Tag: Instrumental music

Categories
Recording

Lamento

CD cover of Lamento Damien Guillon Cafe Zimmermann

Damien Guillon countertenor, Café Zimmermann
69:06
Alpha Classics Alpha 626
Music by J. C. & J. M. Bach, Bernhard, Biber, Froberger & Schmelzer

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links help the site remain alive and FREE!]

Few chamber ensembles play the music of Baroque Germany with more authority than Café Zimmermann, and in their latest release they have unearthed some superb music associated with death and mortality – little can they have realised as they recorded the programme in May 2019 how relevant it would have become by the time of its release. The most remarkable aspect of the project is the discovery of so much unfamiliar music of superlative quality, in some cases by composers who are also virtually unknown. Principal amongst these are the two ‘regional’ Bachs, Johann Michael (1648-1694) organist at Gehren, and Johann Christoph (1642-1703), organist at Eisenach. The former is represented by an eloquent strophic aria and the latter by a powerfully expressive lament, both sung expressively by Damien Guillon, who also graces the setting of Psalm 42 by Schütz pupil Christoph Bernhard, as well as a quite mesmerising setting of O dulcis Jesu, attributed to Heinrich Biber. While, as Peter Wollny’s programme note points out, the writing for the obbligato violin in this striking piece is thoroughly Biberesque in style, the vocal writing bears no resemblance to any of Biber’s surviving oeuvre that I know of, and indeed I would be cautious of the attribution of this anonymous piece. And if we are tempted to think cynically of the relationship between Baroque patrons and composers, Schmelzer’s deeply heartfelt “Lamento sopra la morte Ferdinandi III” provides a useful antidote. This is a CD packed with unanticipated melancholy delights, and Café Zimmermann, with their ideal blend of authority and genuine lively curiosity, are the perfect ensemble in whose company to explore it. Perhaps the bravest decision of many is to conclude the disc with Biber’s extraordinary unaccompanied Passacaglia from the Rosenkranzsonaten for solo violin – it is a testimony to the superb technique and musicality of the group’s first violinist, Pablo Valetti, that we are riveted to the last!

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

La revolta de les Germanies

CD cover of Revolta de les germanies Carles Magraner

Revolt of the Brotherhoods: War and peace in the Renaissance
Capella de Ministrers, Carles Magraner
76:47
CdM 2049

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk
[These sponsored links help the site remain alive and FREE!]

This CD,  marking the 500th anniversary of the uprising of the Guilds in Valencia (the ‘Germanies’ of the title), the Spanish equivalent of the roughly contemporary Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, proves to be a celebration of battle music from the Renaissance. All the old warhorses are here – Isaac’s Alla Battaglia, Susato’s Battle Pavane, the Gervaise Pavanne and Galliarde de la Guerre, Andrea Gabrieli’s Aria della Battaglia (for which the programme note erroneously claims a period instrument premiere performance!) and Hassler’s Battle Intrada and Gagliarda. The rather cavernous acoustic of the church of Sant Miquel dels Reis in Valencia proves problematic for this repertoire. The rather dominant drumming has a tendency to ‘jam’ the other wavelengths, and in tandem with some rather ‘coy’ playing of the wind instruments, the impact of this martial music is dissipated – surely it is clear that this secular battle music for instruments just wouldn’t have been performed in this kind of bathroom acoustic! Things don’t really improve, however, with the addition of the singers, who seem to inhabit an artificial space both too close to the microphones and simultaneously swimming in the larger acoustic. These recording idiosyncrasies cannot be ignored, and this is a great shame, as the repertoire and performances seem generally good, expressive and idiomatic, and the copious supporting notes are fascinating and comprehensive. Some listeners will take exception to the over-busy percussion, including deep drums, cymbals and some sort of tubular bells, but I have to say I found the acoustic more troubling. I would love to have heard these performances by what are clearly fine musicians of intriguing repertoire in a more stable and clear acoustic, where I could have enjoyed their musicianship more thoroughly.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

The Mystery of the Natural Trumpet

CD Cover Mystery of the Natural Trumpet

Krisztián Kováts, L’arpa festante
66:57
cpo 555 144-2
Concertos by Lang, Otto, Riepel, Sperger & Stamitz

