Tag: Baroque

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Recording

Dowland: Lachrimae or Seven Teares

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Phantasm, Elizabeth Kenny
57:00
Linn Records CKD 527

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen in his programme note Phantasm’s director Laurence Dreyfus describes Dowland’s Lachrimae as ‘the most sensuously tuneful hour of music ever written’ this is no small claim, but at the same time it is hard to contradict. The organic (in another age you could say symphonic) development of motifs, the constant attention to melodic beauty, the stomach-churning harmonic volte faces make the complete publication a masterpiece, a fact of which its composer, who afterwards signed himself as ‘Jo:dolandi de Lachrimae’, was clearly aware. This fine new recording by Phantasm speaks of extensive experience with this repertoire, while the vital contribution of lutenist Elizabeth Kenny is also wonderfully idiomatic. The first work ever published for notated lute and viols, Lachrimae was the father to a whole clutch of worthy offspring. The classic recording of this music is the 1985 account for BIS by The Dowland Consort directed by legendary lutenist Jakob Lindberg, and some direct comparisons are instructive. The earlier recording adopts more measured tempi, particularly in the pavans, taking some eight minutes longer over the complete recording, and this to my ear imbues their interpretation with a timeless magnificence. The Phantasm account is more flexible, with rushes of passion, but with some passages which to my ear are simply rushed.

The new recording benefits from Linn’s superlative modern recording quality, although the BIS recording is both more ‘toppy’ and ‘bottomy’, emphasizing the fundamental and occasionally shocking harmonic shifts. Lastly both recordings wisely resist the temptation to enhance the lute sound, allowing it to blend beautifully with the viol textures – I would say that Lindberg’s tone is marginally more prominent than Kenny’s, although given BIS’s pledge to reflect natural sound balance in their recordings we must assume he simply played louder. In the more animated movements later in the publication, there is definitely more definition in the Linn recording, as well as bolder and more daring playing from viols and lute. Rather randomly, Phantasm almost run some tracks together including the seven Lachrimae pavans, but also some of the later movements – it may be that I am too used to The Dowland Consort’s spacious account, but I found myself in need of an intellectual break occasionally. There is no doubt that this new Phantasm recording is a valuable addition to our understanding of this remarkable publication, and Dreyfus and Kenny’s excellent programme notes give us further valuable players’ insights into this extraordinary music.

D. James Ross

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Sheet music

Handel: Te Deum for the Victory at the Battle of Dettingen, HWV283

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Edited by Amanda Babington
Bärenreiter BA10706, 2015
xiii+140pp, £30.50
Vocal score BA 10706-90, 2015
ix+84pp, £12.50
Parts: Wind set £30.50, organ £15, strings £4.50 each

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he edition is essentially based on the composer’s first draft, which in this case needed no second draft; the end is missing but was later replaced by John Christopher Smith Jr. There is no critical commentary, but it is hardly needed.

George II was present at the Battle of Dettingen on 27 June 1743. The music was completed by the end of July (thus overlapping with Semele). Five rehearsal took place from 26 September to 18 November, the last being “rehearsed before a splendid Assembly in Whitehall Chapel” (i. e., The Banqueting House). There is a complex mixture of borrowings from a Te Deum  setting by Francesco Antonio Urio (c. 1630-c1720). Three copies of that work survive, one of them perhaps the one acquired by Handel in 1706; it would be useful if the Urio sections had been listed somewhere, or perhaps indicated in the new edition.

This is an excellent edition, with performance material very reasonably priced. So far the Utrecht Te Deum  (with its matching Jubilate) is the most popular of Handel’s settings, but this new edition will perhaps encourage choirs to think about programming it in their concert schedules.

An alternative is available from King’s Music / The Early Music Company, which was published in 2009: A4 score £25, B4 score £30; vocal score £9; set of parts £50 with extras at £4 each.

Clifford Bartlett

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Sheet music

Rameau: Airs d’opéra: Dessus/Soprano – vol. 2

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Edition de Sylvie Boissou, Benoît Dratwicki, Julien Dubruque
Coédition Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, Société Jean-Philippe Rameau, Bärenreiter-Verlag
BA9192, 2015.
182pp, £38.50

(Also Airs d’opéra: Tenor – vol. 2; BA9197, 2015. 152pp, £38.50)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here are 28 items in the soprano selection and 21 for the tenors; this is good value for study and learning the vocal parts, and the print is quite clear enough for practical use. I suspect the piano will be used more than the harpsichord. However, the publisher should make scores and parts available for each aria as required; serious learners of this repertoire and style will want to move from keyboard accompaniment to the full orchestral texture. The layout is excellent, and the first page of each item has the title and then introductions and the text in both French and English. It is slightly disppointing that there is no difference in the price of two books, one of which has 30 fewer pages.

