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Recording

Birds

Modern floral

Elina Mustonen harpsichord
68:19
fuga-9447
Byrd, F. Couperin, Rameau + modern composers

As a lover of birds and the harpsichord, this CD could have been fashioned specially for me! Throughout history composers have admired and imitated the songs of birds, and this CD by harpsichordist Elina Mustonen explores the relationship in the keyboard music of the 17th, 18th and 21st centuries. The CD opens with the stunning sounds of nightingale song before Mustonen embarks on the Quatorzième Ordre from Couperin’s Troisième Livre de Clavecin of 1722, in which the composer evokes the songs of various birds, most prominently arguably the most distinguished of avian vocalists, the nightingale. After the Couperin, we are taken through a group of modern pieces for harpsichord by Peter Machajdík and Oli Mustonen with bird connections before the programme concludes with some slightly tangential Byrd and some much more on-message Rameau. Elina Mustonen entitles her programme notes A Bird Fancyer’s Delight and it is perhaps a pity that she didn’t arrange some of the melodies from that famous 17th-century English publication rather than shoe-horn in the Byrd (what’s in a name?) and the modern works, which are a bit of a culture shock. The sound of Mustonen’s 1993 Kroesbergen Couchet copy harpsichord is superbly rich and vividly captured by her sound engineers. All in all, I felt that this programme was an intriguing idea, best at its beginning and end, seeming slightly to lose its way in the middle, although the quality of the music and the playing are never less than excellent.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Splendor da ciel

Dark green flowers

Rediscovered Music from a Florentine Trecento Manuscript
La Morra
63:41
Ramée RAM 1803

This CD is subtitled ‘rediscovered music from a Florentine Trecento manuscript’ but the remarkable story of the way in which this music survived as a palimpsest, overwritten with bureaucratic records when the music was no longer fashionable, meaning that it has had to be physically ‘recovered’, makes it all the more valuable a treasure. Music by known composers such as Piero Mazzuoli, Jacopo da Bologna, Paulo da Firenze, Hubertus de Salinis and Antonio Zacara da Teramo makes up just a small part of the 216 compositions preserved in the San Lorenzo Palimpsest. The final stage in what must have been an extraordinarily laborious procedure is the committing by La Morra of 17 of the pieces to CD, and it is hard to imagine a more capable group or a more triumphant outcome. The playing and singing of La Morra, a group springing originally from the seminal Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, is superbly idiomatic, expressive and technically impeccable, evoking vividly the manuscript’s early 15th-century context. In Scotland, we have generally made a more thorough job of disposing of our musical manuscripts, but in the case of one 16th-century church manuscript, The Inverness Fragments, pages of church music deemed superfluous were used as stuffing in the binding of a law book, and in due course they could be ‘recovered’ and reconstructed. We enjoyed the same thrill as we sang this ‘retrieved music’ as I am sure La Morra felt when this stunning Florentine music sprang back to life before their eyes.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Salterio italiano

Floral design

Romina Basso mezzo soprano, Il Dolce Conforto directed by Franziska Fleischanderl
62:16
Christophorus CHR 77426
Martini, Perotti, Girolamo Rossi, Ubaldi & Ugolino

But for a cpo CD by Salzburger Hofmusik with 18th-century music chiefly by Telemann featuring Salterio, which I actually bought for the contribution from chalumeaux and Baroque clarinet, I would have been as unaware as I guess most people are of the 18th-century vogue for the instrument. This programme includes delightful instrumental music by Fulgenzio Perotti, Florido Ubaldi and Vito Ugolino featuring the instrument as well as two works for solo alto by Giovanni Battista Martini and Girolamo Rossi which feature salterio in the accompanying ensemble. In Martini’s fine Motetto, due to the prominence of the solo voice, the salterio is initially just part of the accompanying texture, although presently in a couple of items it steps out of the shadows to take a more prominently solistic role alongside the vocalist. In Rossi’s Lezione Quarta, by contrast, the salterio plays a much more fundamental role. The hand-plucked strings of the salterio have a delightful tinkling quality, which allows it to contrast with the harpsichord when the two are playing together, and imbues music it participates in with an elegant and charming timbre. Although I have little to compare it with, Franziska Fleischanderl’s playing is beautifully effective and effortlessly elegant, while Romina Basso’s solo singing and the playing of the ensemble Il Dolce Conforto are both models of musicality and expressiveness. This whole unsuspected repertoire definitely deserves more general attention, and the musicians here have done us a great service in bringing it to a wider.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Les inAttendus: Poetical Humors

