Ensemble Les Surprises, dir. Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulais, Yves Rechsteiner organ
54:54
Ambronay AMY050
Rameau (arr.), Rebel, Francoeur
[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ow then, concentrate! From 1755 to 1772 the resident organist of the Concert Spirituel was Claude-Bénigne Balbastre. In 1768 he would appear to have played a ‘Suite de Symphonies’ for organ and orchestra by Rameau. However, performing material for such a work no longer exists and this programme is an attempt to re-create what it might have sounded like. So we have three modern organ concertos in mid-18th-century style ‘on themes by Rameau’ (famous themes, too), which are separated by orchestral dance suites drawn from the dramatic works of Rebel and Francoeur. The whole premise is not unreasonable. Rameau’s music was core repertoire at the Concert Spirituel and the programmes at this time often featured arrangements of various kinds. And it is splendid to hear these enthusiastic and clean performances on a ‘real’ organ – a three manual Clicquot of 1782. The registrations used are those recommended by Corrette for concertos and these – reed and tierce heavy in the allegros – do not always blend well with the strings. I wonder if, against an organ with serious ‘oomph’, the ensemble (33221) simply needed to be bigger? The booklet (Fr/Eng) includes three concise but lively essays. This is quite a short CD by most current standards, but it made me smile.
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Maria Luisa Baldassari spinet, clavichord, harpsichord, clavicymbalum, organ
57:44
Tactus TC 480101
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] have to say that the music on this disc did little for me, though I do think I’d have enjoyed it more had I known the vocal originals here elaborated by ‘scales, thrills [sic] and passing notes’. But historically this music is highly significant – the first keyboard music ever to be printed. Its presentation is also thoughtful with sensitive playing on five instruments: spinet (modern copy, 1571 original); fretted clavichord (ditto, 1475); clavicembalum (ditto, 1450); harpsichord (ditto, 1697); and organ (original, 1533). All use ¼ comma mean-tone tuning except the clavichord which is Pythagorean. So organologically it’s all fascinating. Though the English ‘translation’ is rather a trial, the essay is interesting on the composer/arranger, the techniques he uses and the arrangements’ general context and purpose.
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Steven Devine harpsichord
219:39 (3 CDs in a card triptych)
resonus RES 10214
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he first two discs of this comprehensive survey of Rameau’s keyboard oeuvre were released in the anniversary year 2014 to great acclaim. Here they are joined by a volume of transcriptions which, unusually for ‘complete Rameau’ collections, includes the lengthy suite from Les Indes Galantes. These movements have not always been accepted by players as genuine keyboard music, but Devine certainly makes an eloquent case (with help from Robin Bigwood in the three-hand pieces). His general approach inclines towards the thoughtful and restrained which is a welcome contrast to those virtuosos who set out to demonstrate that they are exactly that. Certainly, it seemed very suitable that the final volume ends not with the quite extraordinary La Dauphine but with Devine’s own transcription of the delicate Air pour Zéphire, played on the 4’ stop alone to mirror the piccolo of the original. There is a substantial introduction to the music (though in English only). However, the star that might have been withheld for this is re-instated as an acknowledgement of a rare outing for tempérament ordinaire!
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The Final Harpsichord Works of François Couperin
Katherine Roberts Perl harpsichord
78:47
Music & Arts CD-1284
[dropcap]C[/dropcap]ouperin’s last four ordres are here played almost complete (selections only from no. 24) in a way that to me emphasises the melancholy tinge of this lovely music. Pacing is very deliberate, though not ponderous, the ornaments never sound crammed in and the phrases have time to breathe. The harpsichord (modern, after Dumont 1707) is well recorded and has an even tone with distinct yet blending registers. In this anniversary year especially it is a shame that the booklet (English only) is not a little stronger. The player’s note on performance is valuable but the Couperin biographical summary is more about reception history and we are told virtually nothing about the specific music recorded. Neither is there any attempt to even translate, let alone explain, the pieces’ titles. In these days of the download, I think that those who still purchase CDs deserve a bit more.
