Tag: Baroque

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Johann Sebastian Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium

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MusicaFiorita, Daniela Dolci

Gunta Smirnova, Flavio Ferri-Benedetti, Hans Jörg Mammel (Evangelist), Raitis Grigalis SATBar, Musica Fiorita, Daniela Dolci
142:00 (2 CDs)
PAN CLASSICS PC 10393

This is a splendid performance: beautifully balanced and recorded, with a plausible number of singers – 14, and a comparable group of players – 2.2.2.1.1 strings, admirable woodwind and the peerless Jean-François Madeuf and his cronies playing brass. The continuo includes organ, baroque guitar and theorbo (effective for example in IV.i with the pizzicato bass line), and harpsichord, played by the director, Daniela Dolci, herself a continuo specialist, but used sparingly.

The group is based in Basel, but is broadly European and both singing and playing are of a high standard. Most exciting is the ringing clarity of the tuning, following the natural harmonics of the brass players, who eschew corrective finger holes –  listen to VI.i for true harmonics. But the chief glory is the sense of ensemble singing in the 12-voice choruses. Not quite all those who sing the arias also sing in the choruses. The tenor is the excellent Hans Jörg Mammel with beautifully paced narrative and magical high notes fading into the ether; the soprano is Gunta Smirnova, whose voice is a treat – clean, clear and bell-like: she is clearly an accomplished ensemble singer and could well have sung in the chorus where she would blend perfectly. The alto, Flavio Ferri-Benedetti stunning in II.x, and the bass, Raitis Grigalis –wonderfully baritonish in V.v, both sing in the choruses.

Both in the choruses and in arias every part is crystal clear with a perfect balance between voice and instruments. Before they recorded the cantatas they performed them liturgically in sequence over last Christmas period, and the pacing and flow could scarcely be bettered with a completely integrated sound-world between chorus and soloists. Although the tempi are sometimes fast, as in the opening (I.i), the performances are almost always well in control – only in V.i do I sense that a slightly breathless haste can destabilise the singers when the director’s hands are on the harpsichord.

I have a query about the prominent sound of the fagotto in IV.iv Flößt, mein Heiland. With the pizzicato violoncello and the theorbo, it seems a bit much. Although we have got used to hearing it in the bass wherever oboes are used (especially in multiple oboe numbers), Bach actually specified it only in Part I. It doesn’t work for me in IV.iv, especially where there is a single oboe here. And the theorbo? I am not wholly convinced by the organ/theorbo bass line in Bach as if it were Monteverdi. And the organ? It looks in the booklet pictures and on the Youtube video like an instrument made by Gyula Vági in Budapest and certainly has a fuller sound than the small stopped flute chamber organs of a decade ago, but it was unconvincing in the decorative improvisations between the lines in II.3 which surely would have been played on a more substantial instrument.

These small cavils apart, this version must be at the top of any current or future recording of the Weihnachtsoratorium; this is a dramatic and effective performance and deserves to be bought and played in every household over the days of Christmas this year and for many to come.

David Stancliffe

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1717: Memories of a Journey to Italy

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Scaramuccia
62:19
Snakewood SCD201801
Works by Albinoni, Fanfani, Montanari, Valentini and Pisendel/Vivaldi

In the 17th and 18th centuries if you were a musician wanting to keep up with the latest musical trends your social networking involved rather more than going to your computer or smart phone. It meant a physical trip to the musical centre of the world: Italy. It is, of course, what Handel and many others did. Among their number was the violinist Johann Georg Pisendel of the Dresden Court Orchestra, whose trip to Italy took place in 1717 as one of a number court musicians (including Zelenka) accompanying the opera-mad Prince-Elector of Saxony. During a trip that took in Venice, Rome and Florence, Pisendel, already one of the greatest violinists of the age, made contact with many leading musical figures. Principal among them were Albinoni and Vivaldi (with whom Pisendel established a lasting friendship) in Venice, Antonio Montanari (another great violinist, who became the successor to Corelli as leader of the famous Rome orchestra) and Giuseppe Valentini in Rome, and Giuseppe Maria Fanfani in Florence.

