Tag: Baroque

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Purcell: Royal Odes

CD cover of King's Consort Royal Odes on Vivat

The King’s Consort, Robert King
81:12
Vivat 121

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Those that follow EMR are unlikely to need reminding of Robert King’s devotion to the music of Purcell, with which, as he reminds us in his touching notes, he has been involved for nearly 50 years. Neither will enthusiasts need their memories jogged to recall the valuable complete series devoted to both the sacred music and the secular odes some thirty years ago. The present generously filled CD revisits three of the royal odes: ‘Why, why are all the Muses mute?’ (a welcome ode for King James II from 1685), and two odes celebrating the birthday of Purcell’s much-loved Queen Mary, ‘Now does the glorious day appear’ (1689) and ‘Welcome, welcome, glorious morn’ (1691).

However, the performances are far from being a conventional remake. They were made in September and October 2020 under conditions dictated by the Covid-19 pandemic and as such have a special feel to them. Perhaps the first thing to say is that despite social distancing the sound obtained in the Fairfield Halls in Croydon is of outstanding quality, with splendid balance to the ensemble singing and excellent detail in the orchestral playing. Although King refers to what has been learned in the period since the Hyperion recordings as regard to such matters as vocal and instrumental forces, they are in fact virtually identical. That’s to say two voices per part for the choruses matched by single string parts and continuo plus a pair of oboes and trumpets in the 1691 ode.  The vocal ensemble is a happy mix of singers King has long worked with, including the inimitably stylish tenor Charles Daniels, who participated in several of the original Hyperion series, and soprano Carolyn Sampson, along with singers of the younger generation. Among them high tenor David de Winter makes a favourable impression, giving the unexpectedly subdued air that opens the 1685 ode – there is uniquely no overture – a fine sense of line delivered with excellent diction.

King’s notes don’t, of course, fail to draw the analogy of Purcell himself having lived through a time of plague in London (1665-6), but perhaps some find it surprising his suggestion that Purcell’s music was throughout his life pervaded by ‘a sense of melancholy, of fading glory’. This is borne out by performances that reflect a maturity and sense of poise that would have been foreign to the ebullient King of earlier days. I don’t think it too fanciful to find here a valedictory sense of thoughtfulness that reflects the time in which the performances were recorded. That is not in any way to suggest they have been overlaid by unwanted sentiment or self-indulgent tempi. Comparison with the earlier recordings reveals that tempos are in fact very similar and indeed in the case of ‘Welcome, welcome’, resplendent with its addition of pairs of oboes and trumpets, the overall timing was quicker in 2020 than it was in 1991.

In the face of such satisfyingly integrated performances, it seems invidious to single out special moments, but I can’t resist drawing attention to one or two. In the King James welcome ode countertenor Iestyn Davies produces a ravishingly lovely ‘Britain, thou now art great’, bringing an irresistible lilt to the air, the singing complemented by exquisitely nuanced string playing. In the same ode, Daniels captures with exceptional insight the pensive autumnal glow of the final air, ‘O how blest is the isle’. The 1689 ode sees Davies and Daniels come together with Sampson as a ‘dream team’ for the finely wrought trio, ‘Our dear religion’, while in the more brilliant 1691 birthday ode Sampson is outstanding in the recitative and air, ‘My prayers are heard … I see the round years’, one of the finest sections of the ode, succeeded by a splendid chorus making effective use of one of Purcell’s favourite devices, the echo.

The effervescence of the younger Robert King cannot be gainsaid in these celebratory works, but the more reflective King’s ‘Purcell in a time of Plague’ has its own distinctive qualities and demands to be heard by all for whom our greatest composer is special.

Brian Robins

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Sheet music

Antonio Bononcini: Six Chamber Cantatas (1708)

Antonio Bononcini Six Chamber Cantatas (1708) RRMBE 212

Works for Soprano or Alto with Two Flutes, Bassoon, and Basso continuo from A-Wn, Mus.Hs.17587
Edited by Lawrence Bennett
Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 212
xv, 3, 162pp. ISBN 978-1-9872-0533-6. $190

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One of four manuscripts of cantatas by Antonio Maria Bononcini (1677–1726), Mus.Hs.17587 contains three works each for solo soprano and alto with two recorders and basso continuo. The fact that it is only acknowledged in a footnote that the upper woodwinds are NOT flutes makes me suspicious of everything else about the edition. For example, the fact that Mus.Hs.15931/7–9 contain parts, one of which is for bassoon, does not of itself give these sufficient authority to include a separate line throughout the edition as if it were an obbligato instrument. To me, a far more sensible solution would have been to add [senza Fag.] instructions above those passages where the wind instrument should drop out – by the editor’s own admission, these (and, indeed, the score) are the work of a professional copyist, not the composer, after all.

