Tag: Chamber music

Elysium Ensemble (Greg Dikmans flute, Lucinda Moon violin)
59:13
resonus RES10207
TWV 40:7, 13, 20, 118-123

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he two instruments found on this recording were among those Telemann instinctively took up in his pre-teen days without any formal knowledge of music; what heights he would later reach. After some biographical details, the CD booklet rightly settles on Quantz, for in this composer’s Solfeggi  over 30 works are found including these “Melodic Canons” (TWV40:118-123) which were published during his sojourn in Paris, also known as his VI Sonates en Duo, for Flutes, Violins, or Gambas. Usually, we hear these on two violins, yet they have also previously been recorded on two flutes, and a combination of flute and oboe; here we have violin and flute taking on the canonic lines. With the flute used here, a copy of a Quantz instrument (c.1740) with two keys, we encounter the lower pitch (A= 392/400, so-called Tief-Kammerton) which does affect the brightness of these works, and slower tempi than usual are applied, resulting in elegant, measured readings. The chosen Fantasias for flute  (Nos. 6 and 12 in D minor and G minor respectively) again expose us to this lower, darker pitch. Perhaps the fine, nimble violinist could have had another Fantasia to close the disc? At just under an hour, the recording offers an alternative route through these neatly crafted pieces. Though not new to our ears, they take a novel approach; a pleasant recap.

David Bellinger

Wolfram Schurig flauto, Johannes Hämmerle cembalo
55:30
fra bernardo fb 1711192

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the many Corelli students to grace the first half of the 18th century, Giovanni Battista Somis was a virtuoso violinist and a composer. Much praised for his expressive playing and an influential advocate of the violin, Somis was obviously also an accomplished composer with a distinctive voice. He composed mainly for his own instrument, and the present sonatas are selected from his opp. 3 and 4, published in 1725 and 1726, for violin solo with cello or harpsichord. They are performed here by Wolfram Schurig on a variety of sizes of recorder, and while it seems unlikely that Somis would have too enthusiastic about this liberty taken with his music – he wrote a Sinfonia for flauto, and clearly would have written more if he had wanted to – these performances work very well indeed. Schurig’s easy virtuosity on the recorder and Hämmerle’s wonderfully supportive harpsichord playing are a delight to listen to, and while we miss the double-stopping demanded in some of the pieces (and also the wonderful bow control for which Somis was widely admired), these performances are very persuasive indeed. While Schurig’s programme note is mostly devoted to largely spurious arguments for performing Somis’ violin music on recorders, it does make the relevant point that, of all the Corelli pupils, Somis is the one who most quickly and completely stepped out of his master’s shadow to produce music of genuine individuality and charm. I would have liked to have heard more about Somis’ long career, and am frankly baffled by the CD’s title and the cover illustration, a 1932 snap of Claudette Colbert!

D. James Ross

concerto italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini
68:17
naïve OP30575
BWV582, 588, 988, 989

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here seems to be no end to the processes of second-guessing the inventiveness of Bach’s gift of parodying his own compositions. Re-cycling music too good not to find a continuing life was clearly a temptation to which he frequently yielded. A few years ago a chamber group from Philadelphia, Tempesta di Mare, produceded a CD of the Trio Sonatas for organ (BWV 525-530) arranged for a variety of period instruments by Richard Stone: some movements already existed as prototypes, parodied by Bach himself as sinfonias in cantatas. I much enjoyed hearing them, and indeed bought the transcriptions and have played a number of them. Now Rinaldo Alessandrini has taken a number of Bach works where Variations are the linking theme, and scored them for a few strings and continuo.

The results are enjoyable, and mostly pretty successful. The Passacaglia in C minor taken from BWV 582 (which Alessandrini outdatedly claims was for the pedal harpsichord originally) sounds well on strings in D minor. The way the melodic material of successive variations frequently grows out of the preceding figurations suits the four-part string instrument texture well, as does the polyphony of the fugue. This is a full-blooded performance, and lets you know what you are in for, in terms of a “no holds barred” style.

A lover of Vivaldi, Alessandrini sees the potential in developing a keyboard work into a rather fuller texture. While the Canzona (BWV 588) is a literal transcription, and the Italian Aria variations translate pretty straightforwardly into a sonata for violin and basso continuo, it is in the Goldberg Variations that we see him working the sketchy counterpoint possible on the keyboard – where there are frequent hints of a third or even fourth part in more polyphonic variations – into new, freely composed parts. Sometimes the result goes with a swing (as in Variation 1) or lets us hear in detail what the keyboard original only suggests. Sometimes it is too far from the original, and sounds almost like Brahms (as in the minor Variation 25). So, while I admire Alessandrini’s ingenuity (and his normally pretty minimalist continuo playing), I am not altogether taken with his arrangements here, though his rather spare sounds are certainly an improvement in textural terms on the chamber orchestra version recorded by Bernard Labadie and Les Violons du Roy in 2014.

All this is a long way from Stokowsky’s orchestration of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Bach, after all, was known to improvise a third voice when playing continuo, but I am not sure that I’ll play these Goldbergs in wakeful hours of the night. Each variation’s scoring raises some new hare running in my mind, and I’d be endlessly switching on the light and reaching for the score. I’m more likely to keep it in the car for long journeys.

On the whole, it’s a stimulating exercise, and well worth doing, though for my money Tempesta di Mare and Richard Stone do it better, if you want to explore the possibilities of this kind of parody technique.

David Stancliffe

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