Tag: Keyboard music

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Royer: Premiere Livre de Pièces de Clavecin

Mie Hayashi harpsichord
65:11
resonus RES10236

At an aristocratic funeral recently I was impressed by the fact that one of the participants had a double-barrelled middle name, but the French Baroque harpsichord composer Royer knocks that into a cocked hat with his triple-barrelled name! From the generation after the great François Couperin, Royer powerfully illustrates that the French harpsichord tradition continued to go from strength to strength. One of the most influential French composers of his time, Royer oversaw much of the more lavish orchestral and chamber music which graced the French court in the mid-eighteenth century. It is striking that his First book of harpsichord music from which this programme is drawn appeared in 1746, the year of the battle of Culloden, and the world of contrived elegance it evokes stands as testimony to the refinement of the Court of Louis XVth. Playing a lovely 2010 reproduction by Andrew Garlick of a Jean-Claude Goujon harpsichord of 1749, harpsichordist Mie Hayashi has selected a wonderfully varied set of pieces, ranging from demure dances to a thunderous pair of Tambourins, an unsettlingly unbalanced Vertigo and Royer’s only well-known piece nowadays his wonderfully virtuosic Marche des Scythes. My favourite piece was the enigmatic Les tendres Sentiments, as with all the repertoire, played with sensitivity and élan by Miss Hayashi.

D. James Ross

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François Couperin: Quatrième Livres de Pièces de Clavecin

Guillermo Brachetta harpsichord
resonus RES10240
156:56 (2 CDs inj a card triptych)

Couperin’s final collection of ordres is the first release in this series which will eventually include all his harpsichord music. Brachetta’s playing can be quite flamboyant but here he adopts a suitably sober approach to match that of the composer who always comes across as rather wistful in this last publication. Tempos are calm and nicely judged, inégalité gentle and fluide, and ornaments almost unobtrusively absorbed into the musical lines. And the instrument is lovely too – a copy (2010) by Keith Hill of a notable Taskin (1769). Some might feel that this is a little late for music published in 1730, but the clear treble and rich lower registers do serve the music well. It can be frustrating when the titles of French character pieces are neither translated nor explained but here careful reading of the booklet’s tiny print will add significantly to the listener’s understanding and enjoyment of the music. The booklet (in English only) includes a general introduction by the player, notes on the music (which could have been longer – there’s space) and biographical information. Couperin’s music comes across as finely-spun gold.

David Hansell

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Cabanilles: Keyboard works, volume three: 21 works for organ and for harpsichord

Timothy Roberts
70:49
Toccata Classics TOCC 0451

This is the third release in a series of as yet unspecified length that may eventually include the composer’s complete keyboard music. This is quite an ambition as there is a lot of it; much is not yet published; and the sources are poor, requiring a creative and corrective approach from editors and performers. Three instruments are used: two splendidly restored historic Spanish organs (one big, one small) and a Ruckers-style harpsichord by Michael Johnson and I’d like to pay a small tribute at this point to those who prepared the instruments for the recording. Though one seldom hears on disc an instrument that is unacceptably out-of-tune, it is also rare to hear instruments, especially organs, that are quite as well in tune as these two. Given the pungent nature of some of the sounds, this is an important and a significant factor in the recital’s success. The booklet (English only) contains concise essays on the composer’s life, his musical style, the instruments used and the player: frustratingly, footnotes suggest referring to the notes from previous releases in the series. I hoped to find these online but was unsuccessful.

Many EMR readers will know Tim Roberts as a player of skill and taste, and there is plenty of both on display. Typically, the pieces consist of a florid and colourful solo line supported by a gently contrapuntal accompaniment. Cabanilles’s sequential passages can sometimes threaten over-predictability, but here they always have a sense of direction and purpose. Some Spanish theorists recommended an approach to rhythm that combines elements of French-style inequality with almost modern concepts of rubato. Perhaps there could be a bit more of this in the performances: on the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for a relatively conservative approach when recording, especially when music is committed to disc for the first (and only?) time. I enjoyed this, and recommend that anyone not yet familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish organ school give it a try. But be prepared for a few shocks!