Each cantata has either three or four movements (the latter adding a recitative before the first aria). In one of the arias in each cantata, there is only one line for recorders; in cantata 2, this is marked as a Recorder 1 solo, while both instruments play in unison (as they do in other Viennese cantatas of the period, by Caldara, for example) in the others. There is no denying the quality of the music; Bononcini knew well how to write both for the voice and for instruments. No points for guessing the subject matter, or for imagining that they are open to some very dramatic performances! Singers will need to combine their acting skills with some real vocal agility, and the recorder players, in particular, will require nimble fingers!

Brian Clark

* Parts are available from the publishers for $68.

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Sheet music

Aichinger: Lacrumae Divae Virginis et Joannis in Christum a cruce depositum (1604)

A-R Lacrimae divae virginis RRMBE211

Edited by Alexander J. Fisher
xviii, 5, 63pp.
Recent Researches in Music of the Baroque Era, 211
ISBN 978-1-8972-0549-7 $100

Throughout his life, Gregor Aichinger was associated with the “richest family in the world”, the Fuggers. Sponsored by them to travel and study in Italy, he repaid them with many publications (and doubtless other musical tributes), among them this set of eight a cappella motets. They set texts by Marcus Welser, a wealthy city official in Augsburg, where (among other duties) Aichinger played the organ (financed – of course – by the Fuggers) at the church of SS Ulrich und Afra. The building houses a large bronze “Crucifixion” by Hans Reichle (the first of five illustrations in the edition) which was completed in 1605 – the year after the publication of Aichinger’s music. Fisher’s “loose connection” between the three (though he acknowledges the striking thematic links) is surely an overdose of academic caution!

Although Aichinger studied in Venice with Gabrieli, there is little evidence of that in these motets. That is why, in addition to the Baroque tag, I have added a Renaissance tag, too – this music inhabits the grey world of musical stylistic change around 1600. The first seven short pieces are scored for five voices (SMATB), while the last adds a second tenor. Mostly cast in 4/2 bars, Fisher opts to represent tripla (3) in 3/1 in the fourth motet but in 3/2 in the final piece. I cannot help thinking that this is because he (like others) is afraid to acknowledge that our modern barring system (and subsequently some of our understanding of the interrelationship between time signatures) just does not like joins, where half of a bar is notionally a triplet version of the other half. That said, this is a well laid-out volume with minimal editorial intervention. Having such a clean page allows one to appreciate one aspect of the music that Fisher draws attention to in his rich introduction: the way Aichinger respects the clarity of Welser’s texts.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Mancini: XII Solos, London 1724

CD cover of Mancini XII solos Armonia delle Sfere

Armonia delle Sfere
115:46 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Tactus TC 671390

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These ‘Solos for a Violin or Flute’, (incidentally not ‘a Violin of Flute’ as it appears on the cover and back of the CD) are actually fully-fledged sonatas in four movements, and some of the most ambitious and successful chamber music Mancini composed. Famous during his lifetime for his operas and church music, Mancini operated in the musically rich environment of Naples, and is sadly one of the many such composers whose reputation has suffered an almost complete eclipse in ensuing centuries. On the basis of these solo sonatas, it is hard to see why this is: they are charmingly accessible, consistently inventive and idiomatically written for the recorder. Daniele Salvatore by alternating two treble recorders with a voice flute, a sopranino recorder and a transverse flute, dispenses with the need for the violin alternative option. I find his vibrato (particularly in the free unaccompanied introductory episodes) a little extreme, and he has the annoying habit of occasionally overblowing so as to ‘jam’ high notes, although elsewhere he plays more sympathetically and has an impressive technique. Two of Mancini’s keyboard toccatas, essentially study pieces rather than concert works, provide a little textural variety, while the move to sopranino recorder and the introduction of a guitar into the continuo ensemble really switches things up a notch for the final sonata. It is good to see Italian ensembles exploring their considerable national Baroque heritage, and Mancini sounds likes a composer worthy of attention.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Edinburgh 1742: Barsanti & Handel, Parte Seconda

