Tag: Keyboard music

Carole Cerasi with James Johnstone harpsichord & Reiko Ichise gamba
Metronome METCD 1100 (10 CDs in a box)

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To record and release the whole of Couperin’s seminal Harpsichord oeuvre is an astonishing act of faith and dedication. The lock-down times give amateurs (in the French sense) the chance to get to grips with and reappraise this amazing corpus of music which more than any that I know gives us a feel for what makes French music of the late seventeenth century so very distinctive.

Apart from L’Art de Toucher le Clavecin (1716), Couperin’s pieces are arranged in twenty-seven Ordres, each grounded in a particular key, but avoiding the tight structure of the Bach suites, where the formal series of dances provide a recognised structure. With Couperin we are in a looser, more wayward structure of movements with a more programmatic feel: the fascinating titles given to some pieces reveal the background in a theatrical imagination where reality is miniaturised, life-changing experiences immortalised in particularity and the trivial glimpse turned into an epigrammatic memorial. While Les Langeurs-Tendres in the Sixième Ordre is a classic bit of descriptive mood music, no-one really knows to what Les Baricades Mistérieuses refers. La Triomphante that opens the Dixième Ordre could not rattle the sabres more, while Le Petit-Rien is just what it says – a few insouciant bars of delight, ending the Quatorzième Ordre, with its birdsong pieces and the softly jangling bell-like notes of Le Carillon de Cythère.

Some of the most evocative pieces are written in the resonant tenor range which is so characteristic of Couperin’s style, like Les Ondes that concludes the Cinquième Ordre. But what makes or mars any recording of Couperin’s music are two factors: first, the player’s familiarity with the keyboard style of the period, where ornaments and their languid execution as well as the conventions of notation are so important for whether the playing feels French and second, the choice of instrument(s). For those who would like to sample Cerasi’s skills and sensibilities, I suggest they turn to CD 9.7-11, where they will hear not only Le Point du jour, L’Anguille and the Menuets Croisès but also her skill and immaculate sense of timing in the halting, sliding Le Croc-en-jambe and the magician’s sleight of hand in Les Tours de Passe-passe. I was brought up on Kenneth Gilbert’s recordings of Couperin, made in the 1970s, and it is largely his editions of the Ordres that I still use. But Cerasi’s playing has a grace, a flexibility and a subtle freedom, devoid of tiresome and faddish mannerisms, that I admire greatly. Cerasi is ably partnered in those pieces requiring two clavecins by her producer in this outstanding enterprise, James Johnstone.

For the instruments, she chooses a series of harpsichords, beginning with the Ruckers of 1636 that underwent a makeover by Henri Hemsch of Paris in 1763 in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands and ending with a splendid Antoine Vater of 1738 that seems to live in a private house in Ireland – now there’s a ray of hope in a dark world! The instruments – including the modern ones by Philippe Humeau (1989) after Vater 1738 and Keith Hill (2010) after a Taskin of 1769 – are all suitably French sounding and are all pitched at 415. I haven’t wearied of the wonderful sounds she coaxes from each harpsichord – so different in the languorous slow movements and so bright and fiery at times in the rondeaux, even after listening to the 10 CDs several times, and I don’t think they could be bettered: they certainly sing out better than those used by Kenneth Gilbert in the 1970s. Each instrument is illustrated in the accompanying notes, although ideally I would have liked more information on a website if not in the booklet, particularly on the 1738 Vater from Ireland, which sounds quite wonderful. Nor is there information on the temperament used: the keys are delightfully differentiated – the Eb and C minor are particularly dark and velvety, so my guess is that it is a sixth or fifth comma meantone system. But I trust Cerasi’s scholarship and research to know what was likely in Paris in the first quarter of the 18th century.

The main content of the booklet is an excellent essay, 21 columns long, by Nicholas Anderson, in both English and French. It manages to set Couperin’s oeuvre in its historical, visual and theatrical context, alert us to some of the more recent scholarship and writing and give us a feel for the distinctive nature of each Ordre – no mean achievement in this highly condensed format.

