Tag: Romantic

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Recording

La Famille Rameau

CD cover of La famille Rameau Justin Taylor

Justin Taylor harpsichord & piano
78:41
Alpha Classics Alpha 721

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Justin Taylor’s La Famille Forqueray now has a sequel of the highest standard. This programme includes a number of Jean-Philippe’s more popular pieces and music by one of his sons, his younger brother and a nephew. In addition there are two tributes: a set of variations on Les sauvages by J-F Tapray and (pause for fanfare and drumroll) Debussy’s Hommage à Rameau. This is played on a lovely 1891 Erard piano, a worthy complement to the fine double-manual harpsichord attributed to Donzelague used for the bulk of the programme.

Such splendid instruments deserve splendid playing and from the multiple-award-winning Justin Taylor they certainly get it. He is not afraid to go his own way with the ‘standards’ (though I did find his tempo for J-PR’s famous gavotte a little ponderous, even if the variations did not disappoint) and unfamiliar repertoire has been well chosen and thoroughly prepared.

Taylor also wrote the contextualising essay (the booklet is in French, English and German) though I doubt that it was his decision to print his biography as a page all in upper case type! This looks quite bizarre and is actually difficult to read.

But the playing and programme are tremendous. Treat yourself!

David Hansell

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Recording

Sainte-Hélène: La légende napoléonienne

CD of Sainte Hélène Napoleonic music

Les Lunaisiens, Sabine Devieihle, Arnaud Marzorati, Les cuivres romantiques
62:28
muso mu-044

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This is a portrait of Napoleon and the Napoleonic era in France, as represented in songs for the salon and the street, fanfares and marches, including one by Cherubini. Musical styles are thus varied and sometimes the successive items are slightly uneasy neighbours, though there is a ‘plot-line’ holding it all together. Sonorities, too, are varied and range from the brass choirs (which use historic instruments as well as modern reconstructions) to voice-and-piano and include one sound which has never occurred in even my wildest early music dreams – the combination of solo baritone voice and serpent!

This isn’t really a CD you can have playing as background. To get the most from it you need to listen with concentration and have the texts/translations in front of you. (It will also help if you know the relevant political history.) Doing this, I found that the concept and the performances drew me into their world and I felt culturally enriched and not merely a diligent reviewer.

The booklet (in French and Englich) just about does its job and does include the sung texts and a translation into English.

David Hansell

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Sheet music

Alice Mary Smith: Short Orchestral Works

Alice Mary Smith Short Orchestral Works RRMNETC78

Andante for Clarinet and Orchestra, [2] Intermezzi from The Masque of Pandora
Recent Researches in Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 78
Edited by Ian Graham-Jones
ix, 2, 65pp. ISBN 978-1-9872-0452-0. $144

This is the latest of several volumes Ian Graham-Smith has devoted to Alice Mary Smith. An acknowledged expert on the lady and her output, his introduction to these three works is positively bulging with background information.

The clarinet solo began its life as the middle movement of a sonata with piano. The dedicatee and original performer, Henry Lazarus, commissioned the orchestration and played it with universal approbation. Whether or not the composer (who had also been the “accompanist” at its premiere) ever produced a full concerto (as it is described in at least some of the press coverage of performances) is unclear.*

The two intermezzi also originated in a larger work, this time a “grand choral cantata” setting words by Longfellow. “After the storm”, an Andante movement moving from common time into 9/8 then back again, was transposed from its original B flat minor down a semitone to facilitate a more gentle segue into “In the garden”, which is in A major and 9/8.

These are, indeed, brief pieces – at 148 bars, the clarinet solo is longer than both of the others put together. Yet, there is a charm to all three (and not a little virtuosity about the Andante for clarinet!) which makes them ideal introductions to the composer and her music.

Brian Clark

* The publisher also lists two parts for clarinet and piano of just this work for $10.

