Tag: Baroque

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Book

Walter Chinaglia: Towards  the Rebuilding of an Italian Renaissance-Style Wooden Organ

Chinaglia on rebuilding an organo di legno

Deutsches Museum Verlag, Volume 5, 2020
97pp, ISBN 978-3-940396-97-6 €19.95

This significant monograph details Chinaglia’s research into the making of a copy of the famous and only surviving Italian-style organo di legno in the Silberne Kapelle of the Hofkirche in Innsbruck, Austria. It was undertaken during a residency with the research group on ‘The Materiality of Musical Instruments: New Approaches to a Cultural History of Organology’, based in the Deutsches Museum in 2018.

When I was looking for an organo di legno for a number of performances of the Monteverdi Vespers this April in Lombardy, I was introduced to Walter Chinaglia. I knew that Italian music of that period needed a real organo di legno, with narrow-scaled open wooden pipes rather than the commonly available chamber organs based on a stopped 8’ flute, as I believed it would give more body and securer tonality for the singers and players alike with its unforced, singing tone. I was planning to perform with just eight singers and a minimal band, so the right organ was crucial. Alas, that project fell victim to the lockdown, but what I heard of his organs encouraged me enormously. Margaret Phillips has one in her collection at Milborne Port in Dorset, and there are a series of four youtube videos on his project – Duoi organi per Monteverdi, which I much recommend:

            https://www.organa.it/monteverdi/

There you can hear what the unforced sound of the open principal wood pipes is like with voices.

Chinaglia has an interesting background. After a first degree in physics and five years of research in nonlinear optics, he set up his workshop Organa in 2001, and has been building organs and researching the history and making of historically informed instruments since. In I.3 (p. 18) of his monograph, Chinaglia sets out his philosophy: ‘I strongly believe that a perfect sound from a wooden pipe can only be achieved if it comes naturally from the newly built pipe, in one or two strokes: when mouth cut-up is wisely chosen and the wind-way is properly opened, no other adjustments being necessary (such as toe-hole regulation, or tricky positioning of the mouth cover).’ He is committed to following exactly the dimensions and cut-up of the Silberne Kapelle organ pipes, and the clear, unforced, singing tone that results. The pipe-feet are cut integrally with the pipe and are pyramidal, not turned and glued on later. There are split keys for D sharp and E flat, and G sharp and A flat, giving the most useful major thirds in E and B, while allowing for E flat major and F minor as well as C minor in the flat keys. There is an informative spectral analysis of the sounds of open and stopped pipes, and from metal as well as wooden pipes, and the whole is profusely illustrated by drawings and diagrams, as well as photos.

This project combines scholarship with pragmatic experience, the disciplines of physics and woodcraft (there is detailed analysis of the different ways in which to saw planks and the difference it makes), of historical research into the written sources of the period and organology today. As a record of this work in progress, its author should be congratulated on the comprehensive recording of every step and the Deutsches Museum on sponsoring such an important cross-disciplinary project in the service of us mere musicians, trying to re-create the sound-world – especially the vocal sound-world – that Monteverdi and his forbears, contemporaries and successors inhabited. Vocal production and the difference that the right organ accompaniment makes lags far behind the recovery of the sound-world of strings (both bowed and plucked), brass, flauti and cornetti. These organs will help us immeasurably.

David Stancliffe

The book is freely available online, but you can buy a copy directly from the publisher here:

https://www.deutsches-museum-shop.com/detail/index/sArticle/3925/sCategory/24

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Recording

Cabinet of Wonders, Vol. 1

Violin sonatas from Pisendel's library in Dresden

Kinga Ujszászi violin, Tom Foster harpsichord
56:52
First Hand Records Lts FHR89
Music by Schreivogel, Vilsmayr & Visconti

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The unusual title stems from the original home of these works, which following the restoration of the Dresden court in 1763 were catalogued and stored in a large cabinet along with some 1500 works by then too antique to be a part of the repertoire. It’s an unusual and fascinating early example of music archivism. Today the collection is housed in the Saxon State and University Library, one of the largest and most significant collections of high Baroque music, where it is known as Schrank II. Much of the archive had originally belonged to the Dresden Kapellmeister Johann Georg Pisendel, who when on his travels was an avaricious collector of music he was either given in manuscript or copied.  