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk

The mystery alluded to by the title of this CD is perhaps why nobody now performs any of the many trumpet concertos to survive from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the exception of the ubiquitous concerti by Haydn and Hummel. In many ways, these two concerti are aberrations, composed as they were for the keyed trumpet, and it is fascinating to hear the other concertos here by Johann Stamitz, Johann Sperger, Johann Lang and Johann Otto as well as the Sinfonia by Joseph Riepel written for and performed on the valveless (and keyless) trumpet – it should be said that the instrument used is in the Baroque style but with four finger-holes, which puts it some way along the route to the now ubiquitous keyed trumpet. The solo trumpet playing of Kristián Kováts is simply superb, ranging with flawless tuning and tone over a vertiginous range and he is ably supported throughout by L’arpa festante. It has to be said that the quality of composition here is not of the top level of inspiration – even as a fan of the music of the Stamitz family I would have to admit that they are prone to cliché, and this is also the case with much of the rest of the music here. Coupled with the fact that this period saw the beginning of a process which would lead to the trumpet being emasculated from Baroque magnificence to Classical conformity, I found myself increasingly reliant on the soloist’s virtuosity and musicality to hold my interest. Having said that, it is important to be able to put the Haydn and Hummel concerti in some sort of context, and this repertoire and these performances are never less than enjoyable.   

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

de Lalande: Les Fontaines de Versailles, Le Concert d’Esculape

CD cover of de Lalande Les Fontaines de Versailles

Margot Rood, Aaron Sheehan, Jesse Blumberg, Boston Early Music Festival Vocal & Chamber Ensembles, Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs, Robert Mealy
72:55
cpo 555 097-2

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk

Well, for any who think of Lalande solely as a composer of splendid grands motets and other sacred music, here is the secular corrective in the shape of two delightful one-acters first performed in 1683, revived by the Boston Early Music Festival in 2016 and finally recorded in 2019. In Les Fontaines…, the gods and goddesses represented in the Versailles garden statuary pay tribute to the king, while Le concert …, first heard a few weeks later, compliments a leading physician of the time who served the court, especially the Dauphine.

Thorough preparation and unity of purpose are the hallmarks of Boston productions and the performances here maintain this tradition. The singing captures well the elusive style required and the instrumental contributions sparkle. The continuo section is particularly good – sonorous and supportive without ever becoming silly or intrusive. Overall musical continuity between the short numbers is also excellent.

Between the dramatic items, we hear a Grande Pièce from the collection of ‘background music’ that Lalande composed to accompany meals at Versailles. Apparently, this was a favourite of the king and the players take the chance to show us why – I especially enjoyed the liberation of the bassoon from the bass line to a melodic tenor register role.

The booklet (English, German and French) is a chunky affair with a lengthy (though also very good) essay, the usual performer biographies and texts/translations. But I have to say that I found the font size a challenge and whoever was in charge of production should have allowed for the binding space needed on the inner margins of each page. It’s always a shame when the performers are not perfectly supported in such matters: this ensemble deserves nothing less.

David Hansell

Categories
Recording

Picchi: Canzoni da sonar con ogni sorte d’istromenti

CD cover Picchi Canzoni da sonar

Concerto Scirocco, Giulia Genini
71:29
Arcana A476

Click HERE to buy this recording on amazon.co.uk

Published in 1625, Picchi’s 19 Canzoni da sonar range from duets with continuo to full two-choir pieces. Rather than always stick to the composer’s suggested scorings, Concerto Scirocco switch one of a pair of violins for a cornetto; this helps to vary the soundscape, of course, and it seems churlish (given such fabulous performances) to suggest that that might not be what “con ogni sorte d’istromenti” means. My only other (minor) gripe about the performances is the use of the piercing soprano recorder; as a recorder player myself, I really do not enjoy the way it slices through the texture – give me a more mellow tenor instrument any day. Although the duo and trio sonatas with their kaleidoscopic structures are very pleasant, for me Picchi really comes alive when he has four melody instruments (or more) and the three six-part canzoni are fabulous pieces, displaying the composer’s ample talents as a contrapuntalist but not in an arcane way, rather in conjunction with easily memorable melodies. In the two-choir pieces, two pitch equal choirs against one another (in these performances strings against wind in one, and two mixed choirs in the second) and then a high choir against a lower one. Over the course of more than an hour, listening to the texture grow and enriching is wonderful, though I’m not sure Signor Picchi had that in mind! Hats off to Concerto Scirocco for sustaining my interest – but for your next recording, please, please ditch the high-pitched recorders!

