Tag: Chamber music

The Klagenfurt Manuscript
Peter Sheppard Skærved, Antonio Stradivari 1685
142:10 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
athene ath 23206

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This series of CDs from athene each features a famous violin on which Peter Sheppard Skaerved plays appropriate repertoire, and the present double album features a 1685 Stradivari ‘violino piccolo’. The music seems to be a pet project of Skaerved’s, a manuscript from the mid-1680s of music for solo violin housed in the Landesmuseum Kärnten, Klagenfurt. Having worked with and performed the music for a number of years, Skaerved is able to talk with considerable authority about it in an extensive and intriguing programme note, and to speculate with a high degree of certainty as to its provenance. He is of the opinion that it is probably the work of one of the Benedictine nuns in the Convent of St Georgen am Längsee in Kärnten. The manuscript is notable for its extensive use of various scordatura permutations of tuning, and Skaerved speculates that his chosen Stradivari violin (from the collection in the Royal Northern School of Music in Manchester) was of smaller size not to play routinely higher (as in Bach first Brandenburg Concerto) but to be able to cope better with a variety of different scordature as in the present manuscript. His experience of playing this music on this violin has also suggested to him that the primary aim of the different scordature may not have been technical ease but the quest for different sonorities. Bearing in mind his speculation that this music is the work of a practising nun, we should also bear in mind the apparent religious significance of different tunings in the parallel work of Biber. As there is no attempt in the manuscript to group the mainly short dance movements into suites, Skaerved simply plays them in order, pointing out that with digital technology it is easy for a listener to construct their own suites if they wish! Perhaps unsurprisingly given its probable context, this is not amongst the showiest of this type of music for solo violin – this is probably music for the enjoyment of the player and possibly for a small select audience, in contrast to the music of the travelling violin virtuosi of this period, designed to stun and impress with its technical fireworks. Appropriately, Skareved’s Stradivari instrument produces a delicate if slightly shallow sound, but his intelligent readings and lyrical interpretations of these pieces make for rewarding listening.

D. James Ross

Plamena Nikitassova
56:59
Ricercar RIC412

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While at one point Bach’s music for solo violin was seen as a unique contribution to the violin repertoire, it is now recognised that it is part of a mainstream tradition probably begun in 1662 with the publication of a set of sonatas for solo violin by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and rapidly imitated and developed by a host of 17th- and early 18th-century composers. It is clear from these 1696 works by Westhoff that the solo violin sonata was already in an advanced state of refinement, and he was able to contribute his natural sense of melody along with an aspiration towards polyphonic textures and chordal underpinning. From his base at the musically rich baroque court of Dresden, Westhoff ranged widely throughout Europe, earning plaudits for his virtuosity on the violin. He left very few works, some like the Sonatas of 1696 in a unique copy and that incomplete – the damaged sixth sonata is replaced on this recording with a work published in Paris ten years earlier. Plamina Nikitassova has made a considerable reputation for herself specialising in the violin music of the 17th century and has allowed two German treatises to inform her playing and bowing techniques, holding the violin ‘below her left breast’ and using the thumb to help tension the bow hairs. According to the detailed programme notes by Dr Peter Wollny, the clear instructions in these treatises pose challenges, the solutions to which have given Nikitassova new insights into the early baroque violin and its repertoire. The results are certainly very pleasing and convincing, and there is a freedom and lightness of tone in her playing which certainly suits this wonderfully spontaneous and imaginative music.

D. James Ross

Labirinti Armonici
60:43
Brilliant Classics 95966

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As a talented amateur like Marcello and Albinoni, Bonporti was able to afford himself a degree of creative freedom in his compositions. This is apparent in these imaginative and original trio sonatas, in which he gradually abandons the conventional concept of the sonata da chiesa and adopts a more ‘modern’ chamber style with elements of the concerto grosso contrast between ‘solo’ and ‘tutti’ episodes, which he would have observed in Corelli’s 1694 trio sonatas. It is also interesting to observe in the course of Bonporti’s op. 1 the gradual emancipation of the bass into a sort of basso concertato, participating more and more actively in the melodic interest. The printed part-books appeared in 1696, within two years of the Corelli, and the publication was probably aimed at a small circle of intellectuals in Trent who could appreciate the modernity and subtlety of Bonporti’s talent. Unfortunately, Bonporti’s family never seem to have appreciated his musical talents, and, as he died without children, he had no-one to pass his compositional skills on to. It is by sheer chance, though also a mark of their quality, that Bonporti’s op. 10 inventions for violin, cello and harpsichord or lute were mistakenly published as works by Bach, ensuring that some attention fell on him as a composer when the error was discovered. The present performances bring out the originality and charm of these early compositions of Bonporti, approaching his music with an engaging freshness and open-mindedness, which brings the music vividly to life.

