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Recording

Sarah Willis : Mozart Mambo

CD cover Sarah Willis Mozart Mambo

Sarah Willis, Havana Lyceum Orchestra, José Padrón etc
54:45
Alpha 578

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I suspect your reaction to this CD will depend on your response to the question posed on the back of the package ‘Mozart combined with traditional Cuban music: do these two go together?’ The answer given is unsurprisingly ‘Absolutely!’ As someone who loves and plays Mozart frequently, as well as loving and playing mambo music, I would never dream of mixing to two, and I’m afraid this CD confirms my decision. We have Sarah Willis playing modern horn with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra in inoffensive performances of the K 370b movement and the K371 Rondo for Horn and Orchestra, as well as the complete K447 Concerto. We also have spirited accounts of orchestral arrangements of actual mambos, which have the usual pros and cons of such reworkings, but then we have further mambos based on Mozart melodies from Eine kleine Nachtmusik and the K447 Concerto. If this is your kind of thing, then you will undoubtedly be happy sashaying along to this – I wasn’t and I didn’t. Sometimes such genre-blurring can be a revelation, but I fear this CD seems a bit of an indulgence. I was left wondering who is going to buy it. Fans of Mozart’s horn music can easily find more convincing and thought-provoking performances, while serious mambists are surely going to feel the performances here rather tame.

D. James Ross

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Recording

The Mystery of the Natural Trumpet

CD Cover Mystery of the Natural Trumpet

Krisztián Kováts, L’arpa festante
66:57
cpo 555 144-2
Concertos by Lang, Otto, Riepel, Sperger & Stamitz

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The mystery alluded to by the title of this CD is perhaps why nobody now performs any of the many trumpet concertos to survive from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the exception of the ubiquitous concerti by Haydn and Hummel. In many ways, these two concerti are aberrations, composed as they were for the keyed trumpet, and it is fascinating to hear the other concertos here by Johann Stamitz, Johann Sperger, Johann Lang and Johann Otto as well as the Sinfonia by Joseph Riepel written for and performed on the valveless (and keyless) trumpet – it should be said that the instrument used is in the Baroque style but with four finger-holes, which puts it some way along the route to the now ubiquitous keyed trumpet. The solo trumpet playing of Kristián Kováts is simply superb, ranging with flawless tuning and tone over a vertiginous range and he is ably supported throughout by L’arpa festante. It has to be said that the quality of composition here is not of the top level of inspiration – even as a fan of the music of the Stamitz family I would have to admit that they are prone to cliché, and this is also the case with much of the rest of the music here. Coupled with the fact that this period saw the beginning of a process which would lead to the trumpet being emasculated from Baroque magnificence to Classical conformity, I found myself increasingly reliant on the soloist’s virtuosity and musicality to hold my interest. Having said that, it is important to be able to put the Haydn and Hummel concerti in some sort of context, and this repertoire and these performances are never less than enjoyable.   

D. James Ross

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Recording

Devienne: Trios

Devienne Chamber music

Le Petit Trianon
71:36
Ricercar RIC416

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Devienne is one of these composers who is more often cited than performed, working in France at the crucial transition between the Baroque and Classical styles – his influence can be heard in the ‘pre-classical’ music composed in Mannheim and even in the early music of Mozart. A wind player who played flute and bassoon expertly as well as being acquainted with the other wind instruments, Devienne was an early champion of the clarinet. He composed in a wide range of genres, including large-scale sacred music and opera, as well as ground-breaking symphonies concertants, but is perhaps most admired for his chamber music, represented here by three of his op 66 flute trios and two of his op 17 bassoon trios. These are works of apparently effortless originality, which reflect the composer’s intimate understanding of the respective wind instruments. A notable workaholic, who combined eight hours of composition a day with regular performances, official duties as a professor at the Conservatoire and even found time to compile an influential method for playing the flute, Devienne eventually burned himself out, spending his final months in an asylum, where he died in his mid-forties. The present selection of chamber music is played with consummate expertise and considerable musicality bringing out the unique qualities of Devienne’s compositions. This was music which looked to the future, and it is fascinating to hear how his influence flowed down through the ensuing generations. It is good to see young French musicians exploring so sympathetically the music of such an important French composer, once considered ‘the French Mozart’ and whose music and career have slipped mysteriously into relative obscurity.

D. James Ross

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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).

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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.

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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

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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