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Recording

Biber & Biber

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Concerto Stella Matutina, Johannes Hämmerle, organ and director
71:00
Fra Bernardo FB 1710593
C H Biber: Missa Resurrectionis Domini, Requiem
H I F Biber: Quasi cedrus exaltata, etc

Oddly enough this is the second CD to sport the title ‘Biber & Biber’, which might sound like a firm of German solicitors, but refers rather to the father and son team of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Carl Heinrich Biber. It is of course the former who is much the better known; indeed even readers of a specialist site such as EMR could be forgiven for being unaware that the elder Biber had a composer son. A quick check reveals that to date only a few instrumental works of C H Biber have reached the catalogue, so this excellent new recording concentrating on two major choral works provides a welcome opportunity to be introduced to him.

The younger Biber, Heinrich’s eighth (!) child, was born in Salzburg in 1681. Not surprisingly he studied the violin and composition with his father and also appeared in Latin school dramas with music by him. In 1704, the year of the elder Biber’s death, Carl was appointed to the court of Salzburg and also travelled to Italy, visiting Rome and Venice, where he would likely have come into contact with the young Vivaldi, recently appointed violin master at the Pietà. Subsequently he visited Vienna, but in 1714 he was appointed deputy Kapellmeister and then in 1743 promoted to Kapellmeister, making him senior to Leopold Mozart, who was appointed as a violinist in the court orchestra in the same year. C H Biber died in Salzburg in 1749.

Biber’s extant catalogue consists largely of music for the church. It survives in the archives of Salzburg Cathedral, where in excess of 120 of his works are housed. They include the Missa Resurrectionis Domini and the Requiem setting recorded here. The most surprising thing about both works is that despite Biber’s youthful contact with modern developments in Italy, they remain resolutely conservative in their adherence to solid contrapuntal techniques. Indeed, the difference in style to the three motets by his father also included on the CD is minimal. Both works conform to similar opulent orchestration as the more familiar large-scale works of Heinrich, which is to say they include parts for trumpets, trombones and timpani in addition to strings. The vocal writing, here wisely restricted to eight singers, alternates between brief episodes for the solo quartet and chorus, with very few extended solos. In both works the text is set with extreme economy, with relatively few opportunities for virtuoso solos. Occasionally, as at the telescoped ‘In incarnatus’ and ‘Crucifixus’ in the Credo of the Mass, Biber introduces a florid violin solo to remind us that he, like his father, was a violinist.

It is the Mass that is the more interesting of the two works. The Kyrie, for example, is introduced by infectiously dancing strings, while throughout exhilarating and exuberant writing for (splendidly played) punchy trumpets is never far away. But there are effective quieter moments too, as in the exquisite Benedictus duet for soprano and tenor. But the whole Mass has an engaging, upbeat ambiance. On first acquaintance the Requiem strikes me as a more perfunctory work, although it has impressive moments such as the urgent thrust of ‘Dies irae’, the soprano solo at ‘Lachrimosa’ and a certain noble dignity at the end of the Sequenz. But too much of the textural setting seems lightweight, with the supplication of the Offertorium (‘O lord deliver …) seemingly already decided by the less than humble music.

The performances are of high quality, with a good solo quartet, the soprano soloist Marie Sophie Pollak in particular being outstanding, and excellent orchestral playing from Concerto Stella Matutina. The splendid recording, made in the Seminary Church in Brixen, South Tirol, captures the often complex sounds with clarity, while at the same time creating an impressively spacious overall sound picture. The CD is well worth investigating by anyone attracted to the resplendent sound world of 17th- and 18th-century Salzburg Cathedral.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Zelenka: Missa Omnium Sanctorum

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[Carlotta Colombo, Filippo Mineccia, Cyril Auvity, Lukas Deman SATB], laBarocca, Ruben Jais
50:16
Glossa GCD 924103

Most of the recordings of Zelenka’s choral music that I know have either been Czech or German. Here we have a predominantly Italian performance of the composer’s final mass setting, for the Feast of All Saints. It is absolutely packed full of everything that typifies Zelenka – cleverly constructed fugal choruses, arias that both tax the soloists by give them hugely expansive lines to relish the beauty of their own voices, dramatic harmonies that accentuate key moments in the texts and an unfailing feel for overall architecture; at the end of it all, one is exhausted and yet uplifted.

laBarroca is a new group to me. Under Jais, the 44321 strings with oboes, bassoon and one “continuo” player, they are electrifying. The energy (which anyone playing Zelenka has to bring with them!) is astonishing and the precision of the violini unisoni playing is breathtaking.