The three composers represented on the present CD all fall into this category, none having any direct connection with the Dresden court. Johann Joseph Vilsmayr (1663-1722) belongs to the central European school of violinist-composers, the most notable of whom was Biber, the teacher of Vilsmayr during his time at the Salzburg archbishopric court. Vilsmayr’s six-movement Partita (Sonata) in E flat follows his master’s style closely, being written for scordatura violin and (a rather simple) continuo. Like Biber’s works of this kind, it employs to the full the fantastic or bizzarie, relishing the careless (in the sense of unfettered freedom). The Prelude, for example, opens with wandering scalic figuration and arpeggiations, while the chances of encountering a more eccentric Passacaglia (iv) must surely be remote. The use of scordatura comes into its own in the Final (vi), which wittily opens in the style of an intrada and also makes use of contrasting dynamics in its echo effects.

Gasparo Visconti (1683-1731) was a pupil of Corelli in Rome, but as a highly gifted young violinist also spent time in London (1702-06), where he published a set of sonatas and a trio sonata. The two sonatas played here are manuscript works (untidily) copied by Pisendel. In his characteristically informative note, Michael Talbot suggests they were written later, possibly dating from the 1720s. The three-movement C-minor Sonata is perhaps the least interesting work on the CD, only the chromatic figuration in the final minuet-type of movement seeming to me to be of much note. The four-movement Sonata in F is another matter, having an opening Andante with appealing descending sequences, a highly expressive Adagio (iii), its attractions enhanced here by judicious use of rubato, and variations on a minuet theme (iv) that include a picturesque chordal fanfare episode.

Talbot suggests the most gifted of the composers represented is the Swiss-born Johann Friedrich Schreivogel (fl.1707-1749), an assessment with which I agree on the evidence here. Three of his sonatas, possibly copied by Pisendel when the two may have met in Venice in 1716-1717, are included here. The finest is arguably the three-movement Sonata in E minor, which opens with a soulful Grave that concludes with an unaccompanied solo violin cadenza and relishes much double-stopping in its lively final Allegro assai. Although in four movements, the D-minor Sonata is the most concise of the three, though the arpeggiated flourishes of the opening movement create a feeling of breadth. The opening Vivace of the Sonata in E flat is a forthright movement, with juicy chords in the violin’s middle register.

The same sonata’s final Allegro, extravagantly decorated, is given an infectious lift, confirming the positive impression made by the performances throughout. My first encounter with the young Hungarian violinist Kinga Ujszászi was five years ago in the finals of the eeEmerging competition at Ambronay as one half of the duo Repico. On that occasion, I found the award of a prize disturbing, since I felt that despite a superb technique she displayed little empathy with the style of the early 17th-century Italian pieces she played. My outspoken observations got me into trouble in certain quarters, so here I’m more than happy to report that Ujszászi’s playing and interpretations strike me as near ideal. The high level of technique needed to play this repertoire is still there in abundance, but it is now wedded to an expressivity in slower music and bowing that seems to me more stylish. The use of rubato noted above is often telling as is the calm purity of tone in such movements as F-minor’s Grave (i). Tom Foster’s continuo support, on a mellow-toned copy by Keith Hill of a Taskin of 1769 tuned to unequal-temperament, is splendid, though there were times when I wondered whether he was exceeding the brief of a continuo player. Such things are however very much a matter of taste.

I don’t honestly think there are any hidden masterpieces in this sector of the cabinet, but those to whom this repertoire appeals – and the majority of the works included are first recordings – certainly cannot go wrong with the performances.

