Tag: Baroque

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Clérambault: Chamber Music from the Brossard Collection

Booklet cover for The Bach Players' Clérambault CD

The Bach Players
58:49
Coviello Classics COV91928

This disc is a further exploration by the ensemble of Sébastien de Brossard’s library, their previous release having presented music by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. Here, we are offered instrumental music by Clérambault, a useful counter-balance to the image of ‘cantata king’ that has developed around him. As with all Bach Players programmes, there is a strong impression that ‘someone has thought about it’. There are three trio sonatas, two solo sonatas (each prefaced by a keyboard prelude) and two chaconnes, also for solo violin and continuo. Further variety is embedded in the music of course: especially striking are those moments when the bass viol engages in the contrapuntal discourse, sometimes to spectacular effect!

I enjoyed the programme very much. There is an unfussy honesty and a unity of purpose about the playing which most emphatically is not a kind way of saying ‘a bit dull’. One hears so many ensembles in this repertoire with kaleidoscopic continuo sections, changes of instrumentation for repeats. etc., that it really is a welcome relief to hear classy performances with everything in place that just say ‘Here’s the music. Isn’t it terrific?’. Yes, it is. The booklet will not disappoint either.

David Hansell

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Destouches: Issé

Cover of the booklet for Destouche's Issé

Van Wanroij, Vidal, Dolié, [Santon-Jeffery, Lefebvre], Les Chantres du CMBV, Ensemble Les Surprises, L.-N. Bestion de Camboulas
120:34 (2 CDs in a card folder)
Ambronay AMY053

This charming pastorale héroique was one of 18th-century France’s greatest operatic hits. First performed in 1697, re-worked in 1708 and 1724 and still in the Versailles repertoire in 1773, it also enjoyed a sustained run in Paris from late 1733 into 1734. The music is lovely – dramatically engaging, melodically inventive and orchestrally colourful – and, even in this five-acts-and-a-prologue form, of manageable length.

I might have loved much of this in a theatre but the repeated listening that a recording gets raises some questions. The rather studious composed orchestral ornaments for e. g., the first section of the overture do sound less likely on each hearing; I doubt that the percussion was specified by the composer; and while theorboes are perfectly reasonable in French opera until about 1730 I’m not convinced by the guitar.

Moreover, the first two-and-a-half minutes raise the fundamental problem of so many performances, particularly of early opera, that one hears. The (brief) overture introduces us to one sound-world after which we are disturbed (not too strong a word) by a voice from another sonic universe – ironically singing about ‘une douceur profonde’. I really did wince. And I think others will also struggle with the un-reconstructed modern singing (including by the chorus) against much beautiful, gentle instrumental sound. But some might not.

The booklet (French & English) offers every help to those wishing to explore. The essay is concise but informative and there is a full libretto with parallel translation. I do wish, however, that the dull artist biographies offered a glimpse of the person behind the lists of prizes, roles and conductors-worked-with.

David Hansell

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Bach: The Toccatas BWV910-916

CD booklet cover for Bach: The toccatas

Mahan Esfahani harpsichord
76:53
hyperion CDA68244

The seven Toccatas BWV 910-916 are performance pieces sans pareil. They are exactly what you might have expect to hear if you had asked Johann Sebastian to try out a new harpsichord for you – sonorous chords to test the resonance and the stringing, fugal sections to prove the clarity of the voicing and the responsiveness of the action, episodes to test the two-part balance in lighter sections, sequential passages to gauge the temperament as you slide up and down the keyboard, shifting from key to key and slower sections to assess the chromatic and rhapsodic possibilities – they are all there.

This makes them ideal vehicles for Esfahani – and his harpsichord.  Esfahani is a harpsichordist rather than a period instrument player, and is a champion of the instrument’s possibilities in music old and new. On this recording – the microphones are set close enough to give us every nuance of the damping, and the final chords are frequently held very long as the instrument’s resonance is allowed to continue – Esfahani plays a 2018 instrument from the Prague workshop of the Finnish maker, Jukka Ollikka, ‘based on the theories and surviving examples of Michael Mieke with the hypothetical addition of an extra soundboard for the 16’ register and a cheek inspired by Pleyel 1912; the disposition is as follows: 16’ 8’ 8” 4’ with buff on the upper manual/soundboard from carbon fibre composite, EE to f3/length 2.8 metres.’

