Tag: Baroque

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Bach: The Art of Fugue

CD cover Bach Art of Fugue James Johnstone

James Johnstone harpsichord (+ Carole Cerasi)
100:13 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Metronome METCD 1111 & 1112

This is an amazing performance of The Art of Fugue (BWV1080) by the expert harpsichordist and organist, James Johnstone, with the assistance of Carole Cerasi, who often produces his recordings, and does so here when she is not playing a second harpsichord.

One of Johnstone’s gifts – central to his Bach recordings on the organ – is that of choosing the right instrument for the particular repertoire, and that is true of this performance of the Art of Fugue as well. He plays a 1995 copy by Stephan Geiger after an instrument by Johann Christoph Österlein of 1792. While this may sound anachronistic, it ‘shares significant characteristics with the instruments from Michael Mietke’s workshop, with which Bach was familiar’, he comments. It is certainly crystal clear, and has a mellow, bell-like sound: there are few harpsichords I would be happy to listen to for the unbroken 100 minutes these two CDs employ to record the whole work, but this was ideal for such an intense and concentrated performance. And its companion, lent by Trevor Pinnock, built by John Phillips in 2007 after a 1722 original by Johann Heinrich Gräbner the elder seems an excellent match for tracks 1, 2, 10 & 11 of CD2 which Carole Cerasi plays.

Johnstone has chosen to give us ‘the first integral recording of this posthumous 1751 print’, and it therefore concludes with the choral Wenn wir in höchstein Nöten sein played on the 1737 Treutmann organ in Grauhoff. And in listening to the whole Art of Fugue straight through, I was struck by how coherent it is, even if it might have been re-edited by Johann Sebastian in some details had he lived longer – there are signs that even as the plates were being prepared, he was tinkering with details.

There are, of course, many other performances available. For many years, I have been wedded to Fretwork’s take on a consort of viols, and there is one by Phantasm too; and both Jordi Savall in 2001 and Shunske Sato’s All-of-Bach version from 2001 use a wide variety of scoring. The first recording Johnstone bought as a teenager was by Lionel Rogg on the large organ of St Peter’s Cathedral, Geneva – and still to be found today. But for its clarity, intensity and depth of feeling this version is hard to beat, and I come away from the experience convinced that this is the best way to engage with such a deeply cerebral score, and mildly irritated by the apparent random assortment of instruments scored by Sato. The coherence of the developing depth of the individual variations, when those that are only in two parts suddenly feel as if they are in many more, reflects something that is true of the apparently simple solo sonatas for a single violin, where, around the apparently simple line of a single instrument, you suddenly hear the parts of a complete polyphonic structure. To test this, said his son-in-law, Bach would try out a piece for a solo instrument on a keyboard, adding just enough implied harmonic structure.

Something like this is what you get from this performance. It may seem deceptively minimalist, but Johnstone’s skill in pacing the canons as well as his unrivalled fluency in shaping the material shines through the textures with a clarity and inevitability which does more than justice to this towering work. I know of no better performance.

David Stancliffe

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Charpentier: Messe de Minuit

CD cover Charpentier Messe de Minuit Jarry

Choeur et Orchestra Marguerite Louise, directed by Gaétan Jarry (organ)
77:53
Versailles Spectacles CVS173

Few Christmas works have worked their way into the affections of music lovers to a greater degree than Charpentier’s Messe de Minuit. One of many sacred works composed by Charpentier while in the service of the Jesuits (1689-1698), the exact date of its composition is unknown; the composer’s biographer Catherine Cessac has suggested Christmas 1693 or 4 as likely possibility. Scored in four parts – soprano, alto, tenor and bass plus a string orchestra and organ, it resembles the idea of the ‘parody’ mass familiar in Renaissance sacred music but well out of fashion by Charpentier’s time. But unlike the ‘parody’ form it uses not one theme, but no fewer than eleven drawn from old French carols, employed by Charpentier with great skill and the addition of nothing more than a modest degree of ornamentation that allows them to retain their naive charm. ‘Joseph est bien marié’, for example, to which the opening ‘Kyrie’ is set, has a delightfully catchy tune that instantly draws the listener into the joyous spirit of Christmastide. It is also aggravatingly insidious and I hope other listeners have better luck getting it out of their head than I did! It was a good idea to include a number of the orchestral arrangements of these carols that Charpentier made several years prior to the Mass and which were collected in two groups, catalogued as H. 531 and H.534 respectively. The new recording was made in the wonderful acoustic of the Chapelle Royal at the palace of Versailles and is as idiomatic and as outstandingly performed as one would expect from Gaétan Jarry and his accomplished performers, among them a quartet of first-rate soloists (Caroline Arnaud soprano, Romain Champion haute-contre, Mathias Vidal tenor and David Witczak bass).

