Tag: Chamber music

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Lully’s followers in Germany

Lully's followers in Germany

El Gran Teatro del Mundo
68:24
Ambronay AMY314

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At first glance it may seem odd to have a Telemann ouverture-suite alongside works by the first-wave of lullists in germanic lands, but this is a perfect lesson in musicology, where the date that a work was copied does not imply its actual date of inception. This particular suite (TWV55: Es4) belongs to a small handful to have been transmitted through keyboard settings, some just a few movements (TWV55: E1 and E2) that long pre-date the copied versions; here we know that Bach’s eldest brother, Johann Christoph made a complete keyboard copy in the “Andreas Bach book” c.1708-12. Thus, the original may be from Telemann’s student days in Leipzig (1701-5) or when he was in the employ of count Erdmann von Promnitz at Sorau (1705-8). Compilations of Lully’s works first began to appear in 1682, when Jean Philippe Heus published two collections called: Ouvertures avec tous les airs, extracts from Cadmus et Hermione and Persée.

These works were the creative catalyst for the succession of germanic Lullistes to begin to capture the livel y“theatrical style” and place it into their own compositions; Kusser, Erlebach, Fischer, Fux, Muffat, Aufschnaiter and Steffani did just that. The early Telemann suite fits into this timeline just behind the first-wave of composers. Muffat studied under Lully for six years, and absorbed a great deal from source. This was at the very beginning of the vibrant cosmopolitan blend in music known as vermischter Geschmach or Gouts Réunis (“Mixed Taste”).

The disc opens with a fairly well known G-minor sonata (concerto grosso) from Muffat’s “Armonico tributo”, given a rather playful interpretation with fewer strings than we may have been accustomed to hearing, yet with attractive additions of oboe and recorder and an actively strumming theorbo to bolster the basso continuo section. The overall effect is much slighter, and the graves aren’t in any way onerous or overbearing.

Next the splendid Suite no1 in C from Fischer’s Journal du printemps (1695), again a lovely flowing, dulcet interpretation which makes for very clear melodic lines, especially in the unfolding final chaconne. Following on, another later Muffat work Nobilis Juventus from his 1698 Florilegium Secundum which does have a certain theatrical flair, well captured by the ensemble’s delicate tones.

Closing with the (nine-movement!) Telemann suite, originally for strings, we can hear the neat interplay of French, Italian and Polish elements from an early date. The Entree is a direct adoption from French opera, often employed for scenic changes. The menuets are wonderfully done here, before a far-too-ponderous, introspective reading of the loure (twice as long as the version on Carus 83.337!) followed by a vibrant italianate gigue, and a fine set of the bourrees. Next, a playful, neatly done polonaise and cheekily inserted “prelude” (Not original, not needed!) before the Aria, which I again felt was in too slow to be fully emotive. Lastly – in vivid contrast – the blithesome passepieds.

All are played with a polished delicatesse and relish, just waning in the latter slower movements of the final suite, yet overall capturing the essence of the emergent “mixed taste” with cosmopolitan flair.

David Bellinger

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Mozart: Sonatas for violin & piano

CD cover Mozart sonatas for violin and piano Hanson Arthur

K. 301, 304-306, 454
Peter Hanson violin, Andrew Arthur fortepiano
79:07
resonus RES10281

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It must be something of a disappointment to violin players that so much of the music that Mozart wrote for their instrument is from his youth, and that these early sonatas and concertos sound a little trivial. This is thrown into further relief by the wonderfully idiomatic writing for violin in his larger-scale chamber music and in the superb Sinfonia concertante. The renowned period violinist Peter Hanson teams up here with the equally celebrated fortepianist Andrew Arthur in effervescent performances of three of the six sonatas ‘for harpsichord or fortepiano with accompaniment for a violin’ K 301, K304 and K305. The balance in interest between the two instruments is not quite as clear-cut as the title suggests, but it does mean that the fortepiano takes a relatively active part in proceedings. Composed for and played by Maria Elisabeth Auguste, Kurfürstin of the Palatinate, with Mozart at the keyboard, the violin part places moderate technical demands on the aristocratic protégé, and yet there is a feeling that this relatively superficial music is designed to present Maria in a flattering light and to promote Mozart’s application for a job. With the fourth Sonata performed here, the later Bb major Sonata K454, we are in a different world entirely. Composed for the professional violin virtuoso, Regina Strinasacchi, a product of the rigorous training at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice associated previously with Vivaldi, this music is much more technically and intellectually demanding. It has a particularly exquisite and inventive Andante, but is generally in a different league from the earlier pieces. As I have suggested, the performances by Hanson and Arthur are impeccably musical and charmingly involving, even in the lighter early material, but they truly come into their own in the K454 Sonata, where Mozart provides them with something to get their teeth into.

