Tag: Baroque

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Gluck: Echo & Narcisse

CD cover Echo and Narcisse

Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet
102:19 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS095

The excellent Versailles Spectacle concert and recording series brings us this intriguing recording of Gluck’s last opera, Echo and Narcissus, a light pastoral which turns out to be of much more significance than first appearances would suggest. As a result of a mixture of bad luck, bad timing and bad casting the work was a comprehensive failure at its first performances, much to the chagrin of its composer, who clearly felt it deserved a better reception. On the basis of this delightfully understated performance, I can see why Gluck was so frustrated by its lack of popular success. Not always known for understatement, on this occasion Niquet has astutely cast the piece with appropriately light voices and allowed the music to speak for itself. One particular virtue of the work is Gluck’s imaginative orchestral writing, making particularly imaginative use of horns and clarinets. He also largely succeeds in his aim to blend the French and Italian operatic styles – the ‘extras’ are given music with a light Italianate charm while the central characters’ more profound music recalls the music of Rameau – while you would have thought the generally undemanding musical idiom and the episodic nature of the piece would have appealed to the short musical attention span of the French court in 1779. None of these virtues nor even the patronage of Marie Antoinette herself would save the work from failure and obscurity until it was ‘rediscovered’ in the 20th century. The precise and tasteful playing and singing of Le Concert Spiritual bring this little gem to vivid life, and while the positioning, with the chorus and soloists onstage and the orchestra down on the flat tends to flatten out the orchestral colours a little, the overall sound and balance are pleasing, and the acoustic of the Opéra Royal de Versailles provides just the right amount of resonance, reflecting the sound Gluck would have been writing for. It was probably much too late for the self-obsessed and hopelessly superficial court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to learn any valuable lessons from Gluck’s pastoral – in any case, Gluck never returned to opera in the last decade of his life, while just a couple of years after his death the entire edifice of the French Court was swept away in revolution. In many ways, the innocent simplicity of Gluck’s Echo & Narcisse evokes a whole era of French music, part of a culture blissfully unaware of its shortcomings and the gruesome fate that awaited it.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Berlin Harpsichord Concertos

CD cover Berlin Harpsichord Concertos Grisvard Diderot

Philippe Grisvard, Ensemble Diderot, Johannes Pramsohler
77:45
Audax Records ADX11211

This is a welcome recording of some unjustly neglected music.  Great composers cast long shadows and, in this case, those who overlapped with J.S. Bach and his son C.P.E. have not always had much of a look in. Grisvard and the Ensemble Diderot make an impressive start at remedying that situation with this recording of concertos by four composers who had strong connections to the Berlin court of Frederick the Great. They have deliberately avoided C.P.E. Bach in favour of introducing music by his near contemporaries. Peter Wollny’s very informative sleeve notes give short biographies and provide the context for the music. Christoph Nichelmann, Carl Heinrich Graun and Christoph Schaffrath were close contemporaries of C.P.E.; Ernst Wilhelm Wolf was twenty years younger. Nichelmann was a pupil in the Leipzig Thomasschule in the early 1730s and later served as second harpsichordist in Berlin for a time, until a personality clash with C.P.E. led to him leaving that court. Graun is mainly known for his operas and a Passion composed for Berlin. Schaffrath worked for Frederick as crown prince, and later for his sister Anna Amalia. Wolf did not actually work in Berlin – he served in Leipzig and Weimar – but came under the Prussian capital’s musical influence through the mediation of Georg Benda. 

The music draws clear inspiration from both Bachs, with a strong sense of Sturm und Drang clear from the first movement of Nichelmann’s D minor concerto which opens the disc. Schaffrath’s first movement is a muscular fugue in C minor, starting in the strings but later developed in an extended solo passage by the keyboard. Ritornello form predominates throughout these works, with extended solo passages for harpsichord, especially so in Wolf’s somewhat later concerto. The dialogue between soloist and strings is greatly assisted by the recording engineers, who have produced an excellent balance. Although there are only five string players, their playing and the recording quality tricks the ear into thinking that there are several more players in ripieno passages. Grisvard plays on a Mietke copy by Christoph Kern which has a full rich sound and good registrational capabilities. Cadenzas survive for the Nichelmann and Schaffrath works; Grisvard has developed his own for the other two which sound entirely idiomatic.  His playing throughout is both confident and nuanced, showing a real understanding of the style of this transitional period, with its predictabilities and idiosyncrasies. This comes across as very attractive music, played with energy and plenty of forward drive. These performances really whet the appetite for more of this music and the recording can be highly recommended.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