This would be an outstanding CD even without another major work being included, but Dialogus inter angelos et pastores Judae. In Nativitatem Domini, H. 420 is arguably a more important work than the Mass. ‘Dialogus’ here refers more to a type of work than any extended exchanges between the participants, being one of seven so-called dialogues composed by Charpentier. Taking its text principally from St Luke’s Gospel, the work falls naturally into two sections, each preceded by an orchestral introduction. The first lays the foundation for the opening tenor solo appealing to God: ‘How long will you turn your face to us’, the exquisite second an evocation of night with muted strings and delicate flute. That is followed by the shepherd’s wonder at the opening of the heavens – a translucently beautiful chorus – and the Angel’s announcement to the shepherds, a passage sung with radiantly pure tone by Caroline Arnaud.

Dixit Dominus, H. 202, composed around 1690, is one of six settings Charpentier made of the psalm, this one notable for a prelude of a breadth that surprises in the context of the relative brevity of the work. The writing, employing as usual alternating choruses and solos, is particularly notable for the florid, Italianate writing at passages such as ‘De torrente’. Finally on this generously filled CD there is the lovely Noel, ‘O Créateur’, H. 531 originally one of the orchestral arrangements made by Charpentier, but not employed in the Mass and here heard with its original text, the strophic verses sensitively ornamented.

The whole disc is a joy from start to finish; it is strongly recommended to anyone yet to encounter the delectable Messe de Minuit and is open to discovering some refreshingly different Christmas music.

Brian Robins

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Johann Ludwig Krebs: Keyboard Works volume 6

CD cover Krebs Devine volume 6

Steven Devine harpsichord
70:52
resonus RES10376

Steven Devine completes his complete recording of Krebs’ keyboard works with volume 6 which contains the Sechs Praeambulis from the early Vier Pieces, Part 1 of 1740, Suite 5 of the Six Suites (Clavier-Übung, Part IV, 1746: Krebs WV-811) and the Suite in A minor ‘nach dem heutigen Gusto’ (Vier Pieces, Part 2 of 1741: Krebs-WV 819).

Devine’s instrument for this final CD remains his favourite double-manual harpsichord by Colin Booth (2000) after a single manual by Johann Christof Fleischer (Hamburg 1710) at a=415Hz which he tunes to a Modified Young II temperament. The singing quality of this instrument is perfectly suited to this music which in the early 1740s when Krebs was approaching his 30th birthday sounds completely ‘modern’. For example, track 2, Praeludium 2 – Andante ‘A giusto Italiano’ – with its snap rhythms shows Devine’s perfect control and elegant sense of timing. In tracks 4 & 5 he uses the harpsichord’s second manual to give point to Krebs’ echo effects. Krebs spans the shift from the essentially florid style of the toccatas and contrapuntal writing of the late 17th century, of which the prelude and fugue in the A minor Suite (tracks 13 & 14) are an example, to the gallant and appealing 18th century tunefulness of the 5th Suite (tracks 7-12).

Where did this all come from? Krebs – reputedly Bach’s favourite pupil – had left the Bach household in 1737 when he was 24, after 11 years from 1726-35 as a pupil in the Thomasschule, followed by two in the university. He played the harpsichord in Bach’s Collegium while a university student, and was a copyist of a number of Bach’s Cantatas. Was his failure to secure Bach’s post in Leipzig due to him being considered too modern – or too vieux jeu?

As in the previous discs, Devine’s playing is not only incredibly poised and stylish but entirely adjusted to these mercurial compositions which shed such light on the hinge between the old world and the new. He is that most blessèd interpreter who does not let his ego turn the works he plays into the vehicle of some kind of personality cult as so many of the versions chosen by the presenters on Radio 3 seem to think is what is necessary to bring dusty old music to life. This complete edition is not devoid of colourful characterisation, but Devine’s playing is always at the service of the music, not of himself.

