Categories
Recording

The Art of the Harpsichord: from Cabezón to Mozart

Byron Schenkman
BSF171

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]yron Schenkman has recorded this significant and highly enjoyable disc on eight instruments from the collection at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota. Ranging from a rare anonymous Neapolitan harpsichord of c. 1530 to a 1798 instrument by Joseph Kirckman, the disc covers more than two and a half centuries of the harpsichord’s dominance. Schenkman has made an excellent choice of work to show off each instrument, for the most part eschewing well-known pieces in favour of lesser-known but no less significant ones, which match the chosen instrument extremely well. For example, a Toccata and Passacaglia by the Frescobaldi-influenced Johann Kaspar Kerll, used to illustrate the Giacomo Ridolfi harpsichord of c. 1675, is an inspired choice and Schenkman rises very well to the virtuosic challenges of the extended Passacaglia. The same applies to Gregorio Strozzi’s trill-laden Passacaglia which is played on an octave virginal by Onofrio Guarracino. A spinet by Johann Heinrich Silbermann is put through its paces in a rare piece by Silbermann himself, as well as in a sonata by C.P.E. Bach. It is good to hear three Scarlatti sonatas played on a resonant Portuguese harpsichord by José Callisto, with a particularly exciting rendition of K 427. Schenkman is a versatile player who seems equally at home in this great variety of styles, no small ask in a repertory that ranges from Cabezón to Mozart. Only the Haydn Sonata in D (Hob XVI:24), played on the Kirckman, feels a bit uncomfortable in its overly-fast second and third movements. The disc is accompanied by some excellent notes on the instruments, written by John Koster; there is, however, little information on the actual music which is a pity. In the breadth of its programme, and with some exciting playing, this CD makes an excellent introduction to the harpsichord and its repertory. It also showcases some wonderful historical instruments kept in peak playing condition.

Noel O’Regan

Categories
Recording

Capricornus: The Jubilus Bernhardi Collection

The Bach Choir of Holy Trinity, Acronym, Donald Meineke
110:05 (2 CDs in a wallet)
Olde Focus RFecordings FCR911

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his splendid recording of an unjustly under-recorded collection by first class musicians deserves to be widely known, and I hope that Brian Clark, who writes the brief note that accompanies the two CDs, can advertise the edition he made widely. This is beautiful music, and eminently performable.

The music first: Samuel Capricornus died at the age of 37 in 1665, so is more than a generation younger than Heinrich Schütz, who clearly thought well of him, writing after receiving his Opus Musicum  “your remarkable works have been passed on to me and they fill me with delight. Go on serving God and his Church in this fashion.” Capricornus was the son of a Lutheran pastor who had sought security for his Lutheran beliefs in what is now the Czech Republic. Having worked at the Imperial Chapel in Vienna under the Italians Giovanni Valentini and Antonio Bertali – rather a different cultural and religious milieu from home – Capricornus was appointed Kapellmeister to the Court in Stuttgart in 1657. These 24 motets from 1660 form a sequence scored for five voices (SSATB), and 5-part viol consort with continuo. In spite of the same scoring for each motet, the Jubilus Bernhardi  motets have a great variety of expressive content and a rich and characterful style of word setting. For all their underlying motet style – they are genuinely German/Bohemian versions of the seconda prattica. They have echoes of Monteverdi’s Selva Morale  as well as links to the emerging German school represented by Tunder and Kuhnau. In some sense, they occupy the same territory as the Gibbons and Tomkins verse anthems in England, alternating passages for one or more voices and instruments with full sections.

