Tag: Chamber music

Claire Gautrot viola da gamba, Marouan Mankar-Bennis harpsichord
76:00
encelade ECL 1902

It is understandable that Couperin’s keyboard oeuvre should over-shadow the rest of his output but the chamber music is scarcely disappointing! Here we have two suites originally designated for viol avec la basse chiffrée (pub. 1728) and one of the 1722 Concerts Royaux, for which any suitable melodic instruments can be used. Each suite is followed by a complementary movement from the harpsichord livres.

I regularly question the need for the multiplicity of continuo instruments we often hear in this repertoire so it is something of a relief to note that in this recital a harpsichord shows that it can do the job on its own – and rather well. Variety of texture, in particular, is used to great effect and the recorded balance is unfailingly excellent.

And so is the playing. The plangent tone of the viol, its infinite capacity for tonal shading and ability to convey delicate filigree makes it an ideal voice for this exquisite music. I defy anyone not to be tempted to repeat Pompe Funèbre, possibly more than once. So, if you share my love of the French Baroque, and even if you don’t, this is very rewarding listening, helped on its way by a sensible and quite substantial essay (in French and English).

David Hansell

Odile Edouard violin & Freddy Eichelberger organ
162:15 3 CDs
Encelade ECL 1704

You can buy this at the record company’s website – if you’re quick you can enjoy a promotional offer of these three discs plus any other from their catalogue for €33.

An unexpected photo of the Railway Station in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, forms the cover of this well-presented 3CD recording of Bach entitled Trios pour clavier et violon. The three CDs are recorded using a different organ for each to which a different violin could be matched. Great care has been taken to find suitable organs built in the Thuringian style, though since most of the historic instruments are at Chörton (A=466hz) or higher, all three organs chosen for this project are all recent instruments at 440 or 415.

CD 1 opens with the Fantazia in C minor, BWV 562, played at A=440 on the 1997 organ by Denis Londe in Saint-Louis de Saint Étienne, after Silbermann, and chorale preludes in appropriate keys intersperse the violin works. The second organ (in the Temple de Boudry in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland) is a copy of the actual Silbermann organ in Großhartmansdorf, and the third is by Quentin Blumenroeder in the Temple du Foyer de l’Âme, Paris and is at A=415. Details of their specifications are given in the booklet, which is in French and English. Colour photographs of the three organs and of Edouard’s three violins – Klotz (1757), Bodart, after Stainer (2012) and Hofmans (c.1700) – are on the inner folds of the case.

The nine ‘violin’ sonatas recorded here are the set of six with an independent part in the keyboard’s right hand (BWV 1014-1019), plus two others that are not trios, but simply have a basso continuo (BWV 1021 and 1023 – more like an incipient suite) and BWV 1028, the D major sonata for viola da gamba, of which there is a Bach autograph for violin and keyboard. They make a good group, with their interspersed organ pieces, and are performed splendidly, given that you are happy with the keyboard instrument being an organ, not a harpsichord.

These CDs are celebrating thirty years of Edouard’s and Eichelberger’s longstanding friendship and musical partnership, much of it playing 17^th century music. Edouard makes the point that the balance of voices is easier to achieve between the violin and a decent-sized gallery organ with characterful registrations than a harpsichord. The sonorities of the different instruments in the different acoustics are instructive, and have their effect on the tempi as well as the articulation.

From the outset, it is clear that this is a quintessentially French style of playing: the inégales of the opening quavers of the Fantasia are splendidly extreme. And as the C minor sonata begins, it becomes clear that the difference between the string sound and the organ is more pronounced in the slower movements where the warmer string sound with its (fairly restrained vibrato) seems a very different voice, even when the right hand of the organ uses a tremulant. This difference in the way the sound is produced is less obvious in the faster movements, when a more colourful registration is possible on the organ, and the distinction between the way the notes on the organ are produced does not contrast so sharply with the bow strokes and that sense of beginning and growing into a note that is so characteristic of the violin. But by track 12, I was becoming wooed by the sounds and the overall balance. Try tracks 12 and 13 (from the F minor sonata) to judge for yourself.

CD2 takes us to Switzerland and a cleaner acoustic and here I feel the balance between the organ and the 2012 copy of a Stainer instrument is more successful. Again the organ is at 440, but here we seem to be in a more equal partnership: the quality of the individual 8’ ranks certainly helps to achieve the desired equality, and the left-hand registrations speak with amazing promptness and clarity. I especially appreciated the unhurried tempo in the Presto in the A major sonata (track 15).