Each CD has a card sleeve with the content and timings of each piece listed on the back, and I am amazed and delighted in equal measure that it has been possible to issue the whole of this project for under £45.00. I don’t expect ever to hear a more thoughtful and intense yet playful and elegant version of Couperin’s great works, and Carole Cerasi has us all in her debt. Buy it at once, even if you’ve never heard more than a handful of these works before. This is all pure gold, and I know no better introduction to the French style than this.

David Stancliffe

Masaaki Suzuki harpsichord
69:04
BIS-2221 SACD

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The set of ‘Six toccatas, for the clavir’ mentioned in the 1750 catalogue seems to have been among Bach’s early compositions. No autograph copy survives, but copies of older versions of BWV 912 and 913 existing in Johann Sebastian’s older brother’s hand seem to date from around 1704. Christoph Wolff dates the revised set of six – a set like the Sei Soli or the French and English Suites – to around 1707-8, with the G major BWV 916, with its distinctive and Italianate concerto three-movement structure, added or linked to them in around 1710. The earlier Sei are more truly in the North German style, with opening flourishes and some solid homophonic chords that establish the tonality, followed by the first of the fugati, then a slower passage of a more truly melodic type before a further fugue that leads to a conclusion. So, although the pieces appear to be extended improvisations and are marked manualiter, they follow the models that culminate in Buxtehude’s great pedaliter organ works, whether described at toccatas or not.

These pieces bear all the hallmarks of the improvisatory style of the truly instrumental stylus fantasticus, as Athanasius Kircher calls it. This kind of improvisatory composition, free from the constraints of setting a text or a descriptive programme, is therefore able to reflect the composer’s immediate response to his circumstances like the instrument he had been asked to test or the mood he was in. In England, these became known as fantasias, whether for keyboard or groups of viols, while the generic title for Bach’s semi-improvisatory works is toccata.

You can imagine Johann Sebastian being asked to try out a new harpsichord and using the traditional passagework with runs and arpeggios to test the evenness of the instrument throughout its range leading to more chordal sections to test the resonance; fugal sections test the clarity of the instrument in part-writing and somewhere there will be a more melodic passage to see how well it sings. Later these elements would be refined to the Prelude and Fugue that formed the more disciplined structure of the components of the 48, but at this stage earlier compositional models were being explored.

Suzuki is a seasoned keyboard performer, though better known for directing his Bach Collegium Japan and for being the source and inspiration behind the complete set of cantata recordings, secular as well as sacred. The best historically informed practice underscores his playing, and this is a mature, relaxed and apparently effortless performance. Arpeggios and arabesques are tossed off, fugues are shaped with a clarity of articulation that shows he understands their deep structure and under his hands the instrument – a copy of a substantial two-manual Ruckers by Willem Kroesbergen of Utrecht in 1982 – is coaxed into singing rather than hammered into jangling. This is as good an introduction to Suzuki’s keyboard playing as any and we can appreciate his musicianship at work in these complex and varied works.

David Stancliffe

Tilman Skowroneck harpsichord
69:03
TYXart TXA19133

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This recital by Tilman Skowroneck, a former pupil of – amongst others – Gustav Leonhardt, marks his homage to a fine instrument built by his father Martin Skowroneck in 1976 and to Leonhardt himself.

The harpsichord was first installed in a mansion in Baltimore, where the teenage Tilman remembers seeing it set up on temporary cavaletti, but then bought back after its owners’ demise by Martin in 2009 and re-installed in what was Martin’s (and is now Tilman’s) music room in Bremen. It is a copy of a Christian Zell now in Hamburg’s Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe dated 1728. It was re-quilled before this recording, and the light voicing of I suppose the upper rank makes it a very suitable choice for the version of the E-flat lute sonata BWV 998, which Bach marked ‘for lute or harpsichord’ on the title page of the autograph and can be dated around the mid 1730s. As well as the sixth of the English Suites, Skowroneck plays a transcription of the violin partita in D minor (BWV 1004) taking it down a fifth into G minor, which was a favourite piece of his for recitals. Leonhardt made these transcriptions in the spirit of Johann Sebastian arranging some earlier violin concerti for harpsichord for performance at the Leipzig Collegium Musicum evenings and Bärenreiter now publishes them; but Tilman made and plays his own version, transcribing Leonhardt’s published recording, for performance at a series of memorial concerts for Leonhardt after his death in 2012.

