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Book

Palestrina for All : Unwrapping, singing, celebrating

Jonathan Boswell's book on Palestrina

Jonathan Boswell
ISBN 9781721-968954

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This volume, self-published by the author, and produced and distributed by eBook Partnership is intended to address a perceived gap in the market for an accessible introduction to Palestrina and his music for the non-specialist reader – the title hints at this, and the information on the back of the publication spells it out in further detail, suggesting that it will be ‘welcomed by early music fans, choral singers and church musicians, and by thoughtful, imaginative music lovers.’

I may not be in the front line of Mr Boswell’s target audience, so I have tried to approach his publication with an open mind and with an eye on his intended public. In his opening chapter, the author helpfully lays out his plan campaign, as well as hinting at his methodology. Presumably in deference to his target audience, he states that he will ‘avoid too many technical terms’, and in a general chapter plan he promises an account of Palestrina’s career and life story as well as a treatment of aspects of the composer’s style and more detailed analysis of the Mass settings.

When I got down to reading the text itself, it seemed that the author was all too willing to depart from his promised structure, with bits of biography bleeding into sections of analysis and vice versa. I found the sections on Palestrina’s life and the context of his career the most interesting, and there were occasional genuine insights into how the intellectual fashions of the time would have influenced his music. Too often, though, there were sweeping general statements, which were simply inaccurate. The assertion at the opening of chapter 8 that Palestrina’s music was largely ‘in limbo’ for three centuries is just nonsense – it influenced composers throughout this period, and of all the Renaissance composers Palestrina was the one whose polyphony continued to be sung and copied and imitated until he was joined by his contemporaries in the great 20th-century rediscovery. Too often such sweeping statements of dubious accuracy stand in for genuine fact-based analysis – is this the inevitable result of the author’s aspiration to popularise his subject matter?

To look in more detail at the text, already in this introductory chapter, I encountered an aspect of the author’s writing style, which I found to be an issue throughout the rest of the book. Mr Boswell is prone to express himself in rather opaque turns of phrase. I could cite numerous examples of sentences, which I had to reread several times and some of which I am not sure I ever got to the bottom of. It is only fair that I should give some representative examples :

In the opening paragraph of the book we have –

‘A highly eventful reception and discussion history followed, focussing among inexorable and perennial issues about music, its cultural influence and complex meanings.’

In chapter 4 we have –

‘There is a marked contrast with styles which disclose a large-scale purposive design where everything seems to develop according to a virtuosic master plan.’

Towards the end of the book we have –

‘Palestrina’s counterpoint follows a different path. The texts are centre-of-attention, not woven into enveloping musical structures, however beautiful. Bald description and pure repetition are avoided.’

I have limited myself to three examples, and could, of course, be accused of taking phrases out of context, but in all honesty, context did not clarify any of these statements for me, nor the many other obscure sentences and phrases throughout the book. Many passages read like a bad translation from a foreign language, but as far as I can ascertain English is the author’s first language. I puzzled long and hard about why I found the author’s style so regularly impenetrable, and think it is principally due to two things. Firstly, this is a book, which was in urgent need of a hands-on editor to ask the vital question, ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ (Such an editor would also incidentally have picked up on some of the many typographical shortcomings.) Secondly, I think it is impossible to analyse contrapuntal music in the degree of detail to which the author aspires without the technical terminology he has consciously denied himself – as a result, I think he is often simply inventing his own technical terminology, which frequently means nothing to anybody except himself.

One example would be the term ‘lead’, sometimes expressed as ‘melodic lead’. This would appear to be the author’s term for the cantus firmus, but not always, and sometimes bafflingly he also uses the term cantus firmus, or rather fermus (sic). This sort of mess seems to me inevitable if you deny yourself recourse to technical terms, but then aspire to analyse without them.

The analysis, particularly of the selected mass movements, aspires to musicology, but again without the technical terms to express the main concepts the author seems to engage in the most eccentric fields of analysis. There are several tables recording aspects of Palestrina’s Masses, which seem entirely without relevance. One table expresses the redeployment frequencies of voice parts. Even after reading the surrounding text several times, I am not entirely clear what this even means, let alone why anybody would be interested in these statistics. Is he talking about the density of the polyphony? I really don’t know. More immediately comprehensible, but equally irrelevant is the table laying out the percentage of bars sung by each voice in 12 Kyrie sections, while the statistical analyses of ‘developments of melodic leads’ and the proportions of settings which open with specific voice parts also seem like analysis gone rogue.

