Tag: Choral music

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Johannes De Cleve: Missa Rex Babylonis

Cover of Cinquecento CD of de Cleve and Vaet

Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal
71:06
hyperion CDA68241

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Johannes de Cleve (1528/9-1582), while an almost exact contemporary of Palestrina, composed in a recognisably Franco-Flemish style, with its debt to Gombert and, earlier still, Josquin, while there are a few audible nods towards Italy. Originating from modern-day Kleve, the same neck of the woods as Henry VIII’s fourth wife, on the borders of modern Germany and the Netherlands, it is assumed that he was trained in the Low Countries before, in 1553, fetching up in Vienna and having his first book of compositions published in Antwerp. Their almost exact contemporary, the definitely Flemish Jakob Vaet (pronounced “vart”), born in what is now Kortrijk, also fetched up in Vienna, and provides the motet on which Cleve bases his mass. While Vaet is relatively well represented on disc, thanks in no small part to Cinquecento, Cleve is a virtual newcomer. Does his music deserve this extended recognition?

There is no getting away from the fact that Call-me-Vart is the better composer, for all his limited appearance on this disc. His motet lasts over nine minutes, and its sweeping musical narrative puts Cleve into perspective. In Cleve’s mass, there is a lack of subtlety in his use of salient features from Vaet’s motet which suggests that originality is in short supply. There is some stilted homophonic writing in the first section of Carole qui veniens just before some rather by-numbers syncopation, though there is compensation in a striking chromatic passage during the second section. That said, most of his works possess some good moments. His use of dissonance which, like his chromaticism, is touted in most commentaries about him, shows its head assertively in both settings of the Agnus in the Mass. The same animated and affecting Hosanna concludes the Sanctus and Benedictus. And there is some mellifluous polyphony in the Kyrie.

Recently for this journal, I reviewed a disc, sung by the Brabant Ensemble, of music by members of the Franco-Flemish wolf pack, Lupus Hellinck and Johannes Lupi (Hyperion CDA68304). Born three decades before Cleve, there are aspects of their music – fluency, spontaneity, originality, breadth and independence of creative thought – which make it superior to his agreeable competence. As for the performance, Cinquecento produce a rather thick texture and, as a male ensemble albeit with a falsettist, tend to gravitate to lower in the vocal range than a choir such as the Brabant Ensemble, which includes females, and whose renditions are a tad (very acceptably) rougher but whose vocal textures tend to be brighter. As I remarked in my recent review of Cinquecento’s recording of the second book of Palestrina’s Lamentations (Hyperion CDA68284), this rendered them perfect exponents for this more intense and static music, but it can lead to some monotony especially when applied to a composer such as Cleve.

Cleve’s well-wrought dissonances and chromaticisms, within his competent yet still conservative technique, earn him this revival by a major ensemble on a major label. Other composers tell a better story over the piece, but even a lesser composer within the Franco-Flemish School, albeit right at the end of its span, is better than a lesser composer from most other such circles.

Richard Turbet

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O gemma clairissima

O gemma clarissima Music for St Catherine resonus CD cover

Music in praise of St Catharine
The Choirs of St Catharine’s College Cambridge, Edward Wickham
72:02
resonus RES10246
Music by Fawkyner, Frye, Gombert, Jacquet of Mantua, Mouton, Palestrina, Regnart, Senfl, Vermont, Willaert, anon + sarum chant