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Recording

Beethoven Arranged

CD cover of Beethoven arrangements for tenor and chamber ensemble

Ilker Arcayürek tenor, Ludwig Chamber Players
71:09
cpo 555 355-2
12 Variations on a theme from Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, Septet op. 20, Adelaide, An die ferne Geliebte

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This CD features a performance on modern instruments of Beethoven’s famous and seminal Septet in tandem with modern arrangements for instruments and tenor voice by Andreas N Tarkmann and M Ucki of the Beethoven songs ‘Adelaide’ and the extended ‘An die ferne Geliebte’, and an octet arrangement of Beethoven’s homage to Handel – a set of variations for cello and piano of ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ from his Judas Maccabaeus. The performance of the Septet is delightfully detailed, while the modern arrangements for chamber ensemble use the Septet as their model, and make very effective use of the available combinations of wind and stringed instruments. It is easy forget how ground-breaking and influential Beethoven’s Septet was when it first appeared in 1800, directly inspiring Schubert’s (in my opinion far superior) Octet and much of the larger-scale chamber music of the Romantic period. My favourite track on the CD is the Tarkmann arrangement of ‘An die ferne Geliebte’, possibly because it was the strongest composition to start with, but also I think because of the way the imaginative octet instrumentation enhances the original. Iker Arcayürek is a thoughtful and highly expressive solo tenor, who responds positively to being accompanied by a chamber ensemble rather than the customary piano. My one reservation is that in allocating the original piano part, the arrangements feel free to make demands on the modern instruments (particularly the clarinet) which would simply have been beyond the scope of the instruments of the period. Playing modern instruments, The Ludwig Players make light of this, but these remain obviously modern arrangements for modern instruments.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Chamber Music of Clara Schumann

Byron Shenkman and Friends play Clara Schumann

Byron Schenkman, Jesse Irons, Kate Wadsworth
58:02
www.byronandfriends.org BSF 191

A CD devoted to music by Clara Schumann is always welcome, and there are some genuine treasures here. The most substantial work is her op 17 Piano Trio in C minor, a work of genuine originality and consummate craftsmanship. Unsurprisingly, to us, her music sounds very similar in style to that of her husband with perhaps more than a passing flavour of Mendelssohn, but it is important that more of her music be recorded so that we may begin to identify her unique voice. Her op 22 Romances for violin and piano, composed in 1853 after she had met and been influenced by the young Brahms, hint at the originality she is capable of. The CD concludes with the Romance from the op 7 Piano Concerto, which again gives us a tantalising glimpse of Clara’s potential. After the untimely death of her husband, Clara devoted her life to editing, transcribing and performing his music, a decision which eclipsed her own compositional talents. It is perhaps a pity that the present performers devote about a third of the present CD to Robert Schumann’s op 15 Kinderszenen, music already familiar and which. unfortunately to my ear in its ease of composition and its visionary qualities. slightly outshines Clara’s music. There is a lot of extant and largely unexplored music for solo piano by Clara, including transcriptions of her husband’s music, which could have completed the programme and further informed our understanding of her oeuvre. Having said that, there is an engaging freshness about these performances, with a particularly evocative sound coming from Byron Schenkman’s 1875 Streicher piano. I found the portamento of Jesse Irons’ violin playing a little overdone – the study of contemporary descriptions of performance style will undoubtedly have informed these accounts, but the universal concept of ‘less is more’ might also have been applied. This CD is a valuable part of the current exploration of the music written by female composers which has been unjustifiably overshadowed by that of their male contemporaries – time indeed to let more of the flowers in the garden bloom.