That is at any rate how they are performed by the ten singers of the Bach Choir of Holy Trinity, the Evangelical Lutheran church in New York that specialises in Bach and his Lutheran forerunners under the direction of the Cantor, Donald Meineke, with five viol players (and a continuo consisting of theorbo and keyboard) from ACRONYM. The performances are in the same league as those of Vox Luminis, and use the same vocal forces. The Sopranos are excellent: clean, clear and well-blended, and the Hautes-Contres, the Tenors and even the Basses have the same verbal dexterity. Only occasionally was I conscious of a slightly bleating tenor sound, and the bass line is coloured by a real, plummy bass with a wonderful range which is of a distinctively different timbre. But this is a class act by an ensemble of young-sounding voices and they have released recent videos on Youtube which provide the score as the visual accompaniment. From that it becomes clear that they are performing at A=440, though no details of this or the temperament at which the keyboard is tuned or the makers or provenance of the instruments is given in the extremely slender notes on the attractive card case; the liner notes themselves have nothing but the text and an English translation of Bernard of Clairvaux’s verses.

I find the music captivating in its variety, and exciting for the way in which the rhythms of the texts are captured, not just in the episodes for solo voices but in the more homophonic sections – those that are doubled by ripienists.

I have not heard any Capricornus before, but this is music that ranks in individuality with Monteverdi and Schütz, providing a fascinating insight into the musical links between Italy and Germany. Some of his works are available in facsimile from IMSLP, and range from sonatas in 8 parts to small-scale motets: Paratum cor meum  is for two treble and one bass voice, a cornetto and continuo marked for organ. Vocal works and instrumental pieces alike are imaginatively scored, the discs are well-engineered and I urge you to listen to as much as you can as soon as possible, and absorb this fascinating sound-world.

David Stancliffe

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The editions used for the recording are available from Cornetto Verlag in Stuttgart, Germany. Click HERE (Website in German only!) If you have problems, please contact us directly.

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Recording

Assassini, assassinati

Works by Pandolfi Mealli, Stradella, Albertini and Castaldi
Repicco 60:43
Ambronay AMY 308

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]epicco consists of Baroque violinist Kinga Ujszászi and theorbist Jadran Duncrumb. They have devised the present programme of music from the 17th century by pairing two composers who were murderers with two others who were murdered. At first I thought this was quite a gratuitous way to link these composers, as the two victims were not even the victims of the two murderers, but – on listening to the music and reading the short biographies of the four men – it seemed they had one thing in common, a love of danger, and this character feature comes across in much of the music. Ironically, it is the man who seems from his biographical details to have been the wildest of this musical wild bunch, Bellerofonte Castaldi, who contributes a very mild-mannered short sonata and a tuneful Furiosa corrente  to proceedings. The fiery and impetuous idiom of the others, by contrast, seems symptomatic of their violent and lawless behaviour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al70sJmoT-0

However they may have gathered this repertoire, Repicco play it with great musicality and virtuosity, while the full sound of the theorbo had me constantly having to remind myself that there was just one player and one instrument providing the continuo. In addition to the catalogue of murderers and the murdered, Biagio Marini earns an honorary place on the CD by virtue of the ‘extravagance of his music’, while violinist Kinga Ujszászi contributes a perfectly pleasant but rather irrelevant improvisation at one point. If the linking principle is a bit of a gimmick, it is a good excuse for the very effective performance of an unusual selection of excellent 17th-century music.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Corelli: Violin Sonatas Op. V

Lina Tur Bonet, Musica Alchemica
133:27 (2 CDs in a wallet)
Pan Classics PC 10375

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or her interpretations of Corelli’s landmark set of sonatas, Lina Tur Bonet has opted to perform with a large and diverse continuo group (mercifully limited to one combination per sonata!), at A=392Hz (“From this low tuning lacking in tension seem to spring up subdued practices, but not ones devoid of either fantasy profundity, or of the veneer of the Eternal City”…), and to use many of the pre-extant ornamented versions (only sonatas 9 and 10) as well as her own (the cellist is not shy about decorating his line, too). Tur Bonet is a talented violinist with a clear vision, and these accounts reveal a deep affinity with Corelli’s output; she breathes real feeling into the adagios that are such an important feature of this set of 12 sonatas, and I can easily picture her dancing through the livelier movements of sonate da camera. She may be “the new kid on the block” but she certainly has something to say.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Corelli: Sonate a violino e violone o cimbalo, opera quinta

Enrico Gatti violin, Gaetano Nasillo cello, Guido Morini harpsichord
126:30 (2 CDs in cardboard sleeve)
Arcana A 397