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Richard Egarr harpsichord
62:59
Linn Records CKD518
[dropcap]T[dropcap]he versatile musician Richard Egarr contributes to what is something of a succession of distinguished recordings devoted to keyboard music by Byrd. Only Pavana Lachrymae and the Praeludium and Fancie overlap with the selection on Colin Tilney’s choice of Byrd which I reviewed only recently for EMR. The disc under review here is another well-chosen anthology, wandering slightly further off piste than Tilney in including the exquisite pavan and galliard pair in A minor, BK 16. Here, the good news is that, notwithstanding Egarr’s assertion in his booklet notes that the attribution is insecure, on the contrary the attribution is as safe as it can be for a piece from this period that does not survive in a source directly connected to the composer: both independent sources give Byrd as the composer, and Egarr seems simply to have misinterpreted a passage in an article by David Schulenberg (“The keyboard works of William Byrd, Musica disciplina 47 (1993): 99-121, esp. p. 103); or, he has relied upon the first edition of Alan Brown’s William Byrd: keyboard music (1969) which was published before Robert Pacey’s discovery of the second independent corroborative source (1985) duly noted by Brown in subsequent editions (1985 revised reprint of 2nd ed.; 3rd ed., 1999). That said, Egarr delivers a fine rendition of this exquisite piece, highlighting the poignant opening strain of the pavan and the songlike opening strain of the galliard, epitomizing his performances of most of the rest of the contents of this disc.
Indeed, it is clear from reading his notes that this recording is a labour of love for Richard Egarr. He has already recorded the complete works for harpsichord by Louis Couperin, the French composer most worthy of being named in the same sentence as Byrd. On this occasion he has not sought to emulate Davitt Moroney again, but has focused on a dozen or so works by Byrd that seem to have particular resonances for him.
That said, it is perhaps just as well that he has limited himself to the one disc. Throughout the seven discs of Moroney’s boxed set, there are no quirky interpretations, besides an occasional flourish and the error of judgment over the choice of organ for most of the third disc; even here his interpretations manage usually to transcend the acoustic and other obstacles. Egarr’s disc is one of the best of its type, and comfortably takes its place among the stream of such recent distinguished recordings mentioned at the beginning of this review, but it is bookended by two distinctly quirky interpretations, a quirkiness which, if reproduced proportionally over the course of a boxed set containing over a hundred pieces, might well become irksome.
The first pair of pieces is the Prelude and Fantasia in a, BK 12-13. I would put the Fantasia forward as the first indisputable masterpiece of European keyboard music. Byrd’s control over his almost riotous creativity is remarkable, with a succession of polyphony, homophony, varied tempi, sometimes almost anarchic rhythm, memorable melody and striking harmony are all rolled into a work that can be melancholy and buoyant with everything in between. How to approach such a work? Some performers rely simply on the note values and time signatures; others roll with them and respond in ways that are at best subtle but that can seem exaggerated. At first I felt that Egarr had overdone his response and entered the realm of exaggeration. Listening again after having heard the rest of the disc, I felt that it is perhaps more an expression of sheer enthusiasm, responding to Byrd’s own creativity; if after the first hearing I felt something like exhaustion, after the second I felt something more like stimulation. Egarr certainly sets out his stall here. On a less subjective note, he observes the repeat at bars 58-61 from the presumably authoritative source copied by Byrd’s pupil Tomkins; this is not given by Francis Tregian in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
Thereafter matters become more grounded. This is an appalling pun as, after another Prelude, BK 1, Egarr plays two of Byrd’s “short” Grounds, BK 9 and 43. These are given performances whose lyricism belies the stark titles. It would be interesting to ponder the point in discographical history at which interpretations of this sort of work ceased suggesting that you might not like this sort of work but it is good for you, and started to proclaim the wonders of works which might have dull titles but were conversely beautiful. The conclusion of BK 9 is quite exquisite in Egarr’s hands.
And, speaking of dull titles, they do not come more dull than Ut re mi fa sol la and Ut mi re. Yet the former is one of Byrd’s most radiant pieces, with the latter tagging along not far behind. Original sources make it clear that the second piece should be played immediately after the first, making for a substantial musical edifice. Although Moroney’s performance of Ut re mi fa sol la on the organ is one of the triumphs of his boxed set – and indeed of the entire Byrd discography, notwithstanding the unwise choice of instrument and acoustic – Egarr coaxes his harpsichord to come as close as the instrument can to emulating what can be achieved on the organ by a gifted player. Undeterred by the constraints of his cantus firmus, Byrd produces a work as full of vitality as the Fantasia BK 13, and Egarr maintains an irresistible momentum through Byrd’s rhythmic and metrical adventures, revealing with clarity his counterpoint even in passages low in the registers such as at bars 48-49 while giving due dramatic emphasis to the sudden change from major to minor at bar 75. Egarr also gives the lie to Oliver Neighbour’s dismissal of Ut mi re which is admittedly not as fine a piece as its partner, but nonetheless has much to offer.