Chorus and soloists alike revel in their music, and once again it is a question of energy – this is not music for the faint-hearted! In such a bright acoustic, the radiance of the voices is especially delightful – and what voices! The soloists are all outstanding.

For decades, northern Europeans have been performing Italian music their way; it seems that Italy is ready to strike back!

Brian Clark

Categories
Recording

Joseph Haydn and his London Disciples

Pink chrysanthemum

Rebecca Maurer fortepiano
79:04
Genuin classics GEN19650
Music by Haydn, Thomas Haigh and Charles Ignatius Latrobe

Haydn’s visits to London were notable from a number of aspects, above all their great success with the capital’s concert-going public, but also for his interaction with native composers. It was an interaction that worked both ways, leading not only to a significant body of works by English composers either influenced by or dedicated to Haydn, but also to the visitor embracing in his own compositions such quintessentially native forms as the catch and the glee.

The present CD focuses on the former, framing works by Thomas Haigh (1769-1808?) and Christian Ignatius Latrobe (1758-1836) between sonatas composed by Haydn for his second London visit. Both the Sonatas in C (Hob XVI:50) and in E-flat (Hob XVI:52) date from 1794 or 5 and comprise two of three dedicated to Therese Jansen, an exceptionally talented pupil of Clementi; they are also the last group of piano sonatas composed by Haydn. That Jansen was a virtuoso is clear from the size and scope of these works, big pieces that require considerable technique and fingering strength in such as the outer movements of the E-flat Sonata. They are also admirably suited to the instrument played by the German keyboard player Rebecca Maurer, a Broadwood of 1816 with a bell-like upper register and bold, resonant bass. As Maurer points out in her excellent notes, with these sonatas the piano leaves the confines of the salon and enters the concert hall. Her actions match her words; these are performances at once boldly virtuosic and sensitively poetic, performances in which her ability to lay out counterpoint clearly is matched by a strong sense of innovatory fantasy and appreciation of Haydn’s wit. Listen, for example, to the fun of the light staccato touch Maurer brings to the opening of the C-major Sonata, or the boldness of that of No. 52, a boldness complemented by the wonderful moment of suspense created by the silence that precedes the codetta of the exposition. In short this is Haydn playing of a high order.

Little is known of London-born Thomas Haigh, other than that he studied with Haydn during the course of his first visit to London in 1791-92. His Sonata in B flat is one of three published in 1796 and ‘humbly dedicated (by Permission) to Dr. Haydn’. Like its fellows it is in two movements, the first of which opens with an adagio before proceeding to a bright-eyed sonata-form Allegro with many scalic flourishes. The second movement Allegretto is based on ‘a celebrated air by Asioli’, a rather naïve rondo with Alberti bass. Published in the same year are three rondos with the principal theme based on one of the popular canzonettas Haydn composed in 1794, the episodes being of Haigh’s composition. His Fantasie was published posthumously (in 1817) and again pays tribute to his master by juxtaposing somewhat incongruously the famous ‘Emperor’s Hymn’ with the whirling folk dance that forms the finale of the ‘Drumroll’. While Haigh’s music is not without interest it is less engaging than that of the Moravian minister and dilettante composer Christian Latrobe, represented here by only the central Lente (sic) movement of his Sonata in B flat, opus 3/2. According to Latrobe Haydn visited him and having heard the sonatas suggested he publish them, which the former agreed to do if Haydn would allow him to dedicate them to him. The appealing movement played by Maurer has a simple song-like theme in the sentimental style. It would be interesting to hear the rest of the sonata if it is all as good as this.

Maurer plays the lesser works of Haigh and Latrobe with as much insight and respect that she brings to the Haydn. To cap off what is both an interesting and extremely well-played and recorded CD, the presentation is exemplary, including not only notes on music and performer but also colour photographs and a description of the piano.