Brian Robins  

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Recording

Le Grand Jeu

Le Grand Jeu CD cover for recital of organ arrangements

French Baroque organ favourites
Collection L’Age d’or de l’orgue française No. 4
Gaétan Jarry
65:19
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS024
Music by d’Angelbert, Charpentier, Corrette, Couperin, Dandrieu, de Grigny, Handel, Lully, Marchand, Purcell & Rameau

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CD cover of Gaétan Jarry

Not for the first time, the in-house Versailles CD production team have come up with a disc that isn’t really quite what it says it is, but that might well catch the eye of those browsing in the palace shop, not least because of the picture on the front of the packaging.

Given the working title of ‘French Baroque Organ Favourites,’ I doubt that any EMR-reading organists would have come up with a programme which included Dido’s Lament and/or Handel’s Sheba and in which Corrette out-gunned Couperin by eight and a half minutes to one and a half. And not a Noël in sight. Yes, there is some organ music – the tiny Couperin, more substantial Dandrieu and Grigny – but most of the programme is arrangements principally of Rameau and Lully.

It’s all very well played of course, though some of what we hear wouldn’t be possible without modern recording trickery, and we do get a good trip around the organ’s sound-world (it is a marvellous instrument) but for me that isn’t really the point. You realise how distinctive and rich the true repertoire is when track 4 begins and Dandrieu’s splendid Easter Offertoire succeeds a pair of contredanses by Rameau. The word ‘idiomatic’ sprang to mind, and the organ sounded so much happier.

The booklet essays (French, English & German) are long on gush and short on real information about the music, though there is a useful biography of the organ and some more good pictures. Overall, however, this is not really EMR/HIP material.

David Hansell

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Recording

Buxtehude: Complete Organ Works I

CD cover of Buxtehude Complete Organ Works I Friedhelm Flamme

Friedhelm Flamme
135:50 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
cpo 555 253-2

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I was brought up on the renowned Danish organist, Finn Viderø’s recordings of Buxtehude which he made in the 1950s, largely on the 1942 Marcussen organ in the Klosterkirche at Sorø, Denmark. They were notable for their clarity and rhythmic precision, and while he did not use a historic instrument, the Marcussen organ there was an early example of a mechanical action instrument designed on werkprinzip lines and the recordings were energetic and crystal clear – as an elderly and rather mannered schoolmaster once said to me, ‘absolutely spiffing – no smudge!’

Fashions have changed, and organists now search out historic instruments appropriate to the style of the music they wish to record. I find then slightly curious that for the first two CDs in a new complete Buxtehude – and maybe for them all – the accomplished organist, Friedhelm Flamme, should choose the Christoph Treutmann Orgel (1734-7) in the Klosterkirche Grauhof, near Goslar. It is a favourite organ of his and he has recorded both Michael Praetorius and Vincent Lübeck there.

But this instrument postdates Buxtehude, and it definitely not in the North German style. It seems to have been chosen largely because is has – as had the organ in St Mary’s Lübeck since 1685 – a well-tempered tuning, and so makes the playing of some of Buxtehude’s works in more remote keys like E major and F# minor less astringent. It stands in a large Baroque Augustinian abbey built by an Italian architect from Lombardy between 1711 and 1717, and, although Treutmann had worked with the Schnitgers in north Germany, the sound in the resonant acoustic feels more like a southern German instrument to me. There are a number of string and flute stops that increase this sense of a later Baroque sonority, as well as the fine 32’ Posaune, mentioned in a laudatory contemporary review of the organ by Johann Hemann Biermann, where he says, ‘The structure and outline of this very magnificent and precious work presents itself to the eye as noble and lively beyond all measure. […] It also possesses an all the more pervasive harmony and corresonance (sic), so that it might well brook comparison with a thunderstorm rumbling in the air, namely, when the Posaune 32’ bass is added.’ It is indeed very fine, and, like all the pedal reeds, speaks extremely promptly; if he were recording the organ works of Pachelbel, for example, I might well have applauded his choice of instrument.

The 32’ Posaune is used in the pedal solo of the opening piece, the Praeludium, Fuge und Ciacona in C (BuxWV 137), and it is difficult to hear anything else with any clarity when it is drawn. But Flamme then uses it moderately sparingly, and so allows us to hear the way the other ranks – especially the foundation stops – combine to create a range of more subtle effects in the chorale preludes.

