Categories
Recording

Ceremonial Oxford

Music for the Georgian University by William Hayes
The Choir of Keble College, Oxford, Instruments of Time & Truth, Matthew Martin
79:12
crd 3534

[dropcap]E[/dropcap]very now and then a CD comes along that makes one wonder why the music on it is not better known. That is precisely what happened here; I have known of William Hayes’s music (and that of his son, Philip) for decades (thanks to taking a course on “Handel and his English contemporaries” with David Kimbell), and more recently through an offer to publish editions of some of his instrumental music (including the G major concerto played here on organ), but I had never heard any of it except courtesy of the Sibelius playback feature. With the best will in the world, computers cannot (yet?) compete with human performance, most assuredly not when they are of this calibre – the lively playing of the orchestra (and the soloists) is well suited to accompanying the archetypically (in a good way!) stylish English collegiate choir. Hayes, 23 years Handel’s junior, builds solidly on the older man’s extension and expansion of choral repertoire, though there is no denying the essential Englishness of it all; there may be counterpoint (in many cases better worked that many of his generation), but his primary concern is to convey the mood (if not the meaning) of the words. The inclusion of an organ voluntary by an even more obscure composer (William Walond, who apparently played in performances of Hayes’s works) suggests a commitment to this repertoire that may bear further fruit. If you cannot wait until another CD appears, there will be three performances of Cosimo Stawiarski’s edition of The Fall of Jericho  in Utrecht this April.

Brian Clark

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Recording

F. X. Richter: Te Deum 1781

Luise Haugk, Czech Ensemble Baroque, Roman Válek
49:50
Supraphon SU 4240-2
+Exsultate Deo,* Oboe concerto in F,* Sinfonia no. 52 in D (*premiere recordings)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is the third recording by these forces of Richter’s music, and once again it amply displays the many impressive facets of the composer’s output; alongside a grandiose setting of the Te Deum  we hear an impressive symphony packed with pomp and circumstance, a little-known virtuosic oboe concerto (recorded on period instruments for the first time), and the first of four motets for a procession in Strasbourg on the Feast of Corpus Christi. Famed as he may nowadays be for his Mannheim symphonies, the more we are able to hear his church music, the better we are able to understand that Richter was no second-rate composer; the rousing openings of the symphony and the choral works show that he had an ability to seize the listeners’ attention and enough imaginative power to hold it for long periods – at over 22 minutes long, the Te Deum  didn’t seem to last any time at all. The composer cannot take all the credit, though; this is a team effort, and Válek and his excellent musicians (the choir has four singers per part and he uses 44221 strings) are perfect advocates of their compatriot’s output; the soloists are taken from the tutti group (with the exception of tracks 5 and 9 where another tenor is used), and throughout the singing is first rate with nicely articulated lines and neat ornamentation. The booklet notes, which say no more than they have to (in four languages!), promise more releases in the series – I, for one, shall be waiting!

Brian Clark

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Recording

Pedro Ruimonte in Brussels

Music at the archducal Court of Albert and Isabel Clara Eugenia
La Grande Chapelle, Albert Recasens
114:35 (2 CDs )
Lauda LAU017

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his double CD highlights the music of Pedro Ruimonte, a composer new to me, but also very usefully casts an additional spotlight on an unsuspected musical golden age in the early 17th-century Low Countries. Following the popular uprising against Habsburg rule, music was in a parlous state, and it seems to be due almost entirely to the arrival of the new culturally engaged Habsburg rulers – the Albert and Isabel of the CD title – that a spectacular blossoming of the arts ensued. Side by side with the painters Brueghel the Elder and Rubens, the court employed the English composers Peter Philips and John Bull, as well as the Fleming Gery de Ghersem and the Spaniard Pedro Ruimonte. Considerable Habsburg financial resources allowed a great flourishing of music-making, while the renewed urgency of the Counter-Reformation provided impetus. The voices and instruments of La Grande Chapelle provide a rich and varied programme of music by Ruimonte and Philips but also including works by Pieter Cornet, Richard Deering and Frescobaldi. Grafting the Flemish tradition on to the more adventurous Venetian style, this repertoire is on a grand scale and of a very high standard of craftsmanship. Peter Philips’ music, so often presented in purely vocal accounts, receives rich and very effective performances here, combining voices with brass and stringed instruments, while there is also a lovely and unexpected motet for two solo voices and continuo. Ruimonte’s rich church music stands up very well in comparison with that of his English contemporary, but he is also represented by some attractive madrigals and villancicos, suggesting a composer of considerable versatility. Ruimonte is a fascinating discovery, and fine performances by La Grande Chapelle both of the large-scale works and the more intimate material help to re-establish his reputation, but also help to paint a picture of an obscure musical flourishing and its full artistic context.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Obrecht: Missa Grecorum & motets

The Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice
74:13
Hyperion CDA68216
+ Agnus Dei (attrib.), Cuius sacrata viscera, O beate Basili, Mater Patris, Salve regina a6, Sancta Dei genitrix

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hanks to a stunningly vivid portrait by Hans Memling, Jacob Obrecht is one of the very few early church composers we can put a face to. This is particularly pertinent in the case of Obrecht, whose distinctive music makes his stand out anyway in the generation of Josquin. Mainly represented by some 26 masses, a considerable total for the period, Obrecht also composed many motets, four of which are represented here, along with an isolated motet attributed to him by Rob Wegman.

Like his older contemporary Ockeghem, he seems to delight in mathematical complexity, and in the Missa Grecorum  the unidentified cantus undergoes a particularly tortuous series of treatments. Also like Ockeghem, Obrecht is capable of writing music of surpassing lyricism, but just occasionally I feel both men get a little bogged down in their own cleverness. This is certainly the case with the present mass, and it has to be said the performance by the Brabant Ensemble also doesn’t seem to be quite up to their normal transcendent standard. Whether by design or lack of it, extended passages of the mass seem to be sung without much passion or expression and there are uncharacteristic moments of dodgy intonation. I would be interested to read Rob Wegman’s reasons for attributing the anonymous Wroclaw Codex Agnus Dei  to Obrecht – it sounds rather formulaic and frankly too dull to me to be by a composer of the first rank such as Obrecht. I am normally a huge Brabant Ensemble fan, admiring the passionate and illuminating performances they have given in the past of often wholly neglected material, but I’m afraid this recording didn’t entirely do it for me.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Luther: The noble art of music

Utopia Belgian handmade polyphony, InAlto
51:23
Et’cetera KT1577

This imaginative CD groups treatments by a number of composers from the period immediately following the Reformation of specific texts which were particularly admired at this time, namely: Aus tiefer Not, Vater unser  and Christ lag in Todesbanden. Introducing several of these with settings by Josquin of equivalent pre-Reformation texts, they usefully draw attention to the continuity of the early Reformed tradition rather than its radical differences from the music of the previous generation.

Prominent composers such as Eccard, Othmayr, Praetorius and Lassus feature, but perhaps more interesting are the obscure composers such as Matthaeus Le Maistre, Arnoldus de Bruck and Johann Walter. The Reformation was a great leveler, and it is interesting that the rather simple harmonisations which its philosophy encouraged set the great and the frankly mediocre on an equal footing. The alternation of the wind instruments of InAlto with the unaccompanied voices of Utopia, occasionally mixing the two in various combinations, maintains textural interest, but unfortunately I found a lot of the music on this CD just rather dull. This is not helped by the rather unrelentingly close recording of the voices, which cruelly emphasizes slight indecisions in intonation. Having said that, some composers such as Lassus’ pupil Balduin Hoyoul vividly stand out from the crowd. Worthwhile alone for the unknown composers represented, this CD does cast an interesting light on the music which flourished in the early days of the Protestant Church in Germany.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Handel: Ode for St Cecilia’s Day

Cristina Grifone soprano, Hans Jörg Mammel tenor, Musica Fiorita, Daniela Dolci
59:41
Pan Classics PC10381

