Tag: Chamber music

Forgotten Works from the Düben Collection
[Hélène Brunet, Reginald Mobley, Brian Giebler, Jonathan Woody SATB], ACRONYM
79:33
Olde Focus Recordings FCR917

Click HERE to buy this recording
[These links support the artists AND keep this site alive!]

As someone who has spent most of his adult life exploring the riches of the Düben Collection, named after a 17th-century family of musicians and music collectors/transcribers, this recording is an absolute joy. Even being fortunate enough to be able to “hear” music just by reading it off the page, nothing beats hearing it played/sung, especially when those performing it are a versatile and committed group like ACRONYM. This is not the first of their discs I have heard (or reviewed), but still I find things in their readings of this repertoire that make me smile. The tone of this recording is set right from the get-go: Schmelzer’s 5-part sonata in D minor takes no prisoners and the fiddlers in particular get stuck right in, and I totally LOVE it! There’s no break before Johann Philipp Krieger’s Cantate domino canticum novum, on whose text the disc’s subtitle is a play. This neatly introduces us to the four singers, whose voices blend well together. Thereafter, we have music by Carissimi (perhaps the only well-known name on the list), Geist (who would have known the Dübens personally), Löwe (whose instrumental music does not deserve the neglect in which it languishes), Capricornus (who should also be heard far more frequently), Flor, a very rare piece from the collection by a female composer, Caterina Giani, Radeck, Ritter and finally Eberlin, who contributes the longest work in the programme at just over nine minutes. In the course of the disc, we have pretty much been put through the emotional wringer – life in the 17th century was tough, and many of the texts set to music tended to be on the bleaker side, which inspired some fantastic works which, in turn, sought to inspire believers. In recording this rich repertoire, ACRONYM will hopefully inspire further exploration of the Düben Collection – and its fellow repositories in Berlin and Dresden. I cannot wait to hear their next CD!

Brian Clark

Ricercare Antico, dir. Francesco Tomasi
64:31
Brilliant Classics 96008

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links help the site remain alive and FREE!]

Born in Rome around 1610, Francesca Campana was known as a singer and spinet player, and her set of Arias in one, two and three parts published in 1629, when she was probably still a teenager, reveals a remarkable facility. While female composers were not unknown in Italy at the time, to have an entire publication devoted to your music as a woman was an unusual tribute and is surely a mark of the respect in which she was held. This is underlined by a letter of recommendation of 1633 in which her playing and singing are specifically and extravagantly praised. Her marriage to the composer Giovan Carlo Rossi seems to mark the end of her own compositional career although she lived on until 1665. The arias in the collection comprise solo airs with accompaniment as well as ensemble pieces we would be inclined to describe as madrigals. The writing is expressive and colourfully evocative – it is likely that Campana was writing largely for her own voice and an ensemble, and would probably have performed this music as well as benefiting from its publication. The performances here are imaginative, delicately ornamented and eloquently presented. The slightly close recording has an unfortunate deadening effect, and, as a result, some tracks sound a little plodding – perhaps a little more ambiance might have helped the music breathe a little more and the voices to ring more pleasingly. The arias themselves are interspersed with a beguiling selection of largely Neapolitan instrumental works from slightly earlier than the Campana pieces. This repertoire is catchy and engaging, and the playing is again charming and provides the perfect foil to the arias.

D. James Ross

Kate Lindsey, [Nardus Williams soprano, Andrew Staples tenor], Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen
75:34
Alpha Classics Alpha 736

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links help the site remain alive and FREE!]

The tyranny of the title is that of the infamous Emperor Nero, coincidentally the subject (as I write) of a new exhibition at the British Museum that seeks to redress at least some of the infamy associated with his name. Unsurprisingly there is little redemptive in this collection featuring extracts from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and a group of cantatas from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the most famous of which is the youthful Handel’s superbly freewheeling drama Agrippina condotta a morire, the confused and tormented words of Nero’s mother following her condemnation to death by her son. The locus topos of two cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti could not be more different, Il Nerone finding the emperor in full tyrannical flow, ordering the death of his mother, his wife Ottavia and his old teacher Seneca, while his own death is the subject of La morte di Nerone, claimed as a first recording and obviously an early work since its arias are brief strophic verses rather than the usual da capo structures of the mature cantatas. Finally, and placed with little apparent sense of irony after the extreme sensuality of ‘Pur ti miro!’ (the final duet of Poppea), comes La Poppea by the little-known Bolognese composer Bartolomeo Monari (1662-97), a cantata recounting the lurid death of the pregnant Poppea following reputedly being kicked in the stomach by her husband. The work itself, incorporating both narrative and the words of the dying Poppea herself does not match the grim scenario, being relatively tame and concluding with a moralizing aria on the transience of beauty, a favourite trope of the period.

It goes without saying there is scope for highly dramatic interpretation in much of this music, dealing as so much of it does with extreme emotion. American mezzo Kate Lindsey has seemingly built a considerable reputation as a dramatic actress in a wide operatic range and employs it to the full here. Sadly it’s thoroughly 21st-century drama, at times, especially in the Handel, reducing the music to something like a modern psycho-drama, replete with overwrought self-indulgence and a vulgar use of portamento and other mannerisms, that quite forgets the ease and naturalness that the singing masters of the period expected. Ironically, it comes in the company of poor diction, one of Lindsey’s besetting sins and a particularly serious one in this repertoire. This is especially true of plain recitative, where the approach is too cantato and the tempo at times too slow.

Otherwise, my feelings on Lindsey’s singing are somewhat mixed. Were the programme to be judged on the basis of the opening Scarlatti cantata (Il Nerone), it would almost surely be dismissed by me out of hand, for the vibrato here is wide and near consistent, the interpretation highly mannered. Curiously, however, in more restrained moments and particularly when employing a lovely mezza voce in the middle range there is markedly less vibrato in evidence. Indeed a break in the voice at times gives the disconcerting impression that we are hearing two quite different voices.

The anachronistic character of these performances suggests they are unlikely to have great appeal to specialist readers of EMR. The Monteverdi and Monari are certainly better in this respect, though Ottavia’s  ‘Addio Roma!’ brings a fresh outburst of frenetically undisciplined singing. Lindsey is effectively supported in the Poppea extracts, especially by Nardus Williams in ‘Pur ti miro!’,  rather less so by the continuo players of Arcangelo, whose thrumming theorbist is a near-constant irritant.       

Brian Robins