Tag: Chamber music

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Haydn and the Harp

CD cover of recording of music by Haydn with harp

Chiara Granata harps, Raffaele Pe countertenor, Anaïs Chen violin, Marco Ceccato cello
68:23
Glossa GCD 923517
Music by Bochsa, Eloüis, Sophia Dussek, Haydn, Kozeluh, Anne-Marie & Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz, de La Manière & Ragué

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This CD is a genuine eye-opener. We tend to ignore the instruction ‘for piano or harp’ in the published versions of Haydn’s arrangements of British folk songs, but Chiara Granata has taken it literally and presents here a selection of music by Haydn and his contemporaries. Using two lovely restored harps of 1790 and 1825, she is joined by countertenor Raffaele Pe, violinist Anaïs Chen and cellist Marco Ceccato for these delightful accounts of songs and chamber works. The Haydn songs are beautifully sung by falsettist Raffaele Pe, while particularly intriguing amongst the music by Haydn’s contemporaries, mainly reworkings of the master’s music, are Louis-Charles Ragué’s arrangement for violin and harp of Haydn’s 71st Symphony and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa’s extraordinary medley for harp of melodies from The Creation. From his earliest days at Esterhazy to his late visits to London, Haydn had regular and close contact with amateur and professional harpists, and it seems natural that he would want his compositions to be available for them to perform. In fact, having heard these evocative performances, Haydn’s concise and sparkling idiom seems to lend itself very well to the tone of the harp, and Chiara Granata’s admirable project seems long overdue. Her discovery of the complementary music by Krumpholtz (Jean-Baptiste and Anne-Marie), Kozeluh, Louis-Charles Ragué, Bochsa, Joseph Eloüis, Exupère de La Maniere and Sophia Dussek is a revelation, and the entire programme is wonderfully evocative. The very musical playing and singing of the ensemble make them the ideal advocates for this neglected area of classical music, and the light they shine on it is a revelatory and valuable one.

D. James Ross

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Barbara Strozzi: Virtuosa of Venice

Barbara Strozzi CD cover Fieri Consort

Fieri Consort
67:18
Fieri Records FIER003VOV
With music by Ferrari, Fontei, Kapsperger, Maione, Monteverdi & Selma y Salaverde

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It is good to see Barbara Strozzi’s music receiving more attention – as more of it becomes familiar, it is clear that she deserves her own place in the history of early Baroque music. As a female composer and performer, her considerable success was greeted with some suspicion in her own lifetime, and even in our own day, acceptance of her skills has been slow and grudging. Her image as a serious performer/composer is perhaps not helped by the familiar bare-breasted portraits, but she was a pupil of the Monteverdi’s pupil, Francesco Cavalli, and was a prolific composer with seven books of madrigals, arias and cantatas plus a collection of sacred music to her name. That this large body of work was published is sometimes ascribed to the prominence of her father as a member of the prestigious Accademia degli Incogniti, but, as more and more of her stylistically varied music comes to be performed, it becomes clear that she was probably being published entirely on her own merits. The Fieri Consort fields six voices in various permutations with gamba, lute/theorbo and harp to present a selection from throughout the composer’s musical life. Thus we travel from the flirty music of the early madrigal collections to the more intense music of the late more profound lagrime. The fact that her music stands up very well beside the pieces by Monteverdi, Nicolò Fontei and Kapsperger with which the consort alternate her songs is a mark of their quality.  The singing and playing are generally good, if the ornamentation occasionally sounds a little laboured, and I like the variety of voices, which appear mainly in dialoguing pairs, as well as the subtlety of the instrumental accompaniments. 

D. James Ross

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Dowland: Lachrimae

Opera Prima Consort play Dowland Lachrimae CD cover

Opera Prima Consort, Cristiano Contadin
59:32
Brilliant Classics 95699

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This is a delightfully fresh look at the very familiar Lachrimae Pavans with associated Pavans, Galliards and Almands. The use of alto viola and violins on the upper lines is entirely authentic and gives the overall sound an engaging edge, while some daringly adventurous and ultimately beautifully musical divisions on the repeats of each section transform these performances into something very special. In addition to breaking the traditional viol consensus, Cristiano Contadin also introduces a recorder, which brings its own heightened level of intricacy to the repeat divisions. I am not entirely convinced by the recorder sometimes popping in and out, playing only on some repeats, and am happier with it playing the written line first time and then embarking on its divisions on the repeat having established its presence already. This is very much a personal whim, and I have to say that in practice both Contadin’s solutions, if a little unorthodox, work very well. The performances of the ensuing Galliards and Almans are wonderfully free and inventive, quirky and virtuosic, casting a bold new light on this terrific music. The playing is wonderfully expressive throughout, recalling my hitherto favourite 1985 account by Jakob Lindberg and the Dowland Consort on BIS. I have to say that the felicitous mixture of violins and viols and the deft ornamentation of repeats may just have won me over to this exciting new account! Highly recommended.