D. James Ross

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DVD

Beethoven: Missa Solemnis (DVD)

Frieder Bernius conducts Beethoven's Missa solemnis and talks about his approach

Johanna Winkel, Sophie Harmsen, Sebastian Kohlhepp, Arttu Kataja, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Hofkapelle Stuttgart, Frieder Bernius
Documentary and Performance
71:00 (music), 60:00 (documentary)
Naxos 2.110669

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How do we approach the Missa Solemnis in this Beethoven year, 2020? It is not an easy question to ask of a work that is so multi-faceted, a huge structure that both storms the heavens, as if shaking a fist at fallen mankind, and yet also provides that same mankind with the solace and comfort of the Elysian fields. Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s first biographer, noted that from the start of the Mass’s long gestation period (1818-1823) Beethoven was in a condition of ‘oblivion of everything earthly’. The concept of a large-scale celebratory Mass for the elevation of his royal pupil Archduke Rudolf to cardinal and archbishop in Cologne Cathedral – an event long since over by the time the Mass was completed – had been transcended by 1823. I confess to finding it difficult to provide firm answers to the question posed in my opening sentence.

Some help is certainly provided by this new Naxos release featuring a film of a recording made in October 2018 at Alpirsbach Abbey, Baden-Würtemberg. Not only do we see film of the recording itself, but also a fascinating hour-long documentary that includes valuable insights into the work and Frieder Bernius’s approach to it. For that reason, I would recommend watching the documentary before viewing the performance. Bernius is, of course, a long-established conductor and was the founder of the Kammerchor Stuttgart, whose 50th anniversary is also celebrated by this issue. One of the most interesting features of the film is the way in which Bernius works with his choir, often taking just a couple of choristers to give them individual tuition on the work in hand. Even more compelling is to observe that Bernius’s approach, inspired by his many years of working on earlier choral music, is text-based, the results of his insistence on detailed working on such matters as pronunciation and articulation clearly evident in the final performance. In addition to the interviews and rehearsal clips, there are some fascinating archival clips of Bernius at work with earlier incarnations of the Kammerchor, along with interviews with some of the present performers.

Moving to the performance itself it is clear from the outset of the Kyrie that Bernius knows precisely what he wants. Taken at a measured tempo, the music moves with calm assurance, while the solo entries announce a fine young quartet that throughout impresses particularly in the many ensemble passages, obviously encouraged by Bernius to make the most of the madrigalian textures with which the work abounds. Christe is beautifully managed, though the timpani and brass don’t quite achieve unanimity in the quiet transition back to Kyrie. The Gloria, too, sets out at a well-judged tempo, avoiding the feeling of being pushed. Indeed, the whole, vast movement is unfolded by Bernius like an epic poem. ‘Et in terra’ brings a moment of wondrous stasis in the midst of powerful drive, while the prayerful ‘Gratias’ is another memorably placid interlude succeeded by some splendidly incisive orchestral playing in the lead back to the opening tempo and ‘Domine Deus’. And it is worth mentioning at this point that although the period-instrument Hofkapelle Stuttgart is hardly the most illustrious orchestra to undertake the Missa Solemnis, its playing throughout is excellent, with many distinguished moments coming from its wind section. The overall grandeur of the movement is brought to a triumphant peroration in the final doxology.

Credo opens as powerful affirmation, the contrapuntal passages once again luminescent in their clarity of detail.  The start of ‘Et incarnatus’ finds the choral tenors handling this key moment with a real sensitivity complimented by glinting high wind, another treasurable moment. The stabbing pain of ‘Crucifixus’ is tellingly conveyed, as is the mesmerizingly lovely outcome at ‘et sepultus est’.  

Beethoven’s ‘Sanctus’ is not the exultant triple cry of so many settings but a reverential moment on bended knee in contemplation of God’s glory. The choral sopranos have a rare ragged moment of ensemble at the exposed entry on ‘Osanna’, but in general cope with Beethoven’s wickedly high tessitura very capably. The high violin solo a little later is very well played. The opening of Agnus Dei provides a fine moment for bass Arttu Kataja, to distinguish himself and lead his three colleagues into a gloriously sung exposition, while the militaristic flourishes (first introduced into an Agnus Dei by Haydn in his Missa in tempore belli) provide thrilling moments of dramatic extroversion.