It is also a pleasure to welcome the Fantasia BK 62, Byrd’s longest essay in the genre, which seemingly made some impact in its day as both Peter Philips and Pierre Cornet subsequently used the same initial theme for their own fantasias. Egarr’s sympathetic but not indulgent treatment of the Pavana Lachrymae reflects Byrd’s own evident admiration for Dowland’s piece – one has only to listen to the passionate scalar passages in the final strain – and after another Prelude, BK 24, Egarr leads us through the sunny Fancie: for my ladye nevell treating the normally triumphal concluding phrase with something like poignancy or nostalgia. Perhaps the rising scale with which the fantasia begins was taken by Byrd from similar passages in his motet Descendit de coelis (second book of Cantiones sacrae 1591, the year copying of My Ladye Nevells Booke was completed) at the word “lux” in bars 66-73.
And so to the final item, The Bells, Byrd’s incredible edifice built upon a ground of two notes. This is a very personal reading by Egarr – he says in the booklet that it is the piece that turned him on to Byrd – yet ironically it is the one where he veers most away from what Byrd has written. Perhaps Egarr is emulating the sound of some actual modern bellringers whom he has heard, imitating their technique by adding extra notes to Byrd’s surviving texts, and not always doing so flatteringly, as in one passage where the parts seem – deliberately, one assumes – to get out of time with one another. It is a passionate and committed performance, one where the performer deserves to be indulged.
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“Für Kenner und Leibhaber” Collection 5
Miklós Spányi tangent piano
78:32
BIS-2260 CD
Wq59, Wq69, Wq79 (solo version)
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he musical genius of the great Bach seems in fact to be inexhaustible. However often one studies his sonatas, rondos, or fantasias […] and however one compares them with one another, or with the works of other masters, one always finds that each piece is entirely new and original in its invention, while the spirit of Bach is unmistakably present in them all; this composer is literally incomparable’. No, not J. S. Bach, but an encomium directed at his eldest son by the Magazin der Musik on the occasion in 1786 of the publication of the 5th in the series of his keyboard works issued under the title ‘Für Kenner und Liebhaber’ (a catch-all marketing ploy meaning for both experienced and less experienced players).
The opening quotation is wordy, but worth quoting since it underlines not only the esteem with which C. P. E. Bach was held by the end of his life (he died in 1788), but equally because it remains as valid and succinct a description of the half dozen works included in vol. 5 as one might hope for. It includes pairs of works in the three forms mentioned in the quotation. The two sonatas in the set are very different, the E-minor’s opening Presto exploits the contrasts between upper and lower sonorities, the articulation of the flowing passage work allowed full value by the ever-admirable Miklós Spányi’s refusal to hurry. By comparison the opening Allegro of the Sonata in B flat is a big, virtuoso movement, surging as relentlessly and purposefully as a fast-flowing mountain stream. It is followed by a simpler Largo – again taken at a judiciously moderate tempo – taken from an earlier work composed in 1766 and a final Andantino grazioso that finds Bach making a rare visit into Rococo territory.
The rondos and fantasias are all highly distinctive. The G-major Rondo has a wistful, expressive song-like principal theme, its inherently placid mood interrupted in the central episode by emphatic chords, while that in C minor is more fragmentary, with many pauses and changes of direction and mood reminiscent of the Empfindamskeit of Bach’s Berlin years. The fantasia is the form in which Bach was perhaps happiest as a keyboard composer, the freedom it offers for the kind of ‘unmeasured’, improvisatory writing ideally suited to the composer’s poetic, proto-Romantic temperament. Both the F-major and C-major are marvellous examples of this, the latter an extended work taking the player (and listener) on a wondrous journey of rich, improvisatory character, all started by the little arpeggiated flourish answered by a ‘cuckoo call’ with which it opens.
In addition to the ‘Für Kenner und Liebhaber’ pieces the CD includes two sets of variations, one based on the German folk song ‘Ich schlief, da träumte mir’, which adds further variations to an earlier work. Neither compares with the other works included, although the Arioso sostenuto in A with five variations, Wq 79 has considerable poetic appeal. As already intimated, Spányi’s performances on a copy of a tangent piano of 1799 are of the highest order, being both technically outstanding and displaying the kind of musicality that disarms criticism. My sporadic critical visits to this unostentatious but immensely valuable series have been uniformly rewarding, but rarely more so than on this occasion.
