Tag: Baroque

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Bach: Variations on variations

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concerto italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini
68:17
naïve OP30575
BWV582, 588, 988, 989

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here seems to be no end to the processes of second-guessing the inventiveness of Bach’s gift of parodying his own compositions. Re-cycling music too good not to find a continuing life was clearly a temptation to which he frequently yielded. A few years ago a chamber group from Philadelphia, Tempesta di Mare, produceded a CD of the Trio Sonatas for organ (BWV 525-530) arranged for a variety of period instruments by Richard Stone: some movements already existed as prototypes, parodied by Bach himself as sinfonias in cantatas. I much enjoyed hearing them, and indeed bought the transcriptions and have played a number of them. Now Rinaldo Alessandrini has taken a number of Bach works where Variations are the linking theme, and scored them for a few strings and continuo.

The results are enjoyable, and mostly pretty successful. The Passacaglia in C minor taken from BWV 582 (which Alessandrini outdatedly claims was for the pedal harpsichord originally) sounds well on strings in D minor. The way the melodic material of successive variations frequently grows out of the preceding figurations suits the four-part string instrument texture well, as does the polyphony of the fugue. This is a full-blooded performance, and lets you know what you are in for, in terms of a “no holds barred” style.

A lover of Vivaldi, Alessandrini sees the potential in developing a keyboard work into a rather fuller texture. While the Canzona (BWV 588) is a literal transcription, and the Italian Aria variations translate pretty straightforwardly into a sonata for violin and basso continuo, it is in the Goldberg Variations that we see him working the sketchy counterpoint possible on the keyboard – where there are frequent hints of a third or even fourth part in more polyphonic variations – into new, freely composed parts. Sometimes the result goes with a swing (as in Variation 1) or lets us hear in detail what the keyboard original only suggests. Sometimes it is too far from the original, and sounds almost like Brahms (as in the minor Variation 25). So, while I admire Alessandrini’s ingenuity (and his normally pretty minimalist continuo playing), I am not altogether taken with his arrangements here, though his rather spare sounds are certainly an improvement in textural terms on the chamber orchestra version recorded by Bernard Labadie and Les Violons du Roy in 2014.

All this is a long way from Stokowsky’s orchestration of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Bach, after all, was known to improvise a third voice when playing continuo, but I am not sure that I’ll play these Goldbergs in wakeful hours of the night. Each variation’s scoring raises some new hare running in my mind, and I’d be endlessly switching on the light and reaching for the score. I’m more likely to keep it in the car for long journeys.

On the whole, it’s a stimulating exercise, and well worth doing, though for my money Tempesta di Mare and Richard Stone do it better, if you want to explore the possibilities of this kind of parody technique.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: Fantasias, Preludes & Fugues

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James Johnstone (Raphaëlis Organ, Roskilde)
59:29
Metronome MET CD 1095
BWV 535, 537, 538, 544, 545, 572, 578

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen I reviewed the first volume of James Johnstone’s complete Bach organ music in June 2016, recorded on the reconstructed Wagner organ in Trondheim Cathedral, I welcomed his stylish and lively playing, saying how important the choice of organ was for such a project. This is the second volume, and shows the same spirited playing, good choice of instrument and fresh approach to colour. He clearly plays from newly edited scores (listen to the Largo in BWV 545) and there is always the sense that he comes from a world of informed and concerted music-making that is a good way from the presuppositions of the English cathedral organ loft.

For these Fantasias, Preludes & Fugues, Johnstone turns to the Raphaëlis organ set near the pulpit in the western half of Roskilde cathedral, where he had recorded (on the Marcussen choir organ) Paul McCreesh’s fine Matthew Passion in 2004. This organ began its life in 1554-5, and, after modernisation in 1611 and in 1654-5, very little was done till 1833, when the firm of Marcussen did a major rebuild. Further enlargement took place in 1926 and 1950. Marcussen completed a major reconstruction in 1991, refashioning the structure and voicing to its 17th-century form. The results are an instrument that speaks with clarity and zip, whose action must make it a pleasure to play.

The tempi are on the brisk side and Johnstone’s registration aids his clean fingerwork. The only fly in the ointment is the sometimes slow-speaking pedal 8’ Trompet, which he uses a lot to give clarity to the pedal line in preference to the 16’. As with a number of the organs of this period, the only pedal fluework is a Principal chorus based on the 16’, with a solitary flute at 8’. 1’ Sedecima  stops on both the Rygpositiv and the Brystværk indicate the instrument’s early origins and there is (as far as I can tell) only one Tierce rank.