Floral design

Vincent Lhermet accordion, Marianne Muller viola da gamba
62:26
harmonia mundi musique HMM 902610
Transcriptions of Bull, Dowland, East, Gibbons & Hume, etc.

A review of this CD of music by 17th-century masters Tobias Hume, John Dowland, Orlando Gibbons, Michael East and John Bull and contemporary composers Thierry Tidrow and Philippe Hersant played on modern button accordion and viola da gamba probably has no place on the EMR website. However, I found the arrangements and the playing so charming and idiomatic that I decided to include it. The plain vibrato-free sound of the accordion (yes, they can switch off that offensive warbling effect!) blends absolutely beautifully with the viol’s elegant tone, and at times you forget you are listening to what on paper looks like a bizarre combination, and hear instead the sound of a viol consort or a viol and organ combination. Of the two contemporary pieces receiving their world premiere recordings, I preferred the Hersant, but actually the early music is the main strength of this CD. Both accordionist Vincent Lhermet and viol player Marianne Müller have a fine sense of the idiom of this 17th-century chamber repertoire. This CD is a testimony to the fact that fine musicianship and a feel for idiom can transcend the mere mechanics of HIP performance. I play clarinet in a duo with a button accordionist, and we shall now be exploring some of this earlier repertoire!

D. James Ross

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Recording

Verdi: Macbeth

Pale green early floral

Giovanni Meoni Macbeth, Nadja Michael Lady Macbeth, Fabrizio Beggi Banco, Giuseppe Valentino Buzza Macduff, [Marco Ciaponi Malcolm, Valentina Marghinotti Lady Macbeth’s handmade, Federico Benetti doctor/servant,] Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Chorus, Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi
122:55 (2 CDs in a card box)
Glossa GCD 923411

This HIP performance of the original 1847 version of Verdi’s Macbeth is an absolute revelation. Already in the overture the more transparent orchestral texture allows the colours of Verdi’s subtle orchestration to come through, while the ensuing choruses and arias are also richly individual in texture, a fact of which I had hitherto been largely ignorant – and I have even played clarinet in a run of the opera many years ago! The solo voices are generally thoroughly impressive, with Giovanni Meoni’s beautifully lyrical Macbeth, Fabricio Beggi’s full-voiced Banco and Giuseppe Buffa’s dramatic Macduff all impressing – the latter a tenor and thus clearly the hero of the opera. Sadly Nadja Michael’s Lady Macbeth, although highly charged, is badly afflicted with such a wide vibrato that it is sometimes hard to tell which notes she is actually singing. This is a tragic bit of miscasting in a performance which is otherwise a model of clarity, as – to my ear – she not only squanders the opportunity for us to hear Lady Macbeth’s solo music more clearly than usual, but also introduces an upsetting degree of vibrato into the ensemble numbers in which she also participates. What a pity! Fortunately the singing of the chorus and the playing of the orchestral forces is thoroughly on-message as they deliver a wonderfully clear account of Verdi’s music. The brass add a punch and poignancy to the texture without overwhelming the balance, the woodwind are allowed to contribute their individual colours without being drowned by the strings, which in turn make a wonderfully incisive contribution. Verdi’s debt to previous masters such as Rossini and even Weber becomes apparent in his deft orchestral writing. I don’t want to cruelly over-emphasise my dislike of Nadja Michael’s performance, but because Verdi wishes to make full use of his dramatic heroine while she is still around, she dominates much of the first half of the opera, and to my mind sabotages the laudable aims of this project. When she disappears on CD II (apart from her mad scene) things are much more comfortable. If you think I exaggerate, just listen to this mad scene, where she takes the opportunity of Verdi’s chromatic idiom to slide all over the place above and mainly below her written notes… How on earth did nobody notice before it came to committing this otherwise excellent performance to CD? So, while this makes the CD something of a curate’s egg, I would still heartily recommend it for the spectacularly new light it casts on this very familiar music, and the way it enhances Verdi’s skills as a composer. Just programme out Lady Macbeth!