As I hope is clear from the foregoing Bernius’s Missa Solemnis impresses by dint of its total integrity. It may not be the most imposing or the most dramatically enthralling version on record, but few will not be moved and touched by it. ‘From the heart, may it go to the heart’, wrote Beethoven of his monumental work. Here that mission is unquestionably accomplished.

Brian Robins   

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Recording

Passio Iberica

Passio Iberica CD cover

García Fajer: The Seven Last Words of Christ; dos Santos: Stabat mater
Divino Sospiro, Massimo Mazzeo
65:21
Pan Classics PC 10401

This revelatory CD presents music for Holy Week by two largely unknown 18th-century Iberian composers, Francisco Javier García Fajer and José Joaquim dos Santos. García Fajer’s setting of a Castilian text contemplating the seven last words of Christ on the cross, was written in the wake of and under the influence Haydn’s famous setting of the Seven Last Words of 1792, commissioned by the Brotherhood of Nuestra Señora de la Cueva of Cadiz. García Fajer writes for two soprano voices with strings, and the seven sections all running to just about three minutes each are wonderfully evocative and melodic. He trained in Italy, at the prestigious Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini, before embarking on a career which saw him compose operas and oratorios and enjoy considerable success. For the last four decades of his life, he returned to Saragossa Cathedral, where he devoted himself exclusively to composing sacred music. While much of the music in his Siete Palabras is recognisably in the classical Viennese tradition, some of the more contemplative sections are distinctively Iberian and very atmospheric. The Stabat Mater by the Portuguese composer José Joaquim dos Santos for two sopranos, bass and strings of 1792 is also heavily Iberian in style, although it also owes a considerable debt to earlier settings such as that by Pergolesi. Dos Santos never studied in Italy but had close contacts with many musicians who had and was clearly well versed in the Italian idiom. The singing by Bárbara Barradas, Lucia Napoli and André Baleiro and the playing by Divino Sospiro of this unusual and distinctive music is of a high quality, and the recording both gives a context to Haydn’s unusual instrumental Seven Last Words as well as filling in an Iberian dimension to sacred music at the end of the 18th century.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Campagnoli: 6 Duos for Flute & Violin op. 2

Stefano Parrino flute, Francesco Parrino violin
76:52
Brilliant Classics 95974

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Bartolomeo Campagnoli was born in Bologna in 1751, studying in Venice, Padua and in Florence with the great Nardini and befriending Cherubini, before embarking on an international performance career as a violinist, which took him throughout Europe. In a curious moment reminiscent of Ben Franklin’s meeting with Louis XVI, one of Campagnoli’s concerts was listened to by Spohr, who thought his music elegant but rather old-fashioned. Indeed, by the time his op 2 Duets were published in the early 19th century, they were old-fashioned as they had been composed as early as 1780 and had not been cutting edge even then! Spohr’s evaluation of Campagnoli’s music seems to fit these Duos rather well – never dull, constantly imaginative, always tuneful but rather lightweight and belonging spiritually to the 18th century. The brothers Stefano and Francesco Parrino play modern instruments in performances which never lack passion or style, and which are beautifully coordinated. It is not clear the extent to which these Duos represent the sort of repertoire Campagnoli was wowing his pan-European audiences with as he toured from court to court – it is perhaps odd in that event that the violin usually plays the supportive role to the flute. More likely perhaps that this publication was aimed at the burgeoning market for music for amateur players, although the technical demands would limit their relevance to more accomplished and dedicated dilettante players.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Schubert: 3 sonatas (1816)

CD cover Schubert violin sonatas

Peter Sheppard Skærved violin, Julian Perkins square piano
58:38
(Divine Art) athene ath 23208

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This is part of an ongoing series by the violinist and historian Peter Sheppard Skærved devoted to historic violins. For this traversal of the three