Tag: Chamber music

L’Art de la modulation
Ars Antiqua with Elizabeth Wallfisch
65:07
Nimbus Alliance NI 6347

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese six delightful “Quatuors pour un Hautboy, 2 Violons, et Basse” were published in 1755. Gambist Mark Kramer’s notes say relatively little of the music (in all honesty, there is not much he could have said, since these are the composer’s only surviving chamber works) but they do a marvellous job of setting the scene, describing the transition of taste and artistic and musical styles as the strict order of Louis XIV’s France gave way to the Age of Enlightenment. Philidor was better known in his own day as a master chess player, capable of playing three games simultaneously while blindfolded; thus, writing music in four parts in ever-varying combinations was no complex task for him. These are enjoyable pieces, very nicely played, but they are less contrapuntally complex than Telemann’s of three decades earlier, and – in terms of the rococo filigree that Kramer highlights – they scarcely rival the many quartets produced by Janitsch, his Berlin-based contemporary. Ars Antiqua perform sinfonie  3, 4 and 6 with flute instead of oboe. Their inclusion of a harp is probably justified on the basis of the instrument’s popularity in French music tooms of the period, and I suppose the original gamba player might have read over the keyboard player’s shoulder. Yes, these are quartets for six! And thoroughly entertaining they are, too.

Brian Clark

Pauliina Fred, Aapo Häkkinen
70:17
Naxos 8.573376
BWV 1030-35

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a very good recording, and stands up well to all the others I know in quality of tone, the clarity of the recording and the sense of partnership between the two players, both well-known in the Finnish period instrument world.

Fred plays most of the sonatas on a full-toned and crystal-clear Wenner copy of a Palanca flute, but switches for BWV 1035 to a lighter-voiced copy of a Rottenburg by Claire Soubeyran. In this sonata she is accompanied – the right word here for the sonatas where the keyboard is a continuo instrument rather than a sparring partner – by a clavichord, whose arpeggios in the final Allegro assai seem especially plausible. For BWV 1033, which may have had its origins in a sonata for unaccompanied flute dating from Bach’s time in Köthen, Häkkinen plays a lute-harpsichord by Knif & Ollikka (2014). This certainly suits the rhapsodic nature of this sonata well, while in BWV 1032 he plays an Italian-style instrument, where the single 8’ used in the slow movement is a singing alternative to the lute stops used in the slow movements of 1030, 1031 and 1034. These multiple possibilities of registration illustrate the quality of preparation that has gone into the choices the players make about tone, phrasing and tempi, especially the easing of the tempo where it seems right. In the other sonatas, registration – including the use of the lute stop – seems well-judged, and softens the edge of the somewhat hard-toned flute (so good for balancing with other instruments in a larger band, I imagine) a bit.

The quality of attention one to the other in these sonatas is very high, and makes for chamber music making of the highest order. I can’t believe that there could be a better recording of these characterful and diverse works. I entirely recommend this CD.

David Stancliffe

The Bach Players
54:13
Hyphen Press Music HPM 011
BWV1057 + BuxWV257

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a first-rate performance of a late and intriguing work that is under-performed. There is a CD by Ton Koopman from 2009 and a more recent one by Ricercar in 2015, but this version was prepared and scored by Silas Wollston, the group’s harpsichordist, whose excellent essay in the booklet Bach the orator  is a model for what research and performance practice can create, and I doubt if it could be bettered. He convincingly summarises Ursula Kirkendale’s thesis that the rhetorical basis for the order of the movements is to be found in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, and displays how this works in practice.

Everything is good, except possibly the choice of a Buxtehude trio sonata as a filler: there are a lot of underperformed J. S. Bach fragments among his more canonic writing, (BWV 1072-8), or his arrangement of Fasch’s trio for organ (BWV 585) which might play more interestingly alongside The Musical Offering  than BuxWV 257.