In CD3 we are with the only organ of the three at 415, and immediately the powerful open principal pedal notes make their presence felt in the concerto-like opening movement of BWV1019, where the organ’s sesquialtera is a more than equal match for the violin. This trio has many similarities in its concerto-like feel with the G major organ trio sonata. This organ is certainly pretty punchy throughout this CD.

So here is a partnership of instruments that grew on me musically over the entire programme. As one who is primarily an organist, I found the choice of instruments fascinating and the playing impeccable, as you would expect. It opens a whole alternative sound-world which I hope our violinists will be keen to explore, even if the right organs will be hard to find. For my money, the Swiss copy of the Silbermann organ in Großhartmansdorf by Jean-Marie Tricoteaux provides the organ that best partners Edouard’s violin (here the Hofmans) and brings out her best playing.

David Stancliffe

Stéphanie-Marie Degand violin and Violaine Cochard harpsichord
91:00 (2 CDs in a card folder)
NoMadMusic NNM 071

Click HERE to buy this recording digitally on amazon.co.uk

This recording of the six ‘sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and violin’, as the duo reminds us in the brief liner notes that all the copies of these six sonatas that date from Bach day are titled, is the fruit of many years friendship and musical collaboration since the pair were students in the 1990s. The violinist is a protégé of Emanuelle Haïm, and co-founder of Le Concert d’Astrée, but also plays a wide range of more modern music. The harpsichordist is also a singer, and both their biographies in the liner notes are gushingly superlative. In spite of this, I was not altogether taken with their playing of these Bach sonatas.

They tell us how important it is to hear the right hand of the harpsichord part equally balanced with the violin, yet in the recording, the violin is overwhelmingly projected above the harpsichord, and played for my taste with an almost Brahmsian lushness. Either the engineers hadn’t taken the equality of the harpsichord seriously, choosing to regard it as simply the accompaniment of a solo, or the microphones were placed much too close to the violin. Either way, the performers should have corrected this and re-balanced the recording, as especially in the quicker movements with a lot of canonic writing like the first Allegro in the C minor sonata (CD 2.2) or of the F minor sonata (CD 2.6), the harpsichord is not just an unequal partner, it is barely audible at times.

As I grew increasingly dissatisfied, I turned again to my favourite recording of these sonatas made in 2000 by Trevor Pinnock and a youthful Rachel Podger, which is streets ahead of this one, both in balance and clarity of the part-writing and also in the musical understanding of Bach’s interweaving lines. Just compare the first two movements in the F minor sonata in the two recordings and feel the flow and direction in the long phrases from Podger and Pinnock (CD 2.9/10) through the wonderful key-changes in the first movement, where Degand and Cochard (CD 2.5/6) seem to lose their rather self-indulgent way. You really have to know where you are going when playing Bach if you are to take your listeners along with you.

The violin is by Joseph Catenari, 1710 and played with a Tourte bow; the harpsichord is by Ryo Yoshida, after a German one by Gottfried Silbermann. There is no information about temperament or tuning, nor anything about Bach’s music. For that, you need to go to Podger and Pinnock (CCS 14798) and the essay by Jonathan Freeman-Attwood.

All in all, I am sorry to say that I cannot find much to like in this version.

David Stancliffe

Ensemble Giardino di Delizie
74:53
Brilliant Classics 96033

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Lelio Colista seems the classic example of a prolific and admired composer, who (having failed to publish his music) has slipped into obscurity, with many of his compositions having been lost. He moved in the culturally rich ambience of late 17^th-century Rome, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Cesti, Stradella and even Corelli, and as the ‘go-to’ continuo lutanist played in all the ground-breaking performances of the day. These nine Sinfonie a tre and single Ballo a tre are all taken from the Giordano 15 manuscript at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, and reveal an inventive and accomplished composer at the height of his powers. The Ensemble Giardino di Delizie playing in the pleasingly resonant acoustic of the Church of St Francis in Trevi, take an energetic and imaginative approach to this fine music, alternating organ and harpsichord, and archlute and guitar in their continuo group and playing with sensitivity and considerable musicality. Undoubtedly reminiscent of the music of Corelli, there is a busy freshness about Colista’s writing which makes the loss of much of his larger-scale music disappointing, but certainly makes these world premiere recordings a very welcome addition to the catalogue. These days, a strikingly high percentage of my review CDs feature performances by Italian ensembles of Italian music of the late 17^th and 18^th centuries, and both the quality of the music and the standard of the performances is generally very high indeed. Notwithstanding the ubiquity of Corelli and Vivaldi, it is good to see these musicians delving further into their very rich and still largely unexplored Baroque heritage.

D. James Ross