Brian Robins

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Sheet music

Giovanni Battista da Gagliano: Varie Musiche, Libro Primo

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ed. Maddalena Bonechi.
Biblioteca Musicale no. 33
Lucca, 2018: Libreria Musicale Italiana
xi + 143pp, €25.
ISBN: 9788870969542

Younger than his brother, Marco da Gagliano (1582-1643), under whom he began to study music,  Giovanni Battista da Gagliano (1594-1651) was trained in Florence from the age of 5, at the school of the Compagnia dell’Arcangelo Raffaele, as a singer, theorbist, music teacher and composer. The Compagnia, in which both brothers were active, included Cosimo de’ Medici, Ottavio Rinuccini, Giovanni Bardi and Jacopo Peri, connections that assured their careers. Giovanni became maestro di cappella of the Compagnia itself, and later obtained similar posts in the most important churches of Florence and the Medici court. He composed opera as well, and in collaboration with Francesca Caccini. Most of his published output, mainly sacred, is lost.

He had close contact with secular vocal music from madrigals to monody accompanied by continuo, and to opera, and was active himself as a singer and theorbo player. He also knew poets of these forms personally. But demands to produce sacred music left him little time to devote to other books following his first and only book of Varie musiche. The collective titleof ‘Various Songs’ has a modest ring, even if the small print on the frontispiece adds Nuovamente composto & dato in luce, compared to the reiterated ‘New’  used by Caccini for Le Nuove musiche of 1602 and Nuove musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle of 1614. The table of contents, however, reveals that Gagliano’s  intention was the variety of his Libro primo, and a closer look reveals the exceptional quality of these small forms.

In the first 66 pages of this first modern edition Maddalena Bonechi presents, in Italian only, the composer, the source, the poetry, her editorial criteria and a critical apparatus. She discusses the rhyme schemes and typologies of the 26 poetic texts set by Giovanni, in relation to his settings, 15 of which are strophic. The through-composed ones are remarkable for their internal variety. The sonnet Ninfe, donne e regine, for two sopranos, for example, is through-composed. The poem gives coherence to the piece, while the music, always contrasting longer and shorter notes, upward and downward motifs, and differently shaped melismas, gives each of the 14 lines of poetry a distinct interpretation, employing typical madrigalisms with success. Even in the short solo strophic songs (some only half a page long) the continuo lines are impressively well-written. Giovanni was, above all, a consummate master of polyphony. The complete texts are given with a few footnotes in one of the introductory sections, but since over half of them are strophic, those texts (without the first stanza) reappear following the music. This duplication could really have been avoided by printing the complete text for each piece, along with its sparse annotations, immediately after each musical setting, and nowhere else.

The music starts on page 69, finishing on 143. The small format (24 x 17cm) makes it hard to keep such a fairly thick book open on a music stand. Even though justified by the shortness of many pieces, a normal format for music would have allowed many of the 26 pieces to fit on a single page instead of two, and with fewer pages the edition would be more practical. All but one are with basso continuo, and players need their hands free.

Of those for solo voice, 11 are for tenor, seven for soprano, and one for contralto; two duets are for sopranos and two are for tenors; number 19, Ecco ch’io verso il sangue, on a text probably by Michelangelo Buonarroti il Giovane, is for SSTTB and continuo; number 25, O notte amata, on a canzonetta by Jacopo Cicognini, is for contralto and tenor with two alternating instrumental ritornellos, each heard twice. Number 26, Gioite, o selve, o colli is a canzone in one stanza.

Pieces 19-25 are sacred: the madrigals È morto  il tuo Signore (Petracci) and Care amorose piaghe (Policreti)  are on texts from a publication of spiritual texts from 1608. Together with Tu languisci e tu mori, o Giesù mio these express pain with chromatic effects largely absent from the previous pieces. O notte amata was from Cicognini’s Il Gran Natale di Christo Salvator Nostro.

