Tag: Chamber music

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La Notte

CD cover La notte Cicic Illyrian Consort

Concertos and pastorales for Christmas Night
The Illyria Consort, Bojan Čičić
65:52
Delphian DCD34278

Opening with the predictable Vivaldi concerto La Notte and concluding with a premiere recording of a reconstruction by Olivier Fourés of Vivaldi’s string concerto RV270a Il riposo – per il santissimo Natale, this fascinating programme takes us on a wide-ranging tour through repertoire by Biber, Vejvanovsky, Rauch, Finger and Schmelzer. Since hearing Bojan Čičić play at the St Magnus International Festival in Orkney a couple of years ago, I have sought out his eloquent performances of Baroque music. This recording with his own ensemble The Illyria Consort is no disappointment, with stunning accounts of mainly unfamiliar repertoire. I found it difficult to put my finger on what appealed to me so much about Čičić’s playing, until a performance he gave in a small kirk in Orkney of the great Bach solo Chaconne moved him and all of us to tears, and I realised the extent to which his performances relied on his personal passion for his instrument and for the repertoire. This is what comes through in these performances too, as the wonderfully detailed and precise readings are injected with intelligence, musicality and above all passion. A major factor in the attractiveness of this CD is the crystal-clear Delphian sound, supervised by Peter Baxter and a hallmark of this excellent Scottish label. Just like a puppy, this revelatory recording is not just for Christmas, but provides deeply engaging insights into an important strand of Baroque string music.

D. James Ross

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Bach sous les tilleuls

CD cover Bach sous les tilleuls

Loris Barrucand, Clément Geoffroy harpsichords
53:00
Encelade ECL2303

What music was performed under the lime trees in the Zimmermann café gardens on Wednesday 17th June 1733, when the flier for the concert by Bach’s Collegium in Leipzig advertised a new harpsichord of a kind never heard before? With this question, the two harpsichordists Loris Barrucand et Clément Geoffroy devise a programme of transcriptions for their two Goujon-based instruments – one by Émile Jobin (1983) and the other by Jean-François Chaudeurge (2014). They introduce us to their transcriptions of two of Bach’s Vivaldi-based concerti for organ, BWV 593 & 596, and end with BWV 1060, taking their model 1061 which survives in two versions – one for just two harpsichords – from which they derive the licence to make this simple version of the triple concerto in A minor (BWV 1044). 

The rest of their programme offers us some chorale preludes – Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (BWV 659), Wachet auf (from BWV 140, but one of the six Schübler Preludes, BWV 645), a transcription of the Sonatina that opens BWV 106, the Pedal-Exercitium (BWV 598) and the great Passacaglia in C minor (BWV 582) which may have been conceived for a pedal harpsichord.  

The latter is the most successful version on the disc to my mind: the clarity of the fugal writing, the echo effects and the nimble arpeggio work all score well on this pair of full-blooded harpsichords. The Pedal-Exercitium is a reminder of how strong the bass resonance of the harpsichord is; but the treble can sing too, as the other chorale preludes and the slow movements show. The playing is neat and controlled, and I am glad they chose to record their disc in the spacious acoustic of a chapel rather than outside under the lime trees of Leipzig! 

What are we to make of these versions? While not autographs by Johann Sebastian himself, they continue his practice of repurposing and adapting which is well-documented in his own re-scoring of Vivaldi’s work and his remaking of several concerti for single instruments in their presumed Köthen originals for harpsichord when he took over to the Collegium in Leipzig in 1729. One of the few bonuses of the Covid lockdown that imposed such restraints on large-scale music-making was to spur musicians into activities like this: we have a welter of chamber music versions of larger scale works, and more CDs of the Sei Soli than we could dream of, as musicians re-discovered their instruments and explored new acoustics that helped us appreciate again how essentially polyphonic Bach’s compositions are – even when they are scored for a single line like BWV 598, the Pedal-Exercitium. 

So this disc is to be welcomed, not only for its musicianship, but for its reminder of the extraordinary multi-layered sound world in which Bach composed, adapted and re-purposed his music. 

David Stancliffe

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Meetings with Bach

CD cover Meetings with Bach

Emelie Roos recorder, Dohyo Sol lute
proprius PRCD2098

This is another CD that has its genesis in the Covid-19 lockdown, when musicians were constrained in their performance possibilities. It drove this pair – lutenist Dohyo Sol and recorder player Emelie Roos – outside, where they (like the harpsichordists Loris Barrucand and Clément Geoffrey in BACH SOUS LES TILLEULS which I reviewed earlier) imagined the sonorities available in the Bach household when Wilhelm Friedmann invited the lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss to stay in 1739. They imagine that this was when Johann Sebastian improvised a free upper part to Weiss’s A major Suite for lute that was catalogued as BWV 1025.