For me, Devine’s Krebs stands as a model of how to do it – letting a composer speak for himself – with elegant and sympathetic performances that do not depend on the intrusion of the player’s personality. This will be the best edition of Krebs’ music that you could wish for – even if it fails the BBC ‘Breakfast’ test.

David Stancliffe

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Orlando Gibbons at the Chapel Royal

CD cover Orlando Gibbons at the Royal Chapel

The Choir of HM Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace. The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, conducted by Carl Jackson
Resonus Classics RES10375
67:00

Following the choir’s excellent discs of music by Tallis and Tomkins, this recording is all the more welcome for marking the quatercentenary of Orlando Gibbons’ premature death in 1625 at the age of only 42. The choral items are well chosen, and include hymns, full and verse anthems, and canticles. None of these are obscure or neglected items, with the possible exception of the morning canticles for the Second Service – the Te Deum and Jubilate – of which there have been few previous recordings. This pair makes for the heftiest contribution to the programme, emphasized by the use (seemingly warranted by contemporary documentation) of winds in the accompaniment, and inspired perhaps by the recording of Byrd’s Great Service by Alamire. They are also employed in the much more familiar evening canticles, and for those anthems which survive in versions as consort anthems.

A small but varied selection of Gibbons’ always attractive keyboard works is included, but the most significant items on the disc are those for consort played by the winds. Gibbons left us six such works in six parts which are definitely for instruments, plus two which are considered less likely to be instrumental and might be surviving wordless versions of choral works, plus one further which is considered even less likely to be instrumental. The six definites have all been recorded several times, and the ninth least likely one has been superbly recorded by the fine French consort of viols L’Acheron, but the intervening pair, numbers 7 and 8 (Musica Britannica v. 48, nos 37 and 38 in John Harper’s edition of Gibbons’ complete music for consort) had never received a commercial recording until now. Whether Gibbons’ individual pieces are familiar or not, all are unfailingly worth hearing, but the recorded premieres of these two works elevate this disc into the status of being essential for admirers of Gibbons, and highly recommendable for anyone interested in the music of this period.

The Hampton Court brand of Chapel Royal choir sounds in excellent voice, though the recording itself does no favours to the inner voices – countertenors and tenors – and favours trebles and basses. But all seems well for the winds, and the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble is of course a world leader in its field, a truism confirmed in its contributions to this exciting disc.

Richard Turbet

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Conti: Il trionfo della Fama

CD cover Conti Il trionfo della Fama

NovoCanto & La Stagione Armonica, Accademia Bizantina, directed by Ottavio Dantone
81:46 (2 CDs)
cpo 555725-2

Il trionfo della fama is one of three serenatas commissioned by the Habsburg empress Elisabeth Christina from Florentine-born Francesco Bartolomeo Conti (1682-1732) in honour of either the birthday or name day of her husband Charles VI. Conti, who served the Viennese court from 1701 until his death in 1732, was initially hired as associate theorbist, in 1708 becoming principal court theorbist. Today Conti is principally remembered as a composer of operas that came to dominate the Viennese Carnival season, the principal period in Vienna for the production of secular dramatic works at a court particularly devoted to sacred music.

Il trionfo was in fact not given in Vienna, but rather Prague on 4 November 1723, the name day of Charles. Cast in a single act, the serenata, typically for the genre, eschews dramatic development in favour of a panegyric text put into the mouths of a group of allegorical characters, here Fama (alto), Gloria (mezzo), Genio (alto), Destino (tenor) and Valore (bass). There is no ‘plot’, the ‘characters’ discourse simply revolving around the reiteration of the monarch’s qualities and achievements voiced in the customary alternation of recitative and aria. There is also a single duet, while the work opens and closes with grandiose double choruses that include trumpets and timpani. The work concludes with a licenza, a scenic representation illustrating the glory of the subject. In keeping with the lavish musical establishment maintained by the Viennese court, a total of 73 musicians in the Hofkapelle in 1721, the work is richly scored, to the point, for example, of ‘L’Asia crolla’, an aria for Valore (Valour) that includes a demanding concertante role for two bassoons. The arias, too, are invariably bravura pieces with extensive melismatic passages combining with the kind of rhetorical writing the verse of this kind of eulogy demands, ‘Asia crumbles, Africa fears this Emperor’s great valour’, and so forth. The singers who first performed Il trionfo were regular court singers and included the celebrated male alto Gaetano Orsini (Fama), who graced the Viennese musical scene over a period of nearly forty years. Conti’s writing is at times highly individual, as is apparent from quirkily fragmented passages in his three-part overture, but at other times there tends to be a reliance on sequential writing that can become predictable.