Marc’Antonio Ziani: La Morte vinta sul Calvario

CD cover Ziani La Morte vinta

Les Traversées Baroques, directed by Etienne Meyer & Judith Pacquier
73:18
Accent ACC 24402

Often confused with oratorios, the sepolcro is a peculiarly Viennese form best thought of as a cross between opera and oratorio. The genre flourished at the Hapsburg court during the reign of the highly musical and deeply religious Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (1658-1705), its best-known practitioners being Antonio Draghi (1634-1700) and Marc’Antonio Ziani (1658-1715). Sepolcri can be defined as semi-staged dramatic works performed on Good Friday in either spectacular fashion in the Hofkapelle or more intimately in the private chapel of one of the senior members of the Imperial family. The characters depicted were nearly exclusively allegorical, thus similar to the type of libretto familiar today from Handel’s early Roman oratorio La resurrezione (1708).

The Venetian opera composer Ziani arrived in Vienna in the wake of Draghi’s death, appointed vice-Kapellmeister in 1700. For the Viennese court he composed operas, oratorios and eight sepolcri. His La Morte vinta sul Calvario dates from 1706, when it was given in the Hofkapelle on the evening of Good Friday and has for its subject matter Christ’s triumph over death as a result of his dying on the Cross at Calvary. The topic is explored in P A Bernardoni’s libretto by five allegorical characters: Il Demonio (Satan), La Morte (Death), La Natura Umana (Human Nature), La Fede (Faith) and L’Anima d’Adamo (the Soul of Adam). The ‘action’ is carried on through alternating brief da capo arias and recitative, a typical sequence being aria-recitative-aria for the same character. There is also a duet (for Il Demonio and La Morte) and a final madrigalian chorus. A number of the arias are fairly florid, Il Demonio opening the work with a particularly bravura piece in a role sung at the first performance by the bass Rainaldo Borrini, one of the most highly paid singers at the Viennese court. The taste for contrapuntal writing at the court is much in evidence, with chromatic seasoning also strongly featured in Ziani’s score. Some of the cantabile arias have considerable beauty, La Natura Umana’s ‘Io languia’ (no. 30) being a particularly winning example. Accompaniments feature a rich assortment of brass and wind – pairs of cornetti, recorders, sackbuts and bassoons in addition to the strings, which include violas da gamba. It is a weakness of the present recording that only single strings to a part are employed, since we know sepolcri employed the substantial forces available at the Viennese court, which just a few years later is recorded as employing over 30 string players.

The demands made on the singers are in the main too great for the present performers, though the performance is obviously one of great integrity. Yannis François’s is a lightish bass-baritone whose voice carries neither sufficient authority nor personality for Il Demonio. La Natura Umana is sung by Vincent Bouchot, listed as a tenor but who, particularly in his first aria, sounds more like an haute-contre. La Morte, a countertenor part, is sung by Maximiliano Baños pleasingly enough but without making any significant impression. Much the most satisfying performances come from the two sopranos, Dagmar Šašková’s in particular bringing to the role of La Fede a sense of real commitment lacking elsewhere, along with some highly impressive chest notes in her angry recitative exchange with Il Demonio (no. 25). However, both she and the charmingly fresh-sounding L’Anima d’Adamo of Capucine Keller had difficulty controlling a few notes above the stave. The instrumental playing is good.