So to return to my original mission, has the author made Palestrina’s music more accessible to a general audience? I think that a general reader would struggle as much as I did with Mr Boswell’s eccentric turn of phrase, perhaps even more so without the framework of technical terminology to fall back upon. Would a general reader have any more use than I had for the statistical tables, addressing apparently irrelevant aspects of the composer’s music? Almost definitely not. As I have already suggested, the biographical sections of the book are generally accurate, while their factual nature helps avoids them being infelicitously expressed, so they would probably provide a useful context for anyone listening to Palestrina’s music. However, it has to be said that it is not as easy as the introduction suggests to fillet this information out of the rest of the text. And of course, in the days of Wikipedia, most of the generally agreed biographical material is available online, where it can also be updated. More worryingly, a non-specialist reader would come away from the text with a number of serious misconceptions – that certain passages in Palestrina are badly written, when in fact the author for some reason just doesn’t like them, or indeed that Palestrina’s vocal lines lie comfortably for singers. Try telling that to your amateur tenor section! I will concede that Mr Boswell may be right in identifying the need for an accessible text to support the general listener to or singer of Palestrina’s music, but in all honesty this isn’t it.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Steffani: A son très humble service

CD cover Steffani duets for Hannover

Duets for Sophie Charlotte of Hanover
Various singers and continuo, Jory Vinikour (hpd), dir
89:22
musica omnia mo0802 (2 CDs)

The words in the heading are taken from the dedication made in 1702 by Agostino Steffani to Queen Sophie Charlotte in Berlin in a letter accompanying two volumes of his chamber duets. Exceptionally cultured and herself a singer and keyboard player sufficiently accomplished to take the role of continuo harpsichordist in Giovanni Battista Bononcini’s Polifemo, produced at court in the same year, Sophie Charlotte had been acquainted with Steffani for many years. The unusually close relationship between the two, fully discussed in the exceptionally detailed booklet notes by Steffani scholar Colin Timms and probably facilitated by the fact that the ubiquitously talented Steffani was also a diplomat, is evidenced in a number of surviving letters.

The duets are scored for a variety of vocal combinations. Unlike the alternation of recitative and aria familiar from the slightly later chamber duets of Scarlatti and Handel, they take a variety of flexible forms, all through-composed. Often the structure will consist of some kind of ritornello or rondeau scheme, sometimes, as in ‘Ah che l’ho sempre detto’ for soprano and tenor, returning at the end to the brief opening da capo aria to complete a cyclical form. This incidentally is one of several instances where the text printed in the booklet does not make clear what is repeated. In their fluidity of form, the duets bear a relationship to both earlier 17th century opera and the later madrigal. The latter are also at times evoked by the frequent use of dissonance and chromaticism in vocal writing that is always cajoling the voices into obedient imitation or closely intertwined counterpoint. That of course is appropriate for texts that invariably deal with the vicissitudes of love in either serious or playful mood. Unique among the eleven duets recorded here is the touching final duet, ‘Io mi parto, o cara vita’, scored for soprano and tenor and cast in dialogue form between two lovers on parting. The overall quality of the duets is extremely high, some, such as ‘Pria ch’io faccia altrui palese’ for two sopranos, being sensuously lovely.

Emanating from the US, the set is a follow up to an earlier collection under the direction of harpsichordist Jory Vinikour that I reviewed previously for EMR. There are several differences in the vocal line-up, only Canadian soprano Andréanne Brisson Paquin and bass Mischa Bouvier being common to both recordings. There is now a second soprano, Sherezade Panthaki, who combines most effectively with Paquin in three duets. Reginald L. Mobley, a stylish countertenor and Scott J. Brunscheen’s light lyric tenor complete the roster. Despite these changes, the performances remain very much on a par with those on the earlier CD. That is to say they are all pleasingly sung, though ornaments are often poorly articulated and there are too few of them, without the singers ever suggesting that they have found anything in the text to engage them. True the texts (one of which is by Sophie Charlotte) are all conceits, often, in keeping with the end of the 17th century, pastoral in nature, but we are told over and over again in vocal treatises of the period that realisation of the text is paramount. Highly emotional words such as ‘lasciami’ and ‘tradirà’ must evoke vocal acting if the duets are to come fully to life and move the listener. Here that hardly ever happens. The continuo accompaniment is capable if a little unimaginative, which has the advantage of not detracting from the singers.

