Tag: Keyboard music

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Recording

Couperin, Rameau [&] de Seixas

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Mariko Terashi piano
76:11
athene ath 23207

Of the three composers represented here, Carlos de Seixas is by far the least well known. Working in Portugal in the first half of the 18th century, he had the double misfortune firstly to die young at the age of just 38 and secondly to have most of his music and his instruments destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. On the basis of the imaginative and polished sonatas performed here, he is a composer whose reputation is overdue a re-evaluation. Younger than either Couperin or Rameau by some twenty and thirty years respectively, de Seixas was clearly much more open to new keyboard styles, and it is intriguing to think what he might have achieved had his life not been cut short by a fatal attack of rheumatic fever. In addition to four of de Seixas’s Sonatas we have selections from the first and second Livres de Clavecin by Rameau and pieces from various Ordres by Couperin. I have to point out at this stage that Mariko Terashi performs her programme on a modern piano, and that (personally) I like my harpsichord music played on a harpsichord. Even setting that prejudice to one side, I have to say that I find Terashi’s playing a little bland and that her ornaments lack the definition I think is necessary for the music of this period. She also has the annoying mannerism of throwing away final cadences. This is all probably least detrimental in the forward-looking de Seixas pieces, but both the Rameau and the Couperin sound emasculated. I am grateful to this CD for having alerted me to the music of de Seixas, and I must look out for performances on harpsichord.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Birds

Modern floral

Elina Mustonen harpsichord
68:19
fuga-9447
Byrd, F. Couperin, Rameau + modern composers

As a lover of birds and the harpsichord, this CD could have been fashioned specially for me! Throughout history composers have admired and imitated the songs of birds, and this CD by harpsichordist Elina Mustonen explores the relationship in the keyboard music of the 17th, 18th and 21st centuries. The CD opens with the stunning sounds of nightingale song before Mustonen embarks on the Quatorzième Ordre from Couperin’s Troisième Livre de Clavecin of 1722, in which the composer evokes the songs of various birds, most prominently arguably the most distinguished of avian vocalists, the nightingale. After the Couperin, we are taken through a group of modern pieces for harpsichord by Peter Machajdík and Oli Mustonen with bird connections before the programme concludes with some slightly tangential Byrd and some much more on-message Rameau. Elina Mustonen entitles her programme notes A Bird Fancyer’s Delight and it is perhaps a pity that she didn’t arrange some of the melodies from that famous 17th-century English publication rather than shoe-horn in the Byrd (what’s in a name?) and the modern works, which are a bit of a culture shock. The sound of Mustonen’s 1993 Kroesbergen Couchet copy harpsichord is superbly rich and vividly captured by her sound engineers. All in all, I felt that this programme was an intriguing idea, best at its beginning and end, seeming slightly to lose its way in the middle, although the quality of the music and the playing are never less than excellent.

D. James Ross

Categories
Sheet music

François Couperin: Pièces d’Orgue

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Edited by Jon Baxendale
184 pp (hardback)
Cantando Musikkforlag
ISMN: 979-0-2612-4441-1

It has always frustrated me that past generations of editors have thought it just fine to publish music in non-specialist, mass-distribution editions in a form that is not fully suitable for performance. I am thinking in particular of renaissance music that lacks any indication that a plainchant incipit or insertion is needed and liturgical organ music that gives no hint of the chant that should surround it.

Well, at long last this latter issue has been addressed, at least for Couperin, by this handsome new edition of his two organ masses which may prove to be the most enduring memorial to have been stimulated by the composer’s 350th anniversary year – it has already been used for three recordings. An editorial re-consideration of the masses was long overdue. Their sources are complicated by the fact that the music, though ‘published’ by the composer, was never actually engraved and printed: what you bought was a printed title page but a manuscript copy of the notes themselves. In a spectacular piece of diligent research Jon Baxendale has carefully explored the whole musico-social-historical-commercial context of the surviving copies and their relationship to others that must once have existed and proposed a new and convincing stemma on which to base his work.

Indeed, what this publication contains in addition to the music is at least as important as it is. The lengthy introduction explores Couperin’s early life as an organist and the sources of the music; offers advice on performance style and ornamentation; and explains that this music is in the alternatim tradition, in which organ music replaces portions of the sung liturgical texts. Not only are the necessary chants and texts to complete the mass ordinary provided but there is also a set of propers. Needless to say, all the chant is from appropriate French sources. In addition, there is an explanation of the organs on which the repertoire was originally played, discussion of exactly which stops were used for what, and comments from other contemporary organists/composers – since we have none from Couperin himself – on the general character of each movement style. All these are evaluated and explained further, where this is needed, by the editor. The volume ends with a substantial critical commentary and a valuable bibliography.