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ecorded in 2003, Gatti’s performances are less fussy than Tur Bonet’s in the continuo department; in many ways, though, that puts the violin playing under even deeper scrutiny. A violinist of his class (and here he keeps the best of company!) is the complete master of these seminal works and is at liberty to mould them as he wishes. Nasillo shows just how attentive he is by sometimes imitating Gatti’s ornamentation. For those who like to know such things, the sonatas are re-ordered (I: 1, 7, 2, 8, 3 & 9; II: 4, 10, 5, 11, 6 & 12); thus, although the sequence is disturbed, the da chiesa  and da camera  pieces are interspersed with one another, while the numerical order within each of the two sets is preserved. (In fact, the key sequence is slightly improved by the change!) Gatti’s introductory essay to the recording makes for interesting reading – especially his rebuke of an English critic who wrote about one of his earlier recordings…

Brian Clark

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Recording

Le coeur & l’oreille – Manuscpit Bauyn

Giulia Nuti, Louis Denis harpsichord 1658
74:24
Arcana A 434
Music by d’Anglebert, de Chambonnières, L. Couperin, Froberger, Hardel, Mesangeau & Pinel

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Bauyn Manuscript is a major source of French harpsichord music from the 17th century, containing the music of all the main clavecinistes  active in and around Paris at the time. Represented on the CD are a couple of big names, Louis Couperin and Johann Jacob Froberger, and many less familiar composers, such as Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, Jacques Hardel, Jean Henry d’Anglebert, René Mesangeau and Germain Pinel. What is remarkable is that the ‘lesser’ composers sound every bit as talented as the household names, perhaps a function of the fact that a performer would naturally choose ‘the best of the rest’, or perhaps suggesting that many of them deserve closer scrutiny. The wonderful harpsichord Giulia Nuti plays, ‘Le Haneton’ by Louis Denis made in Paris in 1658, couldn’t be more appropriate; it has a rich and varied selection of tones which are superbly captured by the sound engineers. This venerable instrument is tuned to 1/4-comma meantone a=392, which seems perfect for the repertoire, becoming suitably sourer as the composers err into remoter keys and sweetening as they come back home. The virtuosic Ms Nuti clearly has a profound knowledge of ornamentation, and her performances are suitably encrusted with the appropriate decoration. This is a wonderfully evocative CD, redolent of a bygone age of mannered elegance and rhetorical expressiveness.

D. James Ross

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Recording

A pleasing melancholy

Cheyls Consort of Viols, Emma Kirkby soprano, James Akers lute
72:13
BIS-2283 SACD

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ike Mary Berry or Judi Dench,  Emma Kirkby has become something of a national treasure, and it is wonderful to hear her in fine voice for these songs by Dowland, Tobias Hume, Robert Jones, John Danyell, and Anthony Holborne. Soon to be celebrating her 70th birthday, she brings a lifetime of early music performance experience to this haunting music. While youthful freshness has been replaced with a more mature vocal quality, she has chosen her repertoire wisely and these readings are technically sound but – more importantly – resonant with wisdom. Filled with memories of Emma Kirkby’s rich and varied career, I found these accounts deeply moving and, indeed, almost unbearably poignant. James Akers provides a beautifully sympathetic lute accompaniment to the voice, while also blending elegantly into the consort. The viols, too, are wonderfully responsive, both as accompanists in the songs and also to one another in the accounts of the Lachrimae Pavans  and the other consort music. This CD is a must for all the many loyal Kirkby fans.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Wunderkammer

Acronym
66:44
Olde Focus Recordings FCR906

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he qualifications for admission to Acronym’s cabinet of curiosities seems at first a bit vague – all the music here seems to share is obscurity and a degree of eccentricity, the latter very much in the ear of the listener. However, the cabinet turns out to be a wonderful conceit to permit the performance of a delightful range of neglected music for strings from 17th-century Germany. Beautifully and expressively played by the small period string ensemble, it is revealed as indeed a box of unsuspected treasures. When the programme notes for a CD include the phrase ‘of the ten composers on this recording, probably the best-known is the violinist Antonio Bertali’, you know you are in for a cruise through genuine musical backwaters. Music by Bertali rubs shoulders with works by Samuel Capricornus, Adam Drese, Johann Philipp Krieger, Andreas Oswald, Daniel Eberlin, Philipp Jakob Rittler, Georg Piscator, Alessandro Poglietti and Clemens Thieme, a catalogue of names some of which lurk in the shadows at the edge of my experience but by none of whom could I name a single work.

