Tag: Chamber music

Phantasm73:10
Linn Records CKD 594

Of all the composers of Jacobean viol consort music, it seems to me that Matthew Locke is the one who makes most characteristic use of the viol while at the same time maintaining his roots firmly in the English idiom. The various four-part Suites and the two six-part Canons which Phantasm have chosen for this rich and varied programme show every aspect of Locke’s talent, ranging from music of profound intensity and seriousness to dancing episodes of felicitous energy. The sonorous texture of the viols is beautifully augmented by the theorbo of Elizabeth Kenny, which adds a percussive quality to the superbly smooth viol texture, points up the part writing and enriches the harmonies. These musicians are steeped in the music of this turbulent period, which saw the execution of a king, the temporary triumph of republicanism and then the restoration of monarchy, and they apply the full depth of their understanding to this unique music all composed in the potentially hostile England of Cromwell. As the group’s director Laurence Dreyfus suggests in his hugely readable programme note, this ‘hostile environment’ goes some way to explain Locke’s constant quest for novelty and originality. However, this is by no means music for those with a short attention span, as for every quirky body-swerve and unexpected change of tack there is an extended and eloquent passage in which a musical idea is more than fully developed. This is a lovely CD oozing musicality from every pore, and Phantasm and Elizabeth Kenny provide expert guidance through every twist and turn of Locke’s rich imagination.

D. James Ross

Wayward Sisters
59:16
J. S. Bach, Brade, Corbetta, Corelli, Fontana, Geminiani, B. Marini, Matteis, Schmelzer, Schop & de Selma y Salaverde

This CD is something of a whistle-stop tour of 17th- and 18th-century European chamber music. The composers represented are not all the most obvious – Bach, Corelli, Marini Schmelzer, Matteis, Brade, Geminiani all feature but so do Giovanni Batista Fontana, Bartolomé de Selma v Salaverde and Francesco Corbetta. The ensemble, Wayward Sisters, comprises a violinist, recorder player, cellist and a theorbist/lutanist, and they play the music with an intimate awareness of Baroque performance practice and with considerable musicality and virtuosity. This is fortunate as a rather ‘off the wall’ programme note suggests very little understanding of the music’s context – in it, theorbist John Lenti opines ‘Pre-enlightenment western culture was weird’. Is he punning wittily on the group’s name? Elsewhere the statement that the name derives from ‘Henry Purcell’s vivid conjuring of Shakespeare’s witches’ (?) suggests not… The group acknowledges support through indiegogo, a crowdfunding forum, so (obviously) the packaging of this CD, including the devising of the programme notes, has been done on a shoestring. Probably the important point to make is that it has allowed a group of fine young musicians to bring their very pleasing playing to a wider audience. The recording is slightly ‘close’ for my taste, but certainly provides a ‘vivid conjuring’ of the group’s dynamic sound.

D. James Ross

Labirinti Armonici
58:01
Brilliant Classics 95718

The first nine of the ten trio sonatas that make up Francesco Antonio Bonporti’s op. 2 consist of four dance-based movements, while the final sonata is a Ciaccona in G. Superficially they resemble Corelli’s sonate da camera, but there is a greater degree of contrapuntal complexity (the imitations come thicker and faster, for example) and Bonporti has a wider harmonic palette. Labirinti Armonici opt to perform the sonatas out of order; that of the printed set forms no pattern, so this seems sensible. The playing is generally of a high order – there is an occasional lack of ensemble in some of the quick triplet passages, but the overall effect is of a highly professional group at home with the repertoire. So little of Bonporti’s works have been recorded to the highest standards; let us hope this is a start of a revival!

Brian Clark

Rémy Baudet violin, Jaap ter Linden cello, Mike Fentross theorbo & guitar, Pieter-Jan Belder harpsichord
119:53 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Brilliant Classics 95597

As I have written in these pages so many times in the past, recordings of such important repertoire really need to have something new to say about the music as well as the performers; oftentimes, this results in some hot-shot young fiddler taking the 12 sonatas by the scruff of the neck and decorating the living daylights out of them – the overall effect, of course, is that Corelli is lost in a whirlwind of notes and artificial conceits ranging from subito pianissimo to triple fortissimo just for sheer dramatic effect.

Quite to the contrary, this set (which features two “blasts from the past” in ter Linden and Fentross, a relative newcomer in Belder and – I am ashamed to say! – an unknown violinist in Rémy Baudet) is Corelli as the composer would probably have played it! Baudet has for many years led both modern and period ensembles across Europe as well as playing with the Quartetto Italiano and writing a book about developments in violin technique from 1770-1870. He is also quite the violinist, more than capable of shaping Corelli’s most complex part-writing, weaving the delicate filigree of the ornamentation of the slow movements, and actually dancing the dances. He is, of course, in splendid company, and the whole enterprise is beautifully captured by Brilliant’s engineers.

If – for some strange reason – you don’t already have a set of these pieces, buy this one. Even if you have, buy this one – at Brilliant’s amazingly low prices, this will be something against which to measure your favourite!

Brian Clark

Romina Basso mezzo soprano, Il Dolce Conforto directed by Franziska Fleischanderl
62:16
Christophorus CHR 77426
Martini, Perotti, Girolamo Rossi, Ubaldi & Ugolino

But for a cpo CD by Salzburger Hofmusik with 18th-century music chiefly by Telemann featuring Salterio, which I actually bought for the contribution from chalumeaux and Baroque clarinet, I would have been as unaware as I guess most people are of the 18th-century vogue for the instrument. This programme includes delightful instrumental music by Fulgenzio Perotti, Florido Ubaldi and Vito Ugolino featuring the instrument as well as two works for solo alto by Giovanni Battista Martini and Girolamo Rossi which feature salterio in the accompanying ensemble. In Martini’s fine Motetto, due to the prominence of the solo voice, the salterio is initially just part of the accompanying texture, although presently in a couple of items it steps out of the shadows to take a more prominently solistic role alongside the vocalist. In Rossi’s Lezione Quarta, by contrast, the salterio plays a much more fundamental role. The hand-plucked strings of the salterio have a delightful tinkling quality, which allows it to contrast with the harpsichord when the two are playing together, and imbues music it participates in with an elegant and charming timbre. Although I have little to compare it with, Franziska Fleischanderl’s playing is beautifully effective and effortlessly elegant, while Romina Basso’s solo singing and the playing of the ensemble Il Dolce Conforto are both models of musicality and expressiveness. This whole unsuspected repertoire definitely deserves more general attention, and the musicians here have done us a great service in bringing it to a wider.

D. James Ross