As an organist myself, I value the edition’s landscape format, the clarity of the print and its relatively spacious layout which leaves space for the insertion of fingering! I do, however, regret that the margin on the binding edge is not a little more generous in order to provide easier reading of those parts of the pages. However, above all I value Couperin’s music, of which we now have a newly-authoritative edition we can use with re-booted confidence and understanding – an edition underpinned by no little editorial knowledge, skill and sheer love.

I honestly think that this is the publication that those who play the French Baroque organ repertoire have been needing for decades.

David Hansell

I declare an interest in that I did see and comment on an early version of the edition but I did none of – and claim no credit for any of – the research and do not benefit financially from sales!

Categories
Recording

The 48 on piano

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Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier (Complete)
Cédric Pescia piano
263:18 (4 CDs in a card box)
LDV38.1

Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier
Alexandra Papastefanou piano
263:11 (4 CDs)
FHR65J

Of these two versions of The Well-Tempered Clavier played on a modern grand piano, that by Cédric Pescia seems to me the more interesting. His background includes studying harpsichord and clavichord, spending a year in the company of the Bach Cantatas, and while deciding to play the 48 on a Steinway D of the 1980s, used also by Andreas Schiff, he has had it prepared in unequal temperament – even if we are not told exactly which.

In the extended interview with Pescia that comprises the booklet (and is in French, English, Japanese and German) he declared that it is the piano above all thatmakes this music sing and dance, two qualities he counts as essential forunderstanding Bach.

This is a thoughtful and well-prepared account, in comparison with which Papastefanou suffers. Her playing is more in the tradition of those who constantly feel theneed to ‘bring out’ the fugue subject whenever it occurs in case we should failto notice it. I find it rather wearisome. But all Bach, however played and onwhatever played, is a treat.

And would any reader of the EMR be interested in a set of the 48 played on a piano? Well, they might well be – and if so they should listen to Pescia as well as some of the better-known performers. They would be in for a welcome surprise. I found his playing attentive, engaging and musical.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

J. S. Bach: The Well-tempered Clavier Book One

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Colin Booth harpsichord
121:43 (2 CDs)
Soundboard SBCD218

Colin Booth is an exceptional musician: he has been making harpsichords for at least 45 years; he has written an indispensible book Did Bach Really Mean That? investigating the unwritten assumptions on which much performance practice depends, together with a number of scholarly articles; and he has made a number of recordings including the Goldberg Variations, a fine CD of Byrd (reviewed recently by Richard Turbet in EMR), Mattheson Harmony’s Monument, Buxtehude, Croft, Purcell and Couperin amongst others.

As is right the bulk of the 22 page stiff covered booklet which forms the excellent case for the two CDs is taken up by a well-argued essay on what Wohltemperierte means in the context of the 48, of which volume one was already in circulation amongst pupils and practitioners by 1722 while the second part seems not to have been available till about two decades later. What temperament will retain the sense of differentiation between the keys, which making them tolerably playable? In the end, he settles for Kirnberger III, and certainly the results seem to justify that choice. This is a wonderful example of what a serious booklet can be, and I hope it has wide circulation.

But it is the playing that counts. And I was bowled over. First, the sound. Colin Booth plays on an instrument that he made in 2016. ‘With an extension of the compass it is based on the design of an original instrument signed Nicholas Celini 1661, purchased and restored by Colin during 2013.’ It seems to have been built by aprovincial Italian maker, working in Narbonne. Strung in brass, it has a beautiful singing tone and gives great clarity to the part-writing. He only uses the 8’ ranks (there is a 4’ on the lower keyboard) but alone and in combination these provide both a sonorous richness and weight while allowing a degree of finesse to shine through.

His fingerwork is elegant, ornaments well-considered and never obtrusive, and the absence of that percussive brittle clatter we so often experience makes the whole experience of listening to two CDs straight through a real pleasure. Listen to how he articulates the subject in the B-flat fugue (2.18) where there is a studied ambivalence in how he shapes the grouping of the semi-quavers, or the final B minor fugue, where the wandering subject introduces us to the continuingly unfolding shifts in the tonality: here each phrase in this monumental construction builds upon what has gone before but you are sure that the performer will guide you home. I have no hesitation in saying that this is the most congenial playing I have heard of this remarkable set of pieces. The next volume is due for release this coming year. You will need to order from ColinBooth direct via his website – easily accessible at www.colinbooth.co.uk, where you will find a Christmas offer of three for the price of two.