BClifford Bartlett

Categories
Sheet music

Geminiani: 6 Concertos Op. 7, H. 115-120

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Edited by Richard Maunder
Ut Orpheus, 2016
vi+161pp, £31.95

[dropcap]K[/dropcap]ing’s Music / The Early Music Company have sold facsimiles of the opus-numbered works for 20 years or more, including op. 7, so having a clear, modern score is very useful for reference. The preface is laid out in small print, but most of the second page is blank: larger printer filling the space would have be easier to read. There is a table or ornaments. The score is rather small, too: it will not be much use if you are a conductor, though it will be valuable for students. The KM / EMC facsimile parts cost £50. Some think op. 7 is weaker than the earlier sets. Previous volumes in this series were by Christopher Hogwood.

Clifford Bartlett

Categories
Sheet music

Nicola Fiorenza: Konzert in c-Moll für Blockflöte, Streicher und Basso continuo…

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Herausgegeben von Dario Benigno
Doblinger D20.283
42pp, £15.50

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] wonder if Nicola  (as named above the work) is a mistake, since the Vorwort  and Preface  both give the name as Nicolò. There is a similar difference in the composer’s dates (either 1700 or “after 1700”). He was born in Naples and became cellist in the court orchestra. The layout is treble recorder, three violins, viola and cello, but in fact the original heading was violetta, a five-stringed viola da gamba: I hope that when the parts are available, there will be separate parts for the gamba as it stands and the figured bass line. There are four movements: Largo amoroso, Andante  (particularly long), Largo  (in F minor) and Allegro. It is an interesting piece and I would love to hear it some time.

Clifford Bartlett

Categories
Sheet music

Händel: Organ Works

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Compiled after the Urtext of the Halle Handel Edition  by Siegbert Rampe
Bärenreiter, BA 11226, 2016
ix+49pp, £20.50

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] am suspicious of the title. The five items in the HWV 400s are primarily for harpsichord, though the fugues HWV 605-12 are for organ or harpsichord. No. 13, “O the pleasure of the plain”, is a reduced version of the first chorus from Acis & Galatea, but it needs two hands and two feet and goes down to the G below the normal pedals (which were very rare at the time), and why is it so short? Finally, Jesu meine Freude  is a straight three-part setting with the melody in the alto, with a two-bar link into a second verse with the melody in the treble. I’m sure the volume would sell better if a more flexible title had been used, offering the repertoire as suitable for harpsichord AND organ.

Clifford Bartlett

Categories
Sheet music

Filippo Sauli: 6 partitas for Mandolin

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Edited by Davide Rebuffa
Ut Orpheus, 2016.
X + 38pp, €16.95

Sauli was a theorbist in the first decade of the 18th century at the Hapsburg court in Vienna. The six MS partitas were written in French tablature, but the edition is on a single treble clef in two voices. The length varies from three to five dances. It is likely that bass lines were available: no. 5 is printed thus as an appendix.

Clifford Bartlett

Categories
Recording

Bassani: Giona, Oratorio a 5 voci

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Ensemble “Les Nations”, Maria Luisa Baldassari
88:48 (2 CDs in a jewel case)
Tactus TC 640290

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]assani’s Oratorio – composed for Lent in Ferrara when operas were forbidden – is a far cry from the both the oratorios of Carissimi and the operas of Cavalli, and closer in feel to Vivaldi or even early Handel. Da capo arias interspersed with recitatives slow what pace there might have been to what in the Parte Prima is a slow-moving, moralising opera substitute rather than a moving, dramatic, Biblically based narrative. A small organ and harpsichord play continuo, with a constant 8’ ‘cello line, and the violone player also plays the lirone (an instrument that reached its heyday in the early years of the seventeenth century – is there evidence for its use in music this late?), though I could not distinguish it. The upper strings in the five-part ensemble of single strings play in a modern style, with minimal regard for any historically informed practice. Their tuning – which may just be a failure to absorb the temperament of the keyboard instruments – feels at considerable variance with what we might expect. The ‘cello player is better: his free-ranging, melodic part in Non si fide di brieve sereno was a delight.