CD cover Edinburgh 1742 Ensemble Marsyas Parte seconda

Ensemble Marsyas, Peter Whelan
51:51
Linn Records CKD 626

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This is the second of a pair of CDs evoking the lively world of the 18th-century Musical Society of Edinburgh and bringing us the balance of Barsanti’s op 3 Concerti Grossi, those featuring solo trumpet and two oboes, as well as another four of his Old Scots Tunes and music by Handel. Barsanti’s treatment of the wind instruments in these Concerti Grossi, published in Edinburgh in 1742 just before the Jacobite Uprising, sounds very classical in style, alternating them as a section augmented by timpani with the strings. Perhaps more innovative still and unexpected are the more structurally free slow movements. The four Old Scots Tunes are charmingly played by Colin Scobie – a member of the Maxwell and Fitzwilliam Quartets, in encore slots Colin frequently demonstrates his considerable traditional fiddle skills, and these are very much to the fore here as he is joined by Elizabeth Kenny on the Baroque Guitar for stirring accounts of ‘Dumbarton’s drums’, ‘Ettrick banks’, ‘The bush aboon Traquair’ and ‘Cornriggs are bonnie’. Handel’s Overture to ‘Atalanta’ serves to illustrate a very different treatment of the trumpet and indeed a very different style of composition, notwithstanding that Handel and Barsanti were contemporaries and acquaintances. These works by Barsanti, in an edition from Prima la Musica, provide a valuable counterbalance to our sometimes Handel-dominated and London-centric view of the mid 18th century, and it would be interesting to hear accounts of his later publications, which include a set of six motets for five or six voices and continuo (1750) and his Trio Sonatas op 6 (1769). On first listening, I found the recorded sound a little cramped, but then the Musical Society concerts were presented in the ‘upper room of St Mary’s Chapel, Niddry Wynd’ until 1763 when they moved into the superb surroundings of St Cecilia’s Hall. At any rate, I soon adapted my ear, and the amount of detail captured in the recordings is indeed impressive.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Couperin: Suites Royales

CD Encelade Couperin Suites royales

Claire Gautrot viola da gamba, Marouan Mankar-Bennis harpsichord
76:00
encelade ECL 1902

It is understandable that Couperin’s keyboard oeuvre should over-shadow the rest of his output but the chamber music is scarcely disappointing! Here we have two suites originally designated for viol avec la basse chiffrée (pub. 1728) and one of the 1722 Concerts Royaux, for which any suitable melodic instruments can be used. Each suite is followed by a complementary movement from the harpsichord livres.

I regularly question the need for the multiplicity of continuo instruments we often hear in this repertoire so it is something of a relief to note that in this recital a harpsichord shows that it can do the job on its own – and rather well. Variety of texture, in particular, is used to great effect and the recorded balance is unfailingly excellent.

And so is the playing. The plangent tone of the viol, its infinite capacity for tonal shading and ability to convey delicate filigree makes it an ideal voice for this exquisite music. I defy anyone not to be tempted to repeat Pompe Funèbre, possibly more than once. So, if you share my love of the French Baroque, and even if you don’t, this is very rewarding listening, helped on its way by a sensible and quite substantial essay (in French and English).

David Hansell

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Recording

Le coucher du roi

CD cover Le coucher du Roi


thibault Roussel theorbo and director
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS029
74:00 (CD) 59:00 (DVD)

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The conceit here is that, in the evening of both the day and his life, the aged Louis XIV has summoned his favourite musicians to play him his favourite music as part of the formalities surrounding his retiring for the night. So we have a lovely programme of (mainly) short pieces by the usual suspects: Lully and Lalande, of course, but also Lambert, de Visée, Marais and even that relatively youthful upstart, François Couperin. The instrumentation includes voices, flutes, strings and assorted pluckers in a wide variety of ensembles and solos, offering a rich panoply of sumptuous sounds – three bass viols, two viols with singer and theorbo etc., etc..Quite frankly, this ensemble can come and play to me at any old time of any day! The performances are unfailingly lovely and show great commitment to a repertoire that is still a mystery to many. Yes, I’ll probably have a growl about some questionably over-staffed continuo departments, but the growls will be quiet ones.

