Tag: Chamber music

Guillermo Turina cello, Eugenia Boix soprano, Tomoko Matsuoka harpsichord
[Cantatas and Sinfonie di violoncello a solo]
71:54
Cobra Records COBRA 0063

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]orn and raised in Venice, Giacomo Facco took a post with the Spanish Spinola family who rose to power in Sicily before being expelled and returning to Spain, where Facco joined them for the rest of his life. The present CD selects music from his major publications consisting of cantatas for soprano, cello and continuo, interspersed with sinfonias for cello and continuo. While the cantatas he published while working in Italy are a little pedestrian, the later Spanish-period works sound more convincing. However, none of the cantatas sound as interesting as Facco’s innovative and engaging sinfonias for cello and harpsichord. This is partly due on the present CD to Guillermo Turino’s exciting technique on the Baroque cello, which brings these latter works to life, and contrasts with Eugenia Boix’s rather swooping accounts of the cantatas, which I found a little wearing after a while. Frankly, it is hard to account for the enormous enthusiasm shown by Facco’s fans, including his first biographer Uberto Zanolli, who entitled his book ‘Giacomo Facco : Master of Kings’. To my ear, Facco’s idiom is very conventional, and it came as no surprise to read in the notes that he was sidelined from his final post at the Spanish Court in Madrid by the arrival of the great Farinelli.

D. James Ross

Passacaglia Baroque ensemble
70:08
Barn Cottage Records bcr017
Transcriptions of Vivaldi by Bach, Chédeville & Passacaglia

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]assacaglia are renowned for their wonderfully passionate and detailed playing, and for their custom of arranging Baroque music to suit their instrumental ensemble. This CD illustrates both these characteristics. It features arrangements by later composers – J. S. Bach and Nicolas Chédeville – of Vivaldi’s music, which then undergoes a further transformation at the hands of Passacaglia, who re-instrument it all over again. While I love their lively playing, I find that some of their arrangements have something of a ‘mock-Baroque’ feeling to them, with some of the instruments, particularly the recorders, being asked to do rather unidiomatic things in rather unidiomatic keys. Of course, in the hands of the wonderfully virtuosic Annabel Knight and Louise Bradbury, the playing is never less than superbly accomplished, but sometimes it all sounds a little contrived. The group’s rearrangements of Chédeville’s transcriptions for musette or hurdy-gurdy of two of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, where a hurdy-gurdy is ‘enhanced’ by recorders and a violin along with continuo instruments, seems to me to be neither one thing or another – or rather a whole new thing conjured up by Passacaglia. We have all heard the Vivaldi original and I have heard Chédeville’s transcription on a hurdy-gurdy, both of which are very effective, but what is this? I am always puzzled by Baroque ensembles who feel bound to create their own versions of Baroque music, given that there is such a treasury of music from the period out there which has never seen the light of day. You will enjoy the wonderfully fresh playing on this CD, but I must say I prefer my Baroque music less comprehensively ‘under cover’.

D. James Ross

Manuel Staropoli recorders & Baroque flute, Massimo Marchese theorbo
228:18 (4 CDs in a case)
Brilliant Classics 95595

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n this four-CD account of the complete works of Robert de Visée, the performers have taken creative though entirely justifiable liberties with the instrumentation to involve instruments such as the recorder and Baroque flute known to have been in vogue in Versailles at the time and to give the music the genuine sound of chamber music. The resulting performances are pleasing and reveal in exhaustive detail de Visée’s talents as a composer. With very little known about him as an individual, we rely on the music to characterize both the period and its composer, and this it does very well. If perhaps four CDs of this music could be regarded as ‘peak de Visée’, we should remember that it would never have been performed en masse  like this, rather whiling away Royal ennuies  interspersed with other solo, chamber and larger-scale music. Given the limitations of the music and the ensemble, the performers do a fine job alternating the instruments and bringing the music charmingly to life. Just kick off your dancing pumps, hang up your wig, channel your inner Roi Soleil  and sit back and enjoy this never less than elegant Musique de la Chambre du Roi. For more active listeners, the brief programme notes find room to list the instruments used as well as the few facts that are known about de Visée.

D. James Ross

Stephen Schultz baroque flute, Jory Vinikour harpsichord
55:18
Music & Arts CD-1295
BWV1020 (attrib), 1031 (attrib), 1030, 1032

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is another very good recording of the Bach Flute and Harpsichord Sonatas to go alongside the Naxos CD made by the Finnish duo Pauliinia Fred and Aapo Häkkinen that I reviewed in October 2017. Both CDs contain BWV 1030 in B minor and 1032 in A major, the well-authenticated sonatas whose autograph copies can be dated to 1736, and both have 1031, the accomplished and melodious sonata in E-flat that seems to be a reworking of a Dresden trio by Quantz (QV 2:35) by someone in Bach’s circle. This CD excludes some of the works for flute and simple continuo (1034 in E minor and 1035 in E Major) from the Naxos CD but adds BWV 1020 in G minor, almost invariably attributed to C. P. E. Bach.

The playing is – again – exceptional. Schultz’s tone on his Palanca copy by Martin Wenner is clean and vibrato-free, so his ornaments have all the more force. And the balance of the instruments – with the harpsichordist’s right hand never obscured or overshadowed – is excellent. The harpsichord is a 2010 copy by John Phillips of Berkley CA after an instrument by J. H. Grabner from Dresden in 1722. The give and take is seamless and the tempi never extreme. This is a good advertisement for period instrument performance in the Bay Area of California, even if it needed crowd-funding to make it possible.