D. James Ross

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Recording

Purcell: King Arthur

Floral design

Vox Luminis, Lionel Meunier
97:59 (2 CDs in a wallet)
Alpha Classics Alpha 430

It is hard to believe that this performance of Purcell’s semi-opera is achieved by only thirty performers! One-to-a-part strings sound perfectly adequate (although the original performances would surely have used more) and balance well with the woodwind and brass soloists, while the vocal soloists double as chorus (as they probably would have done originally) and the director Lionel Meunier leads by example, singing bass in the choruses and also playing in the four-strong recorder section! The substantial harpsichord part is not credited in the orchestral list, but in the booklet photos seems to be played by organist Anthony Romaniuk. The general sound is spacious and rich, with a wonderful timbre when the full ensemble are playing and singing. The frost scenes are spectacularly evocative, while the familiar patriotic music, the stirring trumpet tunes and specifically Fairest Isle, are beautifully rendered, the latter sung with crystal-clear tones by Zsuzsi Tóth. The more raucous bucolic choruses never get too out of hand and the piece ends with the pomp of praise for St George, a stirring chorus with trumpets and an elegant Chaconne. This is a fine account of Purcell’s King Arthur with a first-class set of soloists, who also make a fine chorus, and idiomatic and technically sound orchestral forces. Lionel Meunier has a clear vision of the work, and evokes a powerful account of Purcell’s masterwork from his talented performers.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Stradella: La Doriclea

Floral design

Emőke Baráth, Giuseppina Bridelli, Xavier Sabata, Gabriella Martellacci, Luca Cervoni, Riccardo Novaro SmScTATBar, Il Pomo d’Oro, directed by Andrea De Carlo
188:21 (3 CDs in a wallet)
Arcana A 454 (The Stradella Project vol. 5)

The excellent Baroque ensemble Pomo d’Oro under the direction of Andrea De Carlo are joined by a first-class line-up of soloists for this account of the first complete opera by Alessandro Stradella, dating probably from the 1670s while the composer was resident in Rome. At this stage in his short life, Stradella had the reputation of being able to set a libretto to music in a matter of weeks, and in the case of a lightly scored light comedy such as this, it is easy to see how such a feat was possible. Consisting of recitative alternating with simple, tuneful arias ‘con ritornello’ and duets this is the sort of music which could be composed by the yard. Having said that, Stradella’s gift for melody and texture means that he makes the most of the limited demands of this genre, and his instrumental accompaniments are charmingly tuneful, his sung melodies always lyrical and imaginative and the various roles are felicitously characterized in music. The present performance uses just solo strings and continuo, but one rarely feels that the texture is overly thin. The six excellent soloists bring passion and distinctive timbres to their various roles, with particular accolades due to Emőke Baráth’s energetic account of the eponymous heroine Doriclea, the ever-excellent Xavier Sabata as an intense Fidalbo and a smokey-voiced Gabriella Martellacci as Delfina. The programme notes speculate that this is the sort of entertainment which might have been performed outdoors in a castle garden, and with its light orchestration it is easy to see this working rather well, with characters popping in and out from behind hedging to make their contributions. I have emphasized the light-weight nature of the piece, and compared to the operas of Monteverdi it is inconsequential fare indeed, but the music is never less than pleasantly entertaining and this superb performance consistently engages the attention. I consider it unlikely that a performance of the work would have kicked off with a recitative, as suggested by the score and as the performers here choose to do – surely a piece of instrumental music by Stradella would have preceded the performance, and could easily have done so here too. I also feel that that the singers are slightly closely recorded for my taste, but otherwise the sound is excellent and the whole project is infused with musicality and dynamism.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Josquin: Miserere mei Deus