The cracking pace of the Prelude and Fugue in B minor BWV 544 is exhilarating, and neither here – nor in the Gravement in BWV 572 – is he afraid to use a manual 16’. But, if you want a testimony to his fingerwork, listen to the clarity of the episodes in the Prelude in G minor BWV 535. The disc ends with the Dorian Toccata and Fugue where you can appreciate the balanced flue choruses of the Manualværk and Rygpositiv. For the Fugue he adds the 8’ manual Trompet  for a rich and zesty fullness.

The dancing rhythms and splendid energy of Johnstone’s playing are matched by quality recording technique, which makes this a complete Bach organ music to follow with eager anticipation. Collect them all.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

J. S. Bach: Musicalisches Opfer

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Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki
72:12
BIS-2151 SACD
BWV1079 + Aria from BWV988, BWV1038, BWV1087

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his Musical Offering  is intellectually as well as musically satisfying, with a liner note introducing the reader to the – by 1747 – old-fashioned idea that canons (ten of them, to reflect the Ten Commandments) were the bedrock of a musical style that sought to reflect the majesty and incomprehensible greatness of God, while ‘modern’ music in the galant style sought primarily to relax and entertain without troubling the intellect or the theologically inspired quest for meaning.

‘Old’ Bach’s visit to Frederick the Great, where his son Carl Philipp Emanuel was keyboard player in residence, was a widely reported affair. As we know, the ruler of Prussia gave Bach a ‘royal theme’ and was astonished at Bach’s immediate response, and the versatility of his inspirations. Bach promised to work at it, and send the Emperor his considered response, and Suzuki and his companions play the Canones Diversi, followed by the Ricercar à 3, the Canon Perpetuus and the Ricercar à 6 before the Canons à 2 and à 4, the Sonata and finally the Canon Perpetuus.
This tour de force, in a very satisfying form (pace Silas Wollston’s excellent note for Nicolette Moonen’s The Bach Players’ Musical Offering  which I reviewed last July), is completed on this CD by the ten Canons on the Goldberg Ground (BWV 1087) and the Sonata in G major (BWV 1038) for flute, violin and basso continuo.

The Goldberg canons are written over an eight-note soggetto  (or theme) used in the bass line of the Aria from BWV 988. These fourteen conclude with an astonishing four-fold proportion-canon, the A & Ω of all canons. Fourteen also, as Suzuki points out, spells B A C H in numerical code: 2+1+3+8.

BWV 1038 has an almost identical bass line to a slightly later (and much less ‘modern’) sonata for violin and continuo where the fugal imitations were pruned to suggestions, and a wholly different feel was given to the music. I’m only sorry this could not be included too.

As you would expect, the playing and recording are both of the high standard we have come to expect from Suzuki’s forces, and I wholeheartedly commend this extraordinary set of musical puzzles.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: Ein feste Burg

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Wegener, Allsopp, Hobbs, Harvey SATB, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Barockorchester Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
49:03
Carus 83.282
BWV80, 235

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ecorded in June 2017, the CD is among Carus Verlag’s celebrations of the Reformation anniversary while promoting its good new edition of Bach’s choral works. The excellent soloists and experienced chorus, orchestra and conductor make these reliable performances, and it is good to have the opening page of the full score of the new Carus edition by Klaus Hoffman (2014) reproduced in the liner notes.

Carus – and many German choirs and conductors – are still wedded to performing Bach cantatas with substantial choirs (here 7.5.5.4) and you can only buy instrumental parts for the cantatas online in sets of 4 first and 4 second violins, 3 violas and 4 bc parts. They also sell a pack of the W. F. Bach additional brass parts that got included in the BG in the 19th century, and are still sometimes passed off as Johann Sebastian’s today. This performance is still in this tradition.