David Stancliffe

Categories
Recording

The Melodious Birde

Dark green flowers

Keyboard music by William Byrd
Colin Booth harpsichord and virginals
75:50
Soundboard SBCD217 Fugue State Records FSRCD013

The steady flow of distinguished discs devoted to, or featured around, Byrd’s keyboard music shows no sign of abating. This recent recording by Colin Booth is another fine contribution to the stream. Using three different instruments, it is devoted entirely to Byrd, covering all the genres in which he composed, and combining some unfamiliar pieces with some stalwarts of the Byrdian keyboard repertory.

Right from the outset, it is evident that Booth’s approach has more to do with affection for the composer’s works, rather than with storming Byrd’s barns. Lord Willoughby’s welcome home is all about Byrd’s exquisite melodies and harmonies, and his beguiling counterpoint. Booth is at pains to render all this as clearly as possible, with feeling but not with sentimentality. Another of Byrd’s “standards” The queen’s alman receives a similarly clear and more assertive performance. That said, the Third pavan and galliard could have done with a touch more of the same assertiveness, as on this occasion Booth’s restraint sells this powerful piece slightly short. But it is another pavan and galliard pairing, dedicated to Ph[ilippa] Tr[egian], that shows Booth’s thoughtful and penetrating approach at its very best, most notably in the exquisite second strain in which Byrd’s closely argued counterpoint is beautifully presented, contributing to what has a strong claim to be the finest version on disc of this familiar and particularly intense work. The performance of Byrd’s deeply felt Pavan and Galliard BK52 in d (a work which seems to have influenced Gibbons, e.g. his Pavan MB 20/16) is on the same level of interpretation: as it were, gently persuading the notes to express Byrd’s profound intentions in the Pavan, while, as in Ph. Tr., putting a spring in the step of the Galliard without setting off too explosively.

There is an expectation, always fulfilled, that Byrd’s pavans will reward both performers and listeners, so they tend consistently to be selected for recordings and concerts. Until recently grounds did not possess that cache, perhaps suspected of being no more than academic exercises. Booth turns any such assumptions on their heads with enchanting renditions of two “short” Grounds. His pacing of both works – BK 27 and especially 43 – is ideal: patient enough to elucidate Byrd’s argument through his narrative counterpoint and appetizing harmonies but crisp enough not to plod. This appreciation of what such works have to offer has extended particularly to one of Byrd’s towering masterpieces Ut re mi fa sol la and although the nature of Byrd’s writing here means that it is best served by being performed on an organ which can sustain notes in order to give continuity to the piece’s narrative and to point up Byrd’s luscious suspensions, nevertheless even on the small harpsichord which Booth selects for this piece, he brings out most of these details.

Like his pavans, Byrd’s fantasias have always been de rigueur for discs and recitals. Booth chooses two of the best known, the Praeludium and Fantasia BK 12-13 and A fancy for my Lady Nevell BK 25. BK 13 Is the earliest masterpiece of European keyboard music, a kaleidoscope of melodies, harmonies, techniques and structures, the product of a restless yet disciplined mind. Some recordings of it have been rigid, some extravagant. Booth follows the contours of Byrd’s imagination and allows the music to speak for itself yet without discarding restraint. The result is an illuminating interpretation which manages to be clear but also expressive. Incidentally Booth observes the repeat at bars 58ff. which is noted by Byrd’s pupil Tomkins in his source, but which is omitted by Tregian in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. BK 25 can also be played as a powerhouse, its opening upward octave perhaps taken from Byrd’s setting of the word “lux” in his motet Descendit de coelis from his second book of Cantiones sacrae, 1591. Booth’s considered performance is more in the spirit of the piece being played domestically than one busting any of Byrd’s blocks, but still responding to the flow of Byrd’s creativity in what is one of his most surging keyboard works. The final work on the disc, A voluntary for my Lady Nevell, can also be mentioned in the context of fantasies (in his magnum opus about Byrd’s keyboard music Oliver Neighbour contentiously regards the terms fantasy and voluntary as interchangeable) and it brings the disc to a satisfactory close, presenting an attractive case for a piece that can sometimes be made by lesser players to sound a bit dry.

