Tag: Baroque

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Eccles: Semele

CD cover Eccles Semele Academy of Ancient Music Cambridge Handel Opera Julian Perkins

Anna Dennis, Héloïse Bernard, Aoife Miskelly, Helen Charlston, Bethany Horak-Hallett, Rory Carver, James Rhoads, William Wallace, Jonathan Brown, Richard Burkhard, Jolyon Loy, Graem Broadbent, Christopher Forster, Academy of Ancient Music, Cambridge Handel Opera, Julian Perkins
121:27 (2 CDs in a triptych in a folder with a hardback booklet)
AAM012

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John Eccles has been the victim of historical bad timing. Following immediately after Purcell, on whose operatic writing he built very directly, his operas, and Semele specifically, were utterly overshadowed by the arrival in London of Handel. Handel’s own Semele served specifically to eclipse Eccles’s, which had to wait until the 1960s to receive its first performance. By this time the manuscript was incomplete, but it soon became apparent that this was one of the great ‘what-ifs’ of English music. Had Eccles’ Semele, setting a libretto by Congreve no less, been performed in the early 18th century, and earned him the accolades they both deserved, might truly English opera (in English and in the English tradition established so promisingly by Purcell and Blow) have survived to compete with Handel’s Italianate offerings? It is fascinating to hear the degree to which Congreve and Eccles choose the truly tragic route through the familiar myth, while Handel takes a generally more lightweight approach. Eccles Semele has been recorded before, but the present Cambridge Early Music package, with its extensive collection of related essays and a line-up of superb soloists from the Cambridge Handel Opera and the ever-excellent Academy of Ancient Music truly puts Eccles’ opera on the map. The dramatically powerful and musically persuasive performance is directed by Julian Perkins, who at the opposite end of the scale has delighted audiences up and down the country with his clavichord playing, here conducts with considerable authority. There are few Baroque performers who have not dabbled in the music of John Eccles – perhaps sometimes even initially due to his novelty name – and been impressed with his musicality, but his Semele demonstrates an altogether more impressive level of inspiration and musicality. My one slight reservation about this otherwise exemplary issue is that the one or two ensemble items sound a little too ‘close’ and vocally competitive. Otherwise, I think you can tell that these are young singers who are used to staging the opera of this period, and if the Eccles hasn’t yet made it to the Cambridge boards, the sense of unfolding drama is palpable on these two intense and engaging CDs.

D. James Ross

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Purcell: Birthday Odes of Queen Mary

CD cover Purcell Birthday Odes of Queen Mary Robert King

The King’s Consort, Robert King
77:10
VIVAT 122

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There are few ensembles more familiar with the music of Henry Purcell than the King’s Consort under the direction of Robert King. After establishing the link back to pioneering performances by David Munrow, featuring James Bowman, in which King sang as a boy, he alludes to how musicology has provided us with an ever clearer picture of just how this music would have been performed in Purcell’s own day. The smaller instrumental and vocal forces are evident on this beautiful recording – two each of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses cover the solos, duets and the chorus parts, while two each of violins, violas and bass violins along with two oboes, recorders and trumpets with a continuo group of harpsichord/organ and theorbo make up the orchestral component. The Odes featured are Arise, my Muse (1690), Love’s Goddess sure was blind (1692) and Celebrate this Festival (1693) – in fact, the numbering of the items in which the trumpets participate is wrong in the programme list – for 2 read 3 and for 3 read 1.) However, in all honesty, this is the only tiny flaw in an otherwise exemplary package. As usual, King has assembled a first-rate line-up of specialist singers, and the singing of all eight is an utter delight. Exquisite phrasing is complemented with deft and utterly idiomatic ornamentation in every case, while the choruses are given equally detailed treatment, and the instruments in turn complement this with their own superlative level of musicianship. As a result, the often frankly silly libretti can be overlooked in the light of such stunning music-making. We even have time for an ‘in joke’ in the mock rage with which the ground bass of May her blest example in Love’s Goddess sure was blind is presented here, alluding to the story of a piqued Purcell using the tune Cold and Raw after the Queen had previously preferred it to his own music. The choice of a pair of recorders for Sweetness of Nature in Love’s Goddess sure was blind for which the instrumentation in the imperfect source is ambiguous, is inspired, but then when I went back to Munrow’s 1976 recording, this was his solution too. The many vocal and instrumental highlights in this recording are too many to enumerate – suffice it to say, I loved this CD, and can hardly imagine more convincing performances of these three lovely pieces.