These performances are so well-intentioned that I would love to give them higher praise. The fact is however that this is music that is deceptively simple, needing as it does art that transcends artifice.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Armand-Louis Couperin: Pièces de clavecin

CD cover Armand-Louis Couperin Christophe Rousset

Christophe Rousset
100′ (2 CDs in a folder)
Aparté AP236

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Perhaps because of their unusual scoring Armand-Louis’s best-known works are the handful of pieces that he wrote for two harpsichords, and this is the first complete recording of his 1751 solo Pièces. This volume contains suites in G and B flat, both of which intersperse dances and character pieces, often quite expansive in conception, more than merely charming in general character, and inventive in their material and textures. The music is superbly complemented by the marvellous historic instrument on which it is played – a two-manual (with some interesting accessories) by Goujon (early 18th century) with ravalement by Swanen (1784).

It almost goes without saying that the music is also superbly complemented by the artist. Christophe Rousset is one of the outstanding players of our age and he is on fine form here. It’s not so much the notes but the spaces between them that he manages so well – a little breath here or a pushing on there – and his choice of tempo strikes me as consistently perfect. Some of these movements may have been silent for a long time but, as finally revealed on this disc, they do not disappoint.

David Hansell

This is one of two releases I have reviewed as downloads this month. As such it is not possible to comment in the usual way on the overall physical presentation of the package but a few comments on the download experience are appropriate. This is no longer a novelty, of course, and the process for both the music and the booklet is perfectly straightforward. However, any printing of the booklet material needs care and may need a few experiments with single pages to find the optimum settings for both size and format. In particular, beware of pages that are black with white print (a bad design idea anyway) and you may not want to print pages that are not in your language or which contain material of only passing interest. And do not assume that all publications from the same source will work in the same way! Once you have what you want, you will find excellent and informative essays on the composer, his music and the instrument used (English and French).

Categories
Recording

Charpentier: Messe à quatre chœurs

CD cover Charpentier Messe a quatres chœurs

Carnets de voyage d’Italie
Ensemble Correspondances, Sébastien Daucé
TT
hamonia mundi HMM902640

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This programme is one of those ‘the composer may have visited here, heard music like this and then written this’ concepts, in this case credible and not pushed too hard in Graham Sadler’s fluent note. Most of the music (roughly two thirds) of the music is Italian and excellent it is too, in both content and execution, so full marks to whoever did the painstaking research this kind of thing requires. Cavalli’s Sonata is the stand-out for me, but very much as a primus inter pares. Charpentier is represented by extremes – a motet for three unaccompanied voices (SSA) and his mass for four choirs. This is sonically splendid with rich antiphonal effects, though the tutti sections have choirs doubling each other so the number of simultaneous independent parts is never more than seven. My preference is always for masses to interspersed with other music and not treated like later symphonies (we do not even get the organ interludes Charpentier requests), but that aside this release is very strongly recommended for both content and performances, which are stylish and expressive but never self-indulgent.

David Hansell

This is one of two releases I have reviewed as downloads this month. As such it is not possible to comment in the usual way on the overall physical presentation of the package but a few comments on the download experience are appropriate. This is no longer a novelty, of course, and the process for both the music and the booklet is perfectly straightforward. However, any printing of the booklet material needs care and may need a few experiments with single pages to find the optimum settings for both size and format. In particular beware of pages that are black with white print (a bad design idea anyway) and you may not want to print pages that are not in your language or which contain material of only passing interest. And do not assume that all publications from the same source will work in the same way! Once you get there you will find an excellent programme note (French, English and German), but the sung Latin texts are translated into French only.

Categories
Recording

Charpentier: Méditations pour le Carême

CD cover of Les Surprises Charpentier Pour le Carême

Ensemble Les Surprises, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas
59:49
Ambronay AMY056

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Charpentier’s cycle of Lenten meditations, some of which are dramatised biblical scenes, are preserved only in Sébastien de Brossard’s manuscript collection. Brossard himself described the music as ‘excellent’ and he wasn’t wrong! Charpentier’s melodic and contrapuntal skills are present in abundance, and are enriched by moments of harmonic asperity which still startle even post-Wagner ears.