David Hansell

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Joseph Haydn and his London Disciples

Pink chrysanthemum

Rebecca Maurer fortepiano
79:04
Genuin classics GEN19650
Music by Haydn, Thomas Haigh and Charles Ignatius Latrobe

Haydn’s visits to London were notable from a number of aspects, above all their great success with the capital’s concert-going public, but also for his interaction with native composers. It was an interaction that worked both ways, leading not only to a significant body of works by English composers either influenced by or dedicated to Haydn, but also to the visitor embracing in his own compositions such quintessentially native forms as the catch and the glee.

The present CD focuses on the former, framing works by Thomas Haigh (1769-1808?) and Christian Ignatius Latrobe (1758-1836) between sonatas composed by Haydn for his second London visit. Both the Sonatas in C (Hob XVI:50) and in E-flat (Hob XVI:52) date from 1794 or 5 and comprise two of three dedicated to Therese Jansen, an exceptionally talented pupil of Clementi; they are also the last group of piano sonatas composed by Haydn. That Jansen was a virtuoso is clear from the size and scope of these works, big pieces that require considerable technique and fingering strength in such as the outer movements of the E-flat Sonata. They are also admirably suited to the instrument played by the German keyboard player Rebecca Maurer, a Broadwood of 1816 with a bell-like upper register and bold, resonant bass. As Maurer points out in her excellent notes, with these sonatas the piano leaves the confines of the salon and enters the concert hall. Her actions match her words; these are performances at once boldly virtuosic and sensitively poetic, performances in which her ability to lay out counterpoint clearly is matched by a strong sense of innovatory fantasy and appreciation of Haydn’s wit. Listen, for example, to the fun of the light staccato touch Maurer brings to the opening of the C-major Sonata, or the boldness of that of No. 52, a boldness complemented by the wonderful moment of suspense created by the silence that precedes the codetta of the exposition. In short this is Haydn playing of a high order.

Little is known of London-born Thomas Haigh, other than that he studied with Haydn during the course of his first visit to London in 1791-92. His Sonata in B flat is one of three published in 1796 and ‘humbly dedicated (by Permission) to Dr. Haydn’. Like its fellows it is in two movements, the first of which opens with an adagio before proceeding to a bright-eyed sonata-form Allegro with many scalic flourishes. The second movement Allegretto is based on ‘a celebrated air by Asioli’, a rather naïve rondo with Alberti bass. Published in the same year are three rondos with the principal theme based on one of the popular canzonettas Haydn composed in 1794, the episodes being of Haigh’s composition. His Fantasie was published posthumously (in 1817) and again pays tribute to his master by juxtaposing somewhat incongruously the famous ‘Emperor’s Hymn’ with the whirling folk dance that forms the finale of the ‘Drumroll’. While Haigh’s music is not without interest it is less engaging than that of the Moravian minister and dilettante composer Christian Latrobe, represented here by only the central Lente (sic) movement of his Sonata in B flat, opus 3/2. According to Latrobe Haydn visited him and having heard the sonatas suggested he publish them, which the former agreed to do if Haydn would allow him to dedicate them to him. The appealing movement played by Maurer has a simple song-like theme in the sentimental style. It would be interesting to hear the rest of the sonata if it is all as good as this.

Maurer plays the lesser works of Haigh and Latrobe with as much insight and respect that she brings to the Haydn. To cap off what is both an interesting and extremely well-played and recorded CD, the presentation is exemplary, including not only notes on music and performer but also colour photographs and a description of the piano.

Brian Robins

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Bach: Concertos for Organ and Strings

Floral design

Les Muffatti, Bart Jacobs
79:59
Ramée RAM1804

This is an interesting and beautifully produced CD, combining three elements: ingenious scholarship, a fine organ and excellent playing.