That said, the balance between singers and orchestra is good, and between individual singers in the single voice or duet numbers and obbligato instruments. The A/T duet Wie selig sind doch die  (7 in BWV 80) is beautifully done; and Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär  (5) goes with a great swing. But at a running time of 49:03, would there not have been room for Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild  (BWV79), that other great Reformationsfest  cantata? Perhaps the reason is that Carus has now produced another CD with BWV 79, that includes the Missa in G  (BWV 236) and Cantata 126.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: Erhalt uns, Herr

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Mields, Schachtner, Kristjánnson, Berndt SATB, Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann
59:07
Carus 83.311
BWV79, 126, 236

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese cantatas and the Mass in G, which parodies several numbers of BWV 79, are given a full-blooded performance with the substantial band of the Gaechinger Cantorey which uses 6.5.4.3.2 strings and 8.7.8.7 voices. They use both harpsichord and a small organ reconstructed for them after one by Gottfried Silbermann recently discovered in Seerhausen, Saxony. Unfortunately, no details are provided of this instrument in spite of their website saying ‘The Gaechinger Cantorey is basing its new approach on this kind of sound and orchestral arrangement, starting off with the sound of a replica Silbermann organ’. This is welcome news, as a number of photos on the website show modern orchestral instruments (a bassoon and a horn are visible), and the large numbers in both choir and band make the sound rather solid.

The liner notes in German and English have an abridged (in English) version of the essay on Bach the Reformer, placing the cantatas and the mass in their historical and musical context, which is welcome, but the impression of the performances is that, although the chorus singers and the band are well matched, the substantial forces make the ‘solo’ singers work hard to be heard instead of achieving that natural balance we might expect. I have yet to read a scholarly refutation from Germany of Andrew Parrott’s The Essential Bach Choir, which has so influenced performance practice elsewhere, and this performance from such a prestigious Academy shows little evidence of what is now accepted in many quarters as good practice.

In particular, I feel that the tromba in the opening movement of BWV 126 is overpowered by the strings and choir, and the Tenor in the aria Sende deine Macht  has to oversing – where is he standing in relation to the oboes? – while the Bass in Stürze zu Boden  is splendid, singing with both organ and harpsichord, and quite excellent cello and fagotto playing. In BWV 79, the playing of the large band in the open chorus is wonderful in its articulation in the fugato sections, and the horn playing as good as it can be. Here the balance in the aria for Alto and oboe obbligato seems better, though the bass is overweight here as it is in the duet – how many contrabassi are playing here? This all gives the orchestral sound a rather ‘modern’ feel, and at times – especially in the final chorale, the combined sound with an appropriate predominance of organ hardly lets us hear the horns.

These questions of balance seem to have sorted themselves out better by the Mass, though, when the Bass begins the Gratias, I am conscious of a less immediate sound – immediacy is sacrificed to some extent in the recording to the grand effect. The S/A Duetto Domine Deus  again has a very smooth orchestral sound, and an over-prominent 16’ tone.

The contrast here with Carus other CD – Ein feste Burg  – is instructive; although both use substantial choirs, that one feels more immediate and is recorded closer. If you like a full-blooded choral sound, the well-rehearsed Gaechinger Cantorey could hardly be bettered. But, as a recording, it is less integrated that we might expect these days – it feels more like a choral society accompanied by a first-rate orchestra who are sitting between them and the audience, with very distinctly different solo voices for the arias. It is an excellent recording – in a slightly old-fashioned style.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Wunderkammer

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Acronym
66:44
Olde Focus Recordings FCR906

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he qualifications for admission to Acronym’s cabinet of curiosities seems at first a bit vague – all the music here seems to share is obscurity and a degree of eccentricity, the latter very much in the ear of the listener. However, the cabinet turns out to be a wonderful conceit to permit the performance of a delightful range of neglected music for strings from 17th-century Germany. Beautifully and expressively played by the small period string ensemble, it is revealed as indeed a box of unsuspected treasures. When the programme notes for a CD include the phrase ‘of the ten composers on this recording, probably the best-known is the violinist Antonio Bertali’, you know you are in for a cruise through genuine musical backwaters. Music by Bertali rubs shoulders with works by Samuel Capricornus, Adam Drese, Johann Philipp Krieger, Andreas Oswald, Daniel Eberlin, Philipp Jakob Rittler, Georg Piscator, Alessandro Poglietti and Clemens Thieme, a catalogue of names some of which lurk in the shadows at the edge of my experience but by none of whom could I name a single work.