The present performance stems from the 2024 Innsbruck Early Music Festival. Full of vibrant life, it is typical of the kind of intensity and restlessness associated with the Innsbruck Festival’s new music director. At times, this can work to the disadvantage of the soloists, an aria like Valore’s declamatory ‘Io che regno’, with its wide range and multiple passaggi not made more comfortable for the fine bass Riccardo Novaro by Dantone’s arguably over-agitated direction. But in general terms, Dantone’s is a perceptive performance that reveals Il trionfo as a fascinating example of the occasional serenata. The palm for the best singing goes to Sophie Rennert’s Gloria. She gives a particularly fine account of the character’s second aria, ‘Spira il ciel’, one of the few to include any significant cantabile element. Here, the long winding sequential accompaniments support her evenly produced mezzo and fine mezza voce to provide a pleasing contrast to the prevailing bravura writing, largely coped with by the cast in as accomplished a manner as can be expected today, though diction is at times not exemplary.

It is pleasing to report that, in contrast to a number of recent cpo releases, the booklet does include the Italian text and an English translation.

Brian Robins

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Lully: L’Idylle sure la Paix, Charpentier: La Fête de Rueil

CD cover Lully Idylle Charpentier Fête BEMF

Boston Early Music Vocal & Chamber Ensembles, directed by Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs
75:50
cpo 555678-2

During the 17th and 18th centuries, it was customary to celebrate a major peace treaty or important victory with both sacred and secular music, in the case of the former a Te Deum, often freshly composed. Meanwhile, poets and composers would occupy themselves producing an ode in praise of the victor, or less frequently, a dramatic work crafted for the occasion. The present disc presents secular works from both these categories by the leading French composers of the 17th century, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Both were written to celebrate the same event, the Truce of Ratisbon (or Regensburg), which brought an end to the war Louis XIV had fought against the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. Signed in 1684, the Truce initiated what would be a short-lived period of peace that would be widely celebrated in a France increasingly wearied by Louis’s military exploits.

Such occasional works by their very nature present difficulties for modern performers and audiences. Laudatory and often sycophantic in the extreme, there is often little literary interest or emotional content to grasp. Lully’s Idylle sur la Paix is in this respect rather different in that it has a text written by no less than Jean Racine, which if not major Racine is by definition superior to the dozens of such texts churned out by hacks. The occasion of the lavish first performance of the Idylle was a fête attended by the king and his court and given by the Marquis de Seigneley in the orangery at his château at Sceaux, near Versailles in July 1685. Contemporary accounts – several quoted in Gilbert Blin’s long historical note in the booklet – testify to the glittering grandiosity of the occasion. What is not clear is the kind of forces likely to have been employed, but it seems unlikely it would have been the small chamber music ensemble employed in this new cpo. The recording is based on performances originally given by the Boston Early Music Festival in 2022 and subsequently recorded in Bremen. The Idylle consists of a sequence of brief airs and récitatives alternated with the odd ensemble number, choruses and dances, both the latter at times employed as ritornelli. Probably at least in part due to the reason given at the outset of this paragraph, the performances do little to present the work in a positive light, being vocally largely uninteresting and not helped by poor diction. But what really finishes them off is a familiar complaint against Boston Festival performances: the incessant, intolerable and a-historical continuo strumming on theorbo and – even worse – Baroque guitar by Boston’s joint directors, Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs. Both are outstanding players – I count O’Dette’s set of the complete Dowland lute works to be one of the treasures of my collection – but their persistent intrusive contributions to Boston Festival recordings is highly regrettable.