Each CD is planned as a complete recital in itself, with pieces chosen for their related keys. This makes for good listening, but make it harder to follow with a score. On the first CD, the Partita on Auf meinen lieben Gott (BuxWV 179) brings welcome relief before we plunge back into the E minor Ciacona, with all four pedal reeds throughout against the principal choruses of the coupled Hauptwerck and Oberwerck.  The complex three-section prelude on Ich dank dir schon durch deinen Sohn (BuxVW 195) is splendidly played, with a light 8’ pedal, and some of the preludes and fugues have an equally light registration – again the clarity of the pedal flues as well as the reeds shows to great advantage.

In the second CD, after the Toccata in D minor with its contrasting sections and multiple changes of manuals and registrations, we hear Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin (BuxWV 75), Buxtehude’s setting of the Nunc Dimittis with its canonically complex variations, written in memory of his father and capable of multiple performance possibilities, including with voices and viols. I do not much care for his D minor Passacaglia (BuxWV 161) with its nightingale effects, but again we hear what the organ is capable of.

The F major Toccata (BuxWV 157) shows Flamme playing these showy but harmonically simple pieces with the rich 16’ and 8’ manual reeds, and he follows this by small-scale manualiter canzonettas and fugues, sometimes based on 4’ pitch. The disc ends with the amazing Praeludium in E, with its rich chromatics, demonstrating the need for a well-tempered instrument, that influenced his choice of the Klosterkirche Grauhof Treutmann instrument.

On the showing of these first two CDs, this will be a significant series, challenging other established complete organ works by Vogel, Bryndorf and others who chose to play on more recognisably Danish/North German instruments. While it deserves a warm welcome, the choice of instrument(s) matters as well as the playing. Has Flamme in his search for a colourful instrument thought of using the stunningly re-habilitated Stellwagen organ (1659) in St Mary’s Straslund for Buxtehude? It was Stellwagen who rebuilt the Totentanz organ in St Mary’s, Lübeck in 1653 and worked on the large organ there that Buxtehude played as well, so there would be a good historical reason, even if it has a not very extreme meantone temperament. However, in the booklet, there is a good essay on the Treutmann organ and its history, an introduction to the style and development of Buxtehude’s writing and in particular, the detailed registration chosen for each movement of each work. This is a great help to the listener, particularly when the monumental sound threatens to obscure some of the finer points of both the music and the playing.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

F. Couperin: Complete works for harpsichord

CD cover 10 CD box set Couperin complete harpsichord music Carole Cerasi

Carole Cerasi with James Johnstone harpsichord & Reiko Ichise gamba
Metronome METCD 1100 (10 CDs in a box)

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To record and release the whole of Couperin’s seminal Harpsichord oeuvre is an astonishing act of faith and dedication. The lock-down times give amateurs (in the French sense) the chance to get to grips with and reappraise this amazing corpus of music which more than any that I know gives us a feel for what makes French music of the late seventeenth century so very distinctive.

Apart from L’Art de Toucher le Clavecin (1716), Couperin’s pieces are arranged in twenty-seven Ordres, each grounded in a particular key, but avoiding the tight structure of the Bach suites, where the formal series of dances provide a recognised structure. With Couperin we are in a looser, more wayward structure of movements with a more programmatic feel: the fascinating titles given to some pieces reveal the background in a theatrical imagination where reality is miniaturised, life-changing experiences immortalised in particularity and the trivial glimpse turned into an epigrammatic memorial. While Les Langeurs-Tendres in the Sixième Ordre is a classic bit of descriptive mood music, no-one really knows to what Les Baricades Mistérieuses refers. La Triomphante that opens the Dixième Ordre could not rattle the sabres more, while Le Petit-Rien is just what it says – a few insouciant bars of delight, ending the Quatorzième Ordre, with its birdsong pieces and the softly jangling bell-like notes of Le Carillon de Cythère.