The DVD contains some of the repertoire from the CD but also additional pieces (fine chamber music by Hotteterre and Dornel, for instance), all filmed in various atmospheric locations within the Château de Versailles. And, in contrast to some concert DVDs I have seen, someone has actually thought about what it looks like! The singers have memorised their music and, even if they don’t fully act their scenes, they do at least inter-act with each other in a convincing quasi-dramatic way. However, when the final credits roll brace yourself! The accompanying music is not allowed to finish but is chopped off mid-phrase as soon as the text ends.

The 72-page booklet (in French, English and German) offers the usual performer biographies and essays on the music that place it informatively in its context though say little about its content. There is no list of the music on the DVD though there are captions as it plays.

Overall this is a very good package, though that DVD end should never have achieved publication. A shame.

David Hansell

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Recording

Royal Handel

Eva Zaïcik and Le Consort perform arias by Handel, Ariosti and Bononcini

Eva Zaïcik mezzo-soprano, Le Consort
64:59
Alpha Classics Alpha 662
+arias by Ariosti and Giovanni Bononcini

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Eva Zaïcik is a young French mezzo whose cv suggests she might have originally had ideas of becoming an early music specialist, but whose more recent work includes a debut as Carmen in Toulouse and appearances in Pique Dame and Eugene Onegin.  Having heard this CD my guess is that the latter type of repertoire is more likely to become mainstream for her. In full flow the voice is a richly opulent instrument, with a hint of edge to it in the middle register, which itself does not always sit in comfortable relationship with the soprano register. In Baroque repertoire Zaïcek’s voice is on this evidence at its most beguiling singing mezza voce, where the ear experiences a purity of tone and line not always apparent elsewhere. But in general terms neither her technique nor her approach to the mostly Handel arias on the present CD convince that she is truly at home with it. While there is an admirable flexibility and passaggi are in general well articulated, her approach to ornamentation is haphazard, cadences go unembellished and of course there is no hint of a trill. Not that Zaïcek is alone in that respect. As bad is her approach to text or more accurately non-approach. Contrary to the needs of these arias, the performances seem driven by the desire to make a beautiful, lustrous sound. Aria after aria passes with little attempt to explore its emotional core or meaningfully articulate its text.

In this respect, the singer is hardly aided by her choice of accompanists. Le Consort is one of those small French ensembles bearing no relationship to the size of an average 18th-century opera orchestra. It is also characteristic of so many ensembles today in that Le Concert appears to feel it necessary to play quick music very fast and slower numbers excessively slowly. Thus an aria such as ‘Rompo i lacci’ from Flavio is taken so fast as to render it virtually meaningless, despite some agile passagework from Zaïcek, while the funereal tempo and emasculated rhythm adopted for ‘Ombra cara’ (Radamisto) leaves the aria as little more than a glutinous, sentimental wallow.  There are two compensating factors. One is that mezza voce, where the lighter tonal palette can produce exquisite results, nowhere more so than the central section and da capo of ‘Deggio morire’ (Siroe), where criticism is silenced, the listener seduced into luxurious immersion in the sheer beauty of the moment. The other is the inclusion of first recordings of arias by two composers that along with Handel also contributed operas to the first Royal Academy in London (1719-28), the source of the CD’s title. Both Attilio Ariosti and Giovanni Bononcini scored significant successes in its early years and ‘Sagri numi’ from Ariosto’s Caio Marzio Coriolano (1723) is a ravishingly lovely discovery, though as with all the cantabile numbers it is sentimentalized and taken too deliberately.

If the response to this CD is perhaps a little harsh at times, it stems from the depressing regularity with which so many of today’s younger singers seemingly come to Baroque repertoire as a kind of warm-up for bigger, later parts. Such singers need to be taught to recognise that Baroque opera has its own demands that need to be met if they are going to do it more justice than simply winning cheap applause from mainstream critics and audiences.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Tormenti d’amore

Soprano cantatas from 1740s Vienna

Philipp Mathmann, Capella Jenensis, Gerd Amelung
82:13 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Querstand VKJK 2002
Music by Hasse, Porsile, Reutter the Younger & Scalabrini

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This set is centred around a collection of vocal music made by Prince Anton Ulrich of Saxe-Meinigen during the period he spent in Vienna, where he apparently arrived in 1724. Apparently, since the notes rather ambiguously tell us that the collection, consisting of nearly 300 vocal works, including over 170 chamber cantatas, were works from ‘Vienna’s musical scene composed between 1710 and 1740’. So the assumption would be that Anton Ulrich spent around 20 years of his life in Vienna. More importantly, many of the works in the Meinigen Archive are the sole surviving copy, including the best music in the programme, the two characteristically melodious and elegantly turned cantatas by Hasse. The cantata by Georg Reutter, the Court Composer of Vienna and Kapellmeister of St Stephen’s Cathedral who brought Haydn to Vienna, and the Neapolitan opera composer Giuseppe Porsile are less interesting, the former in particular also suffering from an excruciating anonymous text on the prevailing topic of the cantatas – tormenti d’amore, the torments of love.