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]receded by a stylish account of Handel’s Concerto Grosso op. 6/4, this is a crisply persuasive account of the same composer’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day. Composed as an attempt in 1739 to revive the traditionally lavish celebrations for the patron saint of music, Handel’s Ode  was performed alongside his Alexander’s Feast, some of the Op. 6 Concerti and a new organ concerto. As with Alexander’s Feast, the Ode  sets a text by Dryden, and Handel is at his most imaginative in animating the various scenarios his librettist conjures up. Daniela Dolci and Musica Fiorita generally employ a light athletic sound, allowing for very expressive singing and playing, and bringing an admirable clarity to Handel’s rich and varied score. The playing and singing is consistently of the highest standard, the one slight fly in the ointment being tenor soloist Hans Jörg Mammel’s slightly eccentric vowel sounds – given Handel’s characteristic eccentricity in underlaying English text we can perhaps forgive this small failing. In every other respect, this is a thoroughly enjoyable account of the Ode, a charming and engaging work, which apart from “The Trumpet’s Loud Clangour” occasionally extracted as a concert showpiece, is bafflingly underperformed nowadays. Perhaps, due precisely to finely chiseled authentic performances such as this, we are becoming more aware of the considerable virtues of works by Handel traditionally regarded as ‘minor’ pieces.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Capricornus: The Jubilus Bernhardi Collection

The Bach Choir of Holy Trinity, Acronym, Donald Meineke
110:05 (2 CDs in a wallet)
Olde Focus RFecordings FCR911

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his splendid recording of an unjustly under-recorded collection by first class musicians deserves to be widely known, and I hope that Brian Clark, who writes the brief note that accompanies the two CDs, can advertise the edition he made widely. This is beautiful music, and eminently performable.

The music first: Samuel Capricornus died at the age of 37 in 1665, so is more than a generation younger than Heinrich Schütz, who clearly thought well of him, writing after receiving his Opus Musicum  “your remarkable works have been passed on to me and they fill me with delight. Go on serving God and his Church in this fashion.” Capricornus was the son of a Lutheran pastor who had sought security for his Lutheran beliefs in what is now the Czech Republic. Having worked at the Imperial Chapel in Vienna under the Italians Giovanni Valentini and Antonio Bertali – rather a different cultural and religious milieu from home – Capricornus was appointed Kapellmeister to the Court in Stuttgart in 1657. These 24 motets from 1660 form a sequence scored for five voices (SSATB), and 5-part viol consort with continuo. In spite of the same scoring for each motet, the Jubilus Bernhardi  motets have a great variety of expressive content and a rich and characterful style of word setting. For all their underlying motet style – they are genuinely German/Bohemian versions of the seconda prattica. They have echoes of Monteverdi’s Selva Morale  as well as links to the emerging German school represented by Tunder and Kuhnau. In some sense, they occupy the same territory as the Gibbons and Tomkins verse anthems in England, alternating passages for one or more voices and instruments with full sections.

That is at any rate how they are performed by the ten singers of the Bach Choir of Holy Trinity, the Evangelical Lutheran church in New York that specialises in Bach and his Lutheran forerunners under the direction of the Cantor, Donald Meineke, with five viol players (and a continuo consisting of theorbo and keyboard) from ACRONYM. The performances are in the same league as those of Vox Luminis, and use the same vocal forces. The Sopranos are excellent: clean, clear and well-blended, and the Hautes-Contres, the Tenors and even the Basses have the same verbal dexterity. Only occasionally was I conscious of a slightly bleating tenor sound, and the bass line is coloured by a real, plummy bass with a wonderful range which is of a distinctively different timbre. But this is a class act by an ensemble of young-sounding voices and they have released recent videos on Youtube which provide the score as the visual accompaniment. From that it becomes clear that they are performing at A=440, though no details of this or the temperament at which the keyboard is tuned or the makers or provenance of the instruments is given in the extremely slender notes on the attractive card case; the liner notes themselves have nothing but the text and an English translation of Bernard of Clairvaux’s verses.

I find the music captivating in its variety, and exciting for the way in which the rhythms of the texts are captured, not just in the episodes for solo voices but in the more homophonic sections – those that are doubled by ripienists.