But this is really beside the point. The playing – apart from a slightly lumpy start to the Ricercar à3 – is neat, balanced and fluid. Each of the players in Nicolette Moonen’s group (flute, violin, gamba and harpsichord) is confident without being exhibitionistic and the clarity of the recording in a sufficiently yeilding acoustic is a tribute to the seasoned producer, Roy Mowatt, and the editor, Nick Parker. Silas Wollston plays a Clayson & Garrett copy of a Dulcken 1745 instrument.

David Stancliffe

Armoniosa
64:40
MDG Scene 903 1978-6

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]everal previous encounters with the chamber works of Giovanni Benedetto Platti (c. 1697-1763) have a favourable impression fully confirmed by this new CD of trio sonatas. Born in the region of Padua, Platti was educated in Venice, where his father served as violist at San Marco. In 1722 he went with a group of Italian musicians to Würzburg, where he was offered a place in the service of the prince-bishop of Bamburg and Würzburg. On the archbishop’s death two years later the orchestra was disbanded but Platti managed to find employment with the archbishop’s brother in nearby Wiesentheid, where it seems most of his music was composed. After the court orchestra was re-formed in 1729 Platti returned to Würzburg, where he would remain until his death in 1763. There he came into contact with Tiepolo, who included Platti in one of his frescos forming a part of his re-decoration of the palace.

Platti composed 22 trio sonatas, of which the six performed here have been published. With the exception of the Sonata in C minor, WD 694 (the numbering comes from the Wiesentheid library that is home to Platti’s manuscripts), which has only three, all have four movements, including the odd one employing dance forms. They tend to strike a balance between older Baroque forms and newer galant  tendencies. Unsurprisingly it is the minor key works that are more likely to adopt the former, though the B-flat Trio ends with a well-worked fugue culminating in a particularly satisfying stretto. Arguably the most satisfying sonata is the G minor (WD 691), which opens with noble, flowing Largho (sic) with considerable contrapuntal intricacy, before proceeding to a terse Allegro making much play on imitative sequences, another Largho, a heart-easing movement with effective use of suspensions and a brisk finale not without some quirky moments to add spice. Also worthy of special note is the opening Adagio assai of the Sonata in D (WD 680), an expansive melody that sounds like a quasi-operatic aria. But Platti’s writing in general is highly accomplished and appealing. If there is a fault it is perhaps an over- reliance on sequences.

The performances by the Italian ensemble Armoniosa are very attractive, being accomplished technically, thoughtful and unfailingly musical. I was especially taken by the readings of some of the slower movements, where there is much affecting cantabile playing. Full marks, too, for the stylish ornamentation the players apply to repeats (most movements are binary form). One curiosity is the use of both harpsichord and organ as keyboard continuo at the same time, which presumably accounts for the thickening up of the bass texture. I write ‘presumably’ as it is difficult to tell just how much this happens, since the harpsichord is so backwardly balanced that it frequently cannot be heard. Still, this is a fine CD of music that is assuredly worth investigating.

Brian Robins

Linde Brunmayr-Tutz transverse flute, Lars Ulrik Mortensen harpsichord
58:19
fra bernardo fb 1611782
Music by C. P. E. Bach, F. Benda, Kirnberger & Quantz

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a beautiful CD of 18th-century music for flute and harpsichord by some of its finest exponents, many of them associated with the Prussian court of the celebrated royal flautist Frederick II. The enormous popularity of the transverse flute around the middle of the century along with the related triumph of ‘Empfindsamkeit’ as a general approach to music-making meant that some of the finest composers of the age devoted themselves to composing flute music, and one of them even wrote the definitive guide on how to play it. Johann Joachim Quantz is represented here by a fine sonata and an intriguing Adagio from his ‘Method’, which the performers present according to the recommendations contained in the method. The initial ‘flicks’ to important notes are reminiscent of traditional flute playing and remind us that a close look at historical playing tutors always bears interesting fruit. The music on this CD is of uniformly superb standard as is the playing of the two musicians. Flautist Professor Linde Brunmayr-Tutz is well known from her exemplary playing in a number of prominent period instrument ensembles, and her prominent suffix acknowledges her marriage to Rudolph Tutz who, alongside Rod Cameron, is one of today’s finest makers of Baroque flutes, and indeed made the flute his wife uses in this recital.

D. James Ross