Bach’s reported practice when playing basso continuo of improvising an additional fugal or canonic line rather than playing a conventional harmonic chord sequence is illustrated in Richard Stone’s arrangement of the 5th organ trio sonata in C (BWV 529) for his chamber ensemble, Tempesta del Mare, where Stone departs from a strict transcription of that trio sonata by introducing a fourth part for a viola, largely in canonic imitation, to supplement Bach’s three original voices. Bach’s ability to hear the implied harmonic structure of a particular melodic line is revealed by his pupil J. F. Agricola’s comment that Johann Sebastian would sometimes play one of the suites or partitas he had written for a solo instrument on a keyboard, filling out the implied harmonies:

“   …their author often played them on the clavichord himself and added as much harmony to them as he deemed necessary. In doing so he recognized the necessity of resonant harmony which in this kind of composition he could not otherwise attain.   ”

Such implied harmonies were occasionally actually written out by Bach, as in the Lute suite BWV 995 that is based on BWV 1011 (the ‘Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor) or the opening sinfonia to cantata BWV 29 which is based on BWV 1006.i (the Violin Partita 3 in E major).

This implies that the six partitas and sonatas for solo violin and the six ‘cello suites, although composed for a single instrument, are conceived primarily as compositions of a polyphonic nature, with the fugal and imitative lines being implied or suggested rather than being fully written out. This is what this duo accept as the basis of their versions, giving us a lute version of BWV 1008.

It is interesting to see these principles of implied polyphonic structures being worked out in the solo flute sonata by C.P.E. Bach – here transposed from A minor to C minor to suit the recorder. As in the lute transcription of BWV 1008, the dexterity of the players is in no doubt. We have an extended essay in “less is more” and are challenged again to take acoustics seriously as part of how we ‘hear’ the complex polyphonic structures of the 18th-century sound world in the years before every note and marking was written down in the definitive scores of printed editions. It also challenges our preconceived notions about the part that improvisation played in the music of Bach and his contemporaries as it grew beyond the improvised ‘divisions’ expected of cornetto players who were the predecessors of the violinists for whom Vivaldi wrote his concertos.

This is another CD that makes the case for enlarging our horizons as to what constitutes HIP.

David Stancliffe  

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Bach: Partitas

CD cover Bach Partitas re-imagined Pinnock

re-imagined for small orchestra by Thomas Oehler
Royal Academy of Music Soloists Enseble with guests from The Glenn Gould School, directed by Trevor Pinnock
69:47
Linn CKD 730

Under the heading of Re-imagining Bach comes a project spearheaded by the Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, who produced this CD for Linn with the RAM’s crack chamber orchestra in 2003. He got the harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock to direct the players in a version of the Partitas orchestrated for a small chamber orchestra of 44331 strings plus flute, oboe, cor anglais and bassoon by Thomas Oehler, following Pinnock’s masterly direction of a similar group performing Józef Koffler’s orchestral version of the Goldberg Variations.

As a preparation for the project, the group met with Pinnock to read through Oehler’s score and to hear Pinnock play and expound the music on the harpsichord. A month later, they were ready to perform and record the score in Snape Maltings, with Freeman-Attwood producing.

Unlike some of the versions of – for example – The Art of Fugue, scored by the Netherlands All-of-Bach group under Shunske Sato for a variety of period instruments and voices, this performance not only scores harpsichord music for orchestra, but uses modern rather than period instruments, so readers beware!

But – unlike many of the versions of Bach played by the long-suffering Petroc Trelawny on Radio 3’s “Bach before 7”, where listeners seem to want to hear their Bach played on almost anything except what it was actually written for – here there is much to be learned about the process of re-imagining. Two-part textures ‘are split between different instruments and surrounded by a wash of expanded harmonies’ (Pinnock) and ‘the range of orchestral colours and textures . . . did not emerge from a pre-conceived subjective idea born in the mind of a self-calculating composer, but from what the original score suggested’ (Oehler).

I recommend listening both to this CD and to the All-of-Bach The Art of Fugue online, and pondering what the experience brings: the traffic is not all one-way!