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The combined forces of St Catharine’s College and Girls’ Choirs are directed by Edward Wickham in this recital of hymns, motets and chants devoted to the martyr St Catharine, after whom both the Catherine Wheel and the Cambridge College are named. The elaborate and gruesome means of Catharine’s martyrdom captured the Medieval imagination, and Renaissance and Medieval settings of texts relating to the saint abound. The choirs sing relevant plainchant and polyphony by Regnart, Senfl, Willaert, Mouton, Frye, Gombert and Palestrina as well as by the less familiar Pierre Vermont, Jacquet de Mantua and Richard Fawkyner. The singing is generally nice and expressive, although there is a slight ‘herd ethic’ resulting perhaps from the combination of the two choirs. The particular demands of Walter Frye’s Kyrie ‘Deus Creator omnium’ and the Eton Choirbook intricacy of Fawkyner’s ‘Gaude rosa sine spinas’ (a 15-minute choral tour de force) inspire some of the finest singing on the CD. The Girls’ Choir also makes some lovely contributions on their own, while the combined voices generally produce a consistently full expressive sound. Edward Wickham’s intelligent direction brings out the full nuances of this largely unfamiliar music, while his wonderfully knowledgeable programme note both entertains and informs.

D. James Ross

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Passio Iberica

Passio Iberica CD cover

García Fajer: The Seven Last Words of Christ; dos Santos: Stabat mater
Divino Sospiro, Massimo Mazzeo
65:21
Pan Classics PC 10401

This revelatory CD presents music for Holy Week by two largely unknown 18th-century Iberian composers, Francisco Javier García Fajer and José Joaquim dos Santos. García Fajer’s setting of a Castilian text contemplating the seven last words of Christ on the cross, was written in the wake of and under the influence Haydn’s famous setting of the Seven Last Words of 1792, commissioned by the Brotherhood of Nuestra Señora de la Cueva of Cadiz. García Fajer writes for two soprano voices with strings, and the seven sections all running to just about three minutes each are wonderfully evocative and melodic. He trained in Italy, at the prestigious Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini, before embarking on a career which saw him compose operas and oratorios and enjoy considerable success. For the last four decades of his life, he returned to Saragossa Cathedral, where he devoted himself exclusively to composing sacred music. While much of the music in his Siete Palabras is recognisably in the classical Viennese tradition, some of the more contemplative sections are distinctively Iberian and very atmospheric. The Stabat Mater by the Portuguese composer José Joaquim dos Santos for two sopranos, bass and strings of 1792 is also heavily Iberian in style, although it also owes a considerable debt to earlier settings such as that by Pergolesi. Dos Santos never studied in Italy but had close contacts with many musicians who had and was clearly well versed in the Italian idiom. The singing by Bárbara Barradas, Lucia Napoli and André Baleiro and the playing by Divino Sospiro of this unusual and distinctive music is of a high quality, and the recording both gives a context to Haydn’s unusual instrumental Seven Last Words as well as filling in an Iberian dimension to sacred music at the end of the 18th century.

D. James Ross

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The secret life of carols

The Tellin Secret Life of Carols CD cover

800 Years of Christmas Music
the telling
51:17
First Hand Records FHR94

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This selection of Christmas carols is gleaned from the 12th to the 20th centuries, sharing a sort of folk music quality, which suits the performance style of The Telling. Playing and singing in groups of at most three and sometimes solo, the two voices and two harps are at their best at their simplest. On the odd occasion, like track 3 “O Jesulein Süß”, when the two voices combine in harmony, the blend is less than comfortable, although each sounds fine in solo verses. The geographical range of the music seems neatly to match the cultural heritages of the performers, so we have mainly English, Irish, German and Finnish carols. I would have liked some more details about the medieval, baroque and ‘celtic’ harps played by Jean Kelly and Kaisa Pulkkinen, as well more information on the approach to the instrumental accompaniments – the iconic Gruber setting of “Stille Nacht” has a perfectly good accompaniment for guitar, but the accompaniment here on ‘celtic’ harp seems to be largely improvised. The stylistic range of the carols The Telling have chosen demands a considerable degree of versatility in performance, and I would confess that I don’t think they are equally effective with all the material – I think the medieval material seems best suited to the voices particularly. Reading their group CV, I think that their live performances usually include a dramatic dimension, and perhaps their recordings suffer a little by being deprived of this.

