Tag: Baroque

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Recording

Frescobaldi: Complete unpublished works for harpsichord & organ

CD cover Roberto Loreggian Frescobaldi boxed set

Roberto Loreggian
<TT> (6 CDs in a double CD case)
Brilliant Classics 96154

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This collection of six CDs marks the conclusion of Roberto Loreggian’s impressive journey through the complete keyboard music of Frescobaldi, begun back in 2008. While Frescobaldi was a careful preparer and editor of his music for publication, providing a significant canon of authentic pieces, a surprising amount survives in manuscripts scattered all round Europe. This recording has 166 pieces in total, all unpublished during the composer’s lifetime, but issued in 2017 by Etienne Darbellay and Costanze Frey as the final part of their complete edition for Suvini Zerboni. Only a handful are thought to be in Frescobaldi’s hand, but many have been identified as in the hands of collaborators and pupils such as Nicolò Borbone and Leonardo Castellani. Some are substantial pieces; others are short sketches, trial runs for later published pieces, teaching exercises, etc. Authenticating them is a complex business and has occupied scholars over many years, most notably Claudio Annibaldi, Etienne Darbellay, Frederick Hammond, Christine Jeanneret and Alexander Silbiger. Discussion continues about many pieces, and some at least are more likely to be by Frescobaldi’s pupils or followers. Silbiger maintains an online catalogue (Frescobaldi Thematic Catalogue Online (sscm-jscm.org)), hosted by the Journal of Seventeenth Century Music. He has attached F numbers to all pieces attributed to Frescobaldi, published and unpublished, thought to have at least the potential of having been composed by him; for the most part, these F numbers are attached to pieces in Loreggian’s recording, though some have been missed out. Hammond hosts an annotated catalogue of all sources on his website (Girolamo Frescobaldi: An Extended Biography – Frederick Hammond, Bard College), using Silbiger’s F numbers. Between them, these two websites provide the information necessary to contextualise Loreggian’s achievement; the liner notes provide only basic information about the sources.

For those already familiar with the works of Frescobaldi, listening to this recording is at once a disorientating and stimulating experience. Much of the language is familiar and sometimes whole sections are recognisable, but pieces are curtailed, go off in different directions, or use the basic building blocks in an altered way. It is fun speculating whether this or that piece is really by the composer. Above all, the recording provides a crucial insight into the workshop of Frescobaldi, his pupils and followers, and the raw material from which his published pieces emerged fully varnished. There are few surprises here: all the standard genres are found, with lots of random dance movements in particular. There are also sets of partite on familiar themes as well as canzonas, ricercars and toccatas. Some of these last are thought to be late works by Frescobaldi, but might also be by his pupils: they are certainly very accomplished. In particular, a set of three toccatas copied by the musician and engraver Nicolò Borbone in Ms. Chigi Q IV 25, and eleven canzonas also copied by Borbone and now in British Library Add. Ms. 40080, are well worth listening to. There are plenty of other gems too. At the other end of the scale, some pieces are extremely cursory, lasting less than a minute in some cases. Pieces seem to have been ordered by choice of instrument, rather than according to any particular criteria, with no attempt to single out the exceptional from the merely ordinary.

Loreggian has done a very impressive job, taking the pieces equally seriously, and giving them all the same level of attention. He plays on two organs: that built in 1565 by Graziadio Antegnati for the Cappella Palatina in Mantua’s Ducal Palace, and one made by Zanin Organi in 1998 for the Chiesa di S. Caterina in Treviso. He also plays on two modern copies of 17th-century Italian harpsichords by F. Gazzola and L. Patella. All work very well for their chosen pieces and are sensitively registered; recording quality is excellent throughout. There is one surprise in the registration, but I won’t spoil the fun by revealing it! Loreggian has a real gift for making the music sound as if he is improvising it – it is easy to imagine Frescobaldi himself in the room with the listener. As a performer, he is steeped in the musical language of the period and responds with great fluency to the changing declamatory rhythms and affective figures so typical of the composer and his milieu. He is to be congratulated for making all of this music, warts and all, available to listeners. This is a collection to dip into repeatedly for rewarding insights and is a very welcome addition to Frescobaldi discography.