D. James Ross

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Bach: The Art of Fugue

CD cover Filippo Gorini Bach The Art of Fugue

Filippo Gorini piano
97:11 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Alpha 755

It is a little odd to find this series of performances of Bach played on the modern grand piano by a succession of young players on the Alpha label, the home of impeccable historically informed (occasionally controversially so) performances. For my full views on Bach on the modern piano, please see my recent review of Bach: The Well-tempered Clavier Book 1, played on the piano by Aaron Pilsan also on Alpha. I won’t rehearse old arguments here, except to point out again that The Art of Fugue constitutes something of an exception to my HIP preference for period instruments. This enigmatic collection, as far as we can understand conceived by its composer as truly abstract music for the appreciation of connoisseurs and not tied in his mind to any particular instrument, transcends its time. As a result, it is played in our times on a variety of instruments and by different ensembles and still has the power to mesmerise. Thus too, these beautifully understated accounts on two CDs by Filippo Gorini beguile and charm in equal measure. I almost found myself admiring Gorini’s ability to bring out individual lines in the texture, something which Bach could not have done on any of the keyboard instruments of his time, but which a small chamber ensemble most certainly could and would have done – and which of course the eye, and the mind’s ear, of the educated connoisseur would also naturally have accomplished. If you like your Bach on modern piano, this surely must be the sort of performance you would want – wonderfully free from pianistic effects, elegantly understated and technically perfect.

D. James Ross

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Con arte e maestria

CD cover Con arte e maestria Oliver Webber

Virtuoso violin ornamentation from the dawn of the Italian Baroque
Monteverdi String Band In Focus, Oliver Webber, Steven Devine
78:45
resonus RES10282

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It has become apparent that Italian music composed towards the end of the 16th century and in the early part of the 17th century was almost invariably intended to be lavishly ornamented in performance. Tantalisingly, but also mercifully for players aiming for historically informed performances of this repertoire, some composers and players occasionally wrote out the divisions they were clearly using all the time, while a number of theoreticians wrote treatises with examples of ornamentation. One such, the Selva di varii passagii by Francesco Rognoni, gives us the heading for this CD as the title ends con arte e maestria. The violinist Oliver Webber and keyboard player Steven Devine, individually and together, apply these treatises to a variety of appropriate pieces, as well as performing versions of works which have survived in ornamented forms. In addition, Webber supplies a couple of improvised showpieces ‘in the style of Bassano and Monteverdi’ – there can be little doubt that once the early violin virtuosi had mastered the art of ornamentation, in a sense recreating the original works, they would have been emboldened also to improvise more freely in the style of the time, as we know for a fact all the great keyboard masters did. I still remember my astonishment at leafing as a student through Ganassi’s Fontegara, a guide to ornamentation from the earlier 16th century, with its blizzards of scales and other written-out ornaments, including trills in thirds and fourths – who does those? While we can never be absolutely sure how performances sounded in the historical past, Webber and Devine have done an excellent job of thinking themselves back into the role of early Baroque virtuosi, and their performances of this repertoire, encrusted with ornamentation, is musically convincing and thrilling. The nearest parallel to this ‘living art’ of ornamentation must be the aleatoric nature of some jazz idioms, but of course the difference is that we can hear how the latter worked in performance. Webber and Devine apply their consummate technical skills and flawless musical instincts to bring this vital performance technique vividly back to life – and with considerable ‘art and mastery’. 

D. James Ross

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Ich schlief, da träumte mir

Anne Marie Dragosits Ich schlief, da träumte ich

Anne Marie Dragosits harpsichrod
65:00
encelade ECL 2002

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This imaginative programme of movements associated with sleep and night-time in general from the late Baroque period features a wonderful harpsichord by Christian Zell and the equally impressive playing of Anne Marie Dragosits. Some purists may object to her extraction of individual movements from larger works by these German composers, but in reality many of these are pieces which are rarely played in their entirety anyway, and I found myself more intrigued by their shared and contrasting moods and idioms than by their lack of musical context. If sometimes the mood is slightly ‘souped up’ by Dragosits’ occasionally mannered presentation and changes of stops in mid-piece, I found myself less critical of this than you might expect, and by contrast I was engaged by the range of timbres she found in her remarkable instrument. Also, we shouldn’t underestimate the avant garde nature of some of this music from the late Baroque, a period when keyboard composers particularly were experimenting with unexpected harmonic progressions and melodic lines – perhaps they too were keen to emphasise these features in their performances. It was curious to find the constituent materials of the harpsichord – ‘diverse wood and metal, ivory, tortoise-shell’ (both mercifully long dead) – listed in the notes, but as the several illustrations in the booklet reveal this is a stunningly handsome instrument to look at as well as to listen to.