Although the performance is not ideal it is praiseworthy for its honesty and intentions. Les traversées Baroques deserve praise for reviving a splendid example of a repertoire little known today.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Charpentier: Médée

CD cover Charpentier Médée Hervé Niquet

Véronique Gens (Médée), Cyrille Dubois(Jason), David Witczak (Oronte), Le Concert Spirituel conducted by Hervé Niquet
170:43 (3 CDs)
Alpha 1020

It is nearly 50 years since William Christie’s first recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Médée (harmonia mundi) vividly illustrated that French Baroque opera meant more than Rameau and the occasional nod in Lully’s direction. Since then Médée has become firmly established and acknowledged not only as Charpentier’s operatic masterpiece – though I would argue that David et Jonathas (1688) should be considered its equal – but one of the peaks of the repertoire.  First performed at the Paris Opéra (Académie Royale de Musique) in 1693 it was one of the first operas given there after Lully’s monopoly was ended by his death six years earlier. Despite the presence of Louis XIV at the premiere, the opera was not a success, receiving ten performances before being withdrawn and not revived until the 20th century.

Cast in five acts with the usual prologue, Médée is a tragédie en musique that for once lives up its genre, a feature that may have some bearing in its contemporary unpopularity. By the end of the opera not only are Créon, King of Corinth and his daughter Créusa, the new amour of Jason dead, but in her fury at Jason’s treachery the sorceress Médée (Medea) has committed filicide. Yet it is measure of the quality of Thomas Corneille’s libretto that far from being simply an irredeemable villain poisoned by jealousy, Médée emerges as a deeply ambivalent character driven to madness by the ingratitude of Jason. The picture becomes more opaque still if her earlier services (the Golden Fleece) to Jason are taken into account. And it is more than just the text, for Charpentier gives to Médée not only music that is highly dramatic but in her act three air ‘Quel prix mon amour’ the most touchingly beautiful music in the score. Musing on whether she should murder her sons, the product of her love for Jason, also give momentary relief from the derangement from which Médée  now suffers, her servant Nérine a little earlier having spoken of her ‘Eyes staring wildly, her steps unsteady’. The role is one tailor-made for Véronique Gens, one of the great tragediennes of our day and a singer to compare with the creator of the role, Marthe Le Rochois, the creator of all the leading female roles in Lully’s tragedies lyriques and who was considered without parallel for her mastery of the declamatory style.  Gens’s mastery of the role ranges from the imperious in the infernale scene at which she is at her most powerful, displaying some awesome chest notes, to the sheer, pure beauty of her singing in the air noted above.

Her errant husband is given a poor hand by comparison, at his best in the tenderness he displays toward his new love Créuse, its cynical political implications drowned out in the exquisitely sensitive music Charpentier gives the couple in their scenes together (act 1, sc 5 and act 4, sc 2). The experienced Judith Van Wanroij (the cast listing spelling is used in the heading but here the more usual spelling is adopted) is at her best in this kind of gentle heroine role and here she is utterly engaging. There are, too, few finer stylists in haute-contre heroic roles than Cyrille Dubois, though here the fast vibrato that is a part of his voice does occasionally threaten to be a distraction. The only other significant role is that of Creon, which asks for little more than Thomas Dolie’s richly authoritative baritone until the great scene in which he is made mad by Médée (act 4, sc 8/9). Then considerable vocal acting powers are called upon, a demand met admirably by Dolié. 

Among smaller roles baritone David Witczak’s Oronte, the deposed suitor of Créuse, should be noted, as should the enchantingly fresh soprano of Jehanne Amzal in several comprimario roles. Her singing of the Italian air included in the act 2 divertissement is one of the delights of the set. Hervé Niquet’s direction of the prologue, the customary panegyric dedicated to Louis XIV with Glory, Victory and Bellone (goddess of war) doing the honours, is curiously – if arguably understandably – briskly uninvolved. Thereafter it improves significantly without ever becoming one of his finest achievements. Notwithstanding the set is required listening for all Gens’s many fans, who will also encounter a great opera and much excellent singing.

Brian Robins 

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Sheet music

Croft: Three odes with orchestra

MB108 Croft Three odes with orchestra.