The instrument is certainly very easy to listen to. It is pitched at A=415 and tuned to a ‘modified Temperament Ordinaire’. This tuning certainly favours the flat keys of the chosen pieces. There is an odd resonance to the tenor F sharp, which I find rather distracting; at first, I thought it was my mobile phone buzzing in my pocket, but it is definitely that particular note on the instrument.

Tilman plays persuasively, and is a member of the stroking rather than hammering brigade, so his CD is easy to listen to, and a fine tribute to his father’s craftsmanship and his mentor’s musicianship. The music he has chosen is not frequently recorded, which makes the CD of more than usual interest. His website contains further information and has clips of more recent recordings of French music.

David Stancliffe

Terence Charlston clavichord
62:04
divine art dda 25204

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I had not heard Froberger played on a clavichord before and wondered how it might work, but in the capable hands of Terence Charlston this recording is a resounding success. While one might miss the variety of registrations possible on the organ, letting the player build up the texture in successive sections, the clavichord compensates by allowing for subtle dynamic differences and providing the ability to hear individual voices clearly. Charlston plays on a copy of a South German fretted clavichord from c. 1700, in its putative original configuration, by Andreas Hermert; this is reasonably close to the time of the composition of the music and provides Charlston with what he thinks is the ideal clavichord for the job. The instrument is well recorded, with just a small amount of instrument noise to give it a ‘live’ feel. He concentrates on the fantasias and canzonas from Froberger’s 1649 manuscript, which bridge the gap nicely between the ricercars and canzonas of Frescobaldi and the contrapuntal music of Bach. Both genres are sectional, showing off Froberger’s remarkable ability to create extended pieces out of minimal material, varying the metre while keeping a steady tactus, something Charlston brings out very successfully. He uses subtle ornamentation to keep the sound going, including the vibrato-like Bebung which also changes the pitch slightly. He exploits the unequal semitones of his mean-tone temperament in a number of pieces with chromatic subjects. Sleeve notes are very informative. Charlston’s joy in bringing this music to life shines through and I can strongly recommend this recording.

Noel O’Regan

Colin Booth harpsichord
147:34 (2 CDs)
Soundboard Records SBCD 219

David Stancliffe gave a warm welcome on this site to Colin Booth’s recording of WTC Book I when it appeared nearly two years ago and I am happy to confirm that his follow-up recording of Book II is equally fine. Booth uses the same harpsichord (his own copy of a double-manual Nicholas Cellini instrument of 1661) and tuning system (Kirnberger III) as before, and the recording displays the same clarity in the part-writing in what is a warm and chamber-like acoustic. This harpsichord is particularly good at projecting all the lines in dense contrapuntal textures and Booth uses this very effectively. He eschews virtuosity for its own sake, and these are generally straightforward accounts, falling somewhere between the recent recordings by John Butt and Richard Egarr as regards tempo and reflectiveness. Booth adds many judicious ornaments while never letting them interfere with the line. I particularly like his rhythmical flexibility in the preludes which allows him to negotiate some of the trickier notational corners with ease, as in both F sharp preludes. His astute ‘swinging’ of the beat here and elsewhere produces convincing results. In contrast, the fugues can seem a bit rigid at times, particularly those in the more old-fashioned style, though the more modern ones certainly bounce along nicely. There is a very comprehensive set of liner notes with information about the instrument and the rationale behind Booth’s choice of tuning system, in the light of Bach’s understanding of the term ‘well-tempered’. There are also some perceptive notes on the musical qualities of the second book. Overall, this is an excellent and very welcome recording which showcases Booth’s thoughtful interpretations, and much will be learnt from a careful listening to it.

Noel O’Regan