I have some minor complaints or criticisms which should, however, not deter anyone from gaining access to this music. To better understand the editorial criteria (and problems) of the transcription, at least one page of the music in facsimile should have been included. The expression tratti d’unione  is used here for beams, instead of the more common travatura for beaming. Of course in 1623 the Venetian Vincentis (in this case Alessandro Vincenti, son of Giacomo) type set with movable characters, assembling every letter and note, each block including a piece of staff, making beaming impossible. (It was used in manuscripts, woodcuts and engravings, and is implicit in the conception of figured counterpoint). So Bonechi was certainly right to separate notes syllabically and beam them in melismas. She does not, however, do this consistently. Also, her reference to expressing the note values of  ‘white mensural notation’ in modern figures is completely unclear, whereas later she is clear that black notation is rendered in modern notation and indicated by brackets. In the first case I would like to know whether some sections appearing to be in modern 3/2 were written as three semibreves, the difference, whether intended as proportions or by 1623 simply as ‘appropriate’ values, being substantial.

Gagliano uses a generous number of continuo figures, which, to the credit of Bonechi, seem well placed here. I did find some wrong notes, which may have come from the original print, and should have been spotted and editorially corrected. Much more serious and problematic are the editorial suggestions for alterations. As long as every user is cautiously suspicious about adopting editorial alterations, and reasons long and hard about every one, and other possible ones, then an editor has the right to serve the composer in this way. But inevitably one jumps to conclusions, or sees analogous passages which are not so, or anticipates the anticipations (perhaps forgetting an imitation), and so on. Every such suggestion should trigger pondered evaluation. We are still dealing with modal theory; Diruta, we now know, was still alive and frequenting the Vincentis; and even if one takes the concept of musica ficta as an alibi for modernizing the harmony, it isn’t applicable to every note in diminutions or free counterpoint.

The underlay is mostly correct, but sometimes not – which is odd for an Italian transcriber-editor. English editions regularly make such mistakes as sos-pi-ri instead of so-spi-ri (which occurs once right and four times wrong on pages 78-79, along with d’as-pri instead of d’a-spri). The fault may lie in computer setting, or a lack of proof-reading. The more we see accidentally (or deliberately) wrong syllabification in an otherwise excellent edition, the more confused we get about what is correct!

None of these small criticisms spoils my enthusiasm and gratitude to Bonechi and the LIM for this addition to the Biblioteca musicale series. I hope that English readers won’t be put off by not being able to read the text. Actually, before I read it I started to play the first number, Luci, stelle d’amor chiare e ardenti, after which I couldn’t stop until I had played through the entire volume.

Barbara Sachs

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Recording

Schmelzer: Le memorie dolorose

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Tenet Vocal Soloists, Acronym
74:20
Olde Focus Recordings FCR914

Following relatively hot on the heels of a fabulous recording of settings of the Jubilus Bernardi by Capricornus, this stunning performance of a little-known Passiontide oratorio by Schmelzer (perhaps the first of a major piece of vocal music?) can only enhance the reputation of the ensemble Acronym, and also those of the Tenet Vocal Soloists (in this case 11 first-class singers).

Viennese tradition saw musical settings of reflections on Christ’s passion by the leading poets and composers of the day performed in elaborate theatre-like sets for the private devotion of the emperor and his inner circle. Here Nicolò Minato contrasts happy memories from Christ’s life with the events from the story of his crucifixion. The musical style is very much of the age – the narrative is declaimed in tuneful recitative and each section is followed by arias whose melodies are simple but memorable. There are also a duet, three trios, a quartet and two choruses. As tradition also seemed to demand, various passages were set by the emperor himself, here Leopold I, one of which is the longest track on the CD (perhaps Schmelzer was obliged to ensure that this was the case?). Acronym interpolate two sonatas for strings.

The singing is glorious and the instrumental playing (including violini piccoli and lirone!) outstanding. The whole has a very relaxed sense of pace – nothing seems rushed or over-dramatised. If anything, in fact, at points I wanted a little more anguish and pain in the voices; but I stick by my overall impression of the performance – the fact that I listened to it back-to-back three times should give an idea.