All the above are represented on this fascinating CD of sonatas for violin and continuo in which Scaramuccia chart Pisendel’s Italian journey, the works chosen either having a direct or close relationship with the German virtuoso. Thus Albinoni’s four-movement Sonata in Bb not only bears a dedication to Pisendel, but, as Scaramuccia’s violinist Lupiáñez points out in his scholarly notes, also includes unusual features such as triple-stopping that suggest that Albinoni may well have composed the sonata with Pisendel’s virtuosity in mind. Most fascinating of all in this respect is Vivaldi’s Sonata in G, RV 25. Also dedicated to ‘Maestro Pisendel’, Vivaldi left the slow movement for his new friend to fill in, which he did with a lovely serene Grave movement for violin and harpsichord (rather than continuo). This hugely entertaining sonata opens with a bucolic Allegro and includes a number of dances, ending with a Menuetto with variations left open to improvisation, here splendidly fulfilled by Scaramuccia.

It is this sense of the performers being constantly engaged with making music a spontaneous act that makes these performances so rewarding and engaging. There is throughout an evocation of a world of fantasy and bizzarie that feels absolutely right for music intended to dazzle the hearer. Listen for example to Valentini’s Sonata in A (dedicated to Montanari), composed more in the style of a suite. Here a free, extravagant, arabesque-laden opening Preludio, is succeeded by an Allemanda founded on odd glissando-like gestures, a gentle cantabileLargo for the violinist over a rippling arpeggiated accompaniment, a good-humoured Giga and a vigorous concluding Minué more redolent of countryside than court. Quite apart from the captivating inventiveness of the performances, they are technically outstanding and balanced with rare sensitivity. The odd small intonation problem apart, Lupiáñez proves himself master not only of the more virtuosic demands of the music but of also producing a warm, expressive cantabile, while he receives splendid support from Inés Salinas (cello) and Patricia Vintém (harpsichord).

Brian Robins

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Telemann: Christmas Oratorios

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Monika Mauch, Nicole Pieper, Georg Poplutz, Klaus Mertens SATB, Kölner Akademie directed by Michael Alexander Willens
76:50
cpo 555 254-2
TVWV 1:745, 926, 1251, 1431

It is both hugely rewarding and insightful when the spotlight turns on a little-known cantata cycle alongside progressive musicological studies. This fine recording does just that, with three delightful, seasonal examples from the librettist Albrecht Jacob Zell (1701-54), who gave his name to a cycle known as either “Zellischer” or “Oratorischer” Jahrgang from 1730/1. The latter definition is quite telling, as these resplendent works have seemingly imported qualities from the opera, and perhaps more appositely the Passion-oratorios of the time, with the clever use of allegorical figures to add pertinent commentaries to the festive drama unfolding before us. These are quite unconventional cantatas in form, and offer the composer a broad palette of musical expression; Telemann required no more prompting, responding to the hybrid stylistic elements with some ravishing and inspired “Tonal Painting”. The opening work with its dazzling chorale medley: Dictum-Aria-Recitative-Dictum-Recitative, wrapped around the familiar “Uns ist ein Kind geboren” is an excellent festive intro, and displays a compositional freedom, possibly promoted by the quasi-operatic, oratorial style. The aria, “Mein Herze wallet vor lechzendem Vergnügung” (My Heart swells with languishing delight, Track 8), sung by Andacht (Worship) is truly enchanting! The second “Oratorio” opens with a most perfect musical depiction of the shimmering glow of the “Sun of faith”. As an old conductor friend used to say, these are works filled with such “niceties” i. e. charming and clever (alert) responses to the textual content and drama; here with bright sheen and imagination. The final cantata (from a later Neumeister cycle of circa 1742-1744 (Musikalisches Lob Gottes (in der Gemeinde des Herrn), published in Nürnburg in 1744), is set with much more modest forces, only soprano, alto, bass with strings and continuo. It feels more adherent to the conventional formal layout than the first three works, and yet it finds its sequential seasonal placement, and typical expression of humble joy, found in similar pieces from this time of year. All in all, an inspired and inspiring exposition of three wonderful cantatas from one of the lesser-known of the 20-odd cycles Telemann managed to pen during his extraordinarily productive lifetime, ending with a modest work from the later cycle. These are most welcome seasonal delights with a definite musical sparkle, to which all the soloists and instrumentalists respond with notable skill!

