts are not printed in the programme booklet, but are available online – having recently been at work on the equally gory cult of St Katherine (she of the wheel), I preferred to draw a veil over the more gruesome details of what poor Victor and Corona were subjected to. Inevitably in a CD of this sort of repertoire, we are ultimately reliant on the skills and musicality of the singers, and I was utterly beguiled by the singing of the InUnum Ensemble, as well as being thoroughly persuaded by the manner of presentation of the repertoire and the discerning use of instruments. In a telling footnote emphasising the vulnerability of such early repertoire, the manuscript was stolen from St Mark’s around twenty years ago – fortunately, it had by that time been scanned. My mind turned to the wealth of repertoire from this period which has not yet been scanned, nor even catalogued.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Giosquino

CD cover of Giosquino Josquin Desprez in Italia Odhecaton

Josquin Desprez in Italia
Odhecaton, Paolo Da Col, The Gesualdo Six, [La Reverdie, La Pifarescha]
77:17
Arcana A489

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Coinciding as it does with the reopening of the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, with its magnificent Renaissance tapestry featuring Hercules, dux Ferrara, one would like to think this similarly magnificent recording featuring Josquin’s Mass Hercules dux Ferrariae might have found its way into the gift shop. If you like your Josquin big and muscular, this is the recording for you. Looking at things through musicological glasses, we know that the ducal court of Ferrara possessed the musical resources to stage events of this stature, so the only consideration is whether Josquin’s music is effective, performed by these large forces. I think that the approach here, using as many as twenty voices for full sections, with solo voices emerging to perform the more intricate passages works extremely well. The otherwise detailed programme notes are inexplicably uninformative about the role played by the wind instruments – I am sure that the voices are supported by cornets and sackbuts in several tracks, and one photo of the recording sessions would seem to confirm this. If this is indeed the case, the blend of voices and brass is exemplary, and again highly effective. I have to say, I felt the two short instrumental tracks sound a little out of place in this programme of largescale sacred music. The programme ends with Josquin’s extraordinary 12-part setting of Inviolata, integra et casta in which all the vocal and instrumental forces combine in a dramatic performance tour de force. I have recently suggested that this work dates from later in Josquin’s life, and through his pupils kicked off the early 16th-century vogue for works in many voice parts (Brumel, Gombert, Carver – www.earlymusicreview.com/robert-carver-exploring-his-aberdeen-connections) – Camilla Cavicci’s programme note points to the interest in the cult of Franciscan immaculatism at the court of Ferrara as a possible alternative context for the work. Either way, it makes for a dramatic conclusion to this fine CD, and provides more persuasive evidence for the more flamboyant and lavishly scored performance of works from the 15th and 16th centuries.

D. James Ross