D. James Ross

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Graupner: Das Leiden Jesu

Volume 3 of Graupner: Das Leiden Jesu CD cover

Passion Cantatas III
Ex Tempore, Mannheimer Hofkapelle, Florian Heyerick
69:27
cpo 555 230-2
GWV 1119/41, 1124/41, 1126/41

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This is the third instalment of a series of selected Eastertide cantatas by Christoph Graupner to appear on CPO, based on the refined texts of the pastor, theologian, polymath Johann Conrad Lichtenburg (1689-1751) who besides interests in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and architecture, was a very gifted religious poet – librettist, who wrote some 35 annual cycles, I. e., over 1500 sacred texts! He studied at Leipzig and Halle, the latter a bastion of pietism, which took hold in Germany in middle of the 18th century. Of the 1400 extant Graupner cantatas, some 1190 are from the most able quill of J. C. Lichtenburg; obviously a fruitful collaboration was at work! These cantatas from the 1741 cycle described as “Betrachtungen” (contemplations/reflections) on the circumstances surrounding the “Versöhnungsleiden” redemptive/propitiatory sufferings of our Saviour. The definition used here for “Reflections” shows alert respect for the prevailing Passion-oratorio format, and feels equally influenced by the text of B.H.Brockes’ Passion-oratorio set by many composers of the age; there are also hints of the other famous theologian, librettist, pastor Erdmann Neumeister (1671-1756) who had previously helped shape the incipient cantata for.

The CD opens with the work for the last Sunday (Estomihi) before Passiontide itself, with some strikingly original strokes of declamatory expression, more akin to an actual Passion’s chorale workings than a mere cantata. Some very bold, original writing, one might say in a hybrid style?

Not only are the thematic details well-observed with pertinent word-painting, but the attention to deftly applied instrumental colours depicting each of the subsequent tableaux, is most befitting, from two oboes, strings* and continuo in GWV1119/41, next we have flute, two oboes, bassoon and strings in GWV1124/41, and finally flute, three oboes and strings in GWV1126/41; the oboes are richly sonorous and plaintive.

At turns these works feel conventional, then surprise with clever twists, almost in a casual, experimental way, yet never straying far from elegiac or edifying. The chorales deserve a special mention, coming across as beautifully woven final flourishes; as with the famous last one on the CD (O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig am Stamm des Kreuzes geschlachtet). With more explorations of Graupner’s cantatas, we are beginning to see why he was indeed a worthy choice for the Leipzig post in 1722, and why his employer, the Landgraf of Hessen-Darmstadt, wanted to hold onto him. Florian Heyerick is a very alert and sensitive conductor, bringing the very best out of his choral and instrumental forces; the sopranos and basses seemed to me to really shine and excel.

This is a warmly recommended, third instalment of the Graupner/Lichtenburg cycle for Easter 1741 with some noteworthy additions to the Passiontide repertoire.

David Bellinger

(*Graupner specifies “Violette”, possibly a smaller member of the viola family; the Mannheimer Hofkapelle use violas)

NOTE: Apologies to the performers, the record company and the reviewer; this somehow fell through the cracks and is being published A YEAR LATE! Keen fans of Graupner may already have the 4th instalment in the series, since cpo released that to coincide with Easter 2020!

 

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Ingegneri: Missa Laudate pueri Dominum

Ingegneri's Missa Laudate pueri Dominum CD cover

Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, Historic Brass of the Guildhall School and Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Jeremy West (leader), conducted by Gareth Wilson
70:03
Toccata Classics TOCC 0556

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Some luckless composers who deserve to be better known in their own right are encumbered with one particular identity tag before being passed over. So to focus us on Ingegneri alone, I will not mention whose teacher he was. Born in Verona either in 1535 or 1536, but working mainly in Cremona, Ingegneri is audibly a beneficiary of the preceding Franco-Flemish School but is even more audibly an Italian contemporary of Palestrina and a musical product of the Counter-Reformation. Indeed, Palestrina is one composer whom it is appropriate to mention in this context, as Ingegneri’s  Missa Laudate pueri Dominum in eight parts is based upon Palestrina’s motet on that text which, to adapt a phrase from the world of wine, also reveals, quite literally, some Franco-Flemish notes. Sometimes a derived mass can outstrip its original in quality or in other instances a strong original can dominate a less distinguished mass. The current instance is a perfect marriage of mass and motet, both being of the highest class.