D. James Ross

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Handel: Works for Viola da Gamba & Harpsichord

CD cover of Handel gamba sonatas recording by Aziz and Yamamoto

Ibrahim Aziz, Masumi Yamamoto
77:26
First Hand Records FHR91

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This CD of music by Handel for viola da gamba and harpsichord presents the G-minor Sonata HWV 364b and a couple of contested works, which may be the work of the young Handel along with a series of arrangements, respectively of the A-major Violin Sonata and the Keyboard Suites HWV 448 and 437. As fillers, we have the Suite HWV 429 for solo harpsichord in a copy by Gottlieb Muffat and a Prélude from a gamba suite by Sainte-Colombe le fils. So, while the title may not strictly describe what is ‘in the tin’, the performers have been distinctly imaginative and enterprising in their choice of repertoire. The playing is beautiful, with some wonderfully poignant gamba sounds from Aziz, who also displays a deft virtuosity on the instrument, while Yamamoto provides an impressively responsive accompaniment. Particularly intriguing are the musicians’ solo slots. The very conservative piece, thoroughly in the French style, by Saint-Colombe le fils, could easily be by his father, Jean, who taught the legendary Marin Marais – this in spite of the fact that S-C le fils was working in London at the same time as Handel. The edition of Handel’s HWV 429 suite for harpsichord by Gottlieb Theofile Muffat, son of the more imminent Georg Muffat, is intriguingly revelatory of performance practice at the time. Gottlieb Muffat, also a keyboard composer in his own right, spent his whole life in Vienna, and it is fascinating to think of him bringing his version of the music of Handel to the Austrian public in the generation before Mozart would find an audience for his Handel adaptations. Did he feel that Handel’s music needed ‘adapted’ to suit the Viennese taste, or as a composer/player could he just not bear to keep his hands off this fine repertoire? Throughout his lifetime, Handel was dogged by breaches of what would now be called copyright, but this is something else entirely – more akin to an homage from an admiring fellow composer. This is a thought-provoking and musically very satisfying CD.

D. James Ross

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Handel: The Recorder Sonatas

Handel Recorder Sonatas Stefan Temmingh CD cover

[Wiebke] Weidanz, [Stefan] Temmingh
63:20
Accent ACC 24353

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This account of the six recorder sonatas by Handel, each one tastefully ‘set up’ by a short prelude, either a keyboard prelude by Handel or Purcell, an anonymous Fantaisie for solo recorder, or in one case an improvised flourish on recorder and keyboard, has many virtues. The playing of Stefan Temmingh on a trio of Bressan copy recorders by Ernst Meyer is flamboyant and imaginative, while the accompaniment of Wiebke Weidanz on a Taskin copy harpsichord by Matthias Griewisch is equally so. If the harpsichord is consistently recorded a little ‘closely’ and dominates the balance somewhat, this is quite possibly a reflection of the natural dynamics of both instruments, although some of the detail of the recorder playing in the lower register is lost. Temmingh is always keen to embellish, sometimes ornamenting the first playthrough of a section, sometimes improvising on even the opening statement, before departing even more radically into the realms of fantasy on the repeat. This will not be to everyone’s taste, but I found the approach on the whole engaging and entertaining, particularly as Weidanz was quick to reflect this exciting level of spontaneity in the keyboard accompaniment. There is certainly no denying the highly imaginative nature of this improvisation, which manages to sound both utterly compelling and completely convincing. The programme note is in the (for me) annoying form of a dialogue between the two performers, which is necessarily more about their approach to the music and its performance and recording than the historical/musicological background. However, we do learn that, as we might have suspected, Weidanz plays from the original figured bass, allowing her imagination to realise the keyboard part spontaneously in response to Temmingh’s account of the melody line. This is perhaps not the recording to buy for a no-nonsense account of Handel, but the playing is very impressive and thoroughly musical – and you can’t help feeling that this is the sort of approach the composer might have taken in performing his own music.