Some of the most evocative pieces are written in the resonant tenor range which is so characteristic of Couperin’s style, like Les Ondes that concludes the Cinquième Ordre. But what makes or mars any recording of Couperin’s music are two factors: first, the player’s familiarity with the keyboard style of the period, where ornaments and their languid execution as well as the conventions of notation are so important for whether the playing feels French and second, the choice of instrument(s). For those who would like to sample Cerasi’s skills and sensibilities, I suggest they turn to CD 9.7-11, where they will hear not only Le Point du jour, L’Anguille and the Menuets Croisès but also her skill and immaculate sense of timing in the halting, sliding Le Croc-en-jambe and the magician’s sleight of hand in Les Tours de Passe-passe. I was brought up on Kenneth Gilbert’s recordings of Couperin, made in the 1970s, and it is largely his editions of the Ordres that I still use. But Cerasi’s playing has a grace, a flexibility and a subtle freedom, devoid of tiresome and faddish mannerisms, that I admire greatly. Cerasi is ably partnered in those pieces requiring two clavecins by her producer in this outstanding enterprise, James Johnstone.

For the instruments, she chooses a series of harpsichords, beginning with the Ruckers of 1636 that underwent a makeover by Henri Hemsch of Paris in 1763 in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands and ending with a splendid Antoine Vater of 1738 that seems to live in a private house in Ireland – now there’s a ray of hope in a dark world! The instruments – including the modern ones by Philippe Humeau (1989) after Vater 1738 and Keith Hill (2010) after a Taskin of 1769 – are all suitably French sounding and are all pitched at 415. I haven’t wearied of the wonderful sounds she coaxes from each harpsichord – so different in the languorous slow movements and so bright and fiery at times in the rondeaux, even after listening to the 10 CDs several times, and I don’t think they could be bettered: they certainly sing out better than those used by Kenneth Gilbert in the 1970s. Each instrument is illustrated in the accompanying notes, although ideally I would have liked more information on a website if not in the booklet, particularly on the 1738 Vater from Ireland, which sounds quite wonderful. Nor is there information on the temperament used: the keys are delightfully differentiated – the Eb and C minor are particularly dark and velvety, so my guess is that it is a sixth or fifth comma meantone system. But I trust Cerasi’s scholarship and research to know what was likely in Paris in the first quarter of the 18th century.

The main content of the booklet is an excellent essay, 21 columns long, by Nicholas Anderson, in both English and French. It manages to set Couperin’s oeuvre in its historical, visual and theatrical context, alert us to some of the more recent scholarship and writing and give us a feel for the distinctive nature of each Ordre – no mean achievement in this highly condensed format.

Each CD has a card sleeve with the content and timings of each piece listed on the back, and I am amazed and delighted in equal measure that it has been possible to issue the whole of this project for under £45.00. I don’t expect ever to hear a more thoughtful and intense yet playful and elegant version of Couperin’s great works, and Carole Cerasi has us all in her debt. Buy it at once, even if you’ve never heard more than a handful of these works before. This is all pure gold, and I know no better introduction to the French style than this.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

The Dark Lord’s Music

Martin Eastwell plays 17th-century lute music

The Lutebook of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648)
Martin Eastwell
77:41
Music & Media MMC117
Music by Batcheler, Cato, Despond, Dowland, Du Gast, Gauthier, Hely, Edward Lord Herbert, Johnson & Reys

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Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648), brother of the poet George Herbert, was a significant figure in England in the early part of the 17th century, and was known as “The Dark Lord Herbert”. In his interesting and informative liner notes, Martin Eastwell describes Lord Herbert as diplomat, soldier, courtier, philosopher, poet, historian, musician and author of an entertaining autobiography. His lutebook was compiled over a number of years up to 1640 and contains music by the most important composers of that period: Robert Johnson, John Dowland, Daniel Batcheler, Diomedes Cato, Jakob Reys, and others. If Lord Herbert could get his hands round all the pieces in his book, he must have been a very accomplished lutenist.
 