It goes without saying that the same caveat applies to Charpentier’s La Fête de Rueil, but here the presence of a dramatic context does seem to have helped the singers to a higher level of communication and better, though not perfect, diction. The work takes its name from the château built by the statesman Cardinal Richelieu at a small town on the outskirts of Paris. According to Blin, the work was commissioned by Richelieu, who celebrated his 100th birthday this same year, but no contemporary performance of it has been recorded, which is extremely odd if it was indeed commissioned. That it was intended for Richelieu is not in doubt, since the anonymous text mentions his name twice. Catherine Cessac, Charpentier’s biographer, is more circumspect, suggesting only that it ‘may have been performed at Rueil’. Cessac also points to the work being planned on a ‘lavish scale’, for six solo voices, a four-part choir, and a sizable orchestra that includes a continuo section composed of bass violins, bassoons and harpsichord (NB – no mention of lutes of any kind). La Fête de Rueil is a staged dramatic pastorale featuring shepherds, among them a pair of reluctant lovers, Pan, and, incongruously, an ‘Egyptian Woman’, a fortune teller. The work certainly here makes a greater impression than the Lully, with some attractive singing from tenor Aaron Sheehan (Tirsi) and Danielle Reutter-Harrah (Iris), the possessor of a pure, youthful-sounding soprano.

In truth, neither of these occasional pieces adds anything significant to our understanding of its respective composer, but those tempted to explore the CD will need to go online to see the libretto, it seemingly having become cpo’s policy not to include texts in its booklets.

Brian Robins

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Love’s Labyrinth

CD cover Love's Labyrinth Gonzaga Band Savan Newton Devine

Songs and Duets of Monteverdi and his Contemporaries
The Gonzaga Band (Faye Newton, Jamie Savan, Steven Devine)
deux-elles DXL1213
65:45

With the five-star artists of Jamie Savan’s Gonzaga Band, we know that the artistry of the players, their long history of working together in such small-scale projects and Savan’s meticulous scholarship in editing material will produce a programme that offers fine music in captivating performances.

To appreciate the interlaced threads that make up such a well-researched programme, you need to read Savan’s liner notes: these ten columns are a model for how to coax listeners into believing that they understand the nuances behind the choice of some obscure treasures, and to believe that we have been party to the way in which these pearls have been selected and strung together.

They perform this programme at A=440, and the keyboard instruments are tuned in ¼ comma mean tone. They include a harpsichord by Dennis Woolley after an original by Hieronymus Bononiensis (Rome 1521) in the V & A, a single-strung harpsichord by Colin Booth after a 1533 instrument by Domenico da Pesaro in Leipzig and an ottavino of his after a 17th-century original in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The organ is a digitally sampled keyboard after the Goetze and Gwynne St Teilo Tudor Organ.

Faye Newton has a beguiling voice: clear as a bell, yet delivered with a technical mastery that makes her the ideal singer for this Italian repertoire that spans the cusp of the 16th to 17th centuries. Her neat Italian diction coveys the changing emotions of the poems perfectly and the choice and arrangement of material, ranging from solo songs through duets to four- and five-voice madrigals, explores every possible combination of instruments, and, as with the Gonzaga Band’s other programmes, we are left marvelling at how so much rich music can be contrived with such minimal resources. As Savan’s note suggests, ‘If Monteverdi’s five-voice madrigals were performed in the context of the musica secreta in the 1590s, with its emphasis on female vocal virtuosity, they would likely have been so in some kind of arrangement for upper voices with keyboards, as exemplified by Luzzaschi.’

This is a delightful programme, and a very good introduction to the power of song as it was being rediscovered in those formative years for modern music.

David Stancliffe

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Bach: Les 18 chorals de Leipzig & Variations Canoniques

CD cover Bach Les 18 chorals Martin Gester

Martin Gester organ
109:18 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Paraty 2025005

This admirable recording was made in October 2024 on an organ built in 2023 within a surviving 18th-century case at St Loup in Namur. The aim was to recreate within the existing rather French-style case an instrument that reflected rather the sound of more central Germany in the mid-18th century. So, unlike the recordings on surviving instruments from the late 17th and early 18th centuries in the north German style made in the 1950s and 60s by organists like Helmut Walcha which have so coloured the way in which Bach’s organ music has been received, here is a recording of two of the great summary collections of Bach’s later years played on the kind of instrument with which Bach would have been more familiar rather than the more severely north German/Dutch instruments by Schnitger with which composers like Buxtehude would have played.