Noel O’Regan

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Concert-Live performance

ST JOHN’S SMITH SQUARE EASTER FESTIVAL – VOX LUMINUS

St John's Smith Square logo

For obvious reasons, St John’s Smith  Square is an ideal venue for a festival of sacred music for Holy Week. This Easter Festival, which took place between 10 and 17 April, featured a broad mix of repertoire from across the centuries, the concert on 14 April with the vocal ensemble Sansara and Fretwork illustrating the eclectic nature of the festival by including works by the Tudor composer Robert White and Arvo Pärt. Unsurprisingly early music was well represented, with concerts including Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (Anna Devin and Hugh Cutting), Handel and Vivaldi (his Stabat mater, RV621 with Hilary Cronin and Cutting again, the former a Handel Festival prize winner, the latter a Ferrier award winner). Perhaps the most ambitious event was the candlelit late-night concerts by Sansara of Gesualdo’s tormented Tenebrae Responsories, given in a candlelit liturgical context over three nights. More traditional Easter fare featured in a Bach St John Passion (Polyphony and OAE under Stephen Layton), before the festival was brought to a conclusion by the Belgian-based ensemble Vox Luminus, under the unobtrusive direction of bass Lionel Meunier.

It was this concert that we were able to attend along with an audience that was disappointingly sparse given Vox Luminus’s present eminence among vocal ensembles. I suppose Westminster is perhaps not a place of choice for many potential concert-goers to be on an Easter Sunday afternoon. Sadly, too, the level of Schütz’s box-office appeal in this country is far from commensurate with his greatness as a composer, so that his profoundly affecting Musicalische Exequien was the centrepiece of the concert may also have proved a deterrent. A German requiem, the work was commissioned from Schütz for his own funeral obsequies by a German nobleman. In this performance, it was given within the context of a funeral, including the opening chorale ‘Mit Fried und Freud’ that accompanied the funeral procession into the church, and to conclude the exquisite German setting of the ‘Nunc dimittis’, which employs evocative in lontano effects, here most atmospherically brought off. It was an award-winning recording of the work in 2012 that first brought Vox Luminus to wide notice. With its alternation of tutti ensemble movements and Favoriten passages for one or more soloists, the Musicalische Exequien is ideally suited to the strengths of Vox Luminus, which over the years have cultivated the individuality of the singers, all of whom are required to undertake solo parts, within integrated ensemble singing in which the personality of each singer remains paramount. At St John’s, ensemble was further tested by a visitation to Vox Luminus of the Covid curse, necessitating several late replacements. It barely showed, the rare odd slip being of the kind that can occur at any time. Far more importantly, with the slight caveat that the ensemble’s principal soprano slightly tended to dominate the texture in ripieno passages, this was overall a deeply sensitive and moving performance that so obviously came from the heart.

Much the same can be said of the two Bach cantatas that made up the programme. Both ‘Christ lag in Todes Banden’, BWV4 and the so-called ‘Actus Tragicus’ (‘Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit’), BWV106 are among the earliest cantatas Bach wrote and works that owe more to 17th-century predecessors such as Schütz and Buxtehude than the more modern type of Italianate cantata adopted by Bach in his later Leipzig cantatas. BWV106 is a funeral cantata probably composed during Bach’s brief Mühlhausen period (1707-08) for obsequies the details of which are unknown. Scored for minimal forces – SATB ‘choir’ – here of course rightly single voices per part – with solo interjections and just pairs of recorders (instruments associated with death during this period) and viola da gambas, and continuo. More consolatory than dramatic, the performance achieved a wonderfully intimate and inward-looking perspective on death, particularly touching in the exchange between the bass and the alto soloist’s chorale that immediately precedes the final chorale.

BWV4 could not have been a more appropriate choice to round off the programme, it being a cantata for Easter Sunday, the exact year of composition also not established, though it probably dates from his Weimar period (1708-13). It is cast in the form of a set of chorale variations, the melody retained throughout the seven verses which are varied both melodically and in their scoring and vocal disposition. Meunier here went with a larger-scale reading, employing three voices per part, doubtless so as to include all his performers, which caught the vibrant celebratory nature of the cantata effectively. This richly rewarding concert was rounded off by an encore in the shape of Buxtehude’s cantata, termed ‘aria’ in manuscript sources, ‘Jesu meines Lebens Leben’, BuxWV62, which is set over an ostinato bass. The timeline between Schütz and Bach was thus neatly bridged.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Monteverdi: Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria

CD cover Monteverdi Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria

Charles Workman Ulisse, Delphine Galou Penelope Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone (cond)
158:46 (3 CDs)
Dynamic 7927.03

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The opening of the notes provided with this set read, ‘The first opera composed by Monteverdi for a Venetian theatre [SS Giovanni e Paolo, 1640], at the time when in Venice the system of paying public theatres was being consolidated, is miles away from Orfeo.’ Indeed it is. In every sense. So one wonders why Ottavio Dantone decided to drag Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria back fifty years into the sound world of Orfeo rather than recreate one appropriate to mid-17th century Venetian theatres? Recorders pipe, cornetti add their agile roulades and a rich continuo section includes a plonking harp. All that is lacking is sackbuts and half a dozen chamber organs of differing kinds.

Dantone’s recording stems from a production by Robert Carson given at Florence’s Teatro della Pergola as part of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino season in June 2021. For those interested, a DVD has been simultaneously released. Illustrations in the booklet suggest a drab-looking modern production with the occasional nod in the direction of period style. As is well known, the score as it has come down to us is incomplete, most notably in the absence of musical settings for several scenes. The edition prepared by Dantone is what would be considered ‘complete’, although some of his musical decisions, such as his treatment of the strange chordal introduction to Penelope’s opening lament, might be thought odd.

My admiration for Dantone’s work in later Baroque music and opera is near boundless, in particular his recognition, rare among conductors, of the dramatic importance of recitative. Here, where we are still very much in the province of prima le parole, poi la musica, that takes on still greater importance. It is one of the great strengths of the performance that it is obvious that much work in this respect has been done by Dantone and his music staff on the 21(!) named soloists, whose diction is largely exemplary. Paradoxically this laudable emphasis on the rhetorical rather than the lyrical also has a downside. From the outset, Dantone’s handling of the continuo group is exceptionally vigorous, excitable, even in places trenchant. At points such as the slaughter of the suitors that pays dividends, but it also encourages singing that is too forced, that at its most extreme encourages the shouting in which some of the cast at times indulge. Leaving aside the two principals, to whom I’ll turn shortly, the cast is in general disappointingly ordinary. The majority are seemingly unfamiliar with the demands of mid-17th century opera – stylish ornamentation is at an absolute premium – and are pushed by Dantone’s approach to sing with too much force and vibrato. I’ll excuse from the general criticism the Minerva of the excellent Arianna Vendittelli, one of the few soloists with a recognisable name, and to a marginally lesser degree Miriam Albano, whose Melanto conveys a certain lively charm.

That brings us to the protagonists. Penelope is one of the great creations of not just early opera but opera of any period, the benchmark immediately laid out in the extended and magnificent opening lament for her long-absent husband. My high hopes of Delphine Galou – for whose work my admiration runs as strongly as it does for her husband (she is Signora Dantone) – were sadly not realised. Although Galou sings with the commitment and conviction she brings to all she does, she somehow does not sound fully at ease with a style that is not her familiar territory, neither does the part seem to lie well for her. Certainly when one thinks back to some of the great Penelopes, Janet Baker and Sara Mingardo, for instance, this cannot be accounted one of Galou’s most successful roles. To check my memories, I went back to Mingardo’s singing of ‘Di misera regina’ (the lament). Mingardo sounds like a singer that has lived with the role, Galou doesn’t. The versatile tenor Charles Workman is to an even greater extent than Galou a stranger to this repertoire. While again his commitment is not in doubt and he is certainly a strong and forceful Ulisse, his at times overwrought singing is not especially appealing and he somehow fails to move the listener even in the tender final pages of the opera. His performance of the Ulisse’s opening scene, his drowsy awakening and subsequent bleak mood (act 1, sc 7) lacks the quality of that of Anizio Zorzi Giustiniani for example in Claudio Cavina’s Glossa set, currently my first choice for a commercial recording. Finest of all but sadly not available commercially is the Rinaldo Alessandrini performance from the 2010 Beaune Festival, which not only incorporates Mingardo’s wonderful Penelope but also conclusively proves that the modest forces intended in Venetian operas of the period work supremely well.

A final thought on that topic. Dantone’s Florence performances were lavishly praised by the critics, not one of whom – to the best of my knowledge – even mentioned the anachronistic instrumental forces employed. That (and much else) is a sad reflection of the invariable ineptitude of most current early opera criticism.

