Tag: Chamber music

Zoltan Darago, Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset
Aparté AP336

Zoltán Daragó is a young Hungarian countertenor who made a name for himself in his homeland as a star in the opera company there at an early age, and sang the title role of the Pharoah in Philip Glass’s opera AKHNATEN in Helsinki when he was just 28.

This CD is a set of splendid arias from the Bach cantatas, put together as a dramatic showcase of the range and diversity of arias for the alto voice. It was recorded in Paris, where Daragó has made his European base, with a period band, Les Talens Lyriques, who are directed by Christophe Rousset, a deservedly well-known Parisian harpsichordist.

This sounds all good. But – and it’s a big but – there are some real oddities. First, I do not care for his voice much – there’s a tight vibrato that means that the instrumental and vocal timbres never meet; and second, some of the wonderful music is really beyond what this style of singing can cope with: In the opening aria from BWV 83, Erfreute Zeit, he barely gets his voice round the semiquavers in tempo while the violin concertato and corni are whooping it up. The third oddity is the enormous size of the band: 6.5.3.4.1 plus another cello in the continuo group is a bit much with traversi, a four-part oboe band, and a couple of corni, and so they are miked down. There’s some splendid playing, like the oboe d’amore obbligato in BWV 115, but the instruments are not conceived as a Bachian band of equal partners so much as an accompanying orchestra.

Perhaps the opening aria of BWV 170, Vergnügte Ruh’, shows Daragó at his best: not hurried, and the ensemble neater. But I still would not rush to buy this CD, however much of a hoped-for calling card this might be.

David Stancliffe

Ulrike Hofbauer, Monika Mauch, Georg Poplutz, Thomas Gropper SATB, L’arpa festante, conducted by Markus Uhl
64:54
Christophorus CHR 77480

Johann Friedrich Fasch is today arguably best known for something he didn’t do rather than what he did. In 1723, having recently accepted the position of Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, he withdrew his application to become cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, of which he was an alumnus, apparently because he did not wish to teach Latin. That post ultimately went to J S Bach. What Fasch did do was create a body of compositions, many now lost, that makes Bach’s prodigious output look positively miserly. In addition to a huge number of instrumental works, it includes no fewer than eight cycles of sacred cantatas, having been expected during his tenure in Zerbst (from 1722 until his death in 1758) to provide at least three cantatas for each weekend.

It is not known how much Fasch contributed to a genre that played an important role in the occasional life of an 18th-century court. That was the ceremonial odes or serenatas that were an integral part of the celebration of births, birthdays, marriages and deaths of rulers and their closest kin. In Fasch’s case only two such works survive today, the first celebrating the birthday of Johann August, the ruling prince of Anhalt-Zerbst on 9 August 1723, the second, interestingly, that of the Princess Sophie Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catherine the Great in 1757. It is the earlier with which we are concerned here.¹

Freudenbezeugung der Vier Tageszeiten (Joyful Testimony of the Four Times of Day) is described as a serenata, implying it was given in a dramatic context, although this is not clear. Both words and music were written by Fasch, the text introducing four allegorical figures – Aurora, the morning, Phoebus, noon, Hesperus, the evening, and Cynthia the night – whose panegyrics celebrate Johann August’s birthday. The work is lavishly scored for three trumpets and timpani (who only appear in the final chorus, sung by the soloists), two recorders that have a concertante role in the charming triple-time sleep aria for Cynthia, and oboes, given a concertante part in arias for Aurora. Arias are all in da capo form, while stylistically the music is in the galant style that forms the bridge between the Baroque and Classical. As anyone that has heard any of Fasch’s innumerable suites or concertos knows, his music is never less than enjoyable, melodically highly inventive and frequently displaying felicitous touches of instrumental colour – all features on generous display here.

The performance is dutiful and efficient without ever catching fire. Of the four soloists only soprano Monika Mauch is likely to be familiar outside Germany and here in the alto role of Aurora she is the pick of the soloists singing her single aria with considerable charm. The soprano Ulrike Hofbauer (Cynthia) has a bright, agile voice, but her diction is poor even by the low standards that prevail today. The opening of the central section of the ‘sleep’ aria mentioned above screams for a messa di voce but doesn’t get one, but Hofbauer’s ornamentation is good and she even has a trill. Neither of the male soloists rises above average, while the orchestral playing is proficient but hardly inspired by Markus Uhl’s pedestrian direction. Like so many German Baroque ensembles, L’arpa festante favour fussy, over-indulgent continuo that includes a lute, an instrument that was not on the pay role of the Anhalt-Zerbst court in 1723. I was recently berated by a reader on my Facebook site for complaining about the lack of an essential translation of a text. Well, this also comes with only the German text, but it would be idle to pretend it matters as much here.