Brian Clark

Categories
Recording

Extra Time

La Serenissima play Vivaldi, Albinoni, Brescianello, Matteis

La Serenissima, Adrian Chandler
72:14
Signum Classics SIGCD641

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk

This splendidly refined recording does feel like an “extended” Part 2 programme, or follow-on from the marvellous “Godfather” which duly reaped wide-spread accolades and glowing punditry; now continuing in a similarly rich vein of fascinating and varied baroquery, including Nicola Matteis the Younger’s impressive and richly scored (four trumpets and drums, etc.) “balletic” insertions into Antonio Caldara’s operas for Vienna; music as diverting and distracting, as it is charged with a processional flair; no doubt some clever scene changes were made during these episodes. This along with healthy doses of core Vivaldi to provide the fillings between the smart, brassy outside wingers! These include Albinoni’s slick Sinfonia with two trumpets for his opera La Statira. This is all grist to the musical mill for La Serenissima, who follow in the wake of their star players. The ostensibly Italianate violinistic passages are unforced and polished with perky tutti replies. On Pages 10-13 in the CD booklet, we read the amazing composite details of the various recording dates of these works. How the cleverly this “jig-saw puzzle” comes together with over-arching practicality and miraculous synchronicity for over an hour’s worth of noteworthy pieces. G. A. Brescianello continues to supply delights in that high-flown italian style, possibly finding – beyond the obvious Vivaldian expression – the absorption and impetus of certain elements from E. F. Dall’Abaco vicariously rubbing off when he played alongside him in Munich; the fine Largo in the rather tuneful G major violin concerto displays a special operatic calibre that stops you right in your tracks! With the Vivaldi Concerto in F for the “Solemnity of St. Lawrence” (composed around 1727), the contrasting movements are tackled well, with the flashy solo peaks of the first movement, a rather apt solemnity in the second, and overtly joyful third: Allegro non molto, where the second violins seem to chime together with festive bell-like tones between the brisk ritornello theme. This line-up of works, the incredible providence of it all coming together strand by strand, and the splendid, collated effect of these highly entertaining works, with new sonorous treats, again around three bold, brassy pillars, combining some familiar pieces with a generous host of new ones to savour; the playing on “extra time” leads to yet another “Golden goal” for La Serenissima and their continued striving to provide Top League baroquery! Bravi tutti!

David Bellinger

Categories
Recording

Circle Line

Luatten Compagney Katschner play Dufay and minimlist music CD cover

Lautten Compagney, Wolfgang Katschner
75:09
deutsche harmonia mundi 1 90759 43102 3

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk

Philip Glass’s Train to São Paolo gets this recording off to a pounding start, followed by the equally stirring Gloria ad modum tubae by Guillaume Dufay. The similarities in construction between the two pieces are brought out in the instrumentation – there are no voices used in the Dufay – and this CD sets out to display how the use of rhythmic and melodic repetition is a common factor to both composing traditions, even if separated by more than five hundred years. The Glass contributions come mainly from two films, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi; other tracks are by fellow minimalists Steve Reich, John Cage, Meredith Monk and Peter Bauer, while Dufay stands alone. It is imaginative programming which, at times, groups pieces from one tradition together while, at others, alternates them. Some tracks move directly from one composer to the other: the most successful of these moves seamlessly and cleverly from Steve Reich’s clapping music (played here on instruments, including a Jew’s Harp) to Dufay’s chanson Se la face ay pale – and back – keeping a constant ostinato rhythm. While one does miss the words in the Dufay tracks and the greater flexibility usually practised by singers, there was a habit of instrumental substitution in this music and these imaginative transcriptions allow the listener to concentrate on the recurring patterns and on the counterpoint. The Circle Line of the title is exemplified by repeating the opening two tracks at the end, in reverse order, so that the CD starts and ends with a train. This is the second recorded foray into minimalism by the Lautten Compagney, founded in 1984 in the former East Berlin, who have otherwise generally specialised in Baroque music. Playing and recording are excellent and this disc has grown on me with repeated hearing. I can certainly recommend listening to it.