First, what are these organ concertos by Bach? There are none – or rather, none that survive in that precise form. But both Bart Jacobs the organist and Christof Wolff the scholar have hit on the same supposition: that the concert Bach gave on the new Silbermann organ in the Sophienkirche in Dresden in 1725, where a newspaper review says that Bach ‘performed various concertos with sweet underlying instrumental music’, might well have contained movements drawn from earlier instrumental concerti composed at Köthen and Weimar, some of which have survived in later concerti for harpsichord; and another potential source could be movements that found a home in the series of cantatas written in 1726 that feature the organ as a solo instrument either in a concerto-like sinfonia or sometimes as a melodic alternative to a wind instrument in arias. So the prime source for quarrying these ‘concertos for organ and strings’ are the church cantatas BWV 169, 40, 146, 188, and 35; with sinfonias from BWV 156, 75, 29 and 120a. There are just four movements drawn from harpsichord or violin concertos in addition, and some of this assemblage has been transposed up or down a tone to help it fit a group of movements.

Second, this CD was recorded using the fine Thomas organ in the church in Bornem, not far from the Thomas organ-building works in Southeastern Belgium.  This ingenious instrument, after the organ for Rötha near Leipzig that Silbermann built in 1721/2 and which must have been known to Bach, offers a system of jeux baladeurs – a number of ranks that can be played by transmission on more than one key- or pedal-board. Its position on the floor of the north transept allows the 3.3.2.1.1 strings and harpsichord to group around it easily and ensures a unanimity between organ and instruments that is rare – though perhaps unsurprising in view of Bart Jacobs impressive playing in the CD of Bach Cantatas produced under the title Actus Tragicus with Vox Luminis in 2017. A description and full specification together with detailed registration is included, and I can vouch for the quality of the instrument and the excellence of the acoustic as I played it in 2014. I particularly liked the registration for the slow movements incorporating the 8’ Dulcian, the languid tremulant and the versatile Nasat. 

Third, the quality of playing, the balance between the instruments and the apt registration are splendid. The organ is not over-strident, and the registrations provide both blend and clarity: no wonder Bach must have prized Silbermann’s instruments. The only drawback is that the organ’s pitch of A=440 Hz means that no wind instruments playing at 415 can be included, which were a feature of a good number of the cantata movements. And the use of the organ pedal 16’ from time to time seems plausible, though the string 16’ is a robust contrabasso rather than an edgy violone. But that aside, I find the arrangements and performance highly convincing and entirely in the style and spirit of Bach’s own multiple borrowings and rearrangements. I recommend this novel and delightful performance and hope that Bart Jacobs will publish his versions so that others can play them.

David Stancliffe

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Bach: Chorale Partitas BWV 766-768, 770

Floral design

Stephen Farr
55:46
resonus RES10234

Stephen Farr, whose scholarship and playing are of equal excellence, has produced another fine CD in his explorations of Bach’s lesser known works. He produced a CD of the Clavier-Übung III on the Metzler organ in Trinity College, Cambridge which I reviewed for the EMR in June 2016, and enjoyed greatly.

This time it is the four Chorale Partitas, which he plays on a Bernard Aubertin house organ of 2015 in Fairwarp, East Sussex. There are photographs of Aubertin’s instrument, and the full specification and details of the registration for each of the 38 tracks of these four works.

It is a treat to have sensitive and intelligently registered performances of these works, which are probably among Bach’s earliest to survive. They are modelled on the style of Chorale Partitas popularised by Georg Böhm and Johann Pachelbel in the generation before Bach, and probably date from his time at Arnstadt (1703 -1707), or even possibly when he was at the Michaelisschule in Lüneburg from 1700 to 1703 where Böhm was organist at the Johanniskirche and taught the young Bach.

Farr’s sensitive registration and neat playing gives us a well-judged balance and tonal variety – I like for example his use of a 4’ flute for Partita VI of Christ, der du bist der helle Tag, followed by the full chorus on the Positif, with the 8’ Trompette on the Grand Orgue coupled to the Pedal for the final partita (tracks 16 & 17). Overall the registration gives us the benefit of a small-scale organ in a domestic acoustic so that we can hear the complex figuration combined with occasional flashes of a grander sound for the culminating partitas. The elegance of registration (with a soft reed (the Voix Humaine) in the LH) of Partita VI followed by the rhythmically complex Partita VII (my favourite of all) in O Gott, du frommer Gott is beautifully balanced.  This fine judgement is especially evident in the final Partitas with their complex part-writing at the end of Sei gegrüßet.

