Tag: Keyboard music

Colin Booth harpsichord
60:47
Soundboard SBCD 220

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Johann Mattheson is an almost exact contemporary of Handel and Bach, the former whom he lionised and the latter whom he also admired, and had possibly also met. He is also famous for providing us in his Ehrenpforte a vivid autobiography by Telemann, whom he is also likely to have known well. He is a man more quoted than performed, although in his day he was a hugely admired composer, as well as a singer, impresario, polyglot, harpsichordist, musicologist, dancer, man about town and a renowned fencer – a burst of rage in which he attacked the young Handel with a sword might well have deprived us of the output of one of the finest of Baroque composers, but for a button which turned Mattheson’s blade aside! Much of his vast output was tragically lost in the wartime bombing of Hamburg, but among surviving collections is this set of fugues and dance music, Die Wohlklingende Finger-Sprache, extravagantly dedicated to Handel. Like Mattheson, Colin Booth is also something of a polymath, combining the careers of musicologist, performer and harpsichord builder, and plays this programme on a two-manual instrument, based on a 17th-century brass-strung original. This permits a wider than usual range of timbres, and reasonably in the light of Matheson’s flamboyant personality, Booth makes full use of this fine instrument’s possibilities. This and Mattheson’s inventive imagination ensure a thoroughly entertaining CD, particularly as the fugues become more and more complex. Booth comments that Mattheson’s music is attracting growing attention, and it is to be hoped that his contributions to chamber music, church music and the opera will find wider circulation in recordings.

D. James Ross

Aaron Pilsan piano
106:58 (2 CDs in a card triptych)

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Aaron Pilsan’s complete account of Book 1 of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier on a modern grand piano is beautifully poised and measured, with a fine sense of period. I am extremely ambivalent about Bach on the modern piano – great music like this works so well on a range of media that it seems mean to rule it out as repertoire for pianists. There is a further complication with the more abstract music of Bach, which in any case seems to transcend the instruments of his time – in the case of collections like the Art of Fugue it is not even clear that the composer had a specific medium in mind, or even that this was music intended for performance at all. So am I just being churlish in my reaction to these very fine piano performances? My main reservations are the things which a piano can do which no keyboard instrument could that the conservative J. S. Bach advocated when he conceived this collection; namely, constantly raising and lowering the dynamic levels in response to individual phrases, and bringing out certain melodic threads in the polyphonic texture. In a harpsichord or organ performance, these are things which the listener has to do for him|herself – on the piano, the performer takes these decisions for you. Even with a very fine player like Pilsan, whose clear, crisp playing reveals a deep understanding of the Baroque idiom, dynamic decisions are being taken all the time, transforming the music from anything Bach could have conceived of into something entirely different. It may be something equally engaging, perhaps more engaging for some listeners, but for me Bach makes clear in his title the medium he had in mind. For those more broad-minded than I am, these Alpha recordings with their crystal clarity and Aaron Pilsan’s carefully considered and impeccably executed performances will be very attractive.

D. James Ross

Francesco Piemontesi piano
52:14
Pentatone PTC 5186 846

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On this CD Francesco Piemontesi plays mainly transcriptions of Bach by the 19th-/20th-century composer and piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni, as well as one transcription each by pianist Wilhelm Kempff and organist Egon Petri, an homage by Busoni to Bach and even some straight Bach, albeit on the piano. A thoughtful programme note tries to put this music in the context of its time, when the concept of authentic performance had not yet been conceived of, and performers from Mendelssohn to Liszt felt free to adapt, arrange and otherwise muck about with earlier music under the guise of bringing it to a wider audience. We would recall Mendelssohn’s ‘performance edition’ of Bach’s St Matthew Passion with its clarinets and its string quartet renditions of continuo recitative accompaniments. Nowadays it is deeply out of fashion to meddle too much with earlier musical sources, the idea of playing Baroque music on a modern piano being perhaps a dying vestige of a previous attitude. It can hardly be surprising that as a child of the HIP movement, I find Bach on the piano, let alone transcribed for the piano, a bit of a musical cul-de-sac. Interesting to find a CD where these transcriptions themselves are treated as a historical phenomenon, and where they are performed with a HIP perspective. Busoni’s own Toccata is an interesting example of Bach through the looking glass, and we would perhaps recall Bach’s own transcriptions of earlier music – how would Vivaldi have felt hearing his violin concertos arranged for clutches of harpsichords?

D. James Ross

Krijn Koetsveld organ, Ensemble Le Nuove Musiche
71:07
Brilliant Classics 96347

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This recording features a reconstruction of the organo di legno, an instrument described by Monteverdi as ‘soavissimo’, when writing of his Friday concerts in the Sala dei Specchi in Mantua’s ducal palace, and one which he prescribed in his printed score of Orfeo. It was thought most suitable for accompanying the human voice. There has been lots of recent interest in open wooden-pipe organs (including a session at the 2019 Medieval and Renaissance Music conference in Basel), sparked by a realisation that the chamber organ with stopped wooden pipes, beloved of early music groups because of its portability, does not represent the instrument known to Monteverdi and his contemporaries. Oddly, the sleeve notes to the CD under review say that no such instrument survives whereas, in fact, one famously does in the Silberne Kappelle in Innsbruck. Dating from the 1580s, it is thought to have arrived there from Mantua through Anna Caterina Gonzaga who married Archduke Ferdinand in 1582. Various copies have been made and can be heard on the internet, as can the Innsbruck original. In particular, readers of EMR can consult David Stancliffe’s review of Walter Chinaglia’s book and website describing the latter’s reconstruction of this organ (EMR2015 – early music review). It seems odd that Krijn Koetsveld, and the Klop firm of organ builders who have built the organ used on this CD, are not aware of all this.

The hand-pumped Klop organ has a lovely mellow tone and well-balanced voicing, and is shown to full advantage on this disc, both as a solo instrument and in accompanying a series of sacred and secular pieces from Monteverdi’s Selva morale of 1640/41. The sleeve notes do not provide a stop list and do not discuss the rationale behind the choice of items presented. In terms of showcasing the organo di legno, one could imagine a different sort of programme – one which also exploited its importance in chamber settings. This recording was done in the Martinuskerk in Hoogland, Netherlands which has a big acoustic; the instrument is also recorded at some distance. The opening track, a Froberger Toccata, serves to establish a church context, which is continued by a Salve Regina setting from the Selva morale, and later by excerpts from Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali. Recorded in that same acoustic, the madrigals also have a more public than private feel. That said, the inclusion of Frescobaldi’s Ricercar con obligo di cantare with its Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis refrain does conjure up something of the sound of an oratory where such an instrument would have been particularly useful. Canzonas by Merula and Frescobaldi come across best, with good variety in registration, as does a Frescobaldi Capriccio. Koetsveld is ablest in such imitative music; his playing of two Frescobaldi Toccatas, one for the Elevation, is rather too fast and lacking in the nuance and improvisatory feel that these pieces demand.

The voices of Le nuove musiche, singly and collectively, provide the vocal music; this group specialises in singing Monteverdi and is currently engaged in recording all his madrigals as well as the complete Selva morale; this CD is something of a spin-off from these projects. The singers give a good account of themselves, though more rhythmic flexibility would have been welcome here also. Particularly striking is Ab aeterno ordinata sum – thought to have been written for the same bass singer as sang Caronte in Orfeo; Bas Ramselaar is supremely confident throughout its two-octave range. Despite some shortcomings, this is a welcome recording which will hopefully increase interest in the open-pipe organo di legno.

Noel O’Regan