The booklet is built around two fine essays – “The Council of Trent and the music of Marc’Antonio Ingegneri” by Giampiero Innocente, which provides a superb overview of the composer and his music on this disc (plus, where relevant, some which is not); and “For Love is as Strong as Death” by Gareth Wilson, which stems from the experience of himself and the Choir in performing and recording the music represented here.

Ingegneri judiciously selects what Innocente aptly describes as “fragments” from Palestrina’s teemingly laudatory motet (not included on the present disc, but there is a fine performance by Westminster Cathedral Choir on Hyperion CDA67099) and is entirely his own man in utilising them to project the text of the mass, sometimes with restraint and limited vocal resources, at other times letting rip with sonorous climaxes, but always with unerring judgment, with polyphony and homophony in exactly the right measures. He is also his own man when it comes to textures and harmony, so, for instance, Gareth Wilson draws attention to Ingegneri’s discerning use of the augmented sixth chord in the Credo which notoriously may or indeed may not also resonate in Byrd’s Civitas sancti tui.

The chosen motets are all impressive. They range from a couple of modest works in a mere five parts to “big biffers” in eight, twelve, and in the case of Vidi speciosam no fewer than sixteen parts. Nowhere does Ingegneri let loose mere grandiloquence in any of these works, and he always places his massed vocal resources at the service of the verbal text. Besides the movements of the Mass interspersed among the motets, another thread unifying the programme is the inclusion all of Ingegneri’s settings of texts from The Song of Solomon. For reasons not made clear in the booklet, the disc concludes with In spiritu humilitatis a8 by Giovanni Croce, which all but upstages Ingegneri’s own motets.

As on their previous discs of this repertory, the Girton Choir is in fine form. The accompaniments by the Historic Brass are historically informed (as such matters have to be nowadays if the participants desire credibility) and they complement the music perfectly, while the remarkable expertise of individual players comes to the fore in two motets in eight parts which are performed by brass alone. On the evidence of the music presented here, this recording deserves to be a landmark in a broader appreciation of Ingegneri’s music and by the same token Ingegneri deserves to be regarded in his own right as one of the outstanding composers of his day or of any other … regardless of whom he taught.

Richard Turbet

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Handel: Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day

Cover of Handel Ode to St Cecilia CD

[Cassandra Lemoine soprano, Benjamin Butterfield tenor,] The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, The Bach Festival Orchestra, Greg Funfgeld
Analekta AN 2 9541

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This recording celebrates the 120th anniversary of America’s oldest Bach choir, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem based in Pennsylvania, which holds the honour of having given the first US performances of Bach’s B minor Mass and Christmas Oratorio. It is a large choir and the Bach Festival Orchestra play on modern instruments, and while Greg Funfgeld clearly encourages a vibrato-free sound from his tutti strings, some of the solo string episodes sound a little over-romanticised, while the large vocal ensemble can sound a little overwhelming and spongy. The two vocal soloists have pleasant focussed voices and give passionate accounts of their arias. This recording is never less than pleasant and enjoyable, but to my ears it sounds a little dated in conception. I couldn’t avoid comparing it to a performance I discovered recently on you-tube by the Florida-based ensemble Seraphic Fire of Handel’s Zadok the Priest – state-of-the-art period instrument playing and some of the best choral Handel singing I have ever heard. It really depends what you want from your Handel – I find now that I derive little pleasure from performances with large numbers of voices and modern instruments, such as the rather pinched piccolo trumpet we have here. I know that within a few years of Handel’s death performances of his music with massed choirs were all the vogue, but for me once I had heard the clarity and precision of small period-instrument bands and specialist choral forces, I was dissatisfied with the alternative. If this doesn’t bother you, you will find this account by the American forces perfectly enjoyable, and indeed it is a reading into which a lot of thought has gone, and it is never less than musically tasteful and honest.