David Stancliffe

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Bach: Concertos & Suite for recorder and strings

CD cover Bach Hugo Reyne Les Musiciens du Soleil

Hugo Reyne and Les Musiciens du Soleil
73:00
HugoVox 004

The experienced recorder player Hugo Reyne now lives in Les Sables d’Olone, where with his like-minded players who form Les Musiciens du Soleil, he has set up a festival and his own label, HugoVox. After a lifetime of pursuing French music of the Baroque – 11 Lully albums and 4 Rameau as a start – this CD is devoted to Bach, and he has reimagined three concertos and the Second Suite for recorder – using the two Altblockflöte that Bach wrote for in F and G.

He starts with BWV 1056 which has come down to us in a version in F minor for harpsichord, whose original form may well have been an oboe concerto from the Köthen period. He finds close similarities with Vivaldi’s recorder concerto in C minor (RV 441), and transposes it into C minor. For the second, he explores the recorder in G in an adaptation of BWV 1053, the harpsichord concerto in E transposed into C: he notes that the material was also used by Bach in cantatas 169 and 49. For the third, he steps beyond versions of harpsichord concertos to an adaption of Cantata BWV 209, Non sa che sia dolore, whose sinfonia and two arias, scored for traverso, soprano and strings are adapted for recorder and transposed up a tone into C. For the most part, the leading violin takes the vocal line in the two arias (Nos. 3 & 5), leaving the accompanying strings as they are. This reveals one of the potential weaknesses of the CD: while the viola and ‘cello/bass lines use single strings, there are three first and two second violins, so the texture is not quite as transparent as it might be with single strings all through.

There are fewer problems with the Second Suite, again transposed up a semitone into C. The French style of notes inégales is delightful in the Rondeau and Saraband, and if the 16′ bass is sometimes heavier than I would have liked, that is surely a matter of taste. He finishes the disc with a favourite encore, the Larghetto from BWV 1055, the harpsichord concerto in A.

I enjoyed the musicianship of the players and of Hugo Reyne in particular. The recorder can sometimes sound rather inflexible when compared to the traverso, but not here: it is flexible and melodically fluent in such capable hands. And his touch for how to repurpose music that has come down to us in its latest recension as harpsichord concertos, probably for the Collegium concerts in the Zimmerman Café, with shadowy pre-echoes of earlier versions seems entirely plausible. Bach reused his material in exactly this way and we should beware of thinking that the most recent version is automatically the best or most ‘finished’.

The pre-existence of trio sonata material that later found its way into concertos, organ works and many of the arias in cantatas that have come to be regarded as ‘solos’ with accompaniment should alert us to the great wealth of material which Bach was in the habit of repurposing himself when an opportunity arose.

David Stancliffe

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Scheidt: Liebliche Krafft-Bluemlein

CD cover Scheidt Liebliche Krafft-Bluemlein

Twelve duets accompanied by continuo
Marie Luise Werneburg soprano, Daniel Johannsen tenor, Collegium Instrumentale der Kathedrale St.Gallen, directed by Michael Wersin
59:21
cpo 555 513-2

It is difficult to imagine the circumstances in which this music was composed. Published in 1635, during the Thirty Years War, these duets set mostly Biblical texts (and a large percentage of those are from the Book of Psalms); the exception is Johann Walter’s “Herzlich tut mich erfreuen” which has four verses consisting of two rhyming couplets with a refrain. The rather grandly named “Collegium instrumentale…” consists – for this recording – of cello (or piccolo cello for a gamba sonata attributed to Buxtehude), chitarrone (also featured in two toccatas by Kapsberger) and a chamber organ (whose player directs the ensemble and wrote the booklet notes). This is not a recording that will fly to the top of the bestsellers lists, but it is a very valuable addition to the catalogue; the voices are pleasant on the ear and well matched, and the accompaniment is unfussy and stylish. I wonder that the organist did not also take a turn in the limelight (there is plenty of space on the disc), but I would also have rather heard more music from Halle and from the time than a spurious gamba sonata by a composer who was only born two years after Scheidt’s music was published.