D. James Ross

Italico Splendore
63:26
Tactus TC 632203

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These trio sonatas by Vitali are essentially sonatas da chiesa, intended for use in the church and the home, which explains the fact that the occasionally unfettered creativity of late-17th-century violin music is slightly muted here. Employed at the Este Court in Modena, Vitali would have been privileged to have been surrounded by first-class music-making as well as an inexhaustible archive of written music, and these pieces have a wonderfully cosmopolitan quality, as well as a striking sense of assurance. Very well regarded during his own lifetime, Vitali may now not be considered as belonging in the top ranks of Italian Baroque composers, but the present CD presenting all twelve of his opus 2 Sonatas of 1682 suggests a gifted and original musical imagination at work. Within the conventions of the Sonata da Chiesa, Vitali manages to produce melodies of melting beauty such as the Adagio of the fourth sonata. In addition to the two excellent Baroque violinists Claudio Andriani and Micol Vitali (a descendant?) playing wonderfully sonorous original Italian Baroque instruments, Italico Splendore field a pleasingly varied continuo team of cello, violone, archlute/theorbo/Baroque guitar and organ/harpsichord.

D. James Ross

Andreas Böhlen, Michael Hell, Daniel Rosin, Pietro Prosser
73:20
AEOLUS AE-10306

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Notwithstanding his embarrassment of Christian names (including all three wise men!), Giuseppe Francesco Gaspare Melchiorre Baldassare Sammartini is the less celebrated of the two Sammartini brothers – Giovanni Battista being the more familiar. Indeed, as David Lasocki’s excellently comprehensive programme note points out, ‘our’ Sammartini’s works are nowadays practically unperformed apart from a concerto for descant recorder and strings. His bold assertion that nothing else by Sammartini or, indeed, by his contemporaries prepares us for these sonatas, which he describes as ‘staggeringly original’, is powerfully born out by these lovely performances. Sammartini has the gift, limited to very few of his fellow composers such as Purcell, Telemann and Handel, of finding his own very individual melodic and harmonic path through the generally very conventional landscape of Baroque music. It is safe to say in, for example, the Andante of the F major Sinfonia (Track 9) Sammartini simply never goes in the direction you would predict, finding some novel route rather than a cliché. The son of a professional French oboist Alexis Saint-Martin, Giuseppe and his brother Giovanni toured Italy taking up a succession of posts mainly in opera orchestras before Giuseppe progressed to the musical hot-spot of London, where he carved out a career before ending his days in royal employment. As an oboist, he would have been expected to ‘double’ on recorder and flute as required, but the superb understanding of the treble recorder apparent in these sonatas (in effect these pieces are all sonatas, for all some are called concertos and others sinfonias) suggests that he played the instrument as a solo virtuoso and probably also taught it. The performances here are stunning, technically utterly assured, musically sympathetic and the players are clearly aware of the originality of the material they are presenting. Andreas Böhlen’s exquisite playing on three recorders (copies of Steenbergen, Jacob Denner and Stanesby junior originals) is utterly persuasive and is very sympathetically and imaginatively supported by model continuo team of harpsichord, cello and lute. This window on Sammartini’s recorder works, which all survive in a single manuscript in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, partly explains the current undeserved obscurity of this music – much of the chamber music of the early Baroque period circulated in manuscript form and amazingly has either remained unpublished until our own times, or are still unpublished. The numbering of the Parma pieces recorded here suggests plenty of scope for at least a volume 2 of these delightful sonatas – we look forward to this with eager anticipation.