Edited by Alan Howard
Musica Britannica MB108
ISBN: 9780852499696 ISMN: 9790220228100
xlviii + 127pp, £115.00
Stainer & Bell

This excellent volume contains the two pieces Croft wrote to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 – an earn his Oxford doctorate – and an ode (the editor Alan Howarth argues) to mark the Peace of Ryswick in 1697. if, as likely, that is the case, the composer would still have been a teenager, so the infelicities identified in the informative introduction might be forgiven. The main problem with the source (a later copy by one of Croft’s students from the 1720s) is the labelling of the instrumental parts – in the opening movement, there is a trumpet line (or two trumpet lines?) with unplayable notes, and the editor interprets the next four lines as violins where it strikes me as more likely that the first pair are oboes and the next pair violins. In the following movements, an alto is accompanied by recorders, the soprano and bass by strings, the bass by violins, and the full ensemble renders the short concluding chorus. The Utrecht pieces, whose performances in Oxford were noticed in the press, are far more substantial and it is clear that in the intervening years, Croft has matured as a composer. His debt to the Purcellian court ode is self-evident. Where we nowadays tend to think of him as being obscured by Handel, there is no sense in which this music is overshadowed by the German’s music for the Utrecht celebrations – indeed, some of his best choral writing might suggest that the influence worked in the opposite direction! I hope the availability of these fine pieces will inspire musicians to take up his cause – there really is a wealth of beautiful music here!

Brian Clark 

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Sheet music

Requiems by Giovanni Croce and Giovanni Rovetta

Croce Rovetta Requiems RRMBE 238

The Requiem Mass at St Mark’s, Venice, in the Seventeenth Century
Edited by Jonathan R. J. Drennan
Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 238
xvii, six plates + 50pp $140
ISBN 978-1-9872-0865-8

This is the first of three volumes surveying Requiem settings at the basilica of San Marco from the 17th to the 19th centuries. After a detailed introduction, Drennan presents the two settings in the traditional A-R format, meaning that my usual gripes about wasted space and dumbing down of time signatures apply. Both works are written for ATTB choir and were intended to be sung from the bigonzo, a large raised “tub” (the edition includes two excellent photographs of the space); only Croce’s setting splits into two groups – and even then only for the Dies irae. Several pages could have been saved if, instead of printing eight staves every time one choir answered the other (on p. 21 meaning Choir 1 has ONE BAR at the end of the page), they were simply both presented on four staves and clearly labelled. This almost certainly have meant that the Sanctus and Agnus Dei would have appeared on an opening, rather than over two pages. Rovetta adds continuo to his setting but – again – space could have been saved (by printing the chant as a single line, for example!) and those two last movements would fit a spread. The music itself is written in the stile antico; polyphony is limited but both composers know how to use rhythm to keep their music interesting while fulfilling the necessity to declaim the text clearly. Both settings are extremely brief; Drennan suggests that has more to do with restrictions set by church authorities than the composers.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Virtuoso harpsichord music

Melody Lin Virtuoso Harpsichord Music

Melody Lin
51:30
CRD 3546

What should a young harpsichordist include in their first recording? The traditional choices are either to pick a minor composer and concentrate on making their music available, or to present a mixed recital that displays ability over a broader range of repertory. The Taiwanese harpsichordist Melody Lin has chosen the latter course in this short CD which ranges from the English Virginalists Farnaby and Byrd, through J. S. Bach, to Rameau and Forqueray. She has recently completed a doctorate in performance at Claremont Graduate University in California and this recording presumably reflects her work for that degree. The informative programme notes have been written by her teacher Robert Zapulla, who has also produced the disc. He praises Lin’s virtuosity, which is indeed much in evidence here. This is a formidable programme and, on the whole, Lin steps up to the challenge. Her virtuosity is still a bit self conscious, and the simpler sections can be a bit plodding at times; there are occasionally some awkward joins between sections in the earlier music. That said, there is some excellent control of contrapuntal writing in the Byrd A minor Fantasia and Bach’s D major Toccata. Lin plays on a William Dowd harpsichord, after an instrument built by the Blanchets around 1730.  It is a good compromise instrument, at its best in the French music, but bringing good clarity to the more contrapuntal pieces. The recording quality is excellent. There is much to admire here, even if there are more polished recordings of these pieces available elsewhere. We can look forward to her next recording, where Lin might perhaps concentrate on a particular area of the repertoire and further refine her playing.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