Both the choice of instrument and the playing are highly commendable, and the sense of relaxed control, where tempi and articulation match each other excellently, make this a splendid performance. The notes provided by David Lee and the details of the organ are excellent as well: Resonus produce finer liner notes than many of their glossier (and more expensive) rivals.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

From Byrd to Byrd

Friederike Chylek harpsichord
Oehms Classics OC 1702
67:24

This is the second recording by the German harpsichordist Friederike Chylek of early English keyboard music. I gave Time Stands Still a warm welcome (7 February 2017) and so I began listening to its successor with a sense of eager anticipation. The programme is built around a fascinating conceit, somewhat in the form of a rondo, featuring Byrd as fons et origo of harpsichord music, with forays into the works of his pupils and, further afield, to composers from the seventeenth century all of whom benefited from his pioneering. The disc is given a particular significance for including a rare Byrd premiere, of sorts.

The programme begins with four varied pieces by Byrd himself, beginning with The Bells. There are over twenty versions of this classic currently available, and more than one of the recent procession of releases featuring Byrd’s keyboard music have included it. Nevertheless, even a jaded palate will be stimulated by Chylek’s superb performance. I was brought up on Fritz Neumeyer’s version (on a 10” LP from 1957!) which pulled off the trick of being metronomic while allowing Byrd’s music to express how he had been inspired by the sound of pealing bells. Frau Chylek goes further, maintaining an ideal balance between the disciplined requirements of campanology, and a subtle ebb and flow as Byrd revels in the ringing. Some recordings tend to over-interpret this piece. Chylek confirms that the only requirements are the composer’s notes, allied to the performer’s momentum and sensitivity. The other three items in this opening section are Byrd’s first setting (of three) of Monsieur’s Alman; Lord Willoughby’s Welcome Home – always welcome (sic) especially when played as vivaciously as this; and the Prelude in G which is the first item in the volumes of Musica Britannica devoted to the composer.

It might seem perverse to conclude what is obviously a separate section of a recording with a prelude, but in fact it leads fittingly to an anonymous setting of Dowland’s Piper’s Pavan & Galliard (MB 96/28) which is in the same key. This is followed by the disc’s significant premiere. There is an LP recording of the setting of Piper’s Galliard aka If my Complaints, played by Paul Maynard, from 1962, but this is the first version on CD, providing an interesting comparison with the anonymous setting of the same galliard that is the previous track. The attribution to Byrd in its unique source is now universally rejected (BK 103, MB 96/38) not least because yet another anonymous setting (Tuttle 26, BK 118, MB 55/20) is now regarded as likely to be by Byrd, and has been recorded as such by Davitt Moroney on his boxed set of Byrd’s complete keyboard music (Hyperion CDS44461-7) and by Aapo Hakkinen on William Byrd: Late Music for the Virginals (Alba ABCD 405) which I reviewed appreciatively for EMR (published 20 November 2017 q.v.). Although Frau Chylek makes the best possible case for the amiable setting now rejected from Byrd’s keyboard canon, it is not difficult to agree with Oliver Neighbour’s dismissal of it as “a thoroughly amateurish version” of Dowland’s galliard, even going on to call the attribution to Byrd “impertinent”. The piece is not mentioned by Martin Hoffmann in the booklet, and is described accurately and with restraint on the sleeve as “arr. attributed to Byrd”. Incidentally, according to Stephen Tuttle and pace Moroney, the now accepted anonymous setting was first attributed to Byrd as early as 1929, by Hilda Andrews in part II of the Catalogue of the King’s Music Library (London: British Museum).

We remain with Byrd for his second setting of Monsieur’s Alman which is the longest of the three (the brief third is on Hakkinen’s disc mentioned above; Neighbour was wrong to be dismissive of these settings, as Chylek and Hakkinen give thoughtful performances that answer his criticisms) before setting off for the Baroque. Here we are treated to a Suite in D by Matthew Locke from Melothesia, then a Symphony and Saraband in g by William Lawes, numbers 48-49 from Playford’s Musick’s Handmaid of 1663 (numbers 343 and 345 in the Viola da Gamba Society’s Thematic index of music for viols under William Lawes), followed by the Suite in d (Z 668) by Purcell; the subtitle of the almand “Bell-barr” refers to Bell Bar, a hamlet in the parish of North Mimms or Mymms in Hertfordshire, close to Hatfield and St Albans. Chylek’s touch in these tuneful Baroque items is as sensitive to her material as it is in the earlier pieces from the Renaissance.