Brian Clark

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Gentleman for a Day

CD cover Gentleman for a Day Barbara Heindlmeier

Barbara Heindlmeier recorder, Ensemble La Ninfea
66:32
Perfect Noise PN 2401

If the cover of the booklet is anything to go by, this recording was inspired by the BBC’s hit series, “Gentleman Jack”; like the lead actor, Suranne Jones, Barbara Heindlmeier dons black garb and a top hat for a stroll through a cloister. Based on references in Samuel Pepys’ diaries, “the day” is a hypothetical exploration of the music he might have heard (and played) on his “flageolet”, as he was wont to call it. For me, this kind of programme works well live but struggles to inspire me to listen to it more than once. Despite the presence of two fine Handel pieces (a D minor solo sonata and C minor trio with violin) and William’s Sonata in imitation of birds, and in spite of some outstanding playing (from all concerned!), even as a recorder player myself, I found myself longing for different sounds – I certainly would not last an entire day listening to it! As I say, this is no criticism of the performers, who are excellent. I am sure the CD will sell well in the recorder world and at the group’s concerts, when the lived experience adds another dimension to ones appreciation. And at under £4 on amazon.co.uk (no, I don’t get a cut for promoting it!), it’s more than a bargain!

Brian Clark

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Legrenzi: La morte del cor penitente

CD cover Legrenzi La morte del cor penitente Ensemble Masques

Ensemble Masques, directed by Olivier Fortini
77:28
Alpha-classics Alpha 975

This was one of the very first pieces I edited after graduation from St Andrews, and it was the first I convinced the BBC to record. Nigel Rogers, who sang the role of the sinner in and directed those performances, was a great advocate for the work – and the composer’s music in general. Labeled an oratorio, there is no narrative thread; rather, two sopranos (in the guises of Hope and Penance, as the booklet note translates them) give the tenor options for entering Heaven – he should either repent his sins and accept the pains that are their reward, or succumb to the love that has made him sinful in the first place and trust in Heaven’s pity. The second half opens after he has chosen the path of penitence, and a “Choir and Pains” (from which various members emerge to continue the dialogue with the main character) persuades him that the death of his heart is the only way to secure everlasting life. Perhaps best known today for his chamber music, Legrenzi was one of the leading composers of his day, writing everything from solo motets to operas (including one whose staging involved live elephants!) – much like Handel, who incidentally was familiar with his music, he was an expert in conveying emotions. The present performance embraces the theatricality in a way that I don’t recall from previous outings the score has had, pushing and pulling the tempo to suit the mood and deliberately overlapping the cadences of some sections with the beginnings of others for dramatic effect. Rather naughtily, Ensemble Masques insert extra sinfonie; while these are hardly random points in the work, some mention might have been made in the booklet note. All the more forgivable, of course, when the playing – like most of the singing – is so fabulous. Throughout the piece, the (mostly very short) arias recall those from the set of solo motets published posthumously by his nephew, and the ensembles that end each half have sections that echo passages from the Compline service the composer had published eleven years earlier. This excellent recording vividly highlights the latent dramatic qualities of this fine work.

Brian Clark

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CD cover Telemann Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst Vol. 8 Kielland Bergen Barokk

Marianne Beate Kielland, Bergen Barokk
65:51
Toccata Classics TOCC 0266

This is the eighth instalment of this noteworthy project to record the complete cycle of the Harmonischer Gottesdienst, a wonderfully crafted and mellifluous cycle of 72 chamber cantatas from 1725/6, which are firmly couched in the Scriptures, and have the multi-function trait of being ideal for moralistic, musical accompaniment to a sermon, or suitable for domestic worship, and even musical home practice. Although the CD indicates there is one premiered piece, you would have to buy about four or five CDs to cover all these works in one go (Dux, Enchiriadis, Canterino=Brilliant classics) so several of these will be new to many listeners. What better endorsement would one need, than Handel’s? |You can hear why he chose to examine and indeed use some of the melodic content found here. The responsive mezzo-soprano tackles these pieces with just the right attack in her declamation, delivering some wonderful moments, with clever modulations and increased intensity when required. The violin (the back-up instrument if recorder and oboe players weren’t available) makes a perfect partner to this well-honed, mid-ranged voice, and the rest of the ensemble offer admirable supporting roles.

While the texts of the first and third cantatas may even be from Telemann’s own quill, the vast majority were written by the jurist and literatus Mathaeus Arnold Wilckens (1704-59), an obviously gifted 21-year-old. This would not be the last time Telemann approached young Hamburg poets of high quality. There are a few textual nuances to observe in Andrus Madsen’s translation: for example, in German, “Lust” as a singular noun tends to be a positive (joy or pleasure), while in the plural it equates more to vice and debauchery. There are several others but focussing on them might detract from the thoroughly satisfying performances on the disc, so let me just say: caveat lector!

