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Concert-Live performance

Sense and Musicality

Jane Austen’s connections with music have been long acknowledged. They are by no means without controversy and apparent contradiction, Austen’s own undoubted life-long interest in music is to a certain extent counterbalanced by her own observations such as implying that while music might be a good thing on its own terms, sitting listening to a concert might perhaps not be. Otherwise Jane’s large collection of music books, many transcriptions written in her own hand, offer an argument that might serve to arrive at a different conclusion.

Such matters were among those explored in a programme mounted to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth in 2025. It is being presented in various venues by The Little Song Party – soprano Penelope Appleyard and the pianist Jonathan Delbridge, who accompanies her on a Broadwood square piano dating from 1814 and which is thus an instrument that Jane Austen could have known. I suppose the correct name for their well-researched programme would be ‘lecture-recital’, but that hardly does justice to the delightfully relaxed ambiance the performers achieved in presenting it as a part of the Newbury Spring Festival at Shaw House in Newbury. The venue in itself made for a highly appropriate setting, being an Elizabethan house built in 1581, but substantially altered during the 18th century by the then owner James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (he of Handelian fame) and subsequently several James Andrews, the last of whom takes us up to Austen’s day.

The programme juxtaposed introductions and readings with a judicious choice of music that ranged from popular ballads through folk songs and operatic ‘hits’ of the day to themes associated with contemporary films of Austen’s works and in one instance a new work especially commissioned for the concert series. This was ‘Ode to Pity’ by Donna Mckevitt, a rare example of the poetry of the novelist being set to music. Written when she was in her teens, the song captures well the wry sense of humour that would become a hallmark of Austen’s writing. It was well projected by Appleyard, who not only delivered her spoken words with winning natural charm, but whose clear, fresh-sounding soprano is ideal for this type of repertoire. This is not the kind of programme that requires a detailed critique, but it is worth noting that where needed Appleyard added appropriate ornamentation (I thought the principal theme of Gluck’s ‘Che faro’ might have been afforded a little more decoration on its repetition). Delbridge supported the singer throughout with playing of character and sensitivity, providing several solos on his own account. One of the greatest successes of the afternoon was the ‘Storm Rondo’ by Daniel Steibelt, the piece believed by one commentator to be the agitated music played by Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility to cover up her sister Elinor’s secret conversation with Lucy Steele. Delbridge’s fine playing was ideally complemented by Appleyard’s muttered reading of both parts, the dramatization deservedly bringing the house down.

The programme will be given several more times, perhaps most notably at the Jane Austen Festival in Bath in September . If you happen to be in the vicinity don’t miss this enchanting event.

Brian Robins

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Recording

If the fates allow

Helen Charlston mS, Sounds Baroque
58:46
BIS-2734

If the title of this outstanding CD gives little away, its appendage is rather more forthcoming – ‘Music by Purcell and his contemporaries’. Even so and although there are several staples from the Purcell recital repertoire (‘O Solitude’, ‘I attempt from love’s sickness’), there are some rather more unexpected inclusions; ‘If music be the food of love’ is included in two of the three settings made by Purcell, but neither is the well-known one (Z. 379b).

Also unusual is the absence of programme notes, foregone in favour of a fascinating conversation between Helen Charlston and Emma Kirkby, in which they express their feelings about Purcell’s songs and what it means to sing them. Naturally, there is much accord, but what is interesting when it comes to performances is just how contrasted the approach is. One need only listen to a little of Emma Kirkby’s wonderful 1983 recital of the songs after this CD to recognise that the objectives of the singers are quite different. Dame Emma’s performances are all about vocal purity, clarity of diction and a near-perfect musical technique, with cleanly articulated ornaments and shaping of phrases. Charlston comes from a new generation, the best of whom – certainly including singers like her and Lucile Richardot – is starting to recognise that there is potentially more to this repertoire than simply singing it perfectly. Take Charlston’s singing of ‘Morpheus thou gentle god’ by Daniel Purcell, Henry’s younger brother. In this at-times fiery text about jealousy by Abel Boyer – the penultimate passage starts ‘I rage, I burn, my soul on fire, Tortured with wild despair and fierce desire’ – the demands on the singer are in stark contrast to the long cantabile of the earlier part, dramatically intense and full of rhetorical gesture. Charlston rises to these demands superbly, bringing the song to a terrifying peroration on the final word ‘destroy’.

