Tag: Chamber music

Stories of songs, dances and loves
Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini
61:47
Naïve OP7366

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This collection forms an ancillary to ‘Night. Stories of Lovers and Warriors’, which was performed live and recorded to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Monteverdi’s birth in 1567. In an introductory note Rinaldo Alessandrini suggests that this disparate programme is perhaps not intended for purists. Well, I’ve been called a purist – a term incidentally that I do not take to be derogatory – on more than one occasion and found the CD totally irresistible.

There are two principal reasons for that. Firstly one can point to the consummate skill with which the programme has been assembled, bringing relevant music, much of it familiar, from across the whole of Monteverdi’s output and creative life to create a narrative. More on that anon. Then there is the sheer quality of the performances. Over the years the constitution of Alessandrini’s Concerto Italiano has inevitably changed, here indeed even since the recording of ‘Night’, but all five singers employed in the madrigals and other ensemble pieces are outstanding, blending superbly without ever losing individuality. The instrumental playing is equally impressive.

The programme begins with the Sinfonia that opens act 3 of Orfeo, thus providing a link to the earlier disc, which started in the same way, before the marvellous two-part madrigal ‘Non si levava … E dicea l’una sospirando’ (from Book 2, 1590), which depicts a Romeo and Juliet scenario as two lovers awaken to the dawn after a night of passion. This is music of the utmost sensuality, using exquisite dissonance to convey the blissful eroticism of the sentiments expressed in Tasso’s marvellous text. The mood lightens to a trio of three-part pieces, interspersed by instrumental works including the first of several dances by Biagio Marini – all urging shepherds and birds to rise and get the day underway. The singing here achieves a delicious lightness of touch that serves to mask the consummate execution of performance. Among other favourites too numerous to mention in detail are ‘Zefiro torna’ (Scherzi musicali, 1632) and the canzonetta ‘Chiome d’oro’ (Madrigals Book 7, 1619). Most of the items are brief but a sense of symmetrical structure is given by the inclusion of two scenes from the late operas, both concerned with the amorous exploits of servants. From Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria we get the flirtatiously playful scene in act 1 between Penelope’s maid Melantho and Eurymachus, beautifully sung and vocally acted by soprano Sonia Tedla and tenor Valerio Contaldo, which is counterbalanced by that for the innocent (or maybe not so innocent ) page Valletto and Damigella (damsel) from act 2 of L’incoronazione di Poppea, equally enticingly played out by soprano Monica Piccinini and tenor Raffaele Giordani.  There is a sense of exuberant, scintillating joie de vivre about the whole programme that would sweep away the bluest of moods. Recommended without reservation.

Brian Robins

Anna Reinhold mezzo-soprano, Guilhem Worms bass-baritone, Ensemble Il Caravaggio, Camille Delaforge
68:13
Klarthe K120

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This CD cleverly alternates extended Baroque compositions dedicated to the Virgin Mary with the mainly anonymous tradition of popular sacred songs on the same subject. The former consist of the Stabat Mater by Giovanni Felice Sances, Alma Mater Redemptoris by Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, In Sanguine Gloria by Isabella Leonarda, O Quam Suavis by Francesco Cavalli and Tarquinio Merula’s Canzonetta spirituale alla Nina Nana, to which more tenuously the group have added Brunelli’s Lamento della Ninfa. This latter piece is played and sung with great energy and imagination, while the anonymous sacred songs and chants exude a suitable folkloric piety. The singers, Anna Reinhold and Guilhem Worms, pass with ease between these two worlds, the latter bringing a knowledge of traditional ornamentation to bear on this evocative music. The instrumental ensemble Il Caravaggio makes a suitably vivid contribution throughout, and the director Camille Delaforge is to be congratulated on an enterprising project brought to a very successful conclusion.

D. James Ross

Julia Kirchner soprano, Georg Poplutz tenor, La Stagione Frankfurt, Michael Schneider
76:17
cpo 555 300-2

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This recording presents one of the rarer genres to which Telemann contributed, the wedding serenata. Intended as evening’s entertainment (presumably for wealth patrons who could afford to pay the musicians required), it is less a mini-opera and more a light-hearted debate on the virtue of love. In response to Ametas the soprano’s opening question “What is more beautiful than love”, the tenor Crito just laughs. They proceed to throw arguments and counter-arguments in a sequence of recitatives and arias, with tempers rising but finally they are reconciled and sing a duet to the newly weds, hoping they will soon have something to rock in the cradle! There follow two solo cantatas with wedding connections, if not as directly as the serenata. “Lieben will ich” was published as the fifth of a sex of six secular cantatas with instruments by the composer in 1731. The tenor must tell the tale and play the two parts! In “Der Weiberorden”, the soprano tells of the “delights” (and otherwise!) of marriage in rather racy language. The disc abounds with charm – Telemann knew how to hold an audience – and all of his fans will have to have this recording.

Brian Clark

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

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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