I quote this note from the booklet (p.5) in its entirety, as there is no photograph there of the instrument or any other information, and listeners must judge for themselves just what they make of it. It is certainly both powerful and technically faultless, like Esfahani’s playing. If you look up the maker on the internet, his website will direct you a Youtube recording of the flute sonatas where Esfahani talks about as well as plays his custom-made instrument.

His essay in the booklet discusses the many variant readings of the texts, as no autograph of the music has survived in Bach’s hand, and in the process reveals something of Esfahani’s spiritual journey. He sees the combination of the ‘earthy free sections of the toccatas with the highly abstract ‘divine’ truth of the fugues as a meeting point of human imperfection and godly perfection.’

His essay offers a well-argued and highly plausible usicological-theological reflection on the interrelationship between text and performance which deserves a wide exposure to critical debate.

I wholly recommend this disc not just for its well-argued and committed performances of these mysterious works, but also for the insights into the performer’s continuing dialogue between ‘authenticity’ and expression.

David Stancliffe

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Amadio Freddi: Vespers (1616)

CD booklet cover for Freddi Vespers

The Gonzaga Band, Jamie Savan
58:10
resonus RES10245
+ Castello, Donati, A & G Gabrieli, Grandi & Biagio Marini

This recording is another triumph for Jamie Savan and his Gonzaga Band. The research on Freddi and the way the performing edition for these elegant and tuneful movements – largely taken from Freddi’s Messa, vespro et compieta (Venice: Amadino 1616) – is excellently presented in five dense pages of informed and practical scholarship of a high order, which informs the whole enterprise. This is a model of how scholarship and performance should complement one another

We are given details of the sources, editions, instruments, pitch and temperament used. Particularly interesting is the use of a digital Hauptwerk organ running samples from the Nachini organ in S. Maria d’Alleito at Isola in Slovenia and played by Steven Devine. In a recording that itself is digitally created, I can see nothing wrong with using such an instrument, though I wonder what it feels like to sing or play next to it where there is no wind reservoir ‘breathing’ with you. The only other instruments alongside the six voices are Jamie Savan (cornetto) and Oliver Webber (violin), who play Freddi’s entwined and imitative writing in a way that not only imitates the florid vocal lines, but gives the impression of a very much larger instrumental ensemble. The richness of the overall texture created with such slender resources is one of the appealing things about this performance.

Just a violin and a cornetto with the organ was what Freddi had at his disposal when the forces at S. Antonio, Padua where he worked from 1592 to 1614, were reduced to keep the music establishment solvent. The combination appears again as the basic instrumental group hired in for the feast of the Assumption at S. Teonisto in Treviso, where he had moved in 1615, and is a combination that appears in places in the writing of Heinrich Schütz, for example.

The psalms Savan has chosen from the collection are those proper to a Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and as in the Monteverdi 1610 Vespers, he has interspersed the psalms with works for single voices, and a number of sonatas by Donati, Marini  and Castello together with some brief intonazioni by Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli and a motet by Grandi. This is welcome, as fascinating though it is to hear the Freddi works, the voice and instrument combinations are limited and the textures and idioms feel much more samey than the widely varied styles of Monteverdi’s work – but then Monteverdi was trying to display the maximum number of ways the plainsong could be treated, which was not part of Freddi’s game plan. After repeated listenings, I found the music tuneful but not essentially memorable, though some of the instrumental sonatas and the solo motet by Grandi raised the game.

As before with the Gonzaga Band, Fay Newton’s contributions steal the show. Hardly any other soprano has her wonderful voice: light, bright and flexible, yet capable of astonishing changes of colour and mood. This is not to say that the other voices are not excellent – they are equally well-matched. So this is another example of how to create a wonderful but largely unrecognised musical world, where voices and instruments combine to create big effects with minimal forces. In today’s financially squeezed circumstances there is much to lean and admire. Plus ça change.