This is, of course, an extreme example that takes us into a world of Italianate fervour and intensity, but this attention to the rhetorical detail of all the songs here is one of the striking details of the recital. One is given the impression that Charlston has thought deeply and carefully about every word she sings and never forgetting, or letting us forget, that in Purcell’s day this repertoire was often sung by actor-singers. Rarely, for example, in my experience has the Virgin’s fear in ‘Tell me, some pitying angel’ been so graphically expressed, each ‘Why?’, each ‘How?’ given a marginally different inflection, while the lack of a ‘vision from above’ at the ‘wondrous birth’ brings near panic in the repeated calls of ‘Gabriel, Gabriel’. The result is a compelling mini-drama. In ‘Music for a While’ Dryden’s snakes drop from Alecto’s head with languid perfection. And there are so many more examples to explore. I urge you to discover them for yourself.

Throughout the recital Charlston is supremely well supported by Sounds Baroque (Jonathan Manson, bass viol, William Carter, Baroque guitar and theorbo, and Julian Perkins, harpsichord and chamber organ); on their own account they contribute a set of Divisions by Christopher Simpson and John Blow’s Morlake Ground, the latter played by Perkins on a richly sonorous copy of a two-manual Ruckers Hemsch instrument by Ian Tucker.

At a time when I frequently have cause to compare the state of early music in the UK unfavourably with what is happening in several European countries, France in particular, this is pure manna from heaven. Here are British artists performing English music to as near perfection as one has any right to expect.

Brian Robins

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Recording

From Byrd

Trio Musica Humana, Elisabeth Geiger muselaar
42:59
Seulétoile SE12

This is an intriguing and quirky recording, built around Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices. The French Trio Musica Humana (CT T Bar) sing Byrd’s smallest mass superbly, with immaculate blend and intense engagement. They omit the Credo, and intersperse the remaining movements with other works for three voices by Byrd himself, Weelkes and Morley, and with works for keyboard by Byrd, Tomkins, Farnaby and Johnson. Some movements of Byrd’s Mass are performed with muselaar. It is easy to disagree with this approach, but contemporary accounts mention the participation of unspecified instruments in illegal performances of Catholic masses in Protestant Elizabethan England by recusants, so it is not out of order to experiment with instruments of that time. By current standards, this is a brief album, but is worth possessing by Byrd’s enthusiasts for the performances of the two sacred works by the composer which are included in addition to the Mass. Both are the only alternatives to previous recordings in omnibus projects. The longer of the two is Memento salutis auctor, from the Gradualia of 1605, following The Cardinall’s Musick (TCM) on disc 12 of their Byrd Edition. The other is the penitential psalm From depth of sin previously recorded only by Alamire on their complete version of the Songs of sundrie natures, which collection was originally published in 1589. The former interpretation is slower than TCM but every bit as fine. However, the USP of the current disc is the latter: Alamire sing From depth of sin divinely, and again Trio Musica Humana’s performance is slower than its predecessor, but at least for this reviewer their combination of tempo, blend, balance and perception achieves a perfection seldom conveyed on such recordings, elevating its two and a half minutes to the ranks of the very finest renditions of Byrd’s music on disc.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Froberger: Suites for Harpsichord (vol. 3)

Gilbert Rowland
120: 17 (2 CDs)
Athene ath 23213

This collection of twelve suites for harpsichord represents around a third of the suites he wrote, which in turn are a small part of his oeuvre for keyboard. In a comprehensive programme note, the harpsichordist Gilbert Rowland makes a strong case for Froberger as ‘one of the most important and highly original composers of the seventeenth century’. Listening to this concluding third volume in a complete account of the composer’s suites, I am inclined to agree with him. Born in Stuttgart to a musical family, Froberger soon found his way to Vienna where he was court organist to Ferdinand III, who paid for him to imbibe the very latest keyboard trends from Frescobaldi in Rome. Later in life, he was drawn to the glittering Paris of Louis XIV and the company of Duchess Sybilla of Württemberg, a talented pupil and evidently a close friend in whose company he eventually died. It is easy to hear the influence of Frescobaldi in this music but there is a solid Germanic core to it which recalls the music of much later keyboard composers such as Handel. It would be fascinating to hear the choral music by Froberger which has recently re-surfaced, which may have been written for the Viennese Hofkapelle, but clearly the keyboard lay at the heart of his profession and also his surviving work. Rowland plays an impressive 2-manual French-style harpsichord by Andrew Wooderson after a 1750 original by Goermans of Paris, maybe an instrument with a slightly fuller sound than Froberger would have been familiar with almost a century earlier. It does sound magnificent though, and Rowland makes intelligent use of its available timbres, playing with complete technical assurance and innate musicality – and more than that: His intimate understanding of Froberger’s idiom gives his playing an authority which makes his bold claims utterly convincing.