And then it is back to Byrd again for three more works. The Pavan & Galliard pair “Bray” is thought to be dedicated to the expatriate Jesuit priest Fr William Bray. It is one of Byrd’s less recorded pairings in its original version for keyboard, the pavan being more likely to crop up on disc, minus its exquisite varied strains, in its arrangement for lute by Francis Cutting. The third work in this section is Byrd’s Fancy for My Lady Nevell aka Fantasia in C (BK 25) which begins with an upward scale of C major which, as I have suggested in previous reviews in EMR,echoes Byrd’s setting of the word “lux” in his motet Descendit in coelis from his second book of Cantiones sacrae 1591. Her execution of “Bray” captures the character of what is among Byrd’s more pensive, and most beautiful, pavans, while she captures the sheer tunefulness of the galliard, not least in its second strain where there is one of Byrd’s delightful sleight-of-hand key-changes towards the end. Nor is her response to what is one of Byrd’s most performed fantasias at all like the usual cavalry charge with which it can be despatched, again preferring a pensive approach to show the piece in a different light.

After this return to Byrd, we are off again, this time to his more immediate successors. First, Gibbons’ Mask: The Fairest Nymph, a miniature that transcends it miniaturity, if there be such a word. Dowland is then revisited, in two settings by Bull of Piper’s Galliard, both of them effervescent, the second like a shower of musical meteorites. Chylek abides as distantly as possible by Thurston Dart’s pronouncement – solemnly echoed by most subsequent performers and editors of this piece – that “the formidable brilliance of this setting enforces a slow tempo”, without sacrificing any musicality, a thrilling account. Morley’s very C-major Alman goes some way towards slamming the brakes on, though even here the varied strains throw caution bracingly to the winds, as the disc approaches its final item, Byrd’s Hornpipe.

In Byrd’s day the hornpipe was a dance in triple time that could be either fast or slow. It had no nautical connotations until the eighteenth century, when it seems also to have begun to be danced in quadruple time. Byrd’s piece is structurally a ground, and incorporates both the slow and, from bar 121, fast manifestations of the dance. From a staid start, Byrd subtly winds up the musical action using syncopation and varied note values, until the change of tempo at bar 121, when it seems as though some source of extra creative energy bursts forth, such as younger and more energetic dancers taking over from more mature performers, with increasing terpsichorean elation. Or so Friederike Chylek’s playing could persuade one to believe.

This disc is a luminous justification of the concept of the long-playing record and the compact disc. It is beautifully constructed on two levels. First, it provides a programme in which interesting individual pieces are juxtaposed, meaning, for example, that the listener with a penchant for Byrd can be introduced to the superb music of Matthew Locke, who was born two years before Byrd died, with which they might not be familiar. Secondly the programming is inventive and sensitive. Byrd’s Prelude in g BK 1 concludes the opening section devoted to his music but it leads decorously into an anonymous setting, in the same key, of Piper’s Pavan & Galliard by Dowland. The galliard is followed by another setting, attributed – albeit probably wrongly but nonetheless interestingly – to Byrd. Later in the programme there are two dazzling settings by Bull of the same galliard, the second an even more spectacular “variatio” of the first. There are two settings of Monsieur’s Alman by Byrd to compare, and a hornpipe by him and another by Purcell also to compare. As I mentioned at the outset, the entire programme keeps flowing from Byrd to Byrd, interspersed with forays to those who were his pupils, and further afield to those influenced by him more distantly.

The booklet’s notes are an object lesson in informed enthusiasm. It seems churlish to mention that they still give the date of Byrd’s birth as 1543 (recte 1539/40) but this can be excused in view of Martin Hoffmann’s appreciative, almost evangelistic, focus on the repertory of this recording. 