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Colin Tilney harpsichord
62:33
Music & Arts CD-1288
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he steady trickle of new recordings devoted to keyboard music by Byrd continues with this fine selection from the distinguished English musician Colin Tilney who is based in Canada. In this anthology, he investigates Byrd’s copious engagement with polyphony in the varied forms in which he composed for keyboard. On the surface, Tilney surveys dances, variations, fantasias and grounds, but he makes subtle choices, in that Pavana Lachrymae is both dance and variation, Quadran is not only dance but also ground, and in one of its sources The seventh pavan is titled Pavana. Canon. 2. pts in one indicating another aspect of counterpoint within the structure of a dance.
In a selection such as this, with an expressed context, there are always going to be pieces which one might wish that the executant had included. That said, Tilney’s choices from various forms all numerously represented within Byrd’s extensive oeuvre are judicious and in some cases revelatory. For instance, The maiden’s song is one of Byrd’s least recorded works, yet by drawing attention to it in this contrapuntal context, not just as a bunch of diverting variations on a pleasant old tune, Tilney reveals what a magnificent work this is, both in its construction and effect – he rightly and helpfully draws attention in his booklet notes (in which he gives Byrd’s date of birth as 1543 rather than the now accepted 1539/40) to its “most heavenly” ending – enabling the listener to hear a perhaps unfamiliar and certainly neglected work in a new and shining light.
Tilney’s trick is to balance unhurried tempi with an intense response to each piece, so that there are no gratuitous pyrotechnics, yet the fire in his interpretations is intense. This is particularly true in another relatively neglected work, the intimidating Quadran pavan and galliard with its jagged dissonances and rhythms which are all of a piece with Byrd’s contrapuntal vision, not one which doggedly pursues counterpoint for its own sake, but in which these harmonic and rhythmic implications are developed to produce a musical narrative or travelogue to enthral and enlighten both the player and the listener.
The two fantasias could not be better chosen to illustrate Byrd’s contrapuntal genius and Tilney’s enlightening response to it. The Fantasia in d is a work of the composer’s maturity, confident in its structure and in the distribution of melodies, rhythms and other devices among the dazzlingly moving parts of the whole. It is slightly surprising that in his booklet Tilney does not mention the possible reference to the plainsong Salve regina thought by many (but perhaps not CT!) to shape the opening of the Fantasia in d. The Fantasia in a is an early work, Byrd’s (and arguably Europe’s) first keyboard masterpiece, and here as in some of his other fantasias for keyboards and for viols, the raging torrent of ideas and polyphonic techniques has no right at all to come together so compellingly in such a convincing whole. Tilney eschews the repeat at bars 58-61 which is also ignored by Francis Tregian in the Fitzwilliam virginal book, but is given, presumably with some authority as a pupil of Byrd, by Tomkins in the work’s other source. He also makes what feels like the longest pause on disc (there have been many recordings of this challenging tour de force) at the change of tempo in bar 129, but this seems consistent with Tilney’s vision of Byrd’s vision. Which leads to the conclusion that in their respective ways, Colin Tilney and William Byrd are both visionaries.
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[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ehind the unforgettable front cover image of a sad-looking lion door knocker from Leipzig’s Thomaskirche lurk two very fine talents; one the often underrated keyboard composer, Telemann, and the other a wonderfully gifted 24-year-old Japanese harpsichordist who, without a single lesson on period instruments, won the 27th Yamanashi international competition for Early Music. He now studies under Prof.Glen Wilson at the Musikhochschule Würzburg. For his debut CD recording, he has selected these fascinating pieces which were published in Nürnberg between 1745 and 1749 and display a fusion of national styles in condensed form. These interesting works both highlight and reflect Telemann’s own musical spectrum, offering us some conventional Ouvertures with their fugato workings as well as more sonata-like movements; the second of these with hints of the Polish mode in the final Scherzando sections. Ouverture V (Track 13) has a much more Italianate feel, and that of Ouverture III (Track 7) is a freestyle French Gigue in 6/4. These works do not follow the conventional choices of dances following after the opening Ouverture; further examples of this form may be found in TWV32:13-18. But let’s not stray from the remarkable musicianship of this gifted young man, who brings out the various elements of these blended pieces with a skill beyond his age. The future is bright and will give Gaku Nakagawa the opportunity to plunder the riches of the harpsichord repertoire of these nations in evidence and much more for years to come. Would have been nice to know what the instrument used was?