David Bellinger

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Heinrich Scheidemann, Samuel Scheidt: Cantilena Anglica Fortunae

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Yoann Moulin harpsichord
55:24
Ricercar RIC394

This is the first in a new series of recordings by Ricercar devoted to German Baroque keyboard music. Scheidt and Scheidemann both worked with Sweelinck in Amsterdam before returning to Halle and Hamburg respectively; this disc alternates groups of pieces by both of them. The CD cover writes of the ‘introverted Scheidt and the more flamboyant Scheidemann’ but the choice of works and the playing here seems to invert this binary divide. Apart from a lively Gagliarda, the Scheidemann tracks – four Praeambula and his Pavana Lachrymae – are played rather solemnly and a touch too carefully for my taste. There is more flamboyance on display in some Scheidt variation sets, particularly those on Also geht’s, also steht’s and O Gott, wir danken deiner Güt. It is a pity that the track change has been mis-positioned between the latter and the previous track. The most interesting piece is probably the final extended Fantasia on Palestrina’s Io son ferito which displays some challenging rising and falling chromatic fourths, which also stretch the temperament. Moulin plays on an Andreas Ruckers copy by Philippe Humeau which works very well for the music and recording quality is excellent. The playing is a bit too safe and respectful overall, but this is a useful introduction to early Baroque German keyboard music.

Noel O’Regan

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Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Chamber Music from the Brossard Collection

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The Bach Players
67:27
Coviello Classics COV 81915

Jacquet de la Guerre has become well-known to us as a composer of harpsichord music but this recording of six trio and solo sonatas by The Bach Players is a real revelation. These works were not published – Graham Sadler in the liner notes suggests that they came ahead of any French market for such pieces – but were lent by the composer to Sébastien Brossard, whose copies survive. Four are trio sonatas and two are for solo violin and continuo. The latter have a conventional division into movements but the trio sonatas are through-composed, with short sections of contrasting texture and melody. All are highly inventive melodically, with rich harmony and a liking for parallel thirds and sixths. Italian influence is clear, but Jacquet de la Guerre has made her own very distinctive synthesis with the French style. The group’s beautifully rich sound has been excellently captured with close miking by the recording engineers of Coviello, using the resonant acoustic of St. Michael’s Church Highgate. There is a wonderful unity of purpose among the four players which extends to Silas Wollston’s sensitive playing on the harpsichord of quasi-improvisatory preludes and a tocade, leading directly into four of the sonatas. This is highly accomplished music, played with love and great attention to detail on this recording. Do listen to it.

Noel O’Regan

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Reincken: Toccatas, Partitas & Suites

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Clément Geoffroy harpsichord
73:00
L’Encelade ECL1705

Despite his artistic and financial successes, the Dutch-born but Hamburg-based Reincken has left very little music behind – something which, on the strength of this recording, is a great shame. In order to fill up his programme, Clément Geoffroy has included a number of unauthenticated works as well as the few whose attribution is secure. Among the latter, two particularly fine extended sets of variations stick out, those on Die Meierin (the same tune as Froberger’s Mayerin) and on the Balletto. Both are highly inventive and show what Reincken’s improvised performances must have been like. There is also a C major suite which shows strong Italo-German traits. A second suite in A minor, taken from an anthology by Roger, sounds quite different – much more French – and is probably not by Reincken (Geoffroy suggests Pachelbel). Two unauthenticated toccatas are also rather fine: one uses the stylus fantasticus while the other is more Frescobaldi-like. With such a small corpus, it is difficult to establish Reincken’s style, but all of the music on this CD is worth listening to, and it is a good representation of Northern European keyboard styles around the turn of the 18th century. Geoffroy’s playing is exemplary, as is the recording quality. He plays on a Ruckers copy by Emile Jobin which provides the right mixture of resonance and clarity for Reincken’s music. The tuning is a bit sour in the opening track (the stylus fantasticus toccata) but otherwise it works very well. This is an attractive compilation with some real exuberance and virtuosity in the playing and is highly welcome.