David Stancliffe

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Elegy: Purcell & Blow

Elegy: Purcell and Blow duets
Iestyn Davies, James Hall, The King’s Consort, Robert King
77:33
Vivat 118
 

Duets for the countertenor or high tenor voice – often not easy to distinguish between – were popular repertoire during the Restoration, the CD under review featuring a number of well-known examples such as Purcell’s ‘Sound the trumpet’ from the ode Come ye sons of art, ‘O solitude’ and ‘O dives custos’, one of the elegies written to commemorate the death of Queen Mary in 1695, and John Blow’s moving ‘Ode on the death of Mr Henry Purcell’, the most extended work on the disc. There are also a number of solos sung by Davies.

There is therefore rather a concentration on sombre or more reflective topics that seems to have cast something of pall over the CD as a whole. It gets off to a good start with the bright warblings of ‘Hark how the songsters’ from Timon of Athens, Shadwell’s adaptation of Shakespeare. Here the two voices expertly combine with a pair of recorders to weave a colourful tapestry of sound in one of the more agreeable of the Baroque’s ubiquitous bird songs. The following ‘In vain the am’rous flute’ from the Ode for St Cecilia’s day Hail, bright Cecilia is admirable for the sheer sweetness of the sound and the musical way in which the two voices shape the long, melismatic lines. Yet nagging questions start to arise. Does the slow tempo chosen leave it sounding somewhat pedestrian? Is the less than clear enunciation responsible for the lack of engagement felt by at least this listener? A pattern is thus established that extends for the remainder of the disc. The voices are beautifully matched and duet together sympathetically, but is difficult to avoid a feeling of ever-encroaching blandness. Just occasionally something more potent arises, such as Iestyn Davies’ ‘Incassum Lesbia’, particularly at the heartfelt words ‘Regina, heu Arcadiae regina’, where he finds an emotional response to the text not often in evidence elsewhere.

As it happens, over 30 years ago, Robert King recorded for Hyperion a record with almost the same content sung by an earlier generation of countertenors, James Bowman and Michael Chance. I dug it out to find whether it confirmed my impressions of the new disc, which it unquestionably does. Everything on the older recording is brighter, more alive, even the more sober numbers having a deeper expressive quality than those on the new CD. Neither is the presentation on the latter as good, with no source or Z number given in the contents listing, as it was on the Hyperion. The disc will doubtless please the many admirers of Iestyn Davies – though it is worth noting that the lesser-known James Hall is by no means overshadowed – but to my mind it is another reminder that the last quarter of the 20th century was a golden age for the British early music revival.

Brian Robins

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Telemann’s Garden

Telemann's Garden CD cover

Elephant House Quartet
58:56
Pentatone PTC 5186 749

It is with some inevitability that any baroque flautist or recorder player will come to “dabble”, adding their individual flair and sheen to some of Telemann’s neatly conceived, oft charming little gems of chamber music. Many pieces also offer a surprising flexibility in options for possible instrumentation. Here the Elephant House Quartet bring a crisp and balanced interpretation of works chosen to share the limelight, then slip back into the comfortable nucleus of the quartet; this they do with amazingly smooth, unforced ease. The recorder version of the Paris Quartet (TWV43:G4) and the Suite V in A minor (TWV42:a3) display these precise qualities so very well. Camerata Köln recorded the complete “Six Concerts et six Suites” of 1734 back in 2000 on cpo, and perhaps another of the “Concerts” could possibly have been included here to gently push the CD timing over the hour mark?

It would also have been nice to hear all of the fine harpsichord fantasia (TWV33:19) and perhaps the remarkably gifted Reiko Ichise might have tackled one of the recently found gamba fantasias? For another day perhaps…

This said, in the spirit of egalitarian division, all the instrumentalists get their own outings, moments to shine within these selected works which they do with tremendous efficacy and perfectly measured musicianship. All in all, this is a splendidly plucked and blown bouquet/nosegay from Telemann’s neatly conceived musical garden.