David Stancliffe

Anna Torge mandolin, Mayumi Hirasaki violin, Il cantino
61:34
cpo 555 050-2
Music by Arrigoni, Capponi, Hasse & Vivaldi

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his delightful collection of concertos, sonatas and trios by Vivaldi and his contemporaries Carlo Arrigoni, Abbate Ranieri Capponi and Johann Adolf Hasse features the mandolin skills of Anna Torge. With superb musicianship, her simple little instrument brings this music wonderfully to life, ably supported by violinist Mayumi Hirasaki and the small instrumental ensemble, Il cantino. The most famous Vivaldi mandolin concerto is in C major, but the present performers offer a delightful B-flat major concerto as well as a delicate trio in G minor and a sunny C major trio. It is fascinating to hear the equivalent compositions by Vivaldi’s largely unknown contemporaries, which include an atmospheric trio by Arrigoni and a charming sonata for mandolin, cello and lute by Capponi. Johann Adolf Hasse’s concerto, which concludes the CD, introduces a further level of sophistication, with a wider expressive range than the Vivaldi concerti. There is a painting of Hasse’s wife, the singer Faustina Bordoni, one of Handel’s star sopranos in London, playing the mandolin, and Hasse may well have composed his handful of mandolin works for her to play. In any event, it seems likely that her expertise allowed her husband to compose with authority for the instrument. These performances bring out the subtle side of this lovely mandolin and violin repertoire, avoiding the brash approach often heard in other recordings of Vivaldi. A warning for those who buy their CDs based on the cover picture – notwithstanding the prominent appearance of a recorder, no recorders feature on this CD!

D. James Ross

Fretwork
83:02 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Signum Records SIGCD528

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ritain’s premiere viol consort gives wonderfully spirited and expressive accounts of Jenkins’ 17 Fantasias and two Pavans for four viols in this comprehensive and thoroughly engaging double CD set. Sometimes complete recordings such as these need to be dipped in and out of, but such is the variety Jenkins builds into his Fantasias, almost as if he anticipated them receiving complete performances, that boredom is never a danger. Compared to the other English masters of the viol consort, it strikes me that Jenkins displays two diagnostic features: his unerring sense of melodic direction which carries his music through every harmonic complexity, and his unfailing musical imagination which evokes constantly stimulating phrases from even a quite limited number of voice parts. Fretwork’s incomparable familiarity with this repertoire makes them the perfect guide through Jenkins’ rich collection of works, and just as their interpretations never flag neither does our interest. About halfway through the second CD it struck me that these are in general pretty upbeat readings of works, which could conceivably be played much more slowly, but Fretwork’s attention to detail means that we miss nothing in these charming and idiomatic performances.

D. James Ross

Michael Jarvis harpsichord, Paul Luchkow violin
73:55
Marquis 774718147523 (MAR 81475)

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]orrette was active in many musical fields – a prolific pedagogue as well as composer. Le Phénix  may still be his best-known piece either in its original form for four basses de viole  or in one of the many arrangements which circulate (I first heard it on bassoons). However, in recent years a number of his more weighty works have been recorded giving us a rather more rounded view of his output. These sonatas, for the then newly fashionable combination of duetting violin and keyboard were published in 1742, in the wake of Mondonville’s op. 3. Each has three movements fast-slowish-fast and some programmatic content: this is just an overall title for sonatas I-V but extends to the individual movements in VI – Les Voyages d’ Ulysse. The players do a lively, engaging and committed job, taking these indications as a starting point though, given that the keyboard is definitely the musically dominant instrument, it is a shame that it is not a little more forward in the aural image, though I do stress the ‘little’. The booklet notes are sound in content though do incorporate some strange hyphenation and perhaps needed a little more thought about fonts.

David Hansell

Martin Gester harpsichord, Stéphanie Pfister violin
Lidi 0301314-17
74:00
Music by Corrette, Duphly & Mondonville

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]orrette can rarely have had it so good! Three of the discs in my current heap contain at least one sonata from his op. 25, this one claiming to be a first recording, though as it is duplicated on one of the others I have, I’ll leave the artists and/or their recording companies to sort that one out!

This is a very satisfying programme overall, two harpsichord/violin duos (Mondonville as well as the Corrette) being framed and separated by groups of harpsichord ‘solos’ (some of which have subsidiary violin parts) drawn from Duphly’s 2nd and 3rd books. In these Martin Gester plays with an exemplary blend of control and relaxed authority, making full but sensible use of his fine instrument (a copy of the Russell Collection’s remarkable 1769 Taskin). Once or twice I felt he was over-stretching the beat, but this is a tiny issue. More of an issue is the balance between violin and harpsichord in the duos. In general, and given that the keyboard is often the primary instrument, I feel that the violin is too forward in the aural picture and that there are also places where its material is “accompanimental” and simply should be played a little more softly. The supporting material (Eng/Fre) is sound though white print on a dark red background doesn’t make for the easiest reading.

David Hansell

La Rêveuse (Florence Bolton, Benjamin Perrot, Robin Pharo, Carsten Lohff)
64:00
Mirare MIR 386

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here is some marvellously idiomatic playing of marvellously idiomatic music here – the voice of the French Baroque in all its pathos and nobility, though not without lighter moments. The Marais movements are from his last two publications (1717 & 1725). Two skilful arrangements of Couperin for theorbo provide contrast: the barricades have seldom sounded so mystérieuses, though in an entirely good way, I hasten to add. My one reservation concerns the instrumentation of the continuo. The exquisite delicacy of the viol does not need the competition of two plucked accompanists: just one, preferably the theorbo, would have been fine as those pieces in which this is indeed the case demonstrate. The essay is very informative and interesting, even in this slightly lumpy translation, and the general packaging quite robust.

David Hansell