D. James Ross

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La Gracieuse: Pièces de Viole by Marin Marais

Robert Smith gamba, Israel Golani guitar/theorbo, Joshua Cheatham gamba, Olivier Fortin harpsichord
66:13
resonus RES10244

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Virtuoso gambist Robert Smith is joined here by a superb consort in imaginative and supremely musical performances of four of Marais’ suites for viol and continuo. Never one to rush the music he is playing, Smith imbues this wonderfully eloquent repertoire with the time to breathe and the results are truly revelatory. Ever since Gerard Depardieu’s appearance in the film Tous les Matins du Monde brought Marais’ music to a wider audience, it has frequently featured on CD, but not always as well and expressively played as it is here. The continuo ensemble of guitar/theorbo, gamba and harpsichord allows for subtle changes in instrumentation to reflect the mood of the melody. I am less convinced by the employment of a deep drum in some of the more rustic sounding movements – surely Marais would have been using the viol itself to imitate the sounds of a traditional band? I am prepared to overlook this in light of the very imaginative approach taken to Marais’ music, which otherwise sounds utterly convincing to me. The rich resonance of the Lutherse Kerk in Groningen provides a spectacular resonance for Smith’s ringing viol tone and the resonus engineers have done a fine job in capturing the sound so vividly.

D. James Ross

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Violin Sonatas by Gottfried Finger

Gottfried Finger violin sonatas Hazel Brooks CD cover

Duo Dorado (Hazel Brooks violin, David Pollock harpsichord/organ)
78:00
Chandos Chaconne CHAN 0824

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Bohemian Gottfried Finger was just one of an army of European composers who made their way to the musical ferment of late 17th-century London, arriving in 1685 and leaving in a strop in 170,1 having come last in a musical competition! A composer of considerable talent and a catholic, Finger was snapped up by James II for his Catholic Chapel, but on the latter’s flight to the continent, Finger had to make his own way in the cut-throat world of freelance music-making. A British Library manuscript Add. 31466, a bumper collection of 66 violin sonatas, provides all of the sonatas recorded on this CD, which prove to be works in a fascinating range of styles and of limitless imagination – hard to reconcile this with the verdict on his ill-fated entry in the ‘Prize Musick’ which was deemed to be old-fashioned. It seems likely that Finger’s Catholicism and his foreign status probably weighed more heavily in his defeat than his perceived lack of talent. Hazel Brooks plays an 18th-century Viennese violin, which possesses an ideal glowing tone and crisp attack for Finger’s lyrical music, while David Pollock, playing a replica Ruttgers/Hemsch harpsichord and a continuo organ, provides a wonderfully sympathetic and responsive accompaniment. Brooks deftly ornaments the violin part, and clearly enjoys Finger’s spontaneous and often rather chromatically daring idiom. Finger was also a renowned trumpeter, and I have played a trio sonata by him for trumpet, violin and continuo on Baroque clarinet, becoming aware in the process that this was a composer with a distinctive musical voice who deserved further attention. The Duo Dorado are clearly of the same opinion, and this recording is a valuable advance in our awareness of his many musical virtues.

D. James Ross

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Duni: Trio Sonatas Op. 1

Duni op. 1 trio sonatas CD cover

Duni Ensemble
48:20
Brilliant Classics 96023
+Contradanze 1m 3m 4 + Minuetto 2, Minuè no 18 and Minuetto

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Neapolitan by birth, Egidio Romualdo Duni spent time in the great musical centres of the 18th century, Milan, Rome and London, before moving to Holland for reasons of health and to study at Leiden University and to publish two important collections, his opus 1 Trio Sonatas and Minuetti e Contradanze in 17838/9. The six trio sonatas are all performed here, interspersed with a number of the minuets and contradances. Where Duni had stipulated that his sonatas were for the standard ensemble of two violins, cello and continuo, the DuniEnsemble take a refreshing approach to this Galante music by using flutes and recorders for the melodic lines and a bassoon for the cello, occasionally employing Baroque violin and cello for contrast. The continuo group includes a harpsichord, a mandolin, and Baroque guitar/theorbo. The overall sound is very pleasing and nicely varied, allowing this complete recording of Duni’s opus 1 to benefit from an engaging degree of textural variety. It is perhaps unfortunate that the booklet information as to ‘who does what on what’ is a bit of a mess, and that the translation into English of the otherwise interesting programme is a little garbled – worth spending a little more on the printed material to support what is an excellent recording. The motivations behind Duni’s movements around Europe remain mysterious – he seems to have enjoyed considerable success wherever he went – his opera ‘Demofoonte’, staged in London in 1737, featured no less a figure than the great castrato Farinelli in his retirement performance. That his move from London to Holland seems to have been the result of depression, for which he was seeking help from the famous Dr Boherave, may hint at his failure to settle and to enjoy his success – perhaps the dog-eat-dog musical world of early 18th-century London just didn’t suit him. There is no hint of any dark moods in his published music; is it not trite or superficial either, but rather imaginative and original. And the DuniEnsemble, applying considerable musicality and inventiveness to his music, bring it vividly to life for us.