David Bellinger

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Alessandro Grandi: Celesti Fiori – Motetti

Academia d’Arcadia, UtFaSol Ensemble, Alessandra Rossi Lürig
62:39
Arcana A 464

During his lifetime, the Venetian Alessandro Grandi was regarded as the equal of Monteverdi and his influence on the motet was profound. The works recorded here illustrate the dramatic concertato style in which he composed and indicate an original creative genius at work. Blending voices and continuo with cornetti and sackbuts, these performances illustrate how he animates the texts he is setting with rapidly changing bursts of expressive musical ideas, but is also capable of more sustained expressions of passion. The singing and playing here is generally suitably passionate too, with very effective detailed ornamentation subtly applied where appropriate. I have some reservations about the soprano voices which both have more vibrato than is comfortable. Annoyingly they seem able to minimise this at will, but too often they don’t, leaving them sounding unsettlingly wobbly compared to the cornetti and, indeed, the gentlemen. The 15 motets recorded here range from simple two-voice dialogues to larger-scale pieces culminating in a handsome eight-part setting of Nisi Dominus. The recorded sound is best in the smaller-scale works and is a bit crowded in the larger pieces, where surely more use could have been made of the acoustic in the Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara in Mantua. This CD with Alessandra Rossi Lürig’s detailed and informative programme notes makes a strong case for exploring further Grandi’s sacred music, which has survived in large quantities but of which only a small portion has made it into modern editions. [Ed. Dennis Collins’ fine editions are available from primalamusica and he is one of several editors working on a complete edition for CMM.]

D. James Ross

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Handel: Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate

Christina Landshamer, Anja Scherg, Reginald Mobley, Benedikt Kristjánsson, Andreas Wolf, Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann
79:20
Carus 83.310

In addition to the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate on this packed CD we get a suite from ‘Il Pastor fido’ and the Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne. All three works belong to the period when the composer was in the employ of the Elector of Hanover but was taking extended leave in London. The story of Handel’s alienation from the Electors of Hanover and his subsequent embarrassment when George I was translated to the British throne is a complete fiction, and it seems they were more than happy to see their favourite composer established in London. That Handel successfully applied himself to major courtly compositions in the latter days of the reign of Queen Anne helped him quickly to become the archetypal British national composer. While the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate are pieces full of pomp designed to celebrate military victory, the Birthday Ode is more subtle indicating even a degree of affection between the Queen and her rising star composer. Opening with the sublime “Eternal Source of Light” given a fine performance here, this piece seems to show an awareness on the part of the 28-year-old composer that he is stepping into some dauntingly large shoes. In these performances, the orchestra of the Gaechinger Cantorey play with an impressive consistency and idiomatic style while the chorus too produce a pleasingly focussed and expressive sound. The soloists generally impress with their musicality and purity of tone, while the live recording made in the Liederhalle Stuttgart has a fine acoustic bloom with absolutely no audience noise.

D. James Ross

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Baroque Consolation

Sacred Arias at the Imperial Viennese Court
Sarah Van Mol, Oltremontano, Wim Becu
58:04
Accent ACC 24349
Music by Caldara, Conti, Emperor Joseph I, Froberger, Fux, Muffat, Pachelbel, M. A. & P. A. Ziani

The enormous affluence and political success of late-17th- and early 18th-century Vienna allowed it to support a cultural life of the highest standard, and master musicians, many of them Italian, flocked to the Imperial Court. One such was Pietro Andrea Ziani, whose nephew Marc’Antonio took his uncle’s winning formula of motets for solo voice with two obbligato violins and developed it into the distinctively Viennese form in which the violins were replaced by an obbligato trombone. A family of trombone virtuosi, the Christians, flourished in Vienna on the back of this vogue, and veteran Baroque trombonist Wim Becu – a stalwart of many period brass ensembles – brings this neglected repertoire vividly to life here. The sweet-voiced Sarah Van Mol is also a positive asset here, singing with beautiful clarity and expressiveness. Further character is added by the use of the 18th-century ‘Ziverin Orgel’ by J B Forceville for solo items by Pachelbel and Froberger, while a 2013 Jos Moors organ adds distinctive colour to a number of the ensemble motets. These are persuasive performances of repertoire which, notwithstanding pioneering work by the great René Clemencic, remains underperformed. Perhaps Vienna should reserve some of the stardust lavished so generously on the Strauss family for composers such as Georg Muffat and Johann Joseph Fux who did so much to put Vienna on the musical map.