The CD booklet contains a rather splendid essay on Telemann and Neumeister by Sjur Haga Bringeland, an important working relationship which yielded some four or five cycles. One has to question what it is doing here, though – while it is useful page-filler, it has nothing to do with the music on the disc.

As one progresses through these fine sparkling gems of spiritual music, one feels the dramatic effects and cogency, perfectly set to some engaging music, so well suited for their intended purpose. The opera composer is not very far away either. This is a really worthy addition to Toccata Classics’ on-going survey of Telemann’s music.

David Bellinger

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Beethoven: String Quartets, op. 18

CD cover Beethoven op 18 Narratio Quartet

Narratio Quartet
165:35 (3 CDs)
Challenge CC72969

Published less than five years apart, what a world of difference exists between the six opus 18 String Quartets of Beethoven and the similarly constituted opus 76 set of Haydn! While the latter are the supreme work of a man at the height of his powers, the man indeed responsible above all others for the creation of the form, opus 18 represent the entry into the field by a young man who had probably just reached 30 by the time he completed the set. And it had proved to be a far from an easy entry. We know because Beethoven himself admitted it – ‘Only now’, he wrote to a friend in 1801, the year of publication, ‘do I know how to write string quartets’. 

This feeling of exploration and questing with a form accepted as arguably the most difficult to master is also very much a part of these performances by the Amsterdam-based Narratio Quartet. Playing on period instruments they have spent some fifteen years re-examining and working on the quartets in the context of the expressive performing traditions of Beethoven’s own time. These include a more flexible approach to tempo and rhythm than the strict, metronomic time-keeping we generally encounter today. The use of rubato was once a valuable expressive tool and is often used in harness with dynamic and other expressive markings. You can hear an example at the point of arrival of the secondary subject of the opening Allegro con brio of the F-major Quartet (no. 1), where the brisk opening subsides not only into a decrescendo and piano marking but also here an unmarked slowing of tempo, all combining to tell us we’ve moved into fresh territory.  Less innovative is the restriction of vibrato to expressive use, a technique now employed by many instrumentalists and singers. Most radical of all is the use of portamento or glissando, the sliding of one note into another in imitation of the human voice. It is used for expressive purposes, but needs to be employed sparingly. Especially in slower music, it carries a risk of sentimentality if used excessively. Beethoven is reported to have liked it, particularly in his chamber music. The Narratios seem to me to have got it just right, with the technique used sparingly and always sensitively, with little impression of simply making a spectacular effect. You can hear a startling example right at the start of the first CD, in the opening of the D-major Quartet (no. 3), where Beethoven’s unexpectedly poetic opening seems to expect this kind of expression. Incidentally, the quartets are arranged in the order it was once thought they were composed: 3; 1; 2; 5; 4; 6. It is now disputed.  

All this attention to such detail would be to little effect were the performances less perceptive than they are. Other more usual expressive devices such as dynamics and hairpin markings are keenly observed and I could find no tempo with which to take exception. But more importantly, the Narratios have for me captured the youthful essence and spirit of the six quartets to as near ideal an extent as can be humanly expected. Perhaps above all, it is the manner in which the wit and humour are embraced, a characteristic so frequently missing by those that would have Beethoven elevated to some kind of spiritual status. There are countless examples dotted through these performances, but I’ll highlight one. One of the most striking movements of opus 18 is the finale of the B-flat Quartet (no. 6), the structure of which has led some commentators to think in terms of an anticipation of the designs of the late quartets. It opens with an adagio marked La Malinchonia, an intensely inward passage almost entirely marked pp, it is played here with a rapt, intense inwardness brought to a halt by a fortissimo chord that quickly segues into a bright, witty triple-time movement marked Allegretto quasi Allegro. It is Beethoven laughing at us: ‘Ah, fooled you there, didn’t I?’ Wit, good humour and the dance now pervade the movement until a climax, led to in the present performance by an ever-quicker tempo subsiding to a dozen bars of the Adagio interspersed with four bars of triple-time. The coda brings a final example of these two extremes. You will find nothing comparable in the quartets on Haydn and Mozart; it is music that announces a musical revolutionary to whom the Narratio Quartet respond with compelling insight.

The quartet’s name refers to the art of rhetoric, the projection of which is tellingly apparent in these marvellously communicative performances. The continuation of the Narratio’s cycle can be awaited with the keenest anticipation.

Brian Robins