D. James Ross

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Lully’s followers in Germany

Lully's followers in Germany

El Gran Teatro del Mundo
68:24
Ambronay AMY314

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At first glance it may seem odd to have a Telemann ouverture-suite alongside works by the first-wave of lullists in germanic lands, but this is a perfect lesson in musicology, where the date that a work was copied does not imply its actual date of inception. This particular suite (TWV55: Es4) belongs to a small handful to have been transmitted through keyboard settings, some just a few movements (TWV55: E1 and E2) that long pre-date the copied versions; here we know that Bach’s eldest brother, Johann Christoph made a complete keyboard copy in the “Andreas Bach book” c.1708-12. Thus, the original may be from Telemann’s student days in Leipzig (1701-5) or when he was in the employ of count Erdmann von Promnitz at Sorau (1705-8). Compilations of Lully’s works first began to appear in 1682, when Jean Philippe Heus published two collections called: Ouvertures avec tous les airs, extracts from Cadmus et Hermione and Persée.

These works were the creative catalyst for the succession of germanic Lullistes to begin to capture the livel y“theatrical style” and place it into their own compositions; Kusser, Erlebach, Fischer, Fux, Muffat, Aufschnaiter and Steffani did just that. The early Telemann suite fits into this timeline just behind the first-wave of composers. Muffat studied under Lully for six years, and absorbed a great deal from source. This was at the very beginning of the vibrant cosmopolitan blend in music known as vermischter Geschmach or Gouts Réunis (“Mixed Taste”).

The disc opens with a fairly well known G-minor sonata (concerto grosso) from Muffat’s “Armonico tributo”, given a rather playful interpretation with fewer strings than we may have been accustomed to hearing, yet with attractive additions of oboe and recorder and an actively strumming theorbo to bolster the basso continuo section. The overall effect is much slighter, and the graves aren’t in any way onerous or overbearing.

Next the splendid Suite no1 in C from Fischer’s Journal du printemps (1695), again a lovely flowing, dulcet interpretation which makes for very clear melodic lines, especially in the unfolding final chaconne. Following on, another later Muffat work Nobilis Juventus from his 1698 Florilegium Secundum which does have a certain theatrical flair, well captured by the ensemble’s delicate tones.

Closing with the (nine-movement!) Telemann suite, originally for strings, we can hear the neat interplay of French, Italian and Polish elements from an early date. The Entree is a direct adoption from French opera, often employed for scenic changes. The menuets are wonderfully done here, before a far-too-ponderous, introspective reading of the loure (twice as long as the version on Carus 83.337!) followed by a vibrant italianate gigue, and a fine set of the bourrees. Next, a playful, neatly done polonaise and cheekily inserted “prelude” (Not original, not needed!) before the Aria, which I again felt was in too slow to be fully emotive. Lastly – in vivid contrast – the blithesome passepieds.

All are played with a polished delicatesse and relish, just waning in the latter slower movements of the final suite, yet overall capturing the essence of the emergent “mixed taste” with cosmopolitan flair.

David Bellinger

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Mattheson : The Melodious Talking Fingers

Floral design

Colin Booth harpsichord
60:47
Soundboard SBCD 220

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Johann Mattheson is an almost exact contemporary of Handel and Bach, the former whom he lionised and the latter whom he also admired, and had possibly also met. He is also famous for providing us in his Ehrenpforte a vivid autobiography by Telemann, whom he is also likely to have known well. He is a man more quoted than performed, although in his day he was a hugely admired composer, as well as a singer, impresario, polyglot, harpsichordist, musicologist, dancer, man about town and a renowned fencer – a burst of rage in which he attacked the young Handel with a sword might well have deprived us of the output of one of the finest of Baroque composers, but for a button which turned Mattheson’s blade aside! Much of his vast output was tragically lost in the wartime bombing of Hamburg, but among surviving collections is this set of fugues and dance music, Die Wohlklingende Finger-Sprache, extravagantly dedicated to Handel. Like Mattheson, Colin Booth is also something of a polymath, combining the careers of musicologist, performer and harpsichord builder, and plays this programme on a two-manual instrument, based on a 17th-century brass-strung original. This permits a wider than usual range of timbres, and reasonably in the light of Matheson’s flamboyant personality, Booth makes full use of this fine instrument’s possibilities. This and Mattheson’s inventive imagination ensure a thoroughly entertaining CD, particularly as the fugues become more and more complex. Booth comments that Mattheson’s music is attracting growing attention, and it is to be hoped that his contributions to chamber music, church music and the opera will find wider circulation in recordings.