Neither the excellence of the programming nor of Dr Hoffmann’s notes would be worth much without the superlative quality of Friederike Chylek’s playing. With this recording her mere name becomes self-recommending. Her tempi are unerringly judicious, her faultless interpretations exuding profound sensitivity expressed lightly. She is aided by a fine instrument, copied by Matthias Griewisch from an original of 1624 by Ruckers. It has an almost silvery tone yet is strong when required, and depicts every note with clarity and appropriate emphasis, revealing individual lines within the more contrapuntal pieces while blending them into the totality of each piece. This is of course a compliment to Friederike Chylek’s technique.

I cannot recommend this disc too highly. Anyone familiar with some or all of these works will find them interpreted in so many new lights. It is also an ideal disc for someone setting out to discover early English keyboard music – a wonderful repertory complimented by this wonderful disc.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Tilting at Windmills

Dark green flowers

Mico Consort
74:58
Son an ero 12

The Mico Consort, based in France, consists of three violists and an organist. This would not seem an ideal combination for playing a programme such as this, a proportion of which consists of music for viols, much of it in four or five parts, by Byrd and his English contemporaries Tye and of course Mico. Of these only Tye’s Sit fast is performed by the forces, three viols, for which it was composed. They also play pieces by Locke, Coprario, Jenkins and Baltzar appropriate to their personnel, and the organist Anne-Marie Blondel plays four pieces.

Three of Byrd’s five-part In nomines and his Browning are played by 3 viols and organ. Why? The textures are all wrong, impeding and unbalancing Byrd’s narrative. The same is true regarding the two fantasias and, especially, the pavan by Mico. Byrd’s two In nomines in four parts fare better, because the organ plays the cantus firmus and the three viols the contrapuntal parts. Gibbons’ fantasia a6 (MB48/33) is played on the organ. Again, why? Is it because a short score survives and is interpreted by the musicians as indicating the possibility of contemporary performance on the organ alone? Mme Blondel follows this short score in places, and expands upon it in others. The number of surviving fantasias for keyboard by Gibbons runs well into double figures, and their textures differ from this example. Some of them have had all too few recordings. The other three performances on the organ are a vivacious rendition of Tomkins’ Ground (MB5/40); an impressively engaged version of Byrd’s The Bells,surprisingly one of the first commercial recordings of the work to be played on the organ; and to conclude the disc, a radiant performance of Bull’s Salve regina (MB14/40). Here is also a modern piece by Geraud Chirol which gives the disc its title, an incongruous work for the forces of the ensemble.

The presentation is unsatisfactory. Some works are identified merely as ”Ground”, “Fantasia/e” or “Ayre”. There is also a weird piece of translation in the booklet, where a Pavane en la mineur by Jenkins, played on the instruments for which it was intended (see below), is described in the English translation as “a rather tamely written piece” while the original French says “une piece de facture assez sage”. Sage = tame? And if it is tame, why record it? Jenkins’ pavan is not tame, nor is anything in his vast and distinguished oeuvre. This piece also provides a good illustration of the inadequate identifications mentioned above. A search of the Viola da Gamba Society’s thematic index under Jenkins for a pavan in A minor among his hundreds of works proved initially fruitless. By sheer good fortune, on the Presto website there is a “Pavan for 2 bass viols in A minor” listed on a disc of Jenkins’ music performed by Fretwork, with recorded incipits of each track. This turned out to be the same piece. Returning to the VgGS thematic index, I went again to the section on music for bass viols and, having previously scanned the index looking for pieces titled “pavan”, I found the work under the title “[Ayre]”. This took the best part of an hour. It was interesting before it became frustrating, after which I emerged triumphant, albeit rather fortunately, but it was also a huge waste of my time. The item is no 1 in the VdGS listing of Jenkins’ music for two bass viols, and is available from Fretwork Editions and Dovehouse Editions.

This is a curate’s egg of a disc.  Performances by the ensemble tend to be uninspiring and, in the case of the works by Byrd and Mico, are unnecessary. One of the pieces played as an organ solo is a waste of a track but, to conclude on a positive note, the other three organ solos are all estimable.