The scoring is for male voice trio with continuo and I do admire the way in which the singers switch from dramatic characterisation to more ‘objective’ meditation and/or narration while maintaining the balance of the ensemble, phrase shapes and so on. I am less convinced by the approach to the continuo. I do not enjoy, nor do I think historically likely, the changing sonorities within a motet, still less omitting the continuo entirely even though the composer wrote the part. I also doubt the use of a harpsichord in sacred repertoire.

Also in the programme are two fine motets by Brossard and beautifully played instrumental pieces by de Visée and Marais, though over-fiddly continuo disposition distracts from the fine melodic line in the latter.

The booklet (French and English) covers all the bases.

David Hansell

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Recording

de Lalande: Les Fontaines de Versailles, Le Concert d’Esculape

CD cover of de Lalande Les Fontaines de Versailles

Margot Rood, Aaron Sheehan, Jesse Blumberg, Boston Early Music Festival Vocal & Chamber Ensembles, Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs, Robert Mealy
72:55
cpo 555 097-2

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Well, for any who think of Lalande solely as a composer of splendid grands motets and other sacred music, here is the secular corrective in the shape of two delightful one-acters first performed in 1683, revived by the Boston Early Music Festival in 2016 and finally recorded in 2019. In Les Fontaines…, the gods and goddesses represented in the Versailles garden statuary pay tribute to the king, while Le concert …, first heard a few weeks later, compliments a leading physician of the time who served the court, especially the Dauphine.

Thorough preparation and unity of purpose are the hallmarks of Boston productions and the performances here maintain this tradition. The singing captures well the elusive style required and the instrumental contributions sparkle. The continuo section is particularly good – sonorous and supportive without ever becoming silly or intrusive. Overall musical continuity between the short numbers is also excellent.

Between the dramatic items, we hear a Grande Pièce from the collection of ‘background music’ that Lalande composed to accompany meals at Versailles. Apparently, this was a favourite of the king and the players take the chance to show us why – I especially enjoyed the liberation of the bassoon from the bass line to a melodic tenor register role.

The booklet (English, German and French) is a chunky affair with a lengthy (though also very good) essay, the usual performer biographies and texts/translations. But I have to say that I found the font size a challenge and whoever was in charge of production should have allowed for the binding space needed on the inner margins of each page. It’s always a shame when the performers are not perfectly supported in such matters: this ensemble deserves nothing less.

David Hansell

Categories
Recording

Sturm und Drang 2

Ian Page The Mozartists Sturm udn Drang volume 2

Ida Ränslöv mezzo, The Mozartists, Ian Page
71:39
Signum SIGCG 636
Works by Haydn, Gluck, Vanhal, Mysliveček, J. C. Bach

This is the second in a projected series of seven CDs devoted to the so-called ‘Sturm und Drang’ (storm and stress) movement, in fact not a movement at all but an outpouring of passionate, often turbulent emotional outbursts across literature, music and painting primarily between the 1760s and early 1780s. Although the name stems from literature, being particularly associated with Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther of 1774, the music associated with it was mostly composed a decade or more earlier. There appear to be no philological links between the literature and the music, Ian Page’s characteristically informative notes suggesting that Sturm und Drang may simply be a reaction against the charm and gentility of the mid-18th century rococo style.

G minor was a key that particularly lent itself to the turbulence of such fierce emotions. The present disc includes particularly fine examples in symphonies by Haydn and J. C. Bach and vocal works by Haydn and Mysliveček.

Haydn’s Symphony No 39 is not only archetypal of the genre, but also the earliest of a group of minor-key Sturm und Drang works (including string quartets and solo keyboard works in addition to symphonies) that form a highly important component of the middle years of his output. It is unusual in its scoring including four horns, a distinction that leads to suggestions that it exerted an influence not only on the minor key symphonies of Vanhal, at least four of which, including d1, are scored for four horns, but also the earlier of Mozart’s G minor symphonies, No 25, K 183, composed in 1773. Incidentally, in my view it is wrong to include Mozart’s great Symphony No 40 in G minor among Sturm und Drang works; its overall sentiment is one of profound universal sadness, tragedy even that goes beyond the stormy, hurtling drama of works of this kind. Equally, Johann Christian Bach’s Symphony in G minor, op 6/6 seems to belong to a less intense side of the genre, placing as its centre of gravity a deeply-felt C minor central movement that opens in the style of an operatic accompagnato before proceeding to a beautifully shaped melody built on ornamental arabesques. The whole symphony is an object lesson for those who think of Bach’s second son as a purveyor of little more than galant pleasantries.