D. James Ross

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Prisma: Il Transilvano

CD cover Ambronay Prisma Il transilvano

Musical bridges between Italy and Hungary around 1600
Works from the Codex Caioni and Hungarian folk music
57:55
Ambronay AMY312

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This beautifully performed CD alternates Italian music of the late Renaissance with traditional Hungarian music. What it doesn’t do, unsurprisingly, is provide ‘musical bridges between Italy and Hungary around 1600’. The Transilvano of the title illustrates the problem. It is borrowed from a famous organ treatise by Girolamo Diruta (Venice 1593) dedicated to Sigismond Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, but of course the music the group plays from this collection, notwithstanding some ‘Hungarianised’ divisions, sounds entirely Italian. So too the music from Codex Caioni which makes up most of the rest of the Italian component. Amongst others, Renée Clemencic has demonstrated that there is Hungarian music from this period, but the Hungarian traditional music here, beautifully evocative as it is, seems not to be from 16th- or 17th –century sources. As long as you are not looking for some magical musical ‘bridge’ between 17th-century Italy and Hungary, there is much to enjoy here, from the plaintive Hungarian violin airs and the lovely singing of Franciska Hajdu in the Hungarian ballad Magos kösziklának, to the imaginative and fresh accounts of the Italian Renaissance repertoire. There is nothing wrong with playing the divisions in this early repertoire with a Transylvanian flair, but to my ear it still sounds entirely Italian.  

D. James Ross

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Time Zones: Satie, Scheidt

CD cover Satie Scheidt Time Zones Lautten Compagney

Lautten Compagney, Wolfgang Katschner
70:34
deutsche harmonia mundi 1 94398 07952 3

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The wonderfully energetic accounts of the instrumental music of Samuel Scheidt as well as some of his sacred music in instrumental performances are well worth buying this CD for. The very conscious scoring of this music provides a huge number of different timbres and textures from a large consort of wind string and percussion instruments, and while some might doubt whether this degree of processing ever happened in Scheidt’s lifetime, the results are compelling and delightful. The pairing of these performances with the quirky, haunting and slightly weird music of Erik Satie may seem eccentric, and indeed it is. A saxophone is added to the pantheon of early instruments to create equally heavily processed accounts of what in most cases were piano pieces. Due to these clever arrangements by Bo Wiget, these too are constantly intriguing, while the excellent musicianship of the members of Lautten Compagney ensures that they are all utterly convincing. Once the programme gets underway, the juxtaposition of Scheidt and Satie, particularly the former’s motets and the latter’s Pièces Froides, is genuinely uncanny. However, I am not sure that it is a juxtaposition that throws any additional light on either repertoire, and tempting as it is to do something just because it is possible, the eccentricity of mastering 17th-century instruments so completely that you can play 20th-century repertoire seems something of a non sequitur. I don’t want to sound a HIP bore, and this CD is a lot of fun, and all of the arrangements and performances are stunningly effective.