Noel O’Regan

Categories
Recording

Akoé: Nuevas Músicas antiguas

Akoé Nuevas Musicas Antiguas CD cover

Taracea
51:13
Alpha Classics 597

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk

Anybody old enough like me to remember Jacques Loussier and his renditions of Baroque music in a jazz idiom will be slightly prepared for this CD of ‘reworkings’ of early music. There is certainly the same mellow, laid-back atmosphere here, as a broken consort to end all such (flute/recorder, vihuela, double bass, voice, percussion and serpent) go to work on Dowland, Caccini, Isaac, Encina, Josquin, le Roy, Hildegard and Claudin. I have to say that I disliked both what the ensemble was doing to the music and the end result. Unlike in the case of Loussier, there seemed no consistent style into which the music was being translated – this, to me, was just a mess of folky and experimental jazz influences mashed together. The pretentious programme note failed either to explain or convince – ‘This is the very core of Taracea’s Akoé : the thorn, the stinging spur of curiosity, and the memory of past sounds, the integral genetic inheritance of every composer and musician.’  Many of you will also remember pseuds’ corner… Annoyingly, the obvious musicality of the individual players could have been put to much more worthy ends, but there was a worrying inclination towards iconoclasm (e.g. track 3 Caccini’s Amarilli, mia bella being caricatured on a serpent) and a pretentious self-indulgence about this whole project which I found it very hard to warm to. Certainly not hip in either sense of the word!

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Barbara Strozzi: Virtuosa of Venice

Barbara Strozzi CD cover Fieri Consort

Fieri Consort
67:18
Fieri Records FIER003VOV
With music by Ferrari, Fontei, Kapsperger, Maione, Monteverdi & Selma y Salaverde

Click HERE to buy this CD on amazon.co.uk

It is good to see Barbara Strozzi’s music receiving more attention – as more of it becomes familiar, it is clear that she deserves her own place in the history of early Baroque music. As a female composer and performer, her considerable success was greeted with some suspicion in her own lifetime, and even in our own day, acceptance of her skills has been slow and grudging. Her image as a serious performer/composer is perhaps not helped by the familiar bare-breasted portraits, but she was a pupil of the Monteverdi’s pupil, Francesco Cavalli, and was a prolific composer with seven books of madrigals, arias and cantatas plus a collection of sacred music to her name. That this large body of work was published is sometimes ascribed to the prominence of her father as a member of the prestigious Accademia degli Incogniti, but, as more and more of her stylistically varied music comes to be performed, it becomes clear that she was probably being published entirely on her own merits. The Fieri Consort fields six voices in various permutations with gamba, lute/theorbo and harp to present a selection from throughout the composer’s musical life. Thus we travel from the flirty music of the early madrigal collections to the more intense music of the late more profound lagrime. The fact that her music stands up very well beside the pieces by Monteverdi, Nicolò Fontei and Kapsperger with which the consort alternate her songs is a mark of their quality.  The singing and playing are generally good, if the ornamentation occasionally sounds a little laboured, and I like the variety of voices, which appear mainly in dialoguing pairs, as well as the subtlety of the instrumental accompaniments. 

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Resonanze

Resonanze CD of solo gamba music from the baroque and modern periods

music for viola da gamba
Ibrahim Aziz
63:31
First Hand Records FHR83
Abel, J. S. Bach, Martínez Gil, Rowe & Schenck

Click HERE to buy this on amazon.co.uk

This CD is a vehicle for the gamba virtuosity of Ibrahim Aziz. The programme consists of two Baroque pieces and two modern compositions for gamba, and an arrangement of the Bach second cello Suite. Notwithstanding Aziz’s formidable technique and sonorous tone, I found this the least successful piece on the recording, being so familiar with the work as a cello piece and feeling that the gamba with its frets acted as a restraint on the player. Carlos Martínez Gil’s Suite Estiu is very much in the neo-Baroque style, a nostalgic homage to the gamba compositions of the 18th century. He manages to find unusual textures and resonances in the work’s five varied movements, as does gambist and composer, Rebecca Rowe, in her impressive 2018 composition Journeying, specifically written for Ibrahim Aziz. As a player of the instrument, she seems more confident and enterprising than Martínez Gil in her exploration of its potential. The Three Pieces by Carl Friedrich Abel are surprisingly consequential, although this is hardly surprising from the leading gamba virtuoso in London in the 18th century. Curious to think of his gifted pupil, the painter Thomas Gainsborough, working away diligently on this sort of repertoire. The D-minor Suite V by another 18th-century gambist/composer Johann Schenck is the most substantial work in the programme, technically dazzling and musically powerful. It is not surprising to learn that his music was widely published and performed throughout Europe, although the present suite survives in manuscript only. This is a delightfully varied CD, demonstrating the full and varied potential of the gamba in the hands of a capable and wonderfully gifted young player. 

D. James Ross