The CD opens with a Prelude, the first of four pieces by Jakob Reys. The opening theme, which goes down a tone, up a minor third, and down a semitone, creates a mood of unease. After exploring various polyphonic options, the music breaks into a flurry of semiquavers and ends with a few solemn chords. Eastwell’s interpretation involves a fair amount of rhythmic freedom. In bar 30, using his musical common sense, he wisely plays quavers instead of the crotchets which appear in the manuscript and in Piotr Pozniak’s edition. Reys’ Sarabande (track 3) came as a pleasant surprise. The first section consists mainly of chords, including an unexpected flattened seventh chord in bar 2, and Eastwell strums them, as if playing a baroque guitar. Whether or not that was intended by the composer is a moot point, but I like it, since it effectively captures the spirit of the lively saraband, before it almost ground to a halt in the 18th century.
 
The only piece by John Dowland included here, is his galliard derived from Daniel Batcheler’s song “To plead my faith”. It displays a variety of techniques: broken chords, fast running quaver divisions now in the treble now in the bass, sequences of jerky dotted notes, and cadential trills. Eastwell adds a few tasteful ornaments of his own, and keeps a steady unhurried pace.
 
The longest track, at 9’ 49”, is one of five pieces by Daniel Batcheler – seven variations on “Une jeune fillette”, also known as La Monica. It is a most extraordinary piece of music, with considerable variety, and reflects the skill and imagination of one of England’s greatest lutenist-composers. Again, Eastwell chooses an unhurried speed, giving the listener a chance to savour his expressive playing. There are no ornaments in Herbert’s setting, but the ones Eastwell adds are spot on, enhancing the overall effect.
 
There are two tracks of music by Cuthbert Hely, whose music survives only in Lord Herbert’s manuscript. The first is a sombre Fantasia nominally in F minor, where much of the music is played on the lowest strings – not until bar 10 does it go above the fourth course. In the slow-moving polyphony, there seems to be a note missing in bar 72.
 
It may surprise some, but Eastwell has dispensed with the services of producers and recording engineers, and done the work himself. So often in my reviews, I have complained about microphones being too close to the lute, which can produce a sharp, unpleasant tone, and which does not reflect the soft, warm tone of a well-played lute. Eastwell has experimented with how best to record a lute, in particular where the microphone should be in relation to the lute, and the result is very impressive. Obtrusive string noise and heavy breathing are reduced.
 
Eastwell uses two 10-course lutes, one by Martin Haycock after Hans Frei, the other by Tony Johnson after Sixtus Rauwolf. Both lutes are strung in gut. Bass strings made of pure gut can sound rather dull, and modern wound strings have too much sustain. In his liner notes Eastwell explains that there is some evidence that bass strings at Herbert’s time were treated with metallic salts to increase density and improve the response. For the present CD, he uses such strings, which were made by Mimmo Peruffo, and the result is most satisfying.
 
Unlike so many of today’s “thumb-inside” players, Eastwell plays with his right thumb outside, which is appropriate for the period. In his notes, he refers to the manuscript of Johann Stobäus (a contemporary of Lord Herbert), who argues that playing with the thumb outside sounds purer, sharper, and brighter, whereas playing with the thumb inside sounds rotten and muffled. Thumb-outside certainly works better for lutes with many courses, and is more effective for music where the melody goes down to low strings.
 
The CD finishes with a Pavan composed by Lord Herbert himself. It is a gloomy piece in the unusual key of E flat minor. There are strange, unfamiliar chords with few open strings, and much of the time the music is played on low strings – in the first section there are only two notes to be played on the first course, and in the third section the last ten bars of 16 avoid the first course altogether. Dark music indeed for the Dark Lord.
 
Stewart McCoy
 
 
 
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Festival-conference

Hands-on Baroque weekend

If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to be involved with one of the amazing productions at Versailles during the 17th and 18th centuries, now is your big chance! As one of the re-imagined ways to enjoy artistic ventures, the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles has organised a two-day spectacular during the last weekend in August, in which you (as an individual or a family) can get firsthand experience of making such a thing happen. For more information click HERE.