D. James Ross

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Englishman in Tyrol

CD cover of Englishman in Tyrol

Viol music by William Young
Enemble Art d’Echo, Juliane Laake
64:02
Querstand VKJK 2003

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One of the most celebrated gambists in his own lifetime and for some time after, the reputation of William Young has since declined into complete obscurity. Spending his life at the court of Ferdinand Karl, Archduke of Innsbruck, Young had probably travelled with his employer from the Netherlands, where he was previously governor, having perhaps sought asylum there earlier in the 17th century from Cromwellian England, where his Catholicism would have made life dangerous. His quirky music for strings, mainly viols, while not as eccentric as that of Tobias Hume, recalls the nonconformity of that itinerant Scotsman – is it possible that the absence of any trace of Young in England may suggest that he too might have been a Scotsman? At any rate, Young proved indispensable at the Tyrolean court, taking centre stage at several large-scale celebrations. The present CD with its excellent programme note and varied and beautifully played programme, presenting a cross-section of Young’s work and peppered with world premier recordings, does much to restore this remarkable musician’s reputation. But what is it about musicians left to their own devices in recording studios? This CD has a bonus track of free improvisation at the end, which turns out to be a riff on Sting’s ‘Englishman in New York’, but which sadly adds nothing to the project. Worse still, was the oddly ungrammatical title substituted for the more natural ‘An Englishman in the Tyrol’ simply to facilitate this bit of self-indulgence? I forgive them, because the rest of the CD and its presentation are so good.

D. James Ross

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Uccellini: Sonate op. 4 – Michelangelo Rossi: Toccate e Correnti

CD cover Arparla play Rossi and Uccellini

Arparla (Davide Monti violin, Maria Christina Cleary double harp, Alberto Rasi gamba, violone, Rogério Gonçalves dulcian)
79:25
Stradivarius STR 37166

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This delightful programme, thought up and researched during lockdown, juxtaposes sonatas for solo violin and continuo by Marco Uccellini with toccatas and correnti by Michelangelo Rossi, scored for organ and harpsichord but played here on arpa doppia by Maria Christina Cleary. The harp also combines forces with a viola da gamba/violone and occasionally a dulcian to provide the continuo for the Uccellini, and proves a wonderfully effective member of the continuo team. The first seven of the 14 sonatas for violin and continuo of Marco Uccellini’s opus 4 have character names which determines their nature. While Uccellini arrived in Modena in 1630 and stayed for the rest of his life, Rossi is only known to have made a flying visit in 1638, and it is not even known whether the two met, although it seems unlikely that two such renowned violin vituosi would not have sought one another out. The arpa doppia, with its enhanced ability to play the full gamut, comes into its own in Rossi’s daring Toccata settima, with its chains of chromatic scales. This imaginative music from the first half of the 17th century is beautifully and very musically played by the musicians of Arparla, and it comes as a revelation how versatile a consort member the harp can be as well as how pleasing a solo instrument. This project is an encouraging example of how the enforced inactivity of lockdown can bear rich fruit.

D. James Ross

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Thesauri Inventio 1 & 2

CD cover Thesauri Inventio Kromeriz and Di Martinelli violin music

Furor musicus (Antoinette Lohmann violin, Jörn Boysen harpsichord, Maria Sanchez Ramirez cello)
Globe GLO5279

These two discs of music for solo violin (often mistuned) and continue are some of the positive fruits of the Corona 19 pandemic. From two quite different manuscript collections (one a family affair, the Di Martinelli Collection, which has survived since the 18th century and now resides in the library of the University of Leuven/Louvain, the other the celebrated Prince-Bishops’ music collection at Kroměříž), violinist Antoinette Lohmann has select four sonatas by Sigr. Goor (your guess is as good as mine!), and four anonymous Allemandes and a Balletto for one celebration and two sonatas by known composers (Döbel and Schmelzer) and five further pieces of unknown provenance for the other.

Scordatura (re-tuning the strings) does strange things to the timbre of the violin, especially in the more extreme examples. The instrument becomes more resonant, and the sound a little otherworldly, the gut strings eerily metallic. It’s an acquired taste and I’m not going to pretend that two whole CDs of it wasn’t a challenge. That said, much of the music is recorded here – in very fine performances – for the first time and that in itself is reason enough to acquire this set if 17th-century violin music is your thing.

Brian Clark

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Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

CD cover Nevermind C P E Bach

Nevermind
57:27
Alpha Classics Alpha 759

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I have been impressed by Nevermind’s performances before, and from the perspective purely of critiquing the playing, there is nothing here to fault – these are four outstanding musicians in brilliant form and they engage with Bach’s whimsy and caprice 100%.

