Tag: Baroque

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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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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

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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

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Bach: Harpsichord music

Tilman Skowroneck plays Bach CD cover

Tilman Skowroneck harpsichord
69:03
TYXart TXA19133

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This recital by Tilman Skowroneck, a former pupil of – amongst others – Gustav Leonhardt, marks his homage to a fine instrument built by his father Martin Skowroneck in 1976 and to Leonhardt himself.

The harpsichord was first installed in a mansion in Baltimore, where the teenage Tilman remembers seeing it set up on temporary cavaletti, but then bought back after its owners’ demise by Martin in 2009 and re-installed in what was Martin’s (and is now Tilman’s) music room in Bremen. It is a copy of a Christian Zell now in Hamburg’s Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe dated 1728. It was re-quilled before this recording, and the light voicing of I suppose the upper rank makes it a very suitable choice for the version of the E-flat lute sonata BWV 998, which Bach marked ‘for lute or harpsichord’ on the title page of the autograph and can be dated around the mid 1730s. As well as the sixth of the English Suites, Skowroneck plays a transcription of the violin partita in D minor (BWV 1004) taking it down a fifth into G minor, which was a favourite piece of his for recitals. Leonhardt made these transcriptions in the spirit of Johann Sebastian arranging some earlier violin concerti for harpsichord for performance at the Leipzig Collegium Musicum evenings and Bärenreiter now publishes them; but Tilman made and plays his own version, transcribing Leonhardt’s published recording, for performance at a series of memorial concerts for Leonhardt after his death in 2012.

The instrument is certainly very easy to listen to. It is pitched at A=415 and tuned to a ‘modified Temperament Ordinaire’. This tuning certainly favours the flat keys of the chosen pieces. There is an odd resonance to the tenor F sharp, which I find rather distracting; at first, I thought it was my mobile phone buzzing in my pocket, but it is definitely that particular note on the instrument.

Tilman plays persuasively, and is a member of the stroking rather than hammering brigade, so his CD is easy to listen to, and a fine tribute to his father’s craftsmanship and his mentor’s musicianship. The music he has chosen is not frequently recorded, which makes the CD of more than usual interest. His website contains further information and has clips of more recent recordings of French music.

David Stancliffe

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Sonar in Ottava

Carmignola and Bruenllo play Bach and Vivaldi an octave apart CD cover

Double Concertos for violin and violoncello piccolo
Giuliano Carmignola, Mario Brunello, Academia dell’Annunciata, directed by Riccardo Doni
69:58
Arcana A472

I admire Mario Brunello and Giuliano Carmignola, and their playing, together with that of the Academia dell’Annunciata is elegant and stylish, but I cannot pretend that I like these fine concerti played with the solo instruments playing in different octaves.

Unlike the sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord, or some other of Bach’s works which he clearly arranged and rearranged for different combinations of instruments, I find that the intertwining and tossing to and fro of melodic lines at different octaves distracting and unappealing. This is particularly the case in the D minor double violin Concerto BWV 1043. In the opening vivace, the violin line doubled at an octave below just sounds un-Bachian to me, and quite unlike the only other instance I can think of where there is something similar – the central section in D major of the alto aria in the Johannes-passion, Es ist vollbracht. It is like a baritone singer doubling ‘the tune’ an octave lower in a four-part SATB chorale. In the middle movement, too, the canonic writing with its intersecting and overlapping lines surely needs instruments at a similar pitch? In other concerti, even when there are earlier versions of what Bach later presented as concerti for two or more harpsichords, a distinction in timbre as in BWV 1060 has often been reconstructed as a concerto for violin and oboe for example – but always by instruments in the same octave.

The reimagining of the music for these two instruments is served better by the less melodically variegated music of Antonio Vivaldi, with its highly arpeggiated figuration. Here, difference of texture sometimes provides a welcome variation to the texture.

The two colleagues, whose musical friendship goes back a long way, have – I suspect – been seduced by the intriguing possibilities of Brunello’s new violoncello piccolo, strung exactly an octave below the violin, on which he played the Sei Soli for violin so plausibly last year.

But, while you might be curious to hear what their concerti at an octave sound like, I doubt if you will want to keep this CD in your library.