D. James Ross

 

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Cavalli: Missa 1660

Cover of Versailles Spectacles CD of Cavalli Missa 1660

Galilei Consort, Benjamin Chénier
69:05
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS006

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Part of the growing series of DVDs and CDs recorded in Versailles Palace and featuring the very finest of European early music performers, this programme, recorded in the Palace Chapel Royal is a reconstruction of the Mass celebrated in Venice in 1660 to mark the signing of the Treaty of Paris which prepared the way for the marriage between Louis XIV and the Infanta of Spain. This reconstruction presents Cavalli’s magnificent concertante setting of the mass ordinary from Musiche Sacre with liturgical interpolations from a couple of his other publications. The performers go all out for the lavish, with elaborate fireworks from a pair of cornets and decoration of the string parts, while the Chapel Royal acoustic emphasises the dramatic juxtaposition of contrasting textures between the flamboyantly showy and the contemplatively intimate. Just occasionally the upper vocal soloists employ more vibrato and less precision than I am comfortable with, but there is always a fine sense of drama. When Peter Holman recorded the Mass in 1997 with Seicento and The Parley of Instruments (Hyperion CDA 66970) he was apparently unaware of the documentation linking it to the 1660 celebrations, and their performance is less flamboyant, using just eight solo voices and more modest instrumentation, but it is markedly more focussed and detailed than the present French account. While I enjoyed the unashamed theatricality of the latter, I found myself occasionally yearning for the beautifully nuanced solo singing of Seicento.

D. James Ross

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Monteverdi: Vespro

Cover of a DVD of Monteverdi Vespers by Pichon

Pygmalion, choir & orchestra, Raphaël Pichon
117:00 (DVD)
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS018

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This exciting new series of DVDs presents live performances of major works of early music by leading names in the field at the Palace of Versailles. The present DVD of Monteverdi’s Vespers plays out in the Palace Chapel Royal, a space fashioned with a number of balconies ideal for presenting this spatially adventurous work. Pichon and his Pygmalion forces emphasise the theatrical aspects of the work, moving very effectively around the space, usually in darkness and with minimum noise, to appear magically all around the building. The performance opens with a piece of plainchant – a Pater Noster, but one treated like a processional before the drama of the opening ‘movement’ of the Monteverdi. Similar chant interpolations occur throughout the performance, musically a very effective way of breaking up the very dense Monteverdi score (probably never intended to be performed all in one go anyway) and often a handy ‘cover’ for singers to move around the building. One of my very few criticisms of the package is that Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s ‘blow-by-blow’ account of the music in the programme notes – very helpful to the non-specialist viewer/listener – makes no mention of these interpolations, nor of the ‘additions’ at the end (of which more anon), nor of the liturgical context which is being aimed at. My on-screen subtitles also seemed at a loss as to just what this material was. The insertion of a Marian motet by Monteverdi from another source before the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria also passes without comment. The performance ends as it began with the dramatic opening toccata set to new text – a complete fabrication, and depending on your point of view, an outrageous liberty or a theatrical coup. I have heard this done before, and while I initially inclined to the former reaction, increasingly I feel that Monteverdi the opera composer might just have approved of this ‘grand finish’ to one of his most dramatic works. Enough griping about details – the performance is superlatively polished and dynamic, the solo singing stunningly ornamented and beautifully coordinated, the orchestral sound rich and varied and the choral contributions, at ‘high’ pitch, wonderfully precise and focussed and full of drama. Particular mention should be made of the wonderfully leonine solo basses, the declamatory solo tenors, the sublime solo sopranos and the stunning contralto Lucile Richardot, whose voice and presence so impressed my in John Eliot Gardiner’s 2017 Monteverdi opera trilogy – I realise I have just singled out all the soloists for praise! Pichon conducts with passion and gets a hugely passionate performance out of his musicians – occasionally the camera catches individual instrumentalists and singers with expressions of genuine ecstasy on their faces. It is humbling to be reminded at the end that this has been a live performance, having watched a piece of such complexity unfold to such perfection. Mention should also be made of the technicians who lit and captured this complicated event – the sound balance is unerringly superb, no mean feat in this spatially very fluid presentation.