In addition to the cantatas, the set includes two trio sonatas by Hasse and two sinfonias once surprisingly attributed to Hasse, but more recently established as the work of the Italian-born Paolo Scalabrini (1713-1803 or 6), the director of the travelling Mingotti opera company, who ended up as maestro di cappella in Copenhagen, where he composed at least eight operas, including several Danish-language works that helped establish native opera. They are pleasant enough routine Galant works in three brief movements but little more and assuredly not worthy of Hasse’s name being attached to them.

The programme itself is therefore not without interest, but sadly the performances rarely rise beyond the level of the efficient and in the case of the cantatas fail to reach that level.  Philipp Mathmann, confusingly described as a countertenor/soprano, is in fact a sopranist pure and simple. While the voice has an admirable purity and wide range, it is unfailingly hooty in its upper range, while also displaying deficient technique in several respects. Little ability to articulate a simple turn is shown, while more complex embellishment or ornamentation is rarely attempted. What truly compromises Mathmann’s performances, however, is his seeming lack of interest in the texts he is singing. None is a literary revelation but the whole object of the chamber cantata was to move the listener, evoking sentiment and emotion through expressive vocal gesture and realization of the words. Ignore that and you may as well be singing a vocalise, which is precisely the impression given here for much of the time.  

The instrumental contribution of Capella Jenensis is rather more enjoyable, though rhythms tend to plod in slower movements. The Hasse trio sonatas, in particular, are well played, with pleasing shaping of melodic lines from the two violinists and – in that in D, op. 2/2 – flautist. The programme, almost exactly the length possible today on a single CD, is extravagantly spread over two discs so it is to be hoped that some price concession is built in.

Brian Robins

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Recording

J S Bach: Little Books

CD cover Francesco Corti Bach Little Books

Francesco Corti harpsichord
79:14
arcana A480
+Böhm, Couperin, Hasse, Kuhnau, Telemann

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This is a recital that introduces us to the idea of formation by learning under a teacher’s instruction – and also by copying out the music – pieces of that teacher’s choosing.  The “Little Books” of the title – Klavierbüchlein in German – are the books prepared by Johann Sebastian for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann in 1720 and his second wife, Anna Magdalena in 1722 and 1725.

In these latter, we find the first sketches for what would later become the French Suites, while others come from the ‘Andreas Bach Book’ that originated with Johann Sebastian’s eldest brother and first teacher, Johann Christoph. Here we have some of Bach’s earliest keyboard compositions set alongside those he admired and copied for teaching purposes by other composers.

Francesco Corti, an experienced teacher as well as harpsichordist, plays a selection of these in his illuminating recital on a 1998 copy by Andrea Restelli of a Christian Vater harpsichord (Hannover 1738) now in the Germanisches Museum, Nürnberg. The introductory essay on music from the Bach family circle by Peter Wollny and Corti’s own piece, Copying the master’s gestures, are both in English, German and French, and each exudes thoughtful, undogmatic scholarship and sound musicianship.

Corti’s playing matches these aspirations. He is fluent without being showy and varies his style with the chosen music – indeed the whole production is an essay in how to teach by immersion in sources, sounds and sensual serendipity. Recorded in 2019 before the pandemic of this past year, this is the kind of production that is useful to have in lockdown as a teaching aid or refresher course, helping students re-examine the sources of their own technique and choices.

I recommend it for these reasons as well as for the innate musicality of Conti’s playing, which can be glimpsed live in his performance of the A major harpsichord concerto BWV 1055.

Here you can see Corti engaging with the other players in the only one of Bach’s early concertos that he transcribed for harpsichord – probably originally for oboe d’amore – to have a separate continuo part in addition to the solo instrument. This is teaching by immersion, and I commend Conti as a first-class teacher, as he is on this clip, teaching his master’s Suite in G major.

David Stancliffe