Ian Page’s performances of all three symphonies are exemplary. Outer movements have a tremendous driving force, with fierce chords, highlighted dynamic contrasts – listen to the splendidly judged opening paragraphs of the opening Allegro assai of the Haydn – and fierce tremolandos. Also notable as a feature of the performances is the clarity with which the conductor reveals the contrapuntal detail of passages such as the development of the same movement, the importance given to such writing being one of the characteristic features of Sturm und Drang works. In the slow movements of the Haydn and Vanhal Page finds a lighter touch to reveal necessary respite from the fiery thrust of the outer movements, the pastoral serenity of the splendid Vanhal Andante arioso (with flutes replacing oboes) calling to mind Gluck’s Blessed Spirits. As is his custom, Page includes all marked repeats, especially valuable in the Vanhal, which becomes a far more substantial work than in the performance by Concerto Köln, where the total work clocks in at 14:22 against Page’s 21:49.

As with vol. 1 appropriate vocal works are interspersed with the symphonies. They include two extracts from Gluck’s Paride ed Elena (Vienna, 1770), the affecting aria ‘Fac me vere tecum flere’ from Haydn’s Stabat Mater (1768) and an aria di furia from Mysliveček’s setting of a standard Metastasio warhorse, Semiramide (Bergamo, 1776). They are sung by the young Swedish mezzo Ida Ränslöv, who the biography tells us has already sung a wide range of roles in her capacity as a member of Staatsoper Stuttgart and elsewhere. The voice itself has a lovely quality, displaying a tonal richness and variety of colour that bodes well for her future, though I suspect that might be concentrated on later music. Her interpretations here are satisfactory without showing any truly distinctive features. Ornamentation is extremely sparse and her Italian diction and enunciation suggest little detailed exploration of what lies below the surface of the music. Page gives her excellent support, while it would be wrong to conclude without giving generous recognition of the outstanding orchestral playing throughout.

Sturm und Drang is shaping up to be not only an eminently enjoyable series in its own right but an insightful collection of considerable value. Volume 3 can’t come soon enough!

Brian Robins

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Recording

Telemann: Concertos and Ouverture

Lauzer and Lussier play Telemann with Arion Orchestre Baroque on Atma classique

Vincent Lauzer recorder, Mathieu Lussier bassoon, Arion Orchestre Baroque
60:03
Atma ACD2 2789.

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With “just” over an hour’s worth of music to savour here, we are treated to a vibrant and salient reminder of the fluent and mellifluent composing skills of this versatile master of mixed music tastes and guises. The extensive Ouverture-suite closing this disc provides ample proof of both qualities cited above with its refined subtleties and idiomatic twists… it really is akin to Lully with a twist or tweak or three!

It was J. A. Scheibe in his Critischer Musicus (1745) that pointed out Telemann’s prowess and impetus to popularise the ouverture-suite form in Germany and this area was cultivated from quite early on in his career. This fine G-major Suite belongs to a select group that takes us through ten well-crafted, beautifully contoured movements. The amazing flow of musical ideas, clever with subtle touches, displays an ability that Lully and others would have been very proud of. The suite most likely hails from the composer’s Frankfurt period.

After a perfectly observed Ouverture, we set off through the various movements, beginning with “Les Augures” (Omens/Signs) which poses the question, “good or bad?” And there is a brief hint of wincing to be heard! Possibly an allusion to scenes in the stock market on the first floor of his Frankfurt mansion? Splendid examples of the French dance forms feature too, not only a neat, formal Rondeau, but later a Gavotte en rondeau, all attesting to Telemann’s familiarity and playfulness with these dances. The transition is a real delight; going from 4. Entree into 5. La Joye, one feels the processional, joyful flow. Equally, when the emotional “brakes” are applied this overflowing buoyancy, the Sarabande and Plainte find a melancholic mood like tragic operatic nadirs. In many Suites the Gigue is a final fling, but not her;, the closing triple Menuets I-III  add curtain-falling elegance to the musical trajectory. The playing by Arion Orchestre Baroque under Alexander Weimann is first-class, crisp, vibrant, and alert to the subtle dance mannerisms with “twists”. The two concerti expose the brilliant combined talents of Vincent Lauzer on recorder (who, with that blistering ease “à la Steger”, is yet another dazzling virtuoso on his chosen instrument!) and the equally gifted Mathieu Lussier on bassoon in the F-major work, which opens in quasi-pastoral mode, their superbly interwoven dialogue is captured with great relish and responsiveness;, especially in the final Allegro. The overall playing standard is as expected, exceptionally high, and the recorded sound many could merely envy! Viva Arion! 