I’m afraid I didn’t react in the same way to the booklet note. Firstly – and this is probably just me, so perhaps it’s not even a point worth making – I found the references to “our oratorio” and “our sepolcro” and the conclusion that the work “well deserves its first recording” a little twee. More importantly, I found a paragraph about alterations of the libretto very difficult to read. I understand the reasoning behind the change (even though ultimately I think it is a suprious argument), but I wonder why a quarter of a page of the notes had to be devoted to taking “a clear stand”; given that the piece is as obscure as it is, why not just make the changes tacitly? No-one need be any the wiser. It is the banner-waving I find difficult, not the objectionable passages in the original. Ultimately, though, where does such modern-day censorhip stop?

Brian Clark

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Recording

Bach: Cantatas Nos 106 & 182

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Amici Voices
61:37
hyperion CDA68275

This is a fine showcase for Amici Voices, a group of like-minded young singers, based I suspect around the admirable Helen Charleston, who have enlisted some of their able friends as instrumentalists, including their professors and talent around their home-base in Harpenden to make this recording. They work without a director, like Vox Luminis, and I only felt the lack of direction once – in the change of tempo at the start of the durch Jesum Christum fugue at the end of BWV 106. The overall result is the right kind of music-making: bright and enthusiastic.

Sometimes a shade over-enthusiastic, as in the bass’s Bestelle dein Haus in 106, where in a recording as opposed to a live performance over-dramatising phrases can lead to a coarsening. But Helen Charleston’s In deine Hände is utterly ravishing. And how does Michael Craddock manage to give such a convincing top G when reaching for Paradise and still give a grainy F# on alte Bund at the very bottom? The vocal range is testing in BWV 106 even when done at 415, though I think the arguments (not rehearsed in the liner notes) for doing it at 392 (as with other Mulhausen cantatas where string and wind parts are notated in different keys) are strong on practical as well as musicological grounds.

Two other comments on 106: first, when you are using only an organ bass much of the time, the organ really needs to have more of an an 8’ principal tone. Without it, an 8’ violone is welcome especially when you sing the ‘choruses’ two to a part. With such light scoring as in 106, and the boundaries between chorus and arioso so fluid, I personally prefer single voices: it is easier to match single voices to the very straight sounds of recorders and viols. That is demonstrated clearly by Bethany Partridge’s beautiful soprano line in Ja komm, Herr Jesu.

The eight singers come into their own in the motet Komm, Jesu komm (BWV 229). Here we can hear each individual line clearly, with the sopranos exemplary. Singers of inner parts have to learn to trust that they will be audible without resorting to singing though notes or pushing over bar lines, still less to turning on the vibrato. Just occasionally – often at the ends of phrases when breath is short – that is what happens in all the voice parts and we get a note pushed through the texture, or a weak note accented inappropriately. But when they are all listening to and singing to each other, you can hear the potential for the understated ensemble singing that those who have been trained as ‘soloists’ in the conservatoires find it hard to adjust to, but helps us understand that we need to approach Bach’s vocal lines from behind – singing Bach with a style developed from the motets of Schütz and Schein, and from the Altbachisches Archiv.

BWV 182, Himmelskönig, sei willkommen is another early cantata dating from Palm Sunday in 1714, Bach’s first composition as Konzertmeister in Weimar. Although scored for recorder, a single violin and two violas with a ‘cello sometimes independent of the basso continuo with SATB, the work has a later feel to it. Again there are problems with the pitch at which it works, and the decision to play the recorder part on a transverse flute may have something to do with the difficulty of getting a recorder to play convincingly in E minor in the alto aria. A traverso certainly makes that aria more luscious in feel, though here I found a more ‘modern’ singing style from Helen Charleston less convincing. When Cantata 182 was re-scored for Leipzig, and new parts written for a different context, the scoring was thickened (there are indications of more strings) and an oboe was added to the second violin line, while the top violin doubled the recorder in tutti sections. As it stands, Amici Voices balance the slightly more robust instrumental of the Weimar scoring better, and the sprightly singing and well-controlled lines of a slightly more conventional score with its division into arias, recitatives and choruses (including a motet-style chorale in No 7) give it a more established performance practice style, where singers sound as if they are more at ease.