D. James Ross

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Prisma: Il Transilvano

CD cover Ambronay Prisma Il transilvano

Musical bridges between Italy and Hungary around 1600
Works from the Codex Caioni and Hungarian folk music
57:55
Ambronay AMY312

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This beautifully performed CD alternates Italian music of the late Renaissance with traditional Hungarian music. What it doesn’t do, unsurprisingly, is provide ‘musical bridges between Italy and Hungary around 1600’. The Transilvano of the title illustrates the problem. It is borrowed from a famous organ treatise by Girolamo Diruta (Venice 1593) dedicated to Sigismond Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, but of course the music the group plays from this collection, notwithstanding some ‘Hungarianised’ divisions, sounds entirely Italian. So too the music from Codex Caioni which makes up most of the rest of the Italian component. Amongst others, Renée Clemencic has demonstrated that there is Hungarian music from this period, but the Hungarian traditional music here, beautifully evocative as it is, seems not to be from 16th- or 17th –century sources. As long as you are not looking for some magical musical ‘bridge’ between 17th-century Italy and Hungary, there is much to enjoy here, from the plaintive Hungarian violin airs and the lovely singing of Franciska Hajdu in the Hungarian ballad Magos kösziklának, to the imaginative and fresh accounts of the Italian Renaissance repertoire. There is nothing wrong with playing the divisions in this early repertoire with a Transylvanian flair, but to my ear it still sounds entirely Italian.  

D. James Ross

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Time Zones: Satie, Scheidt

CD cover Satie Scheidt Time Zones Lautten Compagney

Lautten Compagney, Wolfgang Katschner
70:34
deutsche harmonia mundi 1 94398 07952 3

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The wonderfully energetic accounts of the instrumental music of Samuel Scheidt as well as some of his sacred music in instrumental performances are well worth buying this CD for. The very conscious scoring of this music provides a huge number of different timbres and textures from a large consort of wind string and percussion instruments, and while some might doubt whether this degree of processing ever happened in Scheidt’s lifetime, the results are compelling and delightful. The pairing of these performances with the quirky, haunting and slightly weird music of Erik Satie may seem eccentric, and indeed it is. A saxophone is added to the pantheon of early instruments to create equally heavily processed accounts of what in most cases were piano pieces. Due to these clever arrangements by Bo Wiget, these too are constantly intriguing, while the excellent musicianship of the members of Lautten Compagney ensures that they are all utterly convincing. Once the programme gets underway, the juxtaposition of Scheidt and Satie, particularly the former’s motets and the latter’s Pièces Froides, is genuinely uncanny. However, I am not sure that it is a juxtaposition that throws any additional light on either repertoire, and tempting as it is to do something just because it is possible, the eccentricity of mastering 17th-century instruments so completely that you can play 20th-century repertoire seems something of a non sequitur. I don’t want to sound a HIP bore, and this CD is a lot of fun, and all of the arrangements and performances are stunningly effective.

D. James Ross

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Englishman in Tyrol

CD cover of Englishman in Tyrol

Viol music by William Young
Enemble Art d’Echo, Juliane Laake
64:02
Querstand VKJK 2003

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One of the most celebrated gambists in his own lifetime and for some time after, the reputation of William Young has since declined into complete obscurity. Spending his life at the court of Ferdinand Karl, Archduke of Innsbruck, Young had probably travelled with his employer from the Netherlands, where he was previously governor, having perhaps sought asylum there earlier in the 17th century from Cromwellian England, where his Catholicism would have made life dangerous. His quirky music for strings, mainly viols, while not as eccentric as that of Tobias Hume, recalls the nonconformity of that itinerant Scotsman – is it possible that the absence of any trace of Young in England may suggest that he too might have been a Scotsman? At any rate, Young proved indispensable at the Tyrolean court, taking centre stage at several large-scale celebrations. The present CD with its excellent programme note and varied and beautifully played programme, presenting a cross-section of Young’s work and peppered with world premier recordings, does much to restore this remarkable musician’s reputation. But what is it about musicians left to their own devices in recording studios? This CD has a bonus track of free improvisation at the end, which turns out to be a riff on Sting’s ‘Englishman in New York’, but which sadly adds nothing to the project. Worse still, was the oddly ungrammatical title substituted for the more natural ‘An Englishman in the Tyrol’ simply to facilitate this bit of self-indulgence? I forgive them, because the rest of the CD and its presentation are so good.

D. James Ross