Johann Ludwig Krebs: Keyboard Works volume 3

Johann Ludwig Krebs Keyboard music volume 3 Steven Devine

Steven Devine harpsichord
77:30
resonus RES10329

Steven Devine continues his highly successful series of recordings of the complete surviving keyboard music of Krebs, a favoured pupil of J. S. Bach at Leipzig who went on to settle in nearby Altenburg.  As well as the substantial 6th partita, this volume includes six sonatas which only reappeared in 1999 in Kyiv, the manuscript having been moved from Berlin during the Second World War; this is their first appearance on disc, in Devine’s own edition.  In a standard three-movement Italian form, they show Krebs revelling in the new galant style.  More predictable than those of his contemporary, CPE Bach, these sonatas make a delightful listening experience, relying on logical sequences and echo effects, with some resonances of Handel’s keyboard writing.  Devine has registered them expertly, bringing out both sequences and echoes and wearing his virtuosity very lightly.  He revels in these contrasts and plays throughout with great versatility and verve.

The sixth partita, one of only three surviving from a presumed set of six, shows a fascinating mixture of styles and is a reminder that, although we now see Bach’s partitas as iconic, other versions were available.  There are reminders of the 17th-century toccatas and ricercars of Froberger in the Prelude, echoes of Handel elsewhere, while the chromatic quirkiness of the Sarabande suggests C. P. E. Bach.  There are added galanterien which give a nod to those of J. S. Bach.  With ten movements in total, this work is a compendium of possibilities, all expertly exploited by Devine.  The two surviving sources for the work vary considerably, pointing to continued revision, and the playing here brings out all the possibilities inherent in Krebs’s treatment of the various dance movements. 

Devine plays throughout on a double-manual harpsichord by Colin Booth after a single-manual by Johann Christof Fleischer (Hamburg, 1710), the same instrument he used for the previous volumes in the series and one which suits this music admirably.  His control of the instrument allows the listener to have complete confidence in the playing and in the interpretation.  This recording is definitely to be highly recommended.

Noel O’Regan

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Charpentier: David & Jonathas

Charpentier – David et Jonathas Boucher Debieuvre Witczak Schneebeli

Clément Debieuvre David, David Witczak Saul, Edwin Crossley-Mercer the ghost of Samuel/Achis, Jean-François Novelli Joabel, Jean-François Lombard Pythonisse, Natacha Boucher Jonathas, LesPages et les Chantres du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, Orchestre Les Temps Présents, directed by Olivier Schneebeli
122′ (2 CDs in a CD-sized book)
aparté AP342

David et Jonathas owes its existence to the tradition of the Jesuits of the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris staging plays and musical dramas during the course of carnival season. It dates from 1688, when it was staged between the acts of a now-lost spoken drama. It should be recognised that it is an opera, not an oratorio and as such has a framework familiar for the tragédie en musique, that’s to say a prologue and five acts. Only the relative brevity of the work, with less importance attached to the divertissements and fewer dances than usual mark it out as unusual in that respect.

As was widely recognised from its first performances David et Jonathas is a powerful masterpiece. It is indeed one of the great pieces of late 17th-century French theatre, apparent from the outset of the prologue, which to the best of my knowledge is unique in being a part of the action. In concerning itself not with the usual royal panegyrics but rather with the visit of Saul to the Witch of Endor (Pythonisse) and the fateful utterances of the ghost of Samuel, it provides an introduction to the drama that will unfold, drama culminating in the final tragedy of the deaths in battle of Saul and his son Jonathan. Yet because the opera has a didactic purpose its ending is not tragic, but rather a brilliant paean of praise to the victorious David, the man who remained obedient to God’s laws, in contrast to the defeated Saul, who has not. More importantly still, the opera is an investigation of human relations on a psychological level rare in opera of this period, specifically the complex love between Saul and David, and those of the brotherly love between David and Jonathan. At their heart are the great monologues given to all three, their lyricism again a distinguishing feature of an opera in which récitatif plays a smaller than usual role.