Noel O’Regan

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Handel: Ode for St Cecilia’s Day

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Carolyn Sampson soprano, Ian Bostridge tenor, Polish Radio Choir, Dunedin Consort, conducted by John Butt
61:15
Linn CKD 578

Handel’s glorious paean to the patron saint of music has understandably been the subject of numerous recordings. Without claiming to have kept track of all of them, my loyalty has tended to remain with Trevor Pinnock’s 1985 recording with Felicity Lott and Anthony Rolfe Johnson as outstanding soloists. Coming back to it yet again by way of comparing it with this version from John Butt, I was once again struck by the remarkable vitality and freshness it has retained over the three decades since it was issued.

Butt’s new recording represents a departure from his usual work with his Dunedin Consort insofar as it emanates from his artistic directorship of the 2018 Misteria Paschalia Festival held in Kraków in Poland, an edition that made a special feature of music from Britain. As a mark of co-operation the choral section of the Dunedin’s is restricted to only two singers per part, who are supplemented by members of the Polish Radio Choir. They prove to be a responsive, well-balanced body who respond to Butt’s direction with enthusiasm, and whose English pronunciation and diction prove to be first class. One of the major pleasures of Butt’s performance is tempos that with one exception strike this listener as being ideally judged, avoiding the extremes that are presently so much a part and parcel of the performance of Baroque music. The exception comes with the soprano air ‘But oh! What art can teach’, which I feel Butt takes at a tempo that is marginally too stately and one that induces Carolyn Sampson to apply excessive vibrato, also a lesser problem with both singers elsewhere.

Elsewhere both she and Ian Bostridge contribute greatly to the success of the performance. Dryden’s wonderfully illustrative and mimetic text is ideally suited to Bostridge’s inimitable way with the English language and his singing of the opening accompagnato ‘When nature…’ and the stentorian air ‘The trumpet’s loud clangor’ are object lessons in communication. Sampson brings great sensitivity to the gentler, contrasting soprano airs, ‘The soft complaining flute’ in particular being enchantingly phrased and floated, the gentle trills expressing the ‘warbling lute’ beguilingly brought off.

In addition to the ode, the disc includes a very fine performance of the Concerto grosso, op. 6, no. 4, again notable for well-judged tempos, the beautifully played and shaped Largo e piano (iii) an object lesson in the right speed for an 18th-century largo. This is most certainly a recording to place alongside the long-serving Pinnock, its qualities further enhanced by notes from John Butt that manage to be both scholarly and eminently readable, an increasingly rare phenomenon.

Brian Robins

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Les maîtres du motet: Brossard & Bouteiller

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Les Arts Florissants, directed by Paul Agnew
67:05
harmonia mundi HAF 8905300

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he concentration on Paris as the hub of musical life has tended to obscure the work of French 17th- and 18th-century composers active in the provinces. The disc to hand includes music by two such composers, who if not totally neglected – both major works on the CD have received previous recordings – are not exactly household names. The better known is Sébastian de Brossard, but even he is today probably more famous as an indefatigable collector and historian who published the first French dictionary of music than as a composer. An aristocratic cleric, Brossard spent most of his life at the cathedral at Strasbourg, to where in 1687 he was one of those sent by Louis XIV to restore Catholicism after the re-capture of Alsace. In 1698 he went to Paris, hoping to be appointed maître de musique at Sainte Chapelle, but the post went to Charpentier. Brossard’s final post was at the cathedral in Meaux, where he died in 1730.

It is to Brossard that we owe the survival of the known sacred music of Pierre Bouteiller, who was born around 1655. A shadowy figure, he is first heard of as director of music at Troyes Cathedral in 1687. Following a period in the equivalent post at Châlons-en-Champagne, Bouteiller returned to Troyes, remaining there until 1698, when he moved to Paris. There he established himself as a performer on the viola da gamba ‘and other instruments’. Other than a commissioned Te Deum no record of Bouteiller’s being active as a composer in Paris exists, although he apparently remained in the city until his death, which occurred around 1717.