D. James Ross

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Bach: Johannes-Passion, BWV 245

Cover of CD of Herreweghe Bach Johannes Passion

Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe
107:08 (2 CDs in a card tryptych)
PHI LPH031

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From the opening bars, this performance has life, drive and commitment. The first thing you notice is the immediacy of the choral sound: the 16 singers, who properly include the four singers of the arias – such luminaries as Dorothea Mields, Damian Guillon, Robin Tritschler and Peter Kooij – but not the Evangelist and Jesus, are clear and powerful – they sound very close and engaged as the turba.  

This performance gives us the habitual mix of versions, and is a real contrast to Rademann’s 1749 version, that anticipates the classically inspired performance tradition. Herreweghe has violas d’amore and a lute, but no harpsichord or bassono grosso, mandated in the 1749 version. Much of the booklet’s essay is devoted to justifying this mixed bag approach on the grounds that Bach never produced a ‘final version’. By the time we have read this essay in English, French, German and Dutch, there is room only for a list of players and singers and the text in four parallel columns. So there are no bios, and no information on the organ or any other instruments, and not even a link to a website for further information.  

The continuo with the Evangelista and others is simple: a small organ with a principal tone and the string bass – often including 16’ – and they provide much of the dramatic impetus. While other singers are absolutely splendid, I am slightly less convinced by Maximillian Schmitt, the evangelist: I prefer my narrators a bit less singerly – more sprechgesang than operatic declamation, and he seems to have only one style. But the entire singing team properly takes centre-stage and the turba exchanges are crisp and well integrated in a way that can scarcely be achieved by a separate and distant ‘choir’.

The arias are well-paced – the lute is used in Ich folge and in Erwege, giving a degree of transparency to the texture there which allows Patrick Tritschler’s voice space to bloom. Putting all of part II onto the second CD allows the chiastic structure formed around Durch dein Gefängnis to be appreciated, and the dramatic intensity of the turba’s interchanges to mount. In Eilt, the overlapping but rhythmically independent lines of the upper strings, the basso continuo – helped by the bassoon and by wonderful violone playing – and the bass singer are each given their freedom, and the result is an urgent hastening of individual voices, but with no sense of rush. The rhythmic punch here is continued into Lasset uns den nicht zerteilen, which I have rarely heard so well done: everything neat and balanced but at a cracking pace.

Damian Guillon has exactly the right voice for Es ist vollbracht, where the central section trembles with suppressed excitement, and Peter Kooij could not be bettered in Mein teurer Heiland, where it was welcome to have no doubling 16’ tone on the spiccato violoncello line that introduces the D major foreshadowing of the resurrection, a theological insight which Bach the Lutheran theologian has grasped in the Johannine theology of the Passion – the gospel narrative that the church has always read on Good Fridays. The seemingly effortlessly soaring voice of Dorothea Mields in Zerfließe gives way to repeated sobs on ‘Tod’, which I have come to think is the right way to interpret the trill written there, and the lute is a telling addition to the traverso and oboe da caccia.

All in all this is an outstanding version, coherent and well thought out, with the dynamics and style of the chorales integrated into the overall scheme, and directed and performed by musicians who understand what they are doing and how Bach’s Lutheran formation has given us the ever-changing, ever vital John Passion with no one ‘right way’ of performing it.

David Stancliffe