D. James Ross

Ensemble Danguy, Tobie Miller
51:15
Ricercar RIC398

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I have to say when I saw the cover of this CD my heart sank – Les Saisons Amusantes: Nicolas Chédeville (after Antonio Vivaldi). Over the years I have reviewed so many CDs where people felt impelled to ‘muck about’ with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with more or less disastrous results. However, a closer examination revealed that tampering with Vivaldi was not just a phenomenon of our times – this CD presents a version by Nicolas Chédeville printed in 1739 and arranged in the French taste of the period for ‘les musettes et les vielles avec accompagnement de violon, fluste et Basse continue’! Closer inspection reveals that Mons. Chédeville manages to amass six ‘seasons’, only the first of which (‘Spring’) is a direct transcription of Vivaldi. The other pieces draw freely from other concertos in the Cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione – ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ use none of the music from the equivalent pieces by Vivaldi, while ‘Autumn’ combines the outer movements of the original with the slow movement from Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’. The two additional pieces (La Moisson and Les Plaisirs de la Saint-Martin) are complete confections from the rest of the Cimento. This would appear already to merit the term ‘mucking about’, albeit 18th-century ‘mucking about’. The ensemble has also been selective in their instrumentation accompanying the solo hurdy-gurdy with two violins, cello, bassoon, theorbo/guitar and harpsichord – so no musettes and no recorder as requested by Chédeville. I think the addition of a musette or two might have been intriguing. If you accept the arrangements at face value along with the instrumentation decisions, the performances have a certain charm, and certainly provide a window on the rather bizarre musical world of early 18th-century France, with its wannabe rustic aristocrats milking imaginary cows and expressing themselves on hurdy-gurdies. So this is certainly not just your standard CD devoted to ‘mucking about’ with Vivaldi, but – notwithstanding the virtuosity – I found the unvarying textures, which might have been helped with the participation of recorder and musettes, a little ennui-making. Quelle domage!

D. James Ross

Estro Cromatico, Marco Scorticati
57:38
Arcana A112

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Corelli at his most inventive and lyrical, beautiful recorder playing sympathetically supported by a classy continuo team – I need hardly say any more! Well, I should probably address the issue that Corelli probably wrote no original music for recorders, and that these Sonatas and Concerti ‘fitted for the flutes’ were arrangements published in London in 1702, 1707 (the Sonatas) and 1725 (the Concerti) to satisfy the enormous demand for music for the newly fashionable recorder. The Sonatas are arranged from Corelli’s op 5 Violin Sonatas, and while they sound technically very demanding, they are played here with enormous assurance. The Concerti, on the other hand, are arrangements of Corelli’s famous op 6 Concerti Grossi, – ironically in their first edition of 1720 inexplicably missing out one or two of the more famous movements, such as the famous Christmas music! These were restored in the 1725 edition performed here, allowing the CD to end with this charming seasonal music which sounds like it was written with recorders in mind! Indeed all of these concerto arrangements sound utterly convincing on two recorders and continuo, and Estro Cromatico perform them with considerable flair, tastefully decorating as appropriate. It is easy to hear the influence of these transcriptions on the resident London composers such as Paisible, Loeillet and Sammartini, all of whom produced substantial amounts of music for recorders and some of whom may even have been involved in the Corelli arrangements. The indefatigable John Walsh, Handel’s chief publisher, was the driving force behind the publication of these arrangements, which proved very popular at the time, and provide recorder players nowadays with legitimate access to the music of Corelli.

D. James Ross

Plamena Nikitossova violin,  Julian Behr theorbo,  Matthias Müller violone,  Jörg-Andreas Botticher harpsichord/organ
70:02
Claves 50-1727

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This exploration of the fantastical world of 17th-century virtuosic solo violin music adds a number of names to the increasingly familiar Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Georg Muffat. Heinrich Lizkau, Phillip Friedrich Böddecker, Heinrich Döbel, Johann Jacob Walter and Johann Caspar Kerll can all hold their heads up in this impressive company, producing wildly imaginative music for solo violin, which jumping a generation or two seems to have more in common with the technical fireworks and sheer fantasy of the likes of Paganini. As a Biber fan of long standing, it is exciting to have confirmed that he was by no means working in isolation, and we can almost hear these composers vying with one another in the sheer quirky creativity of their compositions. Plamena Nikitossova plays with stunning virtuosity and enormous flair,  as well as a saucy wit where appropriate, and the distinctive playing position she adopts following the advice of Georg Falck’s 1688 treatise Idea boni cantoris adds a certain authenticity to her approach. Her Jakobus Stainer violin of 1659 has a rich and flamboyant tone, while her continuo team employing a modern copy of a Stradivarius guitar (!), theorbo, violone, a clavimusicum omnitonum, and the 1642 organ of the Franziskanerkirche in Vienna are sympathetically supportive.

D. James Ross