The singers – the male voices are the best – have some good moments, especially the Testo. But the female voices – there is a duet, and fine echo effects – who have the ungracious roles of Hope and Obedience – are less assured, and too wobbly for me. The narrative hots up in the Parte Seconda, where the storm descends and the helmsman (Atrebate) describes the ship about to founder, when Jonah wakes, rubbing sleep from his eyes. But curiously the whole effect seems bloodless and dull. Partly this is because the music isn’t up to much – there is too much Vivaldian tonic/dominant in endless D major: oh for Handel’s melodic inventiveness! – but partly because there is no real drive, no real dramatic climax – Jonah is just commended for his patience and obedience – and the singers don’t seem able to bring the characters they represent to life.

The recording and production doesn’t help either: there is no libretto with the liner notes: you have to go on line for that; but I couldn’t get through, and the Facebook page has comments from those who had the same experience. In the end, Tactus made contact with me, and provided the text (Italian only, for those who need a translation) and the liner notes. But there was nothing about the performance or style, and no information on the scoring or pitch or continuo decisions, so it is short on information that might help you evaluate the serious quality of this performance.

I don’t imagine there is another recording of this oratorio, but I doubt if this production will commend it to you, unless you are an enthusiast for this particular period and style: but I cannot recommend it as a performance.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: Clavier-Übung III

Stephen Farr (Metzler organ of Trinity College, Cambridge)
105:20 (2 CDs in jewel case)
Resonus RES10120

James Johnstone (Wagner organ 1739, Trondheim)
107:26 (2 CDs in a card folder)
Metronome MET CD 1094

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ike No 11 busses, no new Clavier-Übung III  comes for ages, and now two arrive at once! Both are from English players, and both use good instruments: Stephen Farr plays on the 42 stop 1975 Metzler in Trinity Cambridge and James Johnstone uses the 30 stop 1741 Wagner organ in Trondheim Cathedral, carefully reconstituted by highly experienced Jürgen Ahrend in the 1990s.

In his Liner notes, Farr ponders – as does Johnstone – whether the ‘arcane, unfamiliar and wilfully awkward musical procedures’ in this volume were intended by Bach as a musical riposte to his former pupil, now critic, Scheibe, who in 1737 had accused him of writing in an antiquated mode, rather than in the more tuneful and lyrical gallant style now popular. So what kind of performance does this collection require?

Farr opts for a varied set of performances, using some ingenious registrations. In Jesus Christus unser Heiland  (BWV 688) for example, Farr uses the Rückpositiv 8’ & 4’flutes, and then the Hauptwerk Vox Humana in the left hand to great effect, but it is drawn with both the 8’ Octave and Hohlflöte as well as the 4’ Spitzflöte; in the pedal are also the two 8’ flues coupled to the Swell 4’ Principal and 8’ Trompete. Farr’s articulation is excellent, but I wonder about the thickening effect of his constant use of multiple 8’ ranks. By contrast, the manualiter preludes BWV 685 & 803 are delightfully played, each on just a 4’ flute, and 804 follows on the recovered Smith 8’ Principal on the Rückpositiv: the clarity of these registrations and the elegance of Farr’s fingerwork is a delight. But somehow the organ doesn’t really sparkle: the pedal in particular is often a bit indistinct, and although performances are excellently played, it sounds a bit dull to me – are they recorded from too far away? As well as details of the Metzler organ, Farr gives the precise registration for each piece – a bit of good practice that most recordings on historic instruments in Holland and North Germany seem to provide these days.

Johnstone is a bit more of an early music specialist, and this CD – one of what will be a (yet another!) complete Bach organ works – is presented on an instrument that is almost exactly contemporaneous with the Clavier-Übung III’s date of 1739. The Trondheim organ is Wagner’s only instrument outside Prussia, and took two years to arrive and be assembled. Dismantled in the 1930s in favour of a large Steinmayer organ hidden behind the historic case, some two thirds of the original pipework was discovered stored in the cathedral’s vault and has been carefully restored in the original case by Ahrend. Its registers have rather more individual character than the Metzler: Wagner studied with Christoph Treutmann, a pupil of Arp Schnitger, and was apprenticed to Gottfried Silbermann for several years. Johnstone promises to find and record on equally suitable historic instruments for the rest of his Bach, and having just returned myself from an organ crawl through North Germany and Holland, I look forward to seeing which instruments he chooses for what. But although the details of the Wagner organ, its pitch and temperament are given, we are left to work out his registration as best we may. I hope Johnstone will consider providing this in the future.