David Stancliffe

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Froberger: Complete Fantasias and Canzonas

Terence Charlston plays Froberger on clavichord CD cover

Terence Charlston clavichord
62:04
divine art dda 25204

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I had not heard Froberger played on a clavichord before and wondered how it might work, but in the capable hands of Terence Charlston this recording is a resounding success. While one might miss the variety of registrations possible on the organ, letting the player build up the texture in successive sections, the clavichord compensates by allowing for subtle dynamic differences and providing the ability to hear individual voices clearly. Charlston plays on a copy of a South German fretted clavichord from c. 1700, in its putative original configuration, by Andreas Hermert; this is reasonably close to the time of the composition of the music and provides Charlston with what he thinks is the ideal clavichord for the job. The instrument is well recorded, with just a small amount of instrument noise to give it a ‘live’ feel. He concentrates on the fantasias and canzonas from Froberger’s 1649 manuscript, which bridge the gap nicely between the ricercars and canzonas of Frescobaldi and the contrapuntal music of Bach. Both genres are sectional, showing off Froberger’s remarkable ability to create extended pieces out of minimal material, varying the metre while keeping a steady tactus, something Charlston brings out very successfully. He uses subtle ornamentation to keep the sound going, including the vibrato-like Bebung which also changes the pitch slightly. He exploits the unequal semitones of his mean-tone temperament in a number of pieces with chromatic subjects. Sleeve notes are very informative. Charlston’s joy in bringing this music to life shines through and I can strongly recommend this recording.

Noel O’Regan

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The Grand Mogul

The Grand Mogul Vivaldi Barthold Kuijken CD cover

Virtuosic Baroque Flute Concertos
Barthold Kuijken, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra
65:27
Naxos 8.573899

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‘Il Gran Mogul’, the title which Vivaldi gave to his flute concerto RV431a and similarly to his RV208 Violin Concerto ‘Il Grosso Mogul’, and which in turn is borrowed for this CD of virtuoso flute concertos, is something of a mystery. There are no perceptible hints of eastern musical flavours, and the Mogul may simply refer to the ostentatious nature of the solo parts in both concerti. As such, it is a suitable epithet for this collection of showy flute concerti by Michel Blavet, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Jean-Marie Leclair and Georg Philipp Telemann, all of whom contributed significantly to the new Baroque sensation, the solo concerto. It is fascinating to hear the distinctly ‘national’ flavours of these Italian, French and German concertos. As Barthold Kuijken makes clear in his excellent programme note, many of the composers didn’t seem to care particularly for the difficulties they created for their flautists – in some cases, the flute is just one of the options suggested for the solo instrument – and some passages are particularly challenging and even unidiomatic. Of all the composers represented here, only Blavet actually played the flute, and the finale of his A-minor concerto reaches considerable heights of virtuosity. Fortunately, Kuijken on his one-keyed Rottenburgh copy Baroque flute makes light work of even the most demanding writing, whether idiomatic or not. One of the musically gifted Kuijken family who dominated the early music scene in the 1980s, Barthold is both a stunning technician and a fine musician and is ably supported here by the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, who produce a wonderfully light, nimble sound, playing one to a part.

D. James Ross

D. James Ross

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Kinderman: Opitianischer Orpheus

Chamber and vocal music by Erasmus Kindermann CD cover

Lieder nach Gedichten von Martin Opitz
Ian Siedlaczek soprano, Jana Kobow tenor, United Continuo Ensemble
66:57