Brian Robins

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Festival-conference

Les Traversées 2022

If you happen to be anywhere near the Abbaye Noirlac in central France on any Saturday between 18 June and 16 July 2022, be sure to check out this festival schedule: Les Traversées 2022 – with three events on each date and the option to include a picnic in your ticket price, this sounds like a marvellous way to spend a summer’s evening. Highlights for early music fans will be Aliotti’s “Il Trionfo Della Morte” on 25 June, and a St John Passion by Les Surprises on 16 July.

Categories
Recording

Adriatic Voyage

CD cover Adriatic Voyage Marian Consort Illyria Consort

Seventeenth-century music from Venice to Dalmatia
The Marian Consort, dir. Rory McCleery | The Illyria Consort, dir Bojan Čičić
58:26
Delphian DCD34260

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The premise behind this excellent recording is simple: it traces the musical connections between Venice and its dominions on the Dalmatian coast. The detailed booklet describes the historical background and the music presented. And what music! The five singers of The Marian Consort are individually very stylish singers, not afraid of using vibrato ornamentally but never allowing it to impact the tuning of their faultless ensemble singing. The aptly named Illyria Consort provides both the harmonic support the singers need in their solos and duets, and the glitter in the larger pieces, with Čičić’s violin and Gawain Glenton’s cornetto stylishly improvising around their lines. I was surprised to discover that only four of the 18 tracks are premiere recordings, but then with music of this quality (and there are some stunning pieces, such as Jelich’s beautiful tenor duet, Bone Jesu) it should not have come as a shock. Topped an tailed by arguably the best-known Dalmatian composer of the day, Francesco Usper (aka Sponga), this disc deserves all the awards it will undoubtedly garner.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Buxtehude: Trio sonatas op. 2

CD cover Arcangelo Buxtehude

Arcangelo (Sophie Gent violin, Jonathan Manson viola da gamba, Thomas Dunford lute, Jonathan Cohen harpsichord)
71:25
Alpha Records aplha 738

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It is fascinating to see how the exploration of the music of Buxtehude, at one point known mainly as a composer of keyboard music, has widened our perception of this all-round Baroque genius. His contribution to the trio sonata is indeed profound, and this spirited recording of his opus 2 (BUXWV 259-265) by the four musicians of Arcangelo serves further to enhance his reputation. The combination of violin and gamba, with lute and harpsichord on the continuo, frees up the lute to contribute catchy cross-rhythms while at the same time adding substance to the accompaniments, while the contrasting timbres and ranges of the two ‘melody’ instruments is exploited to the full. Buxtehude’s flair for inventive melodic shapes, as well as his consummate craftsmanship, are very evident in this set, and these wonderfully musical performances by Arcangelo bring out the many charms of this remarkable ground-breaking repertoire. Notwithstanding their opus numbers, this and Buxtehude’s other set of seven trio sonatas (opus 1) are works of his maturity composed in the 1690s when the composer was in his 60s. So they benefit from a lifetime’s compositional experience, but more remarkably there is a stunning spontaneity and quirkiness, more readily associated with the music of youth. There are many ways into the fascinating world of the Baroque Trio Sonata, but there are few more enticing pathways than these relatively early examples, and specifically these vibrant performances.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Handel: Messiah

Floral design

Eboracum Baroque, Chris Parsons
132:08 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
1 98000 82190 6

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Whenever I am presented with a new version of a frequently-recorded work such as Messiah, my first question has to be what does this performance add to the body of existing recordings? After I have expressed my admiration for this project, conducted under the most difficult pandemic conditions and representative of the sort of ‘can-do’ attitude which has seen us through the worst of Covid restrictions, I have to report that this recording doesn’t really add much at all. Although its virtues are several, the problems with it are – I fear – predominant. It is a reduced-forces performance (the oboes are dropped and everything else is one-to-a-part), by its own admission unlike any performance from Handel’s time, providing us with what the performers hope will be ‘an exciting take on Handel’s masterpiece’. While the singing of a line-up of young soloists, who double as chorus, is generally perfectly presentable and the instrumental playing is effectively detailed, the latter is underpowered and the former is undistinguished – and neither of these features is adequate in a field of superb performances. While audiences would have been forgiving of the occasional blurring due to social distancing in a live performance, this is harder to condone or live with in a recording. Problems are compounded with the ‘popping’ of a mic in several of the choral tracks. I wanted to be more positive about this crowd-funded recording by what is clearly an enterprising and excitingly talented young ensemble out of York University, but perhaps pressing ahead with a recording of an established classic in these far from conducive conditions was a mistake.