This plethora of unfamiliar composers reflects the political fragmentation of 17th-century Germany which at this time was a patchwork of semi-independent states. Fortunately, many of these were wealthy enough to employ the services of musicians, and the presence of many small ensembles and the competition between these statelets proved fertile ground for an explosion in composition. Furthermore, competition rather than collaboration led to what we would now regard as musical eccentricity and the cultivation of the individual and distinctive. This very informative trawl through 17th-century German repertoire helps to put composers such as the Austrian Heinrich Biber in a more comprehensible context, but most of this music is also extremely enjoyable in its own right, and Acronym are to be congratulated for their intrepid trawl through voluminous archives to find it, and to perform it so convincingly.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Oddities and Trifles

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The Very Peculiar Instrumental Music of Giovanni Valentini
Acronym 68:53
Olde Focus Recordings FCR904

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen I tell you that Giovanni Valentini preceded Antonio Bertali as Kapellmeister in Vienna, your reaction probably depends on your familiarity with Acronym’s recording entitled Wunderkammer, which explores the music of 17th-century Germany, and which places Bertali’s music in a wider context. Valentini’s quirky compositions provide the musical foundations on which Bertali was building, and – as with Bertali – it is easy to hear the links with the eccentric music of the likes of Heinrich Biber from nearby Salzburg. For a representative sample of Valentini’s striking originality, listen to track 3, his Sonata in C (and indeed every other tonality); this was the piece which I heard some time ago on Radio 3, first alerting me to the existence of this unsuspected talent.

What is interesting is that Valentini belongs to the generation prior to Biber, and so allows us to trace this eccentric taste in textures and harmonies back to his training in Venice. The loss of his publication Messa, Magnificat e Jubilate Deo  of 1621, containing polychoral music in the grand Venetian style including parts for trumpets, is a tragic one indeed. Imbued with the tradition of the Gabrielis, he seems to have pre-empted Monteverdi in a number of musical developments traditionally ascribed to the latter composer. Boldly original and harmonically daring, Valentini’s music is beautifully played here by the innovative period string ensemble, Acronym, who have uncovered yet another highly distinctive and largely forgotten link in the chain of musical history. For Valentini to dictate musical taste for some 20 years in one of the great musical capitals of Europe, suggests the esteem in which he was held during his own lifetime, and, as we become more familiar with his music, I am sure we will more fully recognize his legacy in the music of the next couple of generations of German composers.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV248

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Richter, Mühlemann, Lemkuhl, Kohlhepp, Nagy SSATB, Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann
151:43 (2 CDs in a walleted jewel box)
Carus 83.312
+Tönet, ihr Pauken  (ex BWV214)

We were lucky enough to receive two copies of this recording, so both went out for review; we hope you find it interesting to read different people’s impressions

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith a choir of 8.8.7.7 and strings of 6.5.4.3.2, this is a full-blooded performance in the modern German style, using the new Carus edition and parts, and soloists that are quite distinct from the chorus singers. All the musicians – singers and players alike – are excellent, so what is not to like? Not long ago, we would have been overjoyed to find such a neat and competent performance, but these days there are other considerations to be taken into account.

Regardless of which side you take in the matter of the size of Bach’s chorus, do you want a performance on CD where the sound of the chorus is entirely distinct from the singers who sing the arias? And what about the sound of the trumpets: are finger-holes to assist in correcting the tuning permissible or not? And the size of the organ in relation to the chorus? Here the Gaechinger Cantorey has set up a team of players to work with the singers, and commissioned an organ after Gottfried Silbermann as a basic building block of the sound they are seeking to emulate.

Since we have become used to OVPP performances with small instrumental as well as vocal forces from groups like Dunedin Consort, and singers of the arias being drawn from the ranks of a (much reduced) chorus with John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir, the landscape has changed subtly in England and in some respects the traditional divisions in Germany between choir and soloists, and a line-up that places a large choir at the back, with soloists out front rather than as partners in the music-making seems curiously old-fashioned.

Of its style and period, this is an excellent performance; and no chorus singer will readily surrender the pleasure of taking part in performances of Bach – perhaps especially in Germany where there are so many really excellent choirs and baroque instrumentalists around. Nonetheless, there are questions to be asked of a performance practice that assumes biggest is best. For example, you can order Carus parts for Bach Cantatas online only if you buy into the package that offers multiple string parts. Of course, Carus are delighted to sell you single string parts, but the assumption still is that ‘the orchestra’ will have many desks of violinists as its basic complement.