David Bellinger

Bravo to Dr Ian Payne (Severinus Press) for conflating the various copied versions for the first edition of the Suite used by Arion for the present recording

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Recording

Monteverdi: Orfeo

Monteverdi Orfeo I gemelli Gonzalez Toro

Emiliano Gonzalez Toro Orfeo, Emőke Baráth Euridice/Musica, Natalie Pérez Messaggiera, Alix Le Saux Speranza/Pastore iii, Jérôme Varnier Caronte/Spirito, Mathilde Etienne Proserpina, Nicolas Brooymans Plutone/Pastore iv, Fulvio Bettini Apollo/Spirito/Eco, Zachary Wilder Pastore i/Spirito, Juan Sancho Pastore ii/Spirito, Alicia Amo Ninfa, Ensemble Vocal de Poche, I Gemelli
97:00 (2 CDs in a single case within a card folder with booklet)
naïve V 7176

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From the opening triple statement of the Toccata, crisply articulated and introducing variants of instrumentation for each stanza, it seems likely that this will be an imaginative version of Monteverdi’s first opera. And so it proves. It is the brain child of tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, who not only sings the title role but directs his recently formed (2018) and excellent early music ensemble I Gemelli. In a note in the booklet Toro explains that it has been a career-long ambition to stage Orfeo, an ambition fulfilled in 2019 when it was given in Paris and Toulouse in a production by Mathilde Etienne, who not also sings a gently persuasive and touching Proserpine but is also responsible for an exceptionally scholarly booklet note. The present studio recording is based on those performances. 

The promise of the Toccata is maintained in a Prologue that is beautifully delivered by Emőke Baráth’s La Musica, each stanza of her varied verses in the recently-arrived stile recitativo inflected with real understanding of the text and incorporating little touches of ornamentation. With the arrival of the chorus that will play a major role in the wedding celebrations of Orfeo and Euridice, the opera moves to its Janus-like stance of looking both forward and backward. While the big opening chorus, ‘Vieni Imeneo’ is homophonic, many of the choruses are madrigalian and here Toro has clearly differentiated them by employing an outstanding one-per-part ensemble drawn from his soloists. It is a measure of how Toro has obviously thought deeply about the opera when he drops the continuo accompaniment entirely for the final lines of the tragic conclusion of act 2 – ‘Ahi caso acerbo …’ (Ah, bitter blow…), thus providing a stunning peroration and compounding further the profound emotional impact of all that has happened since the arrival of Messaggiera (the excellent Natalie Pérez) with news of the death of Euridice. Momentarily looking back to the wedding festivities, I do feel Toro takes some of the madrigalian choruses too swiftly, ‘Lasciate i monti’, being a particular example.

Emiliano Gonzalez Toro is a rare example of a singer seemingly equally at home in French and Italian Baroque opera. In some ways Orfeo, with its continuous stream of recitative, arioso and choruses is closer in outline to the French style, doubtless one reason Toro is so fond of it. He brings to the role only not a an exceptionally well-produced voice of great beauty, but a temperament well equipped to intensify (and release) emotion when called upon to do so. This feature is at its peak in act 3, of which of course the great florid outpouring of ‘Possente spirto’ forms the axis of the opera, not for nothing placed at its exact central point. Like all self-respecting Orfeo’s Toro of course sings Monteverdi’s heavily ornamented version and needless to say sings it well, though he does tend to skate over some of the very dense, fast moving passaggi. It is in fact perhaps the major weakness of the set that none of the singers is totally satisfying in respect of ornamentation. This defect is particularly acute at cadences, invariably left unadorned and thus leaving endings pallid and uninteresting. Returning to Toro’s Orfeo in that critical third act, it is at moments of heightened emotion that it is at its most truly compelling. Listen for example to the hopeless desperation in the voice at the end of Speranza’s aria; ‘Dove, ah, dove t’en vai’ … (Where, o where are you going …). At the end of ‘Possente spirto’ Monteverdi’s ornamented version finishes on the words ‘O de lei mei luci sereni’… (O clear light of my eyes…). At this point Orfeo’s use of his musical prowess to seduce Charon (Jérôme Varnier) ends and the poignant, bitter truth takes over; it’s a moment Toro takes full advantage of, as he does the great outburst of passion after Charon’s response, ‘Ahi, sveturato amante…’ (Alas, unhappy lover that I am …