I have not heard any Capricornus before, but this is music that ranks in individuality with Monteverdi and Schütz, providing a fascinating insight into the musical links between Italy and Germany. Some of his works are available in facsimile from IMSLP, and range from sonatas in 8 parts to small-scale motets: Paratum cor meum  is for two treble and one bass voice, a cornetto and continuo marked for organ. Vocal works and instrumental pieces alike are imaginatively scored, the discs are well-engineered and I urge you to listen to as much as you can as soon as possible, and absorb this fascinating sound-world.

David Stancliffe

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The editions used for the recording are available from Cornetto Verlag in Stuttgart, Germany. Click HERE (Website in German only!) If you have problems, please contact us directly.

Categories
Recording

Ludford: Missa Dominica

Trinity Boys Choir, Handbell Choir Gotha, Lewis Brito-Babapulle, David Swinson
79:21
Rondeau Horizon ROP8001

[dropcap]T[dropcap]his CD provides a window on a neglected area of repertoire, the generally small-scale settings by Renaissance composers of the extended ordinary for Ladymass. While the excellent Nicholas Ludford has never quite regained the reputation he deserves as an outstanding and highly original Renaissance English composer, at least his larger-scale mass settings have all been recorded several times. The same cannot be said of his three-part settings of the Ladymass, one of which is recorded here for the first time. Presenting the music in two different guises, for unaccompanied choral voices, and for solo voices accompanied by organ, both of which work very well, is an excellent concept. The handbells, something of an add-on in this programme, supply two accounts of the Square Le Roy, as well as joining the boys in one of the later modern works. Although much of the singing is pleasantly lyrical, there is occasional downward pressure on the intonation. Having said that, the clear tone of the boys’ voices blends beautifully with Ludford’s imaginative writing for them, suggesting that these settings are well worth further exploration. In addition to the Mass, the choir provides lovely performances of the medieval carols Ther is no Rose of Swych Vertu  and Angelus ad Virginem  (with some curious choices of hard and soft consonants) as well as two modern pieces. The Trinity Boys Choir are to be congratulated for tackling this neglected and technically demanding music, and this CD very usefully provides a window on an important part of Ludford’s output and a generally overlooked body of early polyphony.4555

D. James Ross

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Recording

The ears of the Huguenots

Huelgas Ensemble, Paul Van Nevel
65:09
deutsche harmonia mundi 88985411762
Music by Animuccia, Costeley, de L’Estocart, Goudimel, Le Jeune, Mauduit, Palestrina, Servin & anon

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he unexpectedly varied music of the early Protestant church and home is presented beautifully here by the voices and strings of the Huelgas Ensemble. The CD opens with plain but harmonically imaginative four-part psalm settings by Jacques Mauduit and Claude Goudimel. Inventively varying the performance medium between various permutations of voices and strings, as would have undoubtedly been the case in the mainly domestic performances of this music at the time, the ensemble capture perfectly its dignified elegance and understated nobility. Goudimel was one of many Huguenots who perished in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacres of 1572, and tellingly this CD includes a section of music eligible to have been performed in Rome on receipt of the ‘good news’ of the Massacres. This militantly counter-reformation repertoire features a curious anonymous 16th-century lauda  and music by Giovanni Animuccia and Palestrina, the Agnus Dei from whose Messa ‘Ut re mi fa sol la’  is perhaps an oddly placatory choice given the circumstances. The third and most interesting section of the programme explores the slightly later and more adventurous music by some mainly Huguenot ‘big hitters’ – Paschal de L’Estocart, Claude le Jeune and the until recently almost completely overlooked Jean Servin. Setting text from the rhyming Latin Psalter by Scottish intellectual George Buchanan, Servin’s eight-part Stellata coeli  is one of several masterpieces the composer produced in a volume presented to James VI, King of Scots. In one of the great what-ifs of musical history, due to circumstances, this type of opulent Protestant polyphony failed to take root at this time, although we can perhaps hear faint pre-echoes of Schütz here. By some way, this is the most interesting music on the CD, and it is a shame that a second Servin piece promised by the programme notes seems to have ended up on the cutting-room floor. On reflection it would have been more interesting to have cut the rather gratuitous counter-reformation section and to have included more Servin – but perhaps the ensemble will return to the sizeable and idiosyncratic Servin legacy in the future.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV248