It remains to mention the two sets of variations on popular tunes that Booth places centrally in this programme. The carman’s whistle is an amiable ramble through the English countryside up alongside the carman on his horse and cart, as Booth responds appropriately to Byrd’s deceptively artless commentary on the tune, in both their cases concealing a more profound response. In the magnificent John come kiss me now Booth again does Byrd proud as the composer reaches forward across the centuries with some of his bluesiest cadences. Byrd’s variations are themselves varied throughout the piece, and his creative virtuosity is reflected in Booth’s measured but committed response.

Early in this review I suggest that Booth approaches Byrd’s works with affection. It is this approach that gives rise to a fine recording that is both likeable and recommendable.

Richard Turbet

Categories
Recording

Heinrich Scheidemann, Samuel Scheidt: Cantilena Anglica Fortunae

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Yoann Moulin harpsichord
55:24
Ricercar RIC394

This is the first in a new series of recordings by Ricercar devoted to German Baroque keyboard music. Scheidt and Scheidemann both worked with Sweelinck in Amsterdam before returning to Halle and Hamburg respectively; this disc alternates groups of pieces by both of them. The CD cover writes of the ‘introverted Scheidt and the more flamboyant Scheidemann’ but the choice of works and the playing here seems to invert this binary divide. Apart from a lively Gagliarda, the Scheidemann tracks – four Praeambula and his Pavana Lachrymae – are played rather solemnly and a touch too carefully for my taste. There is more flamboyance on display in some Scheidt variation sets, particularly those on Also geht’s, also steht’s and O Gott, wir danken deiner Güt. It is a pity that the track change has been mis-positioned between the latter and the previous track. The most interesting piece is probably the final extended Fantasia on Palestrina’s Io son ferito which displays some challenging rising and falling chromatic fourths, which also stretch the temperament. Moulin plays on an Andreas Ruckers copy by Philippe Humeau which works very well for the music and recording quality is excellent. The playing is a bit too safe and respectful overall, but this is a useful introduction to early Baroque German keyboard music.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

Reincken: Toccatas, Partitas & Suites

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Clément Geoffroy harpsichord
73:00
L’Encelade ECL1705

Despite his artistic and financial successes, the Dutch-born but Hamburg-based Reincken has left very little music behind – something which, on the strength of this recording, is a great shame. In order to fill up his programme, Clément Geoffroy has included a number of unauthenticated works as well as the few whose attribution is secure. Among the latter, two particularly fine extended sets of variations stick out, those on Die Meierin (the same tune as Froberger’s Mayerin) and on the Balletto. Both are highly inventive and show what Reincken’s improvised performances must have been like. There is also a C major suite which shows strong Italo-German traits. A second suite in A minor, taken from an anthology by Roger, sounds quite different – much more French – and is probably not by Reincken (Geoffroy suggests Pachelbel). Two unauthenticated toccatas are also rather fine: one uses the stylus fantasticus while the other is more Frescobaldi-like. With such a small corpus, it is difficult to establish Reincken’s style, but all of the music on this CD is worth listening to, and it is a good representation of Northern European keyboard styles around the turn of the 18th century. Geoffroy’s playing is exemplary, as is the recording quality. He plays on a Ruckers copy by Emile Jobin which provides the right mixture of resonance and clarity for Reincken’s music. The tuning is a bit sour in the opening track (the stylus fantasticus toccata) but otherwise it works very well. This is an attractive compilation with some real exuberance and virtuosity in the playing and is highly welcome.

Noel O’Regan

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Recording

The passinge mesures: music of the English virginalists

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THE PASSINGE MESURES: MUSIC OF THE ENGLISH VIRGINALISTS
Mahan Esfahani, harpsichord and virginals
Hyperion CDA68249
77’ 43

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his recording provides further confirmation of Mahan Esfahani’s status among the finest keyboard players of his generation. For listeners who relish challenging material and interpretations on the harpsichord, he is perhaps the most exciting exponent in the present day. Here he presents a varied and well-chosen selection from a repertory which, as he makes passionately clear in the accompanying booklet, is close, if not closest of all, to his heart and mind: music by Bull, Byrd, Giles and Richard Farnaby, Gibbons, Inglott and Tomkins. There could hardly be a better programme; different, certainly, but not better.

All of the pieces on this disc have appeared on other recordings, either of virginalist anthologies or discs devoted to the works of specific composers. Even the three anonymous pieces – a setting of Dowland’s Can she excuse my wrongs, The Scottish gig  and the concluding Variations on the Romanesca – have their discographical niches. But the strength of an anthology such as this is in the selecting of the pieces, the performer’s attitude to them and, more elusively, the chemistry between the pieces – a combination of how the pieces complement one another and how the performer’s attitude is manifested through them. Esfahani’s commitment to this repertory is absolute. He plays it because of how it affects himself, but also with missionary zeal because he wants it to affect other people as profoundly. Thankfully this does not result in an evangelical harangue. There are passages of gentleness and even humour alongside those exhibiting a dazzling technique and some powerful projection.