There are many other moments in Toro’s performance that might be highlighted, and I’m sure it will repay further study. Equally impressive is the care with which he has ensured that all his excellent cast has been carefully coached to remember the critical maxim in this music – prima le parole, poi la musica. Were it not for the lack of ornamentation this might have become my favourite version, but it is an important flaw. It is salutary that for a more stylish approach to embellishment it is necessary to go back to Nigel Rogers’ 1984 outstanding recording on EMI, interestingly another version where the Orfeo also undertook the musical direction (with Charles Medlam).

Brian Robins

Categories
Concert-Live performance

Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2020

Inside one of the grand rooms of Hatfield House

Iestyn Davies (countertenor) and Elizabeth Kenny (lute) – Dowland
Richard Gowers (organ) – Handel, Tomkins, Byrd and Tallis
Friday 18 September 2020

Founded by the British cellist Guy Johnson nine years ago, the Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival was one of the relatively few events in Britain to have survived this most catastrophic of years for music making, albeit by adapting itself to the prevailing conditions. Four concerts were filmed and presented before members of the owner Lord Salisbury’s family for relay on YouTube on Friday evenings during September. They were given in several of Hatfield House’s historic and spectacular rooms, the one reviewed here taking place in the magnificent Long Gallery (pictured above) and the Armoury, the home of a historic organ built in 1609.

I have to confess to being no great enthusiast for filmed concerts (or opera for that matter), but the close links between the Cecils (the family name of Lord Salisbury) and John Dowland made the gorgeous setting unusually appropriate and fascinating. It was to the courtier Sir Robert Cecil (from 1605 the 1st Earl of Salisbury) that Dowland wrote a famous letter, a mea culpa in which he tried to excuse himself from having become involved with Roman Catholic plotters in Florence on his aborted trip to Rome. Today the letter is housed in the archives of Hatfield House, allowing Iestyn Davies to take a break from the concert (one advantage of filming) to examine it, a touching moment.

In a trailer both Davies and Elizabeth Kenny spoke of how they had found that the historic associations added a dimension to their performances, feeling that the music resounded sympathetically from their surroundings. Certainly, the acoustic of the Long Gallery was lively, giving both voice and lute ample, rounded sonority. The concert included five of Dowland’s best-known songs and a pair of galliards, those dedicated to the King of Denmark and Lady Rich, for solo lute. Given the well-established qualities of both performers, the performances were never likely to be less than highly satisfying, expectations more than fulfilled. The sweetness and beauty of Davies’ countertenor is never in doubt and here he searched beneath the surface of the texts in a way that to my mind he does not always achieve. Reservations largely concerned the slow tempos at which he took the darkest numbers, including ‘Flow my tears’ and ‘In darkness let me dwell’, which for me resulted in both taking on a measure of 21st-century sentimentality that missed on the ambiguous aspects of Dowland’s attachment to the doleful. But the beautiful messa di voce which the concluding line of each verse of ‘Flow my tears’ ended was something to treasure. Otherwise, it might have been good to have had more varied embellishment in strophic songs, particularly one with as many verses as ‘Come again sweet love’, though Davies caught its light-hearted mood to perfection.

The second part of the concert moved to the Armoury for a short recital given by Richard Gowers on the 1609 organ supplied by John Haan, a Dutchman. One of the few organs from the period to survive, it also retains the beautiful decorations by Rowland Bucket, the artist responsible for many of the interior decorations of Hatfield House. The most substantial piece Gowers played was the second of Handel’s Six Fugues, while he also included the same composer’s mimetic voluntary known as ‘Flight of Angels’, Thomas Tomkins’ odd Voluntary in D and brief works by Byrd and Tallis. The organ has an extraordinarily translucent sound, yet also an agreeable mellowness. The playing was fluent, if not without the odd mishap.

Brian Robins