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Recording

F. Couperin: Complete works for organ

CD cover of James Johnstone Complete works for organ Francois Couperin

James Johnstone Tribuot Organ 1699 Seurre
100:59 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Metronome METCD 1098 & 1099
+ Jean-Henri d’Angelbert: Complete works for organ

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In earlier reviews of James Johnstone’s organ playing, I have commented on the importance of finding a characteristic and appropriate instrument on which to perform the music, and this recording of the Couperin organ masses follows this tradition splendidly. The organ is neither well-known nor very large but turns out to be a gem by the Parisian builder Julien Tribuot. It was built for the Cistercian Abbey of Maizières in 1699 and was mercifully preserved when the abbey was dissolved by being sold in 1791 to the parish of Seurre on the Saône, where obscurity saved it from 19th- and 20th-century ‘improvements’, until its careful rehabilitation by Bernard Aubertin in 1991.

Like much else in the French organ music of the period, conventions for registration were detailed and highly prescriptive. Only on a French organ of the period can you hope to reproduce the required sounds with any accuracy and only a player who understands the conventions of notation and ornamentation in the period will get it feeling right.

I bought the L’Oiseau-Lyre edition of the Couperin Masses in October 1958 from UMP, and I remember struggling through some of it in a break-out room when a voice over my shoulder said, ‘No-one has taught you how to play this, have they?’ That was the legendary Felix Aprahamian, music critic and friend of Poulenc and Messiaen, who introduced me to the conventions of the ornaments and notes inégales, and fixed for me to go and play the Cliquot organ in Poitiers Cathedral. So my admiration for James Johnstone’s choice of instrument, disciplined approach to the registration and strict observance of the conventions of rhythm and ornamentation knows no bounds: he plays this repertoire with a detailed knowledge of the style on an appropriate organ that I’ve never heard before in an acoustic that allows the detail and flexible rhythms of his inégales to be appreciated and enjoyed.

This time too he has included not just the details of the specification of the organ in his booklet, but also full details of the registration for each movement on his website (www.jamesjohnstone.org). The pedal organ characteristically has reeds at 8’and 4’ pitch for use with the Plein Jeu and otherwise an 8’ flute; the 3rd and 4th manuals (Récit and Écho) have but a single stop on each – a five-rank cornet. We never hear the Écho cornet, and the flute on the Pedale is surprisingly insubstantial – it is a reconstruction, and I had expected something with a little more body for the bass of the movements en taille, but the robust Cromorne on the Positif en Dos is splendid and makes a surprisingly adequate balance with the Trompette and Clairon of the Grand-Orgue in the dialogue movements.

It is by the fluid rhythms of the recits en taille that I think players of this repertoire – which looks so plain on paper until it is brought to life by a player who has the conventions of late 17th- and early 18th-century French music in his bones – should be judged, and I think Johnstone has it. In his monograph French Organ Music in the Reign of Louis XIV (CUP 2011), David Ponsford analyses in great detail the genesis and development of the genres of the music of this repertoire, and shows how the styles relate to the quest in France for a living, breathing style that was capable of human emotion and expression.

This recording offers a perfect worked example, and I am very glad to have heard it. It is neatly produced and edited by Carole Cerasi, the harpsichordist and a fellow professor of Johnstone’s at the Guildhall. I particularly value Johnstone’s nose for sniffing out such high-quality, lesser-known instruments, and look forward to further discoveries for his Bach series.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Buxtehude: Cantates pour voix seule

Cantatas for solo voice Buxtehude La Rêveuse

La Rêveuse, Maïlys de Villoutreys, Florence Bolton & Benjamin Perrot
65:00
MIRARE MIR442

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The music on this CD places Buxtehude between his predecessor at the Marienkirche in Lübeck, Franz Tunder (1614-1667) and some of his contemporaries – Johann Philipp Förtsch (1652-1732), Gabriel Schütz (1633-1710/11) and Christian Geist (c.1650-1711). The other thread is that six of the nine pieces come from that remarkable source of almost all of Buxtehude’s substantial vocal output, the Düben Collection. Assembled for the Swedish Court and now in the University Library in Uppsala, the collection is a reminder that the Hanseatic League, trading around ports on the Baltic, was a powerful system of international connections before the narrower nationalism of the late 17th century took root.