David Stancliffe

I’m afraid my first reaction to another recording of a very familiar masterpiece such as Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is to ask what it has to say that is new about this very familiar music. The wonderfully crisp and punchy opening, taken by Rademann at a daringly brisk tempo, soon established that this was a serious contender. The Gaechinger Cantorey, a choral group which has now acquired a superb period instrumental wing, is attached to the international Bachakademie in Stuttgart, so one would expect both excellence and scholarly rigour, and both are present aplenty in this recording. Add to that some wonderfully concise and expressive solo and ensemble singing, as well as some beautifully detailed solo and ensemble instrumental playing, and all the elements are in place for a successful recording of Bach’s masterpiece.  Of particular merit are the contributions of the young soloists, particularly Sebastien Kohlhepp, who is a wonderfully expressive and apparently effortless Evangelist. Also impressive is the expressive ease of the double reed players, who conjure some wonderfully expressive sounds from their various breeds of oboe. Both singers and instrumentalists ornament tastefully, while the trumpeters show no signs that Bach’s lines are as challenging as they are, particularly given their conductor’s generally upbeat tempi. So this may be a pretty conventional reading of Bach’s music, but it is stunningly well executed and always beautifully musical. The recording, a combination of a live recording with subsequent non-live sessions, presumably to replace any sore bits or audience interruptions, is entirely effective, although it produces the curious anomaly that one of the soprano soloists appears live whereas the other doesn’t! Incidentally, I was revisiting over the festive season my CD of highlights from one of the first period instrument recordings of the work by the Collegium Aureum dating from 1973 and in which the trumpeters, playing horn-shaped clarini trumpets by Meinl and Lauber, still sound astonishing!

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Graupner: Gott der Herr ist Sonne und Schild

Floral design

Epiphanias-Kantaten
Andrea Lauren Brown, Kai Wessel, Georg Poplutz, Dominik Wörner SATB, Kirchheimer BachConsort, Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch
92:28 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
cpo 555 146-2

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o many cantatas by composers other than Bach are rarely (if ever) performed, let alone recorded, simply because they were not written for either Christmas or Easter. One notable exception was a cpo recording featuring Ludger Rémy. While those were all from the same year (and thus formed a sensible unit), this new recording of five cantatas for Epiphany (otherwise known as the feast of the three kings) selects works from the latter part of Graupner’s working life at the court of Darmstadt. The number of Sundays after Epiphany varies each year because of the alignment of more significant church festivals with the actual calendar. Here, there is one cantata for the feast itself as well as the 2nd and 4th Sundays thereafter, and two for the 3rd Sunday (the GWV numbering system is slightly odd: 1111 is the code for any cantata text written for Epiphany and the two numbers after the slash are the year in which it was composed). The booklet notes explain that these particular cantatas have been chosen because of their colourful instrumentation; Graupner had always been interested in a rich sound palette; here the flauto d’amore, oboe d’amore, chalumeau, viola d’amore and a pair of horns all feature. I have published a lot of Graupner’s music and I am still amazed how much better it sounds than it looks – personally, I would have preferred a programme of his settings for Epiphany itself from his appointment as Kapellmeister until he stopped composing, which might have shown how his style developed and changed over time. That is not to criticise these performances, which are excellent; if Graupner’s recitatives would not be out of place in the Hamburg operas which had brought him to the Landgrave’s attention in the first place, seemingly inappropriate dance elements pervade the arias and chorales, yet I think the latter are actually his most original compositions – each choral phrase is framed and decorated by instruments, much in the way a baroque organist may have done. Maybe we can have a follow-up recording by these marvellous musicians of cantatas for Trinity Sunday, from key points in Graupner’s career?

Brian Clark

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Categories
Recording

In dulci jubilo

Floral design

Music for the Christmas season by Buxtehude and friends
Theatre of Voices, Paul Hillier
77:43
DACAPO 6.220661

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] am surprised that I have not encountered a programme like this before; it narrates the Christmas story using musical settings of familiar texts by Buxtehude and other north-German composers. For me personally, the inclusion of two pieces by Christian Geist is a bonus. As well as the opening Praeludium  by Scheidemann, each of the four sections of the story ends with organ music, finely played on both chamber and church organs by the inimitable Allan Rasmussen. The vocal repertoire ranges from solo voice with strings (Geist, Tunder and Weckmann) to Johann Christoph Bach’s eight-part motet, Merk auf, mein Herz. Throughout the singing and playing is beautiful, nicely paced, and impeccably captured in a bright acoustic. This is not the first time this repertoire has been recorded, but having a story-telling structure is a novel approach, and this could be the ideal soundtrack to last-minute present wrapping! I know I have enjoyed it.

Brian Clark

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