All in all, this is a good calling card for the group and they should feel encouraged by the way the quality of their performance has been captured, even if there are musicological issues that might have been resolved in the planning with the consequent effect on the performance practice. I was glad to have some details of pitch, instruments and an indication of temperament. The brief liner notes explain the choices behind the programme, but do not attempt to enter the minefield of issues around pitch and instrumentation. We need groups like this to get going – do encourage them and get this CD.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Monteverdi: Missa in illo tempore, Magnificat a 6 voci

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Ensemble Corund, Stephen Smith
50:36
Spektral SRL4-17159

The Ensemble Corund was founded by Stephen Smith who has lived and worked in Switzerland since 1982. They are based in Lucerne, and this CD of Monteverdi’s six-voice – Cantus, Sextus, Altus, Tenor, Quintus and Bassus -sacred works published in the volume dedicated to Pope Paul V and published in 1610, where the other works comprise what we know as the Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is sung two to a part by four mean-range sopranos, and two each of hautes–contres, tenors, low tenors and basses. The singers are clean and well blended and arrive at a comfortable pitch by singing the mass based on B flat at 415 (which is I suspect what the organ is tuned to, rather than on G at 465 or even higher as the surviving organs in North Italy of the period would suggest as the basic pitch there in the early 17th century): there is no detail about the pitch, organ, theorbo (inaudible till the magnificat – or was it only used there?), edition or anything else of HIP interest). The Magnificat à 6 is sung down a fourth at 440, as the clefs imply.

The singing is attractive both for the blend and balance of the clear voices, and for the fact that the ensemble creates a warmth of tone without any hint of vibrato.  The singers – Sara Jäggi of Vox Luminis among them – retain a welcome clarity in the sections where close imitation can lead to fogginess in a larger acoustic or with less disciplined voices. As far as I can tell, it was recorded in a studio, but the acoustic has quite a grateful give.

In the Magnificat, I am occasionally taken by surprise by the style of the realisation of the organ part which does not always seem to me in character with the vocal writing. Singers sing the duet and solo lines unfussily, and thanks to the downward transposition the voices are comfortable in their range. The liner notes – where a whole double page is left blank – are spectacularly uninformative: a page on the ensemble and a page on the director in both English and German, followed by the text in Latin, German and English is all that there is. Nonetheless, I like this performance: it is clear, undemonstrative and musical in its shaping of the sections of the mass where the conductor is not afraid to vary the tempo in the longer numbers, for example, and this sensitivity to the word-setting as well as the occasional homophonic sections – like the Incarnatus and the Benedictus – makes this recording a welcome addition to those available.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: The Trio Sonata Project

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Tripla Concordia, Walter van Hauwe
63:08
Arcana A114
BWV527, 997, 1027-29

The five pieces presented on this CD are all transcriptions and arrangements of works by Bach; three of them are derived from sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord – BWV 1029, 1027 and 1028 put into keys that are easier for recorders after analogy with the version for two flutes (BWV 1039) of No 1 in G, which may well be the earlier version. The others pieces are an arrangement for recorder and harpsichord of the C minor lute partita BWV 997 and the D minor trio sonata for organ BWV 527.

The idea of re-scoring works so that novel combinations of instruments can play them – perhaps domestically for fun or for instruction – was something that Bach clearly did with his own compositions, so the idea is not new. This group is primarily of recorder players, who had a good time re-imagining these versions which sound pretty plausible.

Bach is always worth playing in any version you can: whether these arrangements will last remains to be seen. They are easy to listen to, the players are more than competent and I am consigning my copy to the car for a bit, as they provide novel but unchallenging listening.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: Cantatas BWV 169 & 2

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Le Banquet Céleste, [Céline Scheen,] Damien Guillon, [Nicholas Scott, Benoît Arnould] ScTTB, Maude Gratton organ
74:07
Alpha Classics Alpha 448
+BWV 543, 662-664

Alpha have produced a number of fine recordings over the years, and this CD from Damien Guillon, the countertenor, collaborating again with Maude Gratton playing the 2007 Thomas organ in the Église Réformée du Bouclier in Strasbourg is full of wonderful sonorities. It gives us a truer picture of what Bach Cantatas can sound like when the accompaniment based on a substantial organ, and the organ in this church is in the west of a gallery that runs round three sides of the church. Plenty of room has been created for singers and instruments – including a mellow-toned harpsichord – and the effect of cello and contrabass, organ and harpsichord in recitatives is breathtaking.