Tasto Solo
58:00
passacaille 1028
Music by Ashton, Cooper, Henry VIII, Preston & anon
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he three members of Tasto Solo play organetto, hammered clavisimbalum and Renaissance harp respectively, and, notwithstanding the name of the group, usually together in ensemble. Any reservations I have about historical evidence that three instruments of this kind ever played music of this kind together are blown away by the sheer musicality and dynamism of Tasto solo’s performances.
Guillermo Pérez’s complete mastery of the organetto means that he can articulate and shape notes like on a recorder, while his fellow performers’ virtuosity on their respective instruments is also stunning. Repertoire which in some performances can sound dead in the water – who has not sat through stultifying renditions of dreary early Tudor music? – comes vividly to life here, while highly imaginative juxtapositions of the different timbres of the instruments and a wonderfully vivid recording make for a winning combination. If you have any familiarity with this repertoire, you will love what these musicians do with it, and – if you don’t – you will just be right royally entertained.
Aapo Häkkinen
67:31
Alba ABCD 405
+ Gibbons Pavan & Galliard Lord Salisbury
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]wo decades ago, when Davitt Moroney’s boxed set of Byrd’s complete keyboard music was released, there was the worry that it might have the effect of stalling many or indeed any further recordings of this repertory. Thankfully it had the opposite effect, and there has been a steady succession of recordings featuring aspects of Byrd’s output for harpsichord, virginals and organ. One such in 2000 was Music for the Virginals, a fine cross section of Byrd’s oeuvre played by Aapo Hakkinen (Alba ABCD 148). After what does not seem like as many as seventeen years, he has followed this up with a selection of pieces identified as coming from the later period of Byrd’s career.
It is another judicious combination of reassuringly familiar pieces plus others less well known, all of them of course outstanding compositions. So beside the pavan and galliard sets dedicated to Sir William Petre, 1575-1637 (sic: the later version in Parthenia from 1612/13, not the version dedicated to “Mr:” Petre in My Lady Nevell’s Book, 1591) and to the now currently fashionable Lord Salisbury (aka Robert Cecil, the King’s Secretary at the time of the Gunpowder Plot) which is also in Parthenia, we have the fine pair in d from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (BK 52), plus the arrangements, paired in one source, of Dowland’s Lachrymae and James Harding’s Galliard, and the delightful Galliard (BK 77) from Will Forster’s Virginal Book, which could be paired with the Pavan BK 76 (not included here) though they are not placed adjacently by Forster… who is shortly to be identified for the first time, in a forthcoming article by the arch genealogical sleuth John Harley, possibly early next year. Forster is also the source of a setting of Dowland’s If my complaints which has now been admitted into the Byrd canon not only for its quality but also because an inferior setting in the same source is attributed to Byrd, probably in mistake for this one. Meanwhile Fitzwilliam is also the source of the usually neglected third setting of Monsieur’s Alman which setting was recognised only relatively recently. There are major sets of variations in the great John come kiss me now and the less flamboyant Go from my window alongside the amazing ground The bells (the ringers at our parish church are practising as I type this) and the now famous Fancy for My Lady Nevell.
The disc concludes with Gibbons’s pavan and galliard also dedicated to Salisbury aka Cecil; no explanation is given for their inclusion on a disc the title of which specifies Byrd. While these fine pieces are in principle always welcome, it is a shame that the opportunity was not taken to include two more pieces by Byrd himself, perhaps even from his peripheral repertory which I mention below.
All the performances are straight out of the top drawer. Hakkinen’s greatest virtue is in his metrical flexibility, not adhering rigidly to the metronome, but never losing his rhythmic or structural grip when responding to the ebb and flow which Byrd builds into his music. This is an ideal recording for anyone test-driving Byrd’s music for the first time, or for any aficionado of Byrd seeking some different slants on how his work is interpreted. This is supposed to be a critical review so, besides my reservation about the inclusion of music by Gibbons, I will scrape up one gripe: many of the recordings of Byrd’s keyboard music since Moroney’s have made for themselves a niche by including at least one piece which does not appear in Moroney’s monumental and comprehensive set – usually a contemporary arrangement for keyboard of a song or consort piece by Byrd. Hakkinen did this on his previous disc, including a contemporary arrangement of Lulla Lullaby. This time he commendably includes the recently accepted If my complaint s but Moroney had already done so in his box. Nevertheless this illustrates the lengths to which this reviewer has to go in order to find anything about which to complain: if my complaints are this trivial, it confirms that Aapo Hakkinen’s disc is simply outstanding.