Richter, Mühlemann, Lemkuhl, Kohlhepp, Nagy SSATB, Gaechinger Cantorey, Hans-Christoph Rademann
151:43 (2 CDs in a walleted jewel box)
Carus 83.312
+Tönet, ihr Pauken  (ex BWV214)

We were lucky enough to receive two copies of this recording, so both went out for review; we hope you find it interesting to read different people’s impressions

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith a choir of 8.8.7.7 and strings of 6.5.4.3.2, this is a full-blooded performance in the modern German style, using the new Carus edition and parts, and soloists that are quite distinct from the chorus singers. All the musicians – singers and players alike – are excellent, so what is not to like? Not long ago, we would have been overjoyed to find such a neat and competent performance, but these days there are other considerations to be taken into account.

Regardless of which side you take in the matter of the size of Bach’s chorus, do you want a performance on CD where the sound of the chorus is entirely distinct from the singers who sing the arias? And what about the sound of the trumpets: are finger-holes to assist in correcting the tuning permissible or not? And the size of the organ in relation to the chorus? Here the Gaechinger Cantorey has set up a team of players to work with the singers, and commissioned an organ after Gottfried Silbermann as a basic building block of the sound they are seeking to emulate.

Since we have become used to OVPP performances with small instrumental as well as vocal forces from groups like Dunedin Consort, and singers of the arias being drawn from the ranks of a (much reduced) chorus with John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir, the landscape has changed subtly in England and in some respects the traditional divisions in Germany between choir and soloists, and a line-up that places a large choir at the back, with soloists out front rather than as partners in the music-making seems curiously old-fashioned.

Of its style and period, this is an excellent performance; and no chorus singer will readily surrender the pleasure of taking part in performances of Bach – perhaps especially in Germany where there are so many really excellent choirs and baroque instrumentalists around. Nonetheless, there are questions to be asked of a performance practice that assumes biggest is best. For example, you can order Carus parts for Bach Cantatas online only if you buy into the package that offers multiple string parts. Of course, Carus are delighted to sell you single string parts, but the assumption still is that ‘the orchestra’ will have many desks of violinists as its basic complement.

David Stancliffe

I’m afraid my first reaction to another recording of a very familiar masterpiece such as Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is to ask what it has to say that is new about this very familiar music. The wonderfully crisp and punchy opening, taken by Rademann at a daringly brisk tempo, soon established that this was a serious contender. The Gaechinger Cantorey, a choral group which has now acquired a superb period instrumental wing, is attached to the international Bachakademie in Stuttgart, so one would expect both excellence and scholarly rigour, and both are present aplenty in this recording. Add to that some wonderfully concise and expressive solo and ensemble singing, as well as some beautifully detailed solo and ensemble instrumental playing, and all the elements are in place for a successful recording of Bach’s masterpiece.  Of particular merit are the contributions of the young soloists, particularly Sebastien Kohlhepp, who is a wonderfully expressive and apparently effortless Evangelist. Also impressive is the expressive ease of the double reed players, who conjure some wonderfully expressive sounds from their various breeds of oboe. Both singers and instrumentalists ornament tastefully, while the trumpeters show no signs that Bach’s lines are as challenging as they are, particularly given their conductor’s generally upbeat tempi. So this may be a pretty conventional reading of Bach’s music, but it is stunningly well executed and always beautifully musical. The recording, a combination of a live recording with subsequent non-live sessions, presumably to replace any sore bits or audience interruptions, is entirely effective, although it produces the curious anomaly that one of the soprano soloists appears live whereas the other doesn’t! Incidentally, I was revisiting over the festive season my CD of highlights from one of the first period instrument recordings of the work by the Collegium Aureum dating from 1973 and in which the trumpeters, playing horn-shaped clarini trumpets by Meinl and Lauber, still sound astonishing!

D. James Ross

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