The cantatas and their interleaving sonatas are played in an intelligent and well-mannered way by La Rêveuse, a Parisian/Breton ensemble which can boast two violins, dessus, tenor and three basse de violes, harpsichord, organ (a five rank positif by Dominique Thomas 2012 in the Église Protestant in Paris) and theorbo. Six of the items are solo cantatas with the Breton soprano Maïlys de Villoutreys, who sings cleanly and clearly, avoiding excessive vibrato but well able to colour her singing appropriately.

This CD is a welcome insight into the North German school pre-Bach, tastefully performed. The music lets us hear the kind of repertoire that Buxtehude lived among and which no doubt figured in the famous Abendmusiken in Lübeck. The influence of Italy is present in the stile moderna traits of some of the vocal settings and in the instrumental sinfonias between some episodes, recalling the operas and oratorios of Cavalli and Carissimi and the last piece, Herr, wenn ich nur dich hab, is built on a recurring ostinato bass. I listened to the whole recital with great pleasure: the music is well-chosen, nothing jars in the disciplined but relaxed performance, and it is a good advertisement for the group’s commitment to an under-explored repertoire.

David Stancliffe

Categories
Recording

Bach: Toccatas [BWV910-916]

Bach toccatas Masaaki Suzuki CD

Masaaki Suzuki harpsichord
69:04
BIS-2221 SACD

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The set of ‘Six toccatas, for the clavir’ mentioned in the 1750 catalogue seems to have been among Bach’s early compositions. No autograph copy survives, but copies of older versions of BWV 912 and 913 existing in Johann Sebastian’s older brother’s hand seem to date from around 1704. Christoph Wolff dates the revised set of six – a set like the Sei Soli or the French and English Suites – to around 1707-8, with the G major BWV 916, with its distinctive and Italianate concerto three-movement structure, added or linked to them in around 1710. The earlier Sei are more truly in the North German style, with opening flourishes and some solid homophonic chords that establish the tonality, followed by the first of the fugati, then a slower passage of a more truly melodic type before a further fugue that leads to a conclusion. So, although the pieces appear to be extended improvisations and are marked manualiter, they follow the models that culminate in Buxtehude’s great pedaliter organ works, whether described at toccatas or not.

These pieces bear all the hallmarks of the improvisatory style of the truly instrumental stylus fantasticus, as Athanasius Kircher calls it. This kind of improvisatory composition, free from the constraints of setting a text or a descriptive programme, is therefore able to reflect the composer’s immediate response to his circumstances like the instrument he had been asked to test or the mood he was in. In England, these became known as fantasias, whether for keyboard or groups of viols, while the generic title for Bach’s semi-improvisatory works is toccata.

You can imagine Johann Sebastian being asked to try out a new harpsichord and using the traditional passagework with runs and arpeggios to test the evenness of the instrument throughout its range leading to more chordal sections to test the resonance; fugal sections test the clarity of the instrument in part-writing and somewhere there will be a more melodic passage to see how well it sings. Later these elements would be refined to the Prelude and Fugue that formed the more disciplined structure of the components of the 48, but at this stage earlier compositional models were being explored.

Suzuki is a seasoned keyboard performer, though better known for directing his Bach Collegium Japan and for being the source and inspiration behind the complete set of cantata recordings, secular as well as sacred. The best historically informed practice underscores his playing, and this is a mature, relaxed and apparently effortless performance. Arpeggios and arabesques are tossed off, fugues are shaped with a clarity of articulation that shows he understands their deep structure and under his hands the instrument – a copy of a substantial two-manual Ruckers by Willem Kroesbergen of Utrecht in 1982 – is coaxed into singing rather than hammered into jangling. This is as good an introduction to Suzuki’s keyboard playing as any and we can appreciate his musicianship at work in these complex and varied works.

David Stancliffe