I know the church, and have played its organ, which is pitched at A=415 Hz (though it has a couple of ranks at 440). The acoustics are not over-resonant, but gave enough give to ensure good blend. The detailed specification is given, but unfortunately no details of the registration for individual movements.

Guillon sings beguilingly, and, save for one awkward change of register in BWV 169.iv on the words sie schließt die Hölle zu, (though perhaps that gritty sound is intended here?) with his habitual elegance and musicianship. The one-to-a-part strings and wind are perfectly tuned, and the organ when playing obligato lines sings out nobly, but never swamps the rest of the band. It is another recording – like that of arias from the cantatas made by A Nocte Temporis with Reinoud van Mechelen with a Traverso and continuo (Alpha 252 – reviewed in the EMR in December 2016) using the 1718 André Silbermann organ in Saint Aurélie, Strasbourg – that gives us a sense of the rich sonorities you can find if you look for an appropriate organ. The other Cantata on this CD is BWV 82, Ich habe genug, in the version Bach made for an alto/mezzo voice in C minor in 1735.

The other works on this CD are played stylishly by Maude Gratton on the organ. There are three Chorale Preludes on Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr – BWV 662, 663 and 664, and the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 534.

Small clips on Youtube allow us to glimpse something of her nimble pedalling as well as her sparkly style and well-chosen registrations.

This is a CD that has given me much pleasure, and from which I have learnt a lot: but I know of no suitable organs in either 415 or 465 in England where we might be able to perform our Bach Cantatas like this, so I hope the builders will listen to this and see what they can do! I recommend this without reservation.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Telemann: Chamber music treasures from Dresden and Darmstadt (2)

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Les Esprits Animaux
64:13
Musica Ficta MF8029

This is the second review of this recording we have received. You can find the other here.

Those with knowledge of Telemann’s biography will know that he worked in neither Dresden nor Darmstadt, all the works recorded here linked with those centres by their inclusion in libraries in one or, in the cases of the popular Concerto alla Polonaise and the D-minor Concerto, both cities. Their diffusion testifies to the widespread popularity of Telemann’s works beyond the cities in which he worked. It must be added that his authorship of the concertos in B flat and D remains conjectural; on the evidence of the ear alone, I would certainly be inclined to suspect the former as a work of Telemann’s. It is much the least inventive of this group of works, with a Rococo-style opening Allegro that even at five minutes outstays its welcome. The four-movement D-major Concerto for flute and strings is another matter. Opening with an easy flowing Intrada with interesting ‘riffs’ for violin and cello periodically breaking out, it continues with an appealing Aria in which the flute takes the ‘vocal’ part, a brief, lively Gavotte and a graceful Minuet featuring a solo cello in the central section. The presence of three first recordings (TWV 43:G8; the B flat; and the Intrada) would commend the CD to the attention of Telemanniacs if nothing else did.

In fact there is a much more to it than that. For some years Les Esprits Animaux has shown itself to be one of the foremost Baroque chamber ensembles, its performances above all notable for a sense of spontaneity rarely encountered in this repertoire. Mention above of the word ‘riffs’, more frequently associated with jazz, was not accidental, for there is a strong feeling of the improvisatory about all Les Esprits do. The music lives from bar to bar, every gesture counting and contributing to an exhilarating sense of fantasy, of bizzarie. It is necessary to go no further than the beguiling opening Dolce of the Concerto alla Polonaise to hear the stylishly delicate manner in which first violinist Javier Lupiáñez embellishes repeats to know there will be nothing routine about these beautifully played and balanced performances. Caveats? Well, just occasionally I feel the animal spirits run away with the performers a little too much, leading them to excessively fast tempi, as in the Allegro ma non troppo finale of TWV43:G8. Other than that this a disc that conveys the sheer joy of music making to a degree rarely experienced. If you’ve yet to catch up with the unbounded pleasure of listening to Les Esprits Animaux this is the time to rectify the omission.

Brian Robins