Richard Turbet

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Sheet music

New from G. Henle Verlag

Modern floral

The first title in the most recent batch we received from this publisher is a piano reduction of Neruda’s Horn (or trumpet) concerto (Henle 561, ISMN 979-0-2018-0561-0, €15) by Dominik Rahmer (editor) and Christoph Sobanski (piano reduction). Famed for his stratospheric playing, Neruda was one of the outstanding Bohemian hornists at the Dresden court. The set includes three parts for a variety of brass players – one notated in C for a natural horn player (presumably playing an F horn to be in tune with the piano?), one for trumpet in E flat (the music in C an octave below the horn part) and for the concert trumpet in B flat (the music in F). All three have the same idiomatic (though virtuosic for the natural instrument!) cadenzas by Reinhold Friedrich. An excellent and very reasonably priced addition to the horn player’s repertoire.

Mozart’s Erste Lodronische Nachtmusik is a sequence of dances, written for the name day celebrations of Countess Antonia of that ilk in 1776. Felix Loy’s Urtext edition sensibly pairs it with a March written for the same celebrations and, based on his belief that it was performed by the musicians (strings with two horns) as they assembled for the divertimento, it comes first in the volume (Henle HN7150, ISMN 979-0-2018-7150-9 study score, €14, Henle 1150, ISMN 979-0-2018-1150-5 parts €32), although that causes the two Köchel numbers to be reversed. As you would expect, the edition is meticulous with succinct critical notes, and the parts are beautifully laid out, with fold-out pages when movements are too long to be accommodated on a two-page spread. First class attention to detail.

The remaining two editions sent are from the on-going Beethoven piano sonata series from Norbert Gertsch and Murray Perahia (who is credited as joint editor and for supplying the fingerings). There is not much I can say that I did not already cover in my previous review – same beautiful engraving with carefully planned page-turns, and the same footnotes providing on-the-page important information or insights. The A major sonata op 2/2 (Henle 772, ISMN 979-0-2018-0772-0, €12) and that in C major, op 2/3 (Henle 1222, ISMN 979-0-2018-1222-9, €10) were dedicated to Haydn – even relatively early in Beethoven’s career, we must wonder what his former teacher made of them when he heard the composer play them in 1796.

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Sheet music

English Keyboard music 1650-1695: Perspectives on Purcell

Floral design

Purcell Society Edition, volume 6 PC6
Edited by Andrew Woolley
xlii+190pp, linen bound. £85
Stainer & Bell ISBN 979 0 2202 2345 7; ISMN 978 0 85249 930 6

This volume will be welcomed by anyone interested in 17th-century English keyboard music. With typical Purcell Society thoroughness and equally typical Stainer & Bell beautiful book publishing, it comprises 32 pages of introduction and facsimiles, then 126 movements (plus variants), divided into sections:

  • Organ music from Restoration Oxford (six works, mostly anonymous)
  • John Cobb (including two dubious and four anonyma)
  • Commonwealth and early Restoration suites (Mell, Locke, two dubious, two anonyma)
  • Pieces by or associated with Frnacis Forcer (including Blow, Farmer and Lully)
  • John Blow and his milieu (three dubious, seven anonyma, Lully & Lebègue)
  • Pieces collected by Charles Babel
  • Giovanni Battista Draghi (four suites)

There follow two appendices, the first an Almain in D minor by John Cobb, the second a suite in F by Davis Mell, then a thoroughly detailed Textual Commentary giving all the variants of the multiplicity of sources. Just this description of the layout of the contents gives some impression of just what a massive undertaking the project was, and what an achievement its realisation is. Woolley and co. (and Stainer & Bell!) have produced a book that is both unparalleled in its informative value and inclusive scope, and in the presentation of that which is most important, i. e., the music itself, in a performable format. Where variants are too complicated to describe in detail (or are, perhaps, deemed of equal value?), third and (especially in the music by Draghi) fourth staves are very cleverly added to allow musicians to have both versions available in a single score.

I did find it rather tiresome to see the editor credited on every page of music, likewise the Purcell Society Trust asserting their copyright similarly but in this age of digital reproduction it is quite right of them to ensure that everyone knows who has invested so much time, effort and money into producing such a monumental and excellent contribution to our understanding and appreciation of this repertoire.

Brian Clark