Dark green flowers

Funeral Motets & Deplorations
Cappella Amsterdam, Daniel Reuss
66:10
Harmonia mundi musique HMM 902620

There seems to have been something of a vogue for commemorative music around the end of the 15th-century, music and verse, which would mark the passing of great artists in both media, and it perhaps signals the establishment of composers and poets as individuals of note and status. It became customary for composers to lament the passing of their teachers, and to usefully list in these ‘deplorations’ their fellow students, providing musicologists with useful musical ‘genealogies’ for composers. Opening with Josquin’s exquisite ‘deploration’ for his teacher Johannes Ockeghem, this is a wonderfully comprehensive programme of music by Josquin associated with death including his extended settings of Planxit autem David and the Miserere, concluding fittingly with Musae Jovis by Nicolas Gombert, lamenting his late teacher, Josquin. Cappella Amsterdam produce a wonderfully pure sound and sing this music expressively and convincingly. I had one or two reservations about their pronunciation – surely the Renaissance pronunciation of the French ‘ois’ syllable as ‘way’ is fairly well established, and simply to sing the texts simply as if they were modern French is to lose something. I have to say that an entire programme of sung funeral music does begin to sound a little ‘samey’ – perhaps a piece or two of instrumental music interspersed would have alleviated the similarity of texture. We could perhaps have managed a little more passion in one or two of the pieces, such as the exceptional setting of Absalon fili mi, which – given the passion of the text and Josquin’s extraordinary musical response to it – receives a rather glib performance here. I notice that this is the first of a projected trilogy of deploration music by great composers of the Renaissance, so we await forthcoming albums.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Come to my Garden, my Sister, my Beloved

Modern floral

Lovesongs by Franck & Schein [+Haussmann & Palestrina]
Voces Suaves, Jörg-Andreas Bötticher
69:57
deutsche harmonia mundi 1 90758 49752 5

Best known perhaps for their church music, it is nice to have this selection of lovesongs by Melchior Franck and Johann Hermann Schein. Using compositional techniques similar to their polychoral church music, both composers seem equally adept at setting vernacular love lyrics. The voices of Voces Suaves are joined by a violin, cornetto, theorbo, violone and organ/harpsichord to produce a wonderfully full sound in performances which are adeptly ornamented and expressively presented. The songs by Schein are a particular revelation, as he seems to feel freed to explore a greater variety of textures in these secular works than in his church music. In the music from his late collection Musica Boscareccia of 1628, he seems to be exploring a more operatic idiom using the compositional skills acquired over a twenty-year career. Sadly within two years he would be dead, denying us undoubtedly of much fine music. To provide variety, if such were needed, the instruments perform a delightful Passameza by Valentin Hausmann, as well as two instrumental reworkings by Giovanni Bassano and Luigi Zenobi respectively of two motets by Palestrina. This is a beautifully varied CD, performed with passion and technical assurance acquainting us an unexpectedly rich repertoire.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

The Seasons

Floral design

Prisma
58:31
Ambronay AMY311
Castello, Marini, Merula, Uccellini, etc.

Rather disorientatingly, two of the four seasonal sections of this programme begin with decidedly 21st-century preludes on recorder and violin respectively, which to my mind add nothing musically to the programme of otherwise 16th- and 17th-century Italian instrumental works – hard to imagine who thought this was a good idea. The witty mosquito imitations of the violin prelude and the lute homage to Yves Montand, shoe-horned into the Autumn selection would probably be well received in a concert but don’t really belong on a serious CD. However, even once we are safely into the real subject of the CD where the choice of repertoire is impeccable and fascinating, and the playing is wonderfully idiomatic, we are still occasionally dropped into episodes ‘arranged’ by the group members, where the early music is forced through a prism of modern textures. I found this approach self-indulgent and annoying, as well as slightly patronizing to the original composers – why bother to learn to play period instruments in an idiomatically authentic manner, only to randomly present some of the music in a context in which it could never have been conceived by its composers? This is a huge pity as most of the repertoire is beautifully and imaginatively presented, and there is fine music here which has rarely been heard before. Isn’t that enough, without cheap gimmicks?

D. James Ross