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Erasmus Kindermann spent most of his 39 years of life in Nürnberg, and unfortunately for him it coincided largely with the Thirty Years War. He was lucky to spend the worst of it studying in Venice, and also enjoyed the considerable artistic upswing which greeted its conclusion, which saw the publication in 1642 of his settings of poems by Martin Opitz for solo, dialoguing or duetting voices with instrumental accompaniment. This coincided with the foundation of various literary societies in Nürnberg in which new literature was encouraged, but also the poetry of Opitz from 20 years earlier was read, performed and appreciated. A key figure in all of this was Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, whose ‘Poetic Funnel’ also of 1642 through which he boasted the art of German poetry (freed of Latin) could be poured in just six hours! Although Kindermann’s surviving portrait shows a man aged and haggard before his time, his Opitz settings are delightfully cheery, bucolic affairs with perky short-phrased tunes that seem to relate to the simplicity of folk music. The performances here are completely charming, with both singers instilling just the right amount of drama and expression into these beguiling songs. The cover of the first volume of Kindermann’s “Opitianischer Orpheus” depicts a small consort grouped around a table in a domestic setting presumably performing the contents of the publication, and the present forces evoke this delightful scene to perfection. The United Continuo Ensemble comprises two violins, gamba, harp, harpsichord and organ, and independently contributes a couple of violin sonatas by Kindermann to the programme. It is indeed a shame that Kindermann survived plague, war and financial ruin only to die just after peace promised a genuine cultural Renaissance in his home city. Remarkable too that his music seems genuinely so optimistic and without the shadow of the desperate times he had lived through. The same could be said of the poetry of Martin Opitz, regarded by many as ‘the father of German literature’, who died in 1639 at the age of just 43, having misguidedly demanded change from a beggar, who turned out to be suffering from the plague – a lockdown lesson for us all perhaps!

D. James Ross

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Amor, Fortuna et Morte

Amor Fortuna et Morte CD cover

Madrigals by de Rore, Luzzaschi, Gesualdo & Monteverdi
Profeti della Quinta
64:21
Pan Classics PC 10396

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This collection of madrigals has been compiled for the excellent reason that the singers of the Profeti della Quinta love singing them. Interestingly the composers they choose span the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries – Cipriano de Rore was born in 1515/6 and died in 1565, while Monteverdi was born in 1567 and died in 1643. While there is considerable variety here, various musical and thematic threads run all the way through the programme. The five male voices, joined in the later works by lute, achieve a remarkable blend and purity of intonation, and sing these madrigals with intense expression and musical intelligence. In addition to some very familiar material, we have an extraordinary madrigal by Scipione Lacorcia, who manages to outdo his model Gesualdo in harmonic eccentricity and melodic waywardness! The recording of Monteverdi’s “Lamento della Ninfa” (13) is a hair-raising aberration, as one of the group’s male altos hideously droops and swoops around Monteverdi’s melodic line in a style verging on caricature. Famously, Monteverdi asks the soloist to sing ‘at the beat of the emotions’ – however, this clearly means singing with a degree of mensural freedom rather than approximating the actual notes in a sort of anachronistic Sprechgesang. Just awful, but mercifully unique on the CD. Interspersed among the madrigals, we also have a number of pieces for solo lute, some of them very effective arrangements of madrigals. Founded in Galilee by the eminent singer/harpsichordist/director/composer Elam Rotem, Profeti della Quinta is now based in Basel.

D. James Ross

 

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Locatelli: L’Arte del Violino Op. III

Locatelli op 3 Diego Conti CD cover

Diego Conti, Gli Archi di Firenze
212:04 (3 CDs in a card triptych)
Tactus TC 691280

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This comprehensive 3-CD set presents the twelve violin concertos of Locatelli’s op111 Art of the Violin recorded in a variety of venues over a period of ten years from 1988 to 1998 by Diego Conti and Gli Archi di Firenzi. Locatelli was one of a handful of violin virtuosi who completely revolutionised the musical world of the 18th century, and his 24 eye-wateringly virtuosic capriccii ad libitum published along with the concerti serve as cadenzas. From the outset, Diego Conti’s sparkling and showy playing seems to summon the ghost of Locatelli, and, if the liberties he takes with tempo must have driven his Archi di Firenze to near distraction over the years, I am quite sure that the flamboyant Locatelli would have done exactly the same! It is of course in the wild capriccii that Conti’s full virtuosity is put to the test, and he comes out of these with flying colours. If the playing of the ensemble sounds a little lacklustre by comparison, this is maybe inevitable and perhaps even part of Locatelli’s original design. Of all the achievements of HIP performers over the years, I find the recreation of the music of these violin virtuosi perhaps the most revelatory and remarkable – to master a period instrument, bow and technique so thoroughly as to be able to rival these extraordinary virtuosi of the past is truly amazing! If Locatelli’s capriccii never quite go in the direction you would expect, neither did his life – having spent his career doing the unexpected, he then retired to Amsterdam in his mid-twenties in mid-career and seemed satisfied with a life of luxurious solitude, enjoying the financial fruits of his previous concert life and his publications. 

D. James Ross