Though the instrument is smaller, I find Johnstone’s registration more characterful than Farr’s, and his liner notes have an interesting and provocative reflection on the possible liturgical and theological rationale behind the selection of works in the Clavier-Übung III. Try and listen to both, and the more suave performance of Farr may win you over; but I gained more from Johnstone’s vivid and sparkling performance on an excellently recorded, crystal-clear organ that was new to me. The choice of instrument, how susceptible it is to being recorded with clarity, how well the performer understands the conventions of registration on a historic instrument – all these are vital for successful interpretation, however fine the player.

David Stancliffe

NOTE: At the time of publishing this post, it was impossible to find internet links for James Johnstone’s CDs… we will attempt to rectify this at a later date.

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Categories
Recording

Come all ye songsters

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Carolyn Sampson, Elizabeth Kenny, Jonathan Manson, Laurence Cummings
77:40
Wigmore Hall Live WHLive0083
Music by Corbetta, Draghi, Purcell, Simpson & anon

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the problems of live recital CDs is their potential ability to inspire feelings of envy of the audience that was present when you were not. By the time an ecstatic audience comes to show its appreciation of this superb recital, given at the Wigmore Hall in March 2105, I was way into such feelings and longing to join in to express my appreciation. Instead I consoled myself with memories of an unforgettable late night recital Carolyn Sampson gave with countertenor Robin Blaze at the first Göttingen Handel Festival I attended back in 2006.

One of the most compelling features of that event was the ability of the artists to communicate strongly with their audience (and each other) to a rarely attained level. It is that same quality that one senses with the present concert, where it is evident that Sampson and her colleagues very obviously had the audience eating out of their hands. And of course this is hugely important in the vocal items presented here, mostly songs taken from Purcell’s stage works, The Fairy Queen  being particularly favoured. Sampson never lets us for one moment forget that the singers in such pieces were more often than not actor-singers, giving each song its own distinctive character and finding in them a gamut of passions ranging from the plaints of unrequited lovers to dramatic outbursts and wit. ‘Let the dreadful Engines of Eternal Will’, one of the two ‘mad scenes’ from Don Quichotte  included, is a tour de force  in this respect, including aspects of all three. The pastoral evocation in the passage commencing ‘Ah where are now those flow’ry Groves’ leaves unforgettable beguilement in its wake, before the final cynical philosophy carries the scene to its end with deliciously pointed humour, leaving the audience in laughter.

Yet for me one of the most admirable features of Sampson’s singing is that all this emanates from superb vocal acting rather that the exaggerated gestures we sometimes hear in this repertoire. It involves the employment of first-class diction, but equally as importantly a wide range of vocal colour. Just listen, as a single example from many, to the subtle colouring and inflexions on the words ‘kind’ (the line from ‘I see she flies me’, Z573 reads ‘Were she but kind, kind whom I adore’. And just in case you’ve not already succumbed (impossible, I would have thought), one of Sampson’s encores is perhaps the most tear-jerking performance of ‘Fairest isle’ (King Arthur) I’ve ever heard. In short, Carolyn Sampson has here provided a master class that makes the CD obligatory listening by all singers aspiring to sing this repertoire.

The accompaniments are admirably played, with each of Sampson’s distinguished companions also allowed their own spot in the limelight, Laurence Cummings providing a lovely, mellow performance of the Harpsichord Suite No. 5 in C. Jonathan Manson’s bass viol tone is richly lyrical in Draghi’s ‘An Italian Ground’ and Christopher Simpson’s ‘Divisions on a ground, while Elizabeth Kenny plays three pieces from ‘Princess Anne’s lute book’ and a fine Passacaille by Corbetta, all this music appropriate in the context and helping to complete an intelligently designed programme. A predictably exemplary note by Purcell scholar Andrew Pinnock, full documentation and printed texts complete an issue that is in every way deserving of the highest praise.

Brian Robins

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