D. James Ross

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Recording

W A Mozart: Fantasy

Florent Albrecht
78:24
Trihort 585

Playing a Baumbach pianoforte of 1780, Florent Albrecht presents a programme of Mozart’s four fantasies for solo piano, bringing under the same umbrella three preludes, as well as a further “Mozart Fantasy” reconstructed by himself. There is an interesting record from 1785 of Mozart playing fantasies for his fellow Masons, and it is highly plausible that this exploratory and improvisatory music would have appealed particularly to this inner circle of deep-thinking connoisseurs. Albrecht’s accounts emphasise the spontaneous nature of this music, managing to make it sound as if he is discovering its secrets alongside his audience. He makes imaginative use of the different textures available on his chosen instrument, a remarkable survivor from a bygone age – it was the property of the Abbé of Vermont, tutor and confessor to Marie-Antoinette, and unlike these two people who are very likely to have played it, it survived the French Revolution to be restored to its original state in 2013 by Olivier Fadini. It produces a remarkably rich array of timbres, which Albrecht exploits to the full in these flamboyant accounts of some of Mozart’s most imaginative piano music. With many composers from the Baroque era onwards, we are painfully aware of the wealth of improvised music, which took many composers to the very limits of their creative talents, but which by definition often existed only in the moment. Fantasies such as these are treasures, preserved by random chance, and the main strength of these recordings is the way in which Albrecht expressively unfolds each piece, much as Mozart may have done in the rarefied setting of his Masonic Lodge.

D. James Ross

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Recording

A Bach & Abel Concert

Catherine Zimmer Merlin square piano 1784
Music by K F Abel, J C & C P E Bach, Haydn, Lachnith, [Maria Hester] Park & Stanley
62:00
encelade ECL2401

The year is 1784 and in London the inventor John Joseph Merlin and the Gray brothers have come up with one of the more bizarre offshoots of the development of the piano – a square piano combined with an organ. There was a considerable taste for novelty at this time among the spoiled metropolitan musical public, with an account of one musician in fancy dress and on roller skates performing on the violin before destroying a valuable mirror, his instrument and himself! Remarkably the 1784 Merlin Organised Piano has survived, and it is on this fully restored novelty that Catherine Zimmer presents a recital of music from the time which might just have been played on it. In addition to the promised works by JC and CPE Bach and Abel, we have music by Haydn as well as more obscure repertoire by John Hook, Maria Hesther Park and Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith. Opinions will be divided as to whether a combined sound of piano and organ is even desirable, and some listeners may be distracted by the necessary clanking of the mechanism as Zimmer switches among the various available timbres. I have to say I found this inclusion of the ‘mechanics’ both honest and engaging, particularly when on one track they are joined by the chirping of sparrows, and I even found myself warming to the virtues of the ‘organised piano’. It is perhaps significant that prior to its extensive restoration in 2020, this remarkable instrument had been subjected to ongoing work, suggesting that it had never fallen entirely out of use. At any rate, it is fascinating finally to hear an instrument which hitherto had only been heard about, and particularly when it is in the hands of an expert pianist/organist such as Catherine Zimmer.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Un clavecin pour Marcel Proust

Olivier Baumont
46:00
Encelade ECL2204

The idea of a harpsichord for Marcel Proust may at first glance seem like a bit of a historical mismatch between an essentially Baroque instrument and a writer of the late 19th and early 20th century. But of course this is an author in search of times gone by, and harpsichords and harpsichordists make regular appearances in his writings. Olivier Baumont has cleverly sought out these allusions and constructed a programme of the music mentioned as well as pieces ‘in the old style’ by Proust’s friends and fellow enthusiasts for earlier centuries, Reynaldo Hahn and Louis Diémer. Playing appropriately three impressive 20th-century copies of 18th-century original harpsichords, Baumont explores the 19th-century revival of this Baroque repertoire witnessed by Proust and included in his novels. Grouping the music by Rameau, Bach, Scarlatti and Couperin interspersed by pastiches by Anthiome, Hahn and Ravel under the heading of the Proust characters the music is associated with, Baumont constructs a concert programme for an event which never in fact took place on an instrument (Proust’s clavecin) which never actually existed – a very proustian questioning of memory! He is joined by soprano Ingrid Perruche, violinist Pierre-Eric Nimylowycz, and fellow clavecinist Nicolas Mackowiak for what turns out to be a very engaging sequence of music. This CD is very much a flight of fancy of harpsichordist Olivier Baumont and for all it hangs on what in Scotland we would call ‘a bit of a shoogly peg’, his beautiful playing and the thought-provoking juxtaposition of pieces makes for a satisfying and involving experience.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Miscellanées