The organ chosen for this recording is by Dominique Thomas, the builders of the substantial 2008 organ in the Temple du Bouclier in Strasbourg, with which Martin Gester is clearly familiar, and there is a wealth of information on the Namur organ – though alas no detailed registration scheme piece by piece. The organ is pitched at Chörton (A465), and tuned in a modified Neidhardt 1724 temperament.

Accompanying Gester’s rhythmically fluid playing, perhaps appreciated best in Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Herr BWV 663 with the cantus firmus in the Soprano (2.1), is a great variety of registration. Ornamented chorales in the right hand are often played on a Sesquialtera or Cornet, sometimes on a reed, and occasionally on an 8’ Principal, as in BWV 959. In An Wasserflüssen Babylon (BWV 653) the Chorale is played in the style of a Chromhorne en Taille. There is liberal use of a tremulant, even with an 8’ Principal, as in the first verse of O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig (BWV 656); I was unprepared for the second verse to be played on the Vox Humana complete with tremulant! This substantial prelude, lasting over 8 minutes, is one of Bach’s most astonishing compositions. When the chorale is given to the Pedal, reeds at several pitches are employed and a pedal bass at 8’pitch – there are no less than four 8’ flue ranks on the pedal organ – is used effectively in a number of the trio movements, like BWV 664, the trio on Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr (2.3), as well as in BWV 663. For Gester’s notes, you need to consult his detailed blog, which will lead you to his reflections on the desert island quality of this miscellaneous collection (so unlike other collections like the well-planned but incomplete Orgelbüchlein) as well as the full texts of the chorales on which the preludes are based, which is highly illuminating for his interpretations.

For the larger Organo Pleno registrations, the instrument provides a variety of options, and Gester does not hesitate to use manual 16’ ranks. In the trio on Nun Komm’, der Heiden Heiland (BWV 661), the ornamented chorale is accompanied by a bicinium of bass parts in close imitation not unlike some of the duets in cantatas for a bass voice and basso continuo, and here the manual left hand betrays traces of a cantata adaptation with its viola da gamba-like chords at cadences that link it stylistically to the Schübler Chorales.

The obvious comparison to this performance is that by James Johnstone, who played “The Eighteen” with the canonic variations on Von Himmel hoch (BWV 769) on the Treutmann Organ of 1737 in Grauhof, which I reviewed in April 2021. I find Gester’s performance to be as well-judged as Johnstone’s, and I learned much from it – not least how important the chorale settings are in the cantatas and how closely interrelated are the cantatas and the organ works. You will not be disappointed if you choose this version, and the two are complementary in many ways, even if I slightly prefer Johnstone’s on the Treutmann organ, where the accompanying downloadable notes provide detailed registrations for every number.*

Many of the pieces on these two CDs are regularly ignored by players and recitalists. But this wonderful music represents Bach’s compositional maturity as he selected and edited a number of pieces to which he clearly wished to give a continuing life, rather as he did by parodying some favourite cantata numbers for the four ‘Lutheran Masses’. We ignore these preludes at our peril if we wish to understand the corpus of organ music as a key part of the whole project to furnish a ‘well-ordered church music’.

David Stancliffe

* Martin Gester kindly sent a link to the French section of his website where the registrations ARE listed. Please click HERE.

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Telemann: Violin Concertos

CD cover Telemann Isabelle Faust akamus

Isabelle Faust violin, Akademie für alte Musik Berlin, Konzertmeister Bernhard Forck
79:35
harmonia mundi HMM 902756

With this latest release on harmonia mundi, Isabelle Faust and Akamus Berlin display a considerable synergetic assurance with technical agility whilst approaching these selected Telemann works. Mostly known pieces, with even the Suite having had several previous outings on disc, as with the “Gulliver-suite”; the “Frog” Concerto in A major was first heard in 1998 on Decca. It is slightly ironic that the lesser-knowns on the menu are a circular canon by J. J. Quantz (formerly listed in the Appendix of the TWV as Anh. 40: 103), and a Fantasia, not TWV 40: 22 but TWV 40: 4! Eschewing the works the composer wrote specifically for violin, this piece is lifted from the flute fantasias c.1731, and might have been dispensed with for TWV 51: a2, or the impressive quartet sonata, TWV 40: 200.