Outstanding performances have of course to stand out from the rest, but before a few pieces are selected, it should be emphasized that all the performances stand out within the entirety of the English virginalist discography. That said, a few deserve special mention because of the quality of the individual works. These are not the best-known, go-to or even knee-jerk selections from their respective composers’ oeuvres. One such is the beautiful pavan by Gibbons, MB 20/16, which, like Bull’s fine Fantasia MB 14/12 also included here, proclaims its derivation from the generic prototype pioneered by Byrd; perhaps it is this relative conformity in Bull’s composition (albeit echoing the controlled anarchy of Byrd’s famous Fantasia in a) that has led to the suggestion (implausible, in my opinion) that it might be by Benjamin Cosyn, in whose manuscript it appears, notwithstanding the attribution there to Bull. Esfahani also gives more substance to Gibbons’ Woody-cock than other interpretations, and exploits the brief chromatics in Bull’s Chromatic or Queen Elizabeth’s pavan without derailing the overall rhetoric of the piece. The best of Giles Farnaby’s several Fantasias, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB) 129, also has structural resonances of Byrd’s Fantasia, though thanks to a fresh and exuberant performance by Esfahani it sounds very much the work of its composer, and he also makes a case for William Inglott’s variations on the old stalwart The leaves bee greene aka Browning, giving the unique voice of this sound provincial composer a brief outing.

Esfahani already has some excellent interpretations of Byrd under his belt from Byrd Bach Ligeti which is his live recording, mainly of Byrd, at the Wigmore Hall (WHLive0066). Here he enlarges his Byrd discography with penetrating readings of two monumental works, the hexachord fantasia Ut re mi fa sol la and The ninth pavan and galliard also known as The passing measures or Passamezzo from My Lady Nevell’s Book. And perhaps the very best performance and interpretation on the disc is of Tomkins’ wonderful, profound, heartfelt and virtuosic Pavan FVB 123 (his only pavan in this source), an emotionally generous work which embraces or inspires resonances in the music of contemporaries such as Byrd, Dowland and Bull (his Chromatic pavan on this disc) yet remains entirely unique to Tomkins, undoubtedly the greatest composer ever to have been born in Wales; the Iranian Esfahani does him full justice among all these Englishmen.

Finally, as for Esfahani’s overall performance, he responds stylishly and elegantly to this music that evidently means so much to him, responding with panache to glittering cascades of notes when given the opportunity by the composers where they let their creativity exuberantly rip. Questions can legitimately be raised about his use of a copy of a German harpsichord of 1710 (though perhaps not of the copy of early 17th-century English virginals) an issue that he confronts in the accompanying booklet. For this reviewer, as both an authenticist yet also someone who wishes to encourage pianists to idiomatically play this repertory (I split this infinitive for clarity and rhetoric), I found that Esfahani’s interpretations on his chosen instruments gave me fresh insights into pieces by composers with whom I am very familiar. I hope other readers will investigate this thoughtful, stimulating and quite outstanding record.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Basso ostinato: Passacaglias and chaconnes

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Pieter-Jan Belder
77:58
Brilliant Classics 95656

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the course of this programme, Pieter-Jan Belder plays three modern copies of harpsichords by Giusti, Blanchet and Ruckers respectively, each producing a distinctive sound appropriate for the music he plays on it. We have a stimulating mix of familiar music by J. S. Bach, Purcell, Tomkins, Couperin and Frescobaldi, and unfamiliar works by less than well-known composers such as Giovanni Picchi, Louis Marchand, Antonio Soler, Bernardo Storace and Georg Muffat. There is something very reassuring about a repeating bass pattern, and by the middle of this CD I found myself well and truly in a chaconne groove – on a day which started badly when Morrisons changed its breakfast menu, it is good to know some things can be relied on. The inventive choice of basses, the imaginative variations set above them, and Belder’s expressive and highly rhetorical playing prevented any boredom setting in, and had ennui threatened, the inclusion of Soler’s flamboyant D minor Fandango would have headed it off at the pass. Technically assured and musically intelligent, Belder makes a reliable and authoritative guide through this interesting Baroque repertoire.

Brian Clark

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