Elisabeth Joyé harpsichord
62:00
encelade ECL2202

This recording grew out of a Covid lockdown project in which Joyé recorded a series of videos of very short pieces covering the whole of the early keyboard repertoire for sharing with students and friends. The CD is a collection of the earlier pieces from that project, many of them very short indeed. It includes music by major 17th-century keyboard composers and makes for a varied and informative programme. Perhaps because of the nature of the project, I found much of the playing to be rather too careful, correct but not very exciting, especially in some non-imitative pieces which would have benefitted from some more panache. I did enjoy her rendition of the Capriccio cromatico by Tarquinio Merula, with some nice uneven semitones, and some similar chromaticism in a Pavan by Orlando Gibbons and a Froberger Fantaisie. The playing does come more alive in some chaconnes by D’Anglebert, Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer and Georg Böhm. Most of the programme is played on an Italian virginal by Jean-François Brun after an anonymous instrument of 1626. She also uses a polygonal spinet at low pitch by the same maker, after an anonymous instrument of 1560, and a 4’ harpsichord by Amadeo Castille after Pisaurensis 1543, also made in the Brun workshop. All are recorded quite closely and produce a satisfactory sound. Something of a mixed bag, then, but worth listening to, nevertheless.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

Le Salon de la rue du Hasard

Mlle Certain, claveciniste du Grand Siècle (1662-1711)
Mathilde Mugot harpichord
64:56
Seulétoile SE10

This is a very satisfying recording with some highly idiomatic harpsichord playing from Mathilde Mugot. It celebrates the salon presided over by Mlle. Marie-Françoise Certain on the Rue de Hasard in Paris in the late 17th century. Patronised by the fableist Jean de la Fontaine, it played host to all the great French musicians of the time. Sadly, no compositions by Certain survive but this CD seeks to reconstruct some of the music which she knew. It includes some well-known pieces by D’Anglebert, François Couperin, Lully and Jacquet de la Guerre, but also two pieces by the little-known Françoise-Charlotte Ménétou. One of the highlights is a Suite in D put together from dances by the little-known Jacques Hardel, extracted from the Bauyn and Lapierre manuscripts, which surprised me with its accomplishment. A product of the Covid lockdown, the recording marks the debut of this young French harpsichordist who proves to be an excellent interpreter of the repertoire. Her playing is fluent with lots of idiomatic ornamentation which, however, never disturbs the flow or sense of forward movement. Her interpretations are always well directed and convey their meaning easily to the listener. She plays on a harpsichord by Émile Jobin and the recording, made in the Abbaye de Royaumont, displays great clarity. The accompanying booklet is in French only; the Seulétoile website does give some little information in English but its translation of the CD’s title (‘The livingroom on the Hasard Street’) doesn’t quite convey the project’s significance! It is certainly a very welcome recording and an excellent introduction to the French harpsichord repertoire.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

Andrea Gabrieli: Le peine de mon cœur

Sébastien Wonner harpsichord
63:00
encelade ECL2102

For those of us whose minds turn to epic choral music or madrigals at the mention of the name Andrea Gabrieli, it is a useful antidote to be reminded of his career as keyboard player and his publications of keyboard music. This repertoire is undoubtedly an extension of Gabrieli’s improvisation skills at the organ, and many of his pieces such as the intonazioni and ricercars would have served liturgical purposes in the lavish services in St Mark’s Venice – we have frequently introduced Gabrieli’s largescale choral pieces with relevant intonazioni to establish the tonality. However, it is useful to hear this music, as well as keyboard arrangements of madrigals and motets, on the harpsichord to remind us that it is perfectly effective, freestanding solo keyboard repertoire. Gabrieli was a truly international musical figure, using Venice’s status as a world power to incorporate pan-European influences into his work. He samples French and German secular songs as well as the music of his Italian contemporaries in his work, but the wonderful spontaneity with which Sébastien Wonner imbues his performances constantly emphasises the improvisatory aspect of these works. He plays a fine 1999 harpsichord by Matthias Griewisch, while the distinctive tuning with its occasional spicy discords permits parallels to be drawn with Gabrieli’s exact contemporary Veronese – more remarkably still in 1585 musician and artist collaborated on a production of Sophocles Oedipus with Gabrieli composing the choruses and Veronese designing the costumes! O to have been a fly on the wall at that performance – both Gabrieli’s music and Veronese’s costume designs survive, so await the attentions of some enterprising opera company! Clearly there is much more to Andrea Gabrieli than his magnificent church music, and this excellent CD emphasises just one further aspect of this kaleidoscopic musician.

D. James Ross