When then am I not bedecking them with garlands of yet more appreciation? Well, for a start, if the briefest of brief booklet notes tell us that there is no indication of a stringed bass instrument, and that this is later music when Bach had most probably moved on to a piano-like instrument of some sort, why did Nevermind choose to play the keyboard part on harpsichord? And, if I pick up a CD in a record shop and all the cover says is “Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach”, what am I to imagine might it be? One the first point, it’s as if they are coming at the music as a bunch of baroque musicians for whom the classical period has not yet arrived; some of the added ornamentation (for some of us, Bach’s own is quite enough!) don’t work for this old fuddy-duddy of a reviewer. If the three quartets are not enough to fill the disc, I’d rather hear more authentic music rather than some arrangements. And, yes, damn it, I’d like to hear a period piano!

And for the benefit of future programme note writers, the presence of the viola in such a prominent role is NOT unusual here; Madame Levy (who commissioned the work from Bach) also commissioned viola duets from his brother Wilhelm Friedemann. In the Berlin of Janitsch and Graun, there was no shortage of music for viola…

Brian Clark

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Sonatas for three violins

CD cover Sonatas for three violins Ensemble Diderot Johannes Pramsohler

Ensemble Diderot, Johannes Pramsohler
79:56
Audax Records ADX 13729

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In days of yore, when I enjoyed occasionally playing the violin, there was no repertoire I derived greater fun from that the (mostly 17th-century) music for three trebles. There is just something maigcal about adding another voice to the more usual trio texture; the harmonies can become richer, the texture more complex, and the resonance of your instrument just goes up a notch.

This, of course, is not the first time that a disc has been devoted to such music. But (and it’s a big but) HIP playing has come such a long way since the last one of real quality that this disc seems to signal a changing of the guard. All of the favourites are there: Gabrieli, Fontana, Buonamente, Schmelzer, Purcell and, of course, Pachelbel. But Messrs Pramsohler, Bernabé and Pirri also bring new delights: an arrangement of Psalm 8 by Johann Sommer (published in 1623, this is the earliest work in the programme), a fabulous sonate en quatuor by Dornel (the latest, published in 1709), a very modern sounding sonata by Giuseppe Torelli, and – one of my old favourites – the Fux sonata for just three violins! The playing is superb, the recorded sound clear as a bell, and the production standards just incredible (I can’t rate the Japanese translation, but I enjoyed practising my French and German!) What impressed most was the way music from different places was instantly distinguishable; while some groups take a “one-size-fits-all” approach, Ensemble Diderot invest as much of their considerable talent and seemingly limitless energy in making the music feel genuine.

Time after time, Audax Records just keep the stunning releases coming. If we still had the old “five stars” system, this would be a six. And they do it all while maintaining a healthy sense of humour: click HERE if you don’t believe me…

Brian Clark

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Centorio : Vocal and instrumental music

CD cover Centorio Vocal and instrumental music

Cappella Musicale della Cathedrale di Vercelli, Denis Silano
60:42
Brilliant Classics 96242

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This CD is part of a broader exploration by Italian musicians of their local heritage, and this ensemble based in Vercelli in northern Italy has come up with Marco Antonio Centorio, a local composer of not inconsiderable charm, whose oeuvre remained in manuscript form. This selection of instrumental and vocal music presents a picture of an accomplished local musician of the early 17th century with a solid grounding in polyphony but also with distinctive elements of individuality and originality. There is some fine period instrument playing here, as well as a pleasing contribution from vocal soloists and small choir, the boys’ voices of the latter ensemble making a distinctive and idiomatic contribution. Denis Silano, the mastermind behind the project and who directs proceedings, makes a powerful case for Centorio’s music being more widely known, and it is clear from this CD that he is of more than local significance. It is good to see this ongoing exploration of regional Italian music-making in the 16th and 17th centuries by Italian ensembles, at the same time allowing us to witness the high standard of historically informed performance throughout Italy.

D. James Ross