D. James Ross

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Schubert: 3 sonatas (1816)

CD cover Schubert violin sonatas

Peter Sheppard Skærved violin, Julian Perkins square piano
58:38
(Divine Art) athene ath 23208

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This is part of an ongoing series by the violinist and historian Peter Sheppard Skærved devoted to historic violins. For this traversal of the three sonatas composed by Schubert in 1816, he is playing an instrument made in 1782 by the most renowned member of a German family of makers, Martin Leopold Widhalm. As heard here the instrument has a bright, at times rather thin upper range, but satisfyingly full and rounded middle and lower gamut. Sheppard Skærved plays the sonatas using an early Tourte bow (c.1770-1780). Julian Perkins, his pianist on this occasion, plays on a square piano built by Clementi and Co in 1812. While it stresses the domestic purposes for which the music was composed, there are times in more demanding passages where I felt the need for an instrument with greater body. However, as Perkin’s modestly points out in his notes, this is just one of many ways of playing these works.

Both players are understandably protective about the music which as their comprehensive notes makes clear they have thought about in considerable detail and value greatly. All three are indeed pleasing if to my mind hardly memorable works in which, as in the sonatas of Mozart, the piano is often the leader when it comes to presenting thematic material. The D-major is the slightest of the three, having only three movements as opposed to the four of the two minor-key sonatas. But its Andante has a charming little march-like theme, the kind of thing one might expect to accompany a child playing at soldiers. Both the A-minor and G-minor sonatas explore both the melancholy and restlessness one might expect, though to my mind not too profoundly and I have to admit to finding the Mozartian echoes that Sheppard Skærved identifies in the latter to be rather distant ones.

It is so manifestly obvious that much thought, care and affection has gone into this project that it makes it exceedingly hard to confess that I find the results to be in major respects unsatisfying. The principle problem is that Sheppard Skærved’s tone, at least as recorded here, is less than agreeable, especially in the upper range where it too often sounds acidic. Neither is his intonation always reliable and one victim is his frequent perfectly legitimate use of portamento (or portes de voix). In respects such as bowing and phrasing, the violin playing is certainly musical, and in unassertive passages where the music sits in a comfortable mid-range – the beguilingly ambiguous opening of the A-minor’s finale for example – the results can be pleasing. Julian Perkin’s contribution is stylish and technically excellent, although as suggested above I’d have preferred a rather less modest instrument; it would have given a more dramatic sound to, for example, some of the stormier passages in the opening Allegro moderato of D.385.

In sum, this is a CD that deserves the attention of anyone interested in historical instruments and an intelligent approach to playing them, but despite the integrity of the performances I’m afraid it is simply not possible to overlook technical flaws.

Brian Robins

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Routes du café

Cantatas by bernier and Bach on the theme of coffee's arrival in Europe CD cover

Ensemble Masques, Olivier Fortin
71:39
Alpha Classics Alpha 543
Music by Bach, Bernier, Locke, Marais & Nâyi Osman Dede (+Tanburi Cemil Bey & Kathleen Kajioka)

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This clever CD charts the spread of coffee through Europe, starting with the original cafés in Turkey and then finding music associated with its arrival in France, England and Germany. The famous coffee cantata by Bach finds an equally witty contemporary French counterpart in the cantata Le Caffe by Nicolas Bernier, while France is also represented by the viol piece Saille du caffé by Marin Marais. In London Matthew Locke’s Consort of Fower Parts, we have the sort of music he and Pepys might well have played together when they met in the Turk’s Head coffee house around 1660. The rest of the music is Turkish traditional music played either by a Turkish instrument ensemble or by Kathleen Kajioka on the violin to the accompaniment of Turkish percussion. The Bernier with its obbligato flute part is charming, while the Bach, also with obbligato flute, is very effectively dramatised by the three singers. Soprano Hana Blažíková sounds a little taken by surprise by some of the more eccentric musical phrases in the Bernier and doesn’t sound entirely comfortable in the higher passages in the Bach, but the two men help to keep things on the rails. The mixing of Baroque music and the traditional music of the east doesn’t always work, but here I feel it does so very well. In particular, Kathleen Kajioka’s violin Taksim and Wahda sound very much like the sot of music that might have been played in the cosmopolitan London coffee houses of yore!

D. James Ross