D. James Ross

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Schütz: Psalmen & Friedensmusiken

Complete recording, Vol. 20.
Gerlinde Sämann, Isabel Schicketanz, Maria Stosiek, Dorothee Mields, David Erler, Stefan Kunath, Georg Poplutz, Tobias Mäthger, Felix Schwandtke, Martin Schicketanz, Dresdner Kammerchor, Instrumentalisten, Hans-Christoph Rademann
138:05 (2 CDs in a box)
Carus 83.278

These two CDs mark the end of Hans-Christoph Rademann’s complete recording of Schütz in collaboration with the publishers Carus that began in 2006. CD1 includes a number of psalm settings (127, 15, 124, 137, 85, 116, 8 and 7) and the Whitsun Sequence, while CD2 has commissioned works for public occasions, a couple of biblical dialogues, and music of a more personal nature, like Schütz’s ode to his wife who died (aged 24) in 1625. The astonishing variety of music represented here alerts us to the significance of Schütz’s oeuvre spanning the long period of his life from the madrigals composed under the influence of his teacher Gabrieli in Venice, through the richly scored psalms of his early maturity to the biblical dialogues and solo songs, with their minimalist instrumental colouring, of his middle age and maturity, and also to the breadth of his commissioned work.

The team of singers for the single-voice performances of much on these discs is a starry double SSATB quintet with Gerlinde Sämann, Isabel Schickentanz, Dorothee Mields, Georg Poplutz and Tobias Mätheger among their number. Many have connections to the Dresdener Kreuzchor or Kammerchor, like Rademann himself, and the Dresdener Kammerchor here is a fine foil to the solo voices with whom they share the same timbre as the opening psalm, Nisi Dominus (SWV 466), reveals at once. Psalm 15 (SWV 473) that follows it has two contrasting cori, one of alto & bass with two violins and violone, the other soprano & tenor with three trombones. In Psalm 137 – By the waters of Babylon – the verses of lament are given to the chorus tenors with four trombones while those that tell of the hanging up of their harps are sung by two solo sopranos and bass with two theorbos and continuo.

By contrast, the four choirs in the Latin Sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus – two sopranos & fagotto, two cornetti & bass, two tenors & three trombones, alto & tenor with two violins & violone – are not all heard together till the opening chords of verse 4, when Schütz’s characteristic G major to E major shift illuminates the words O lux, and some bars of 6/8 invigorate the heavenly rewards promised. CD1 ends with Psalms 8 and 7 and some of the niftiest trombone playing I have heard amongst other delights. The balance between voices and instruments is excellent, and the ringing clarity of the whole ensemble makes these fine performances under the experienced and sure-footed Rademann.

On CD2, big public works like Da pacem and an immense setting of the Benedicite with a wide variety of instrumental accompaniment to colour the text contrast with the chamber quality of Tugend ist der beste Freund (SWV 442), the strophic Danklied (SWV 368) with its instrumental ritornelli and the solo song Mit der Amphion zwar (SWV 501) that Schütz wrote on the death of his wife. Especially interesting in this category of smaller scale works are the two biblical dialogues – the well-known Easter dialogue (SWV 443) Weib, was weinest du with pairs of soprano and tenor voices for the dialogue between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, and the enchanting Vater Abraham (SWV 477) with its sinfonias for pairs of violins with the rich man (B) and recorders with Abraham (T) probably dating from the 1620s and new to me.

The greater variety of styles shown in CD2 makes this pair of CDs as good an introduction to Schütz as one could imagine. This is not the sweep up of oddments that the final volume of a series often is. If you do not know the long-lived Schütz to be the major figure in German music in the 17th century, buy this volume and start from here.

David Stancliffe