This said, the “Relinge” Pond frogs concerto and Gulliver-suite offer scope of expression, and delightful wittiness to sweep the mind away, but it is these two splendid book-ends in this collection that really dazzle, showcasing both composer and soloist’s ability for Italianate panache a la Vivaldi, although the Suite (TWV 55: h4) is a “Brassage” (mixed-brew) of French and Italian. Faust and Akamus capture and own these excellent pieces with some true “Bravoura” and daring “ Rodomontade” (two movements from TWV 55: h4). Her “sleeping beauty” Strad (1704) is fully awake! All the music is couched in a smooth, accomplished synergy, and the polished trumpet playing of Ute Hartwich is pitch perfect and never overstated, the fine interplay in TWV 53: D5 with Faust is really quite captivating, this piece almost certainly aimed at Pisendel, the composer’s friend and gifted virtuoso at Dresden.

Setting aside the minor aberrations of the Quantz and the fantasia, this is a recording of quality with a real dash of showmanship, and should catch the ears of any would-be doubters of Telemann’s powers to provide music of calibre, wit, and heartfelt, dynamic melodic lines. This recording will seek out a wider appreciation and acclaim: Beauty and “Bravoura” have been awoken!

David Bellinger

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Recording

Clérambault: Te Deum, Histoire de la femme adultère

CD cover Clérambault Te Deum Histoire de la femme adultère Van Mechelen

Choeur de Chambre de Namur, A nocte temporis, directed by Reinoud Van Mechelen
58:36
Versailles Spectacles CVS163

Member of a family with a long musical association with the French court, Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749) is today remembered principally as arguably the finest composer of the French secular cantata. However, he was also a distinguished organist who held the post of organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris from 1715. Commenced in the mid-17th century, the building of the church of Saint-Sulpice (a replacement for a much smaller original church) was not completed until a century later. It is likely that Clérambault’s Te Deum was one of a number of his works given at the lavish opening celebrations in July 1745. Although designated ‘à grand choeur’ and according to reports originally performed by 100 musicians, it is overall less ostentatiously spectacular than familiar examples of the hymn by Lully and Charpentier. While the scoring includes the expected trumpets and drums, they are used sparingly, while in keeping with the custom for French settings the work is colourfully multi-sectional, contrasting solo passages with full choral passages. The composer makes the hub of the work the verse ‘Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim’ (To thee Cherubim and Seraphim), at once the most extended and elaborate passage in the work. Opening with the ethereal high voices of the angels’ praise of God, the section segues into dramatic contrast with the outburst of trumpets and drums at ‘Pleni sunt caeli’ (Heaven and earth are full). Other notable moments include the exceptionally lovely choral devotional passage at ‘Te ergo’ (We therefore pray).

While not aspiring to the use of 100 performers – the forces are fewer than half that number – the intimacy of so much of the writing makes for a highly satisfying reading of the work. The many solos and duets, often involving quite florid melisma, are well taken by a fine team, with haute-contre Reinoud Van Mechelen, tenor Guy Cutting and bass Lisandro Abadie particularly distinguishing themselves. The choral singing and orchestral playing are equally satisfying.

If the Te Deum is something of a discovery, I’m tempted to say that here it must give way to an even more exceptional work. As French Baroque music expert Catherine Cessac notes in her customarily valuable notes, L’Histoire de la femme adultère is something of an anomaly, an oratorio after the style of those of Charpentier, composed well after such works had passed into history. Like those of Charpentier (and his model Carissimi), it employs a narrator to tell a biblical story, in this case one of the most touching of those involving Christ’s ministry on earth. The story of the adulterous woman comes from the Gospel of St John, and tells of Christ’s forgiveness of a woman accused of adultery, a crime for which she would of course have been put to death. The story revolves around the famous words by which He puts her accusers to shame – ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone’. Unsurprisingly, Clérambault’s setting puts these words at the heart of the oratorio, with a sublime passage of wonderment for the Narrator and chorus. But the work’s remarkable quality is apparent from the outset, a darkly sombre ‘simphonie’. In addition to the Narrator (Abadie) there are roles for Jesus (Van Mechelen), the Adulterous Woman, beautifully sung with sensitive insight by Gwendoline Blondeel, and two Jewish accusers.

Anyone yet to discover Clérambault is urged to hear this exceptional recording. Then go on to explore some of the composer’s secular cantatas, starting with Orphée.

Brian Robins