The serenata is preceded by a four-movement Fantasia featuring different concertante instruments, including in the Largo (iii) a chalumeau. Full marks here to Uhl for understanding that a Baroque largo does not proceed at a funereal pace.

Brian Robins

1. Textbooks for many others survive in the library of the Francisceum in Zerbst, now a secondary school but once a renowned university. ↩︎

Sandrine Piau, Amel Brahim-Djelloul, Karine Deshayes, Lucile Richardot SSSmS, Les Paladins, Jérôme Correas
64:00
Aparté AP359

The story of the rape and subsequent suicide of the Roman noblewoman Lucretia in 509 BC has resonated down the centuries. As a political event that spelt the end of the Roman monarchy and as a personal tragedy, the sexual violence of Sextus Tarquinius, son of the king of Rome, has captured the attention of writers such as Livy, Ovid and later Shakespeare, painters like Artemisia Gentileschi, herself a victim of rape and portrayer of the scene in four separate paintings, and composers. The best-known versions in music are the early cantata by Handel, included here, and Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia. Surprisingly we are told by Jérôme Correas in his note that the Baroque era yielded only three further versions of the tale set to music, all of which are included on the present disc, providing a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the settings.

The earliest of the four is that by Alessandro Scarlatti, the ‘father’ of the Italian cantata, whose setting of a text by the Roman nobleman Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj dates from 1680. An abridged version of the same libretto was employed by the Venetian Benedetto Marcello, who omitted the final aria. Handel’s version is something of a mystery, since it is not known where or when it was composed, nor has the author of the libretto been identified. It is frequently attributed to Pamphilj, though if it is his work it is a quite different text to the one set by Scarlatti and Marcello. Examination of the paper type has also led scholars to believe it was composed before Handel arrived in Rome, either in Florence or Venice. It is interestingly also the only one of the four cantatas to have a text entirely in the words of the stricken Lucrezia, the others all including narrative passages written in the third person. The final cantata by the French composer Michel Pignolet de Montéclair has an Italian text but the musical style tends to that of the ‘goûts réunis’ that sought to unite French and Italian taste. All four cantatas fundamentally employ the alternating recitative and aria structure, though within this pattern is an array of contrast. Scarlatti, for example, binds his final stretch of recitative with a touching vocal ritornello, ‘Ma che farai mia cor’, its repetitions more affecting as Lucrezia comes ever closer to death. It is here one of the highlights of the performance by the Algerian soprano Amel Brahim-Djelloul. But no one can match the sheer exuberance of the young Handel, whose structure abides by no rules in an extended setting that includes only two arias, but concludes with passages of an infinitely moving arioso, as death starts to steal in on Lucrezia and then a final, furious recitative outburst of unrestrained anger directed at the man who has defiled her.

In nearly every respect, this ought to have been an outstanding release, but sadly it is seriously flawed, not for musical reasons but because Aparté have taken the foolish step of issuing the CD without bothering to translate the texts into English. Such is the importance of the communication of words in this repertoire, both directly by the singer and to the listener that the lack of translation seriously diminishes the impact of these works to those without Italian or French.

It is a luxury to have four different singers, including three of France’s leading early music artists, although Karine Deshayes is generally associated more with bel canto. Her singing of the Handel has considerable merit, but in a work so frequently performed doesn’t quite match the finest versions. The lesser-known name, particularly outside France, is Brahim-Djelloul , whose singing of the Scaralatti veers between the sensitivity described above and some rather overwrought singing more suited to the opera house than the chamber. No reservations apply to Sandrine Piau’s exquisitely nuanced Montéclair or the Marcello of mezzo Lucile Richardot, whose powerful projection reminds us she is today one of France’s paramount actor-singers. Finally, it must be mentioned that the support by Les Paladins is exemplary; on their own account they contribute a fine performance of Marcello’s Concerto in F minor, op 1/7 and a brief but affecting sinfonia from Bernardo Pasquini’s oratorio Il martirio dei santi Vito.

No one that has a fair understanding of Italian and/or French should miss out on this fascinating collection. Those that don’t, well, you’ve been warned. Three boos to Aparté, whose slovenly presentation does poor service to the outstanding performers on the CD.

Brian Robins