In 2022 the opera was given a superlative production and performance in the Chapelle Royale at Versailles, a highly appropriate venue given its original commissioning by the Jesuit fathers of the Collège Louis-le-Grand. That performance has already been issued on CD and DVD on Versailles Spectacles. The set to hand was made live at Versailles, but was a concert performance given in the Opéra Royal the previous year. Ironically it is this performance that seeks to come closer to the original 1688 performance than the staged production in the Chapelle by using a children’s choir for the upper voices and a child for the role of Jonathas, though in this instance a girl rather than a boy. The present performance also almost certainly comes closer to the original performance at the Collège by using considerably smaller orchestral forces, although the playing of the somewhat oddly-named Orchestre Les Temps Présents (it is a period instrument band) is excellent. Also giving a hint of the context of the Jesuit performance is the inclusion of brief spoken 17th-century ‘déclamations’ placed as introductions to each act and, especially movingly, immediately after the death of Jonathan. Thus rather than a play serving as the context, the spoken word provides interludes to a music drama.

One of the features of David et Jonathas is that in contradiction to the title, the leading character is neither Saul’s son nor his much loved David, but the king himself, his tortured soul revealed in a manner and to a depth rare in Baroque opera. The role is here taken by bass David Witczak, heralding the overwhelmingly searing and insightful  characterization he brought to the role just over a year later in the Versailles production. David is sung by contre-ténor Clément Debieuvre, an alumnus of the CDMBV. His voice is lighter and more youthful in timbre than that of Reinoud Van Mechelen, whose assumption of the role was one of the glories of the production. Since the biblical David was young, some may feel Debieuvre’s sensitive if less authoritative performance is more authentic, but there’s no gainsaying Van Mechlelen’s authority. There is of course no valid comparison between the respective interpreters of Jonathas, but the sweet-voiced Natacha Boucher achieves an immensely touching degree of sensitivity in the events leading up to his death (act 5).

The remaining smaller roles are all well filled, with the experienced Edwin Crossley-Mercer a resonant Ghost of Samuel (in the prologue) and Achis, Saul’s general.

There is no question that David et Jonathas is one of the masterpieces of Baroque opera. The story is dramatic, Charpentier’s music magnificent. And like all masterpieces, it is capable of responding to alternative approaches. This version – orientated as it is toward its original college production – is in any event very different to the magisterial Versailles recording. Both have a more than valid place in the catalogue, as indeed does the earlier Erato set under the direction of William Christie.      

Brian Robins

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Recording

Popora: Music for the Venetian Ospedaletto

jose maria lo monaco porpora

Josè Maria Lo Monaco contralto, stile galante, Stefano Aresi
67:36
Glossa GCD 923537

On the inside cover of the booklet, along with the other credits, we read: “This recording is an outgrowth of musicological research seeking new insights on historically informed performance practices based upon the acoustics of the Ospedaletto in Venice”. That all sounds great, but there is no further explanation or, indeed, any other comment on the actual performance apart from a half-hearted explanation of the presence of a cello concerto on an otherwise vocal programme because there it is known that one of the women in the orchestra there was a known virtuoso on the instrument…

While the disc is promoted as an exploration of music at the Ospedaletto, in fact it focuses very much on the activities of a single singer for whom Porpora conceived a valuable body of work during his several years there (having also worked at the three other similar institutions in Venice), the alto Angiola Moro. With a range from the A below middle C to the E flat at the top of the treble clef, she apparently had no problem with chromatic scales, wide arpeggios and leaps, or rapid scales. As the “early music voice” seems to get bigger and bigger, it is no surprise to find a singer of the calibre of Josè Maria Lo Monaco tackling this repertoire, and she does it very well.

Whether or not it was played by Niccolosa Fanello, Porpora’s G major cello concerto is beautiful; its opening movement was very reminiscent of some of the slushier passages from the concertos attributed to Wassenaer. The booklet notes tell us that Porpora’s official appointment (after two years of working for free – musicians, it was EVER thus!) the violin teacher asked for extra resources to support him in getting his musicians up to the standards of the “new music”, and – if they were up to playing this piece – he clearly succeeded.

Brian Clark