D. James Ross

 

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Recording

À sa guitare

CD cover A sa guitare

Philippe Jaroussky, Thibaut Garcia
69:03
Erato 0 190295 005702

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This eclectic CD seems to be the result of two musicians ‘clicking’ and enjoying making music together – and this enthusiasm infuses the wide range of repertoire represented here. While Jaroussky’s countertenor voice is largely associated with music of the Baroque, Thibaut Garcia plays a modern guitar and the pair range throughout the entire history of music from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Curiously, the earliest repertoire (Dowland and Purcell) and the latest repertoire (Poulenc, Granados, Rodriguez, and Britten) sound the most effective, while the classical and romantic music is more problematic. Perhaps this is less due to the arrangements for guitar, which are surprisingly effective, than to the appropriateness of the countertenor voice for this repertoire. Schubert’s Erlkönig is a case in point. The contrasting use of different registers in the original is turned on its head, while the guitar struggles to portray the pounding hooves of the horse with anything like the drama of Schubert’s original writing. I remember attending a performance by the countertenor Andreas Scholl of romantic Lieder, and I had exactly the same reservations about that. It seems inevitable that specialists in the music of a particular period find the grass greener in unrelated periods. This CD is evidence that, while the musicians may be superb exponents of their art, such explorations can only be partly successful. And then again, the lovely modern ballad Septembre by Barbara works superbly well – perhaps the mistake was feeling the need to spread themselves across the history of music, rather than finding truly sympathetic repertoire. To end on a positive note, the two musicians’ musical rapport and superb musicality emanate from every track, and the repertoire which does work is beautifully executed.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Eredità Galanti

Eredità Galanti

Alberto Gaspardo organ
56:40
Barcode 8 05571 5 60000 9
SFB Records 002

Available from: accademia.superfluminababylonis@gmail.com

Like so many other musicians in the early 18th century, the Venetian-born Giovanni Battista Pescetti found his way to London in search of a career. The fact that he wrote so extensively for keyboard takes us back to his ancestry, and specifically his father Giaconto Pescetti, who was custodian of the organs in San Marco, and a famous builder of organs. One of the many delights of this CD is that the son’s music is played on an instrument built by the father. As the title of the CD suggests, Pescetti’s music is predominantly in the galant style, and as the excellent programme note points out his cantabile movements are particularly charming. The Pescetti organ in the Chiesa di S. Giacomo Apostolo in Polcenigo offers a pleasing range of stops, of which the organist Alberto Gaspardo makes full use. The decision to complete the programme with works by two composers born in 1991, Roberto Squillaci and Nathan Mondry, may have proved risky, except that the two young composers are clearly well-versed in Pescetti’s music and seem to be commenting on the galant style – while the latter is writing a form of pastiche, the former has a more pungent, angular response to Pescetti’s sound-world. Compared to the organ music of the Baroque and the Romatic eras. galant organ music of the 18th century is often overlooked, and it is a genuine delight to hear a programme like this, imaginatively and musically presented, and including modern works which comment so intelligently and sympathetically on the earlier repertoire.

D. James Ross

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Recording

I put a spell on you

I put a spell on you cover

Body & Soul Consort
47:41
E-Label: bellesecouteuses.com

Well… I approached this CD with an open mind, and if I could have selected my favourite bits I would have been writing quite a positive review of about ten minutes of music. This would have consisted of some lovely singing of 17th-century material by Ellen Giacone, accompanied by archlute, cornet and gamba. Unfortunately, this was not possible as, in addition to being interspersed by 1940s and 50s numbers, the early material had a habit of being invaded by drumkit and bass guitar, as if they had been waiting for centuries for this treatment. While the ‘early’ material is relatively inoffensive, the later material does not really lend itself to performance on a mixture of early and modern instruments, while the crossover treatment is often just silly. I usually complete the headings of my reviews after I have written the review itself, and it is quite some time since I have noted with relief the brevity of a CD. I can’t imagine who will want to buy this curious CD, but if 17th–/20th-century fusion is your thing, knock yourself out.

D. James Ross