Brossard recounts a meeting with Bouteiller in Châlons, at which time the latter gave the collector manuscripts of 13 ‘excellent’ petits motets, and a ‘very good Mass for the Dead’ in exchange for Brossard’s recently published first book of motets. Brossard took great care of the manuscript, which he considered to be ‘one of the best I have’, the works included in it remaining all that is extant of Bouteiller’s output of sacred music. The present disc includes the Missa pro defunctis (Requiem), which is scored in five parts with continuo accompaniment. Many hearing it in this wonderful performance will likely consider Brossard’s description to be an exceptional example of masterly understatement. Anyone who regularly reads my reviews will know I’m not prone to hyperbole, but my verdict be that the work is a sublime masterpiece, a largely polyphonic setting in stile antico that throughout demonstrates Bouteiller’s mastery of contrapuntal technique and manipulation of varied textures, including telling touches of affective chromaticism. Especially lovely is the in alternatim setting of the Kyrie, the plainchant set off to great effect by the polyphony. Equally as impressive is Bouteiller’s response to his text, which concentrates on the consolatory and even uplifting, the latter exemplified by the buoyant, confident setting of a verse from Psalm 23 in the Graduel (‘Though I walk’ etc). Yet the overall impression left by this exquisitely lovely work is of heart-easing transcendence.

The major work of Brossard’s here is his Stabat Mater, a large-scale 8-part setting. Divided into 17 sections, it is richly diverse, ranging from grand motet passages like the opening to the chamber-like ‘O quam tristis’ a grief-filled setting of the utmost beauty for solo quartet. The final sections, at first deeply penitential then increasingly ecstatic, culminate in an animated radiance that brings this splendid work to a deeply satisfying peroration. In addition there are two further works by Brossard, a Miserere mei Deus in which two soprano soloists alternate verses with the choir, made especially effective by the recessed placing of the latter, and a 5-part a capella setting of Ave verum corpus, a tiny gem that the brings the disc to an ineffably satisfying close.

As already suggested the performances are outstanding, with beautifully balanced choral singing in the more fully-scored passages and unfailingly sensitive solo work from the seven soloists selected by Paul Agnew from within Les Arts Florissants. This is not only the most deeply affecting CD I’ve heard in some time but also unquestionably one of my records of the year.

Brian Robins

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Mayr: Psalms from Sacri Concentus 1681

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Ars Antiqua Austria, Gunar Letzbor
59:13
Challenge Classics CC72759

OFTEN THESE DAYS groups attempt some sort of liturgical reconstruction when they perform and record selections of Vespers music. Not so here. Even though there is plenty of room for another psalm and a Magnificat, Letzbor (whose booklet note spend six pages talking about the training of choir boys before devoting two to the little that is known with much certainty about Rupert Ignaz Mayr) is forced by restricting himself to a single publication to give us four psalms performed by four different singers with four-part string accompaniment and a similarly scored hymn setting. Boy treble Fabian Winkelmaier sings Laudate pueri, tenor Markus Miesenberger Confitebor tibi Domine, alto Markus Foster Beati omnes, bass Gerd Kenda Nisi Dominus and male soprano Alois Mühlbacher Venite gentes. These are what Letzbor calls “honest” recordings with no extra engineering to “nicefy” the sound, so the sound is quite dry which pays dividends at the ends of phrases where the decay is fairly rapid. I am disappointed that at least one more piece from the 1681 publication was not included – there are some really nice moments on this recording!
Brian Clark

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Jenkins: Complete four-part consort music

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Fretwork
83:02 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)

THERE ARE 17 four-part fantasies by the English composer John Jenkins (1592-1678) and they really ought to be far better known! On the international stage, England is really all about Purcell, Elgar and Benjamin Britten… this is so unfair to a large number of composers whose music deserves recognition; Jenkins, “a very gentle and well bred gentleman” according to the writer Nigel North (with whose family he lived for eight years), is one such. There is a charm and an ease about these fantasies, a fluidity of texture and effortless of counterpoint which means one can listen for long periods of time without even being aware that one piece has ended and another begun; the four voices interact in a way that is at once inevitable and deeply satisfying. In the hands of performers of the quality of Fretwork, it is a relaxing and purifying experience; no one voice dominates the others, especially in the two four-part pavans which complete the programme. The recordings, which were made in 2016, are accompanied by an informative booklet and will surely prove popular with fans of Fretwork and John Jenkins – I sincerely hope, though, that they will also draw new admirers to this sublime music.
Brian Clark