This plethora of unfamiliar composers reflects the political fragmentation of 17th-century Germany which at this time was a patchwork of semi-independent states. Fortunately, many of these were wealthy enough to employ the services of musicians, and the presence of many small ensembles and the competition between these statelets proved fertile ground for an explosion in composition. Furthermore, competition rather than collaboration led to what we would now regard as musical eccentricity and the cultivation of the individual and distinctive. This very informative trawl through 17th-century German repertoire helps to put composers such as the Austrian Heinrich Biber in a more comprehensible context, but most of this music is also extremely enjoyable in its own right, and Acronym are to be congratulated for their intrepid trawl through voluminous archives to find it, and to perform it so convincingly.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Oddities and Trifles

The Very Peculiar Instrumental Music of Giovanni Valentini
Acronym 68:53
Olde Focus Recordings FCR904

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen I tell you that Giovanni Valentini preceded Antonio Bertali as Kapellmeister in Vienna, your reaction probably depends on your familiarity with Acronym’s recording entitled Wunderkammer, which explores the music of 17th-century Germany, and which places Bertali’s music in a wider context. Valentini’s quirky compositions provide the musical foundations on which Bertali was building, and – as with Bertali – it is easy to hear the links with the eccentric music of the likes of Heinrich Biber from nearby Salzburg. For a representative sample of Valentini’s striking originality, listen to track 3, his Sonata in C (and indeed every other tonality); this was the piece which I heard some time ago on Radio 3, first alerting me to the existence of this unsuspected talent.

What is interesting is that Valentini belongs to the generation prior to Biber, and so allows us to trace this eccentric taste in textures and harmonies back to his training in Venice. The loss of his publication Messa, Magnificat e Jubilate Deo  of 1621, containing polychoral music in the grand Venetian style including parts for trumpets, is a tragic one indeed. Imbued with the tradition of the Gabrielis, he seems to have pre-empted Monteverdi in a number of musical developments traditionally ascribed to the latter composer. Boldly original and harmonically daring, Valentini’s music is beautifully played here by the innovative period string ensemble, Acronym, who have uncovered yet another highly distinctive and largely forgotten link in the chain of musical history. For Valentini to dictate musical taste for some 20 years in one of the great musical capitals of Europe, suggests the esteem in which he was held during his own lifetime, and, as we become more familiar with his music, I am sure we will more fully recognize his legacy in the music of the next couple of generations of German composers.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Sisto Reina: Armonia Ecclesiastica, Opera Quinta, 1653

Concentus Vocum, Michelangelo Gabbrielli
74:55
Tactus TC 621801

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]isto is a composer new to me. He seems to have been one of many ordained composers of church music who moved throughout Italy during the 17th century, visiting important centres such as Modena and Bologna, but also smaller musical establishments. Vital in the dissemination of musical ideas, such composers inhabited the grey area between providing rather mundanely adequate liturgical music and making a genuinely original contribution to musical history. Sisto’s music seems better than mundanely adequate, but not much. The performances by Concentus Vocum are variable. The accounts by the full choir struggle with some of the more fleet figures in the writing, while unanimity of attack and intonation are also a problem. In the manner of singers who are ‘only just hanging in there’, everything is unrelentingly loud and punchy which gets a bit wearing. Some of the motets are sung by solo voices, which addresses the unanimity issues and solves many but not all of the accuracy problems. This CD provides a useful profile of Reina Sisto, but much of the singing is just a little uncomfortable to listen to and I found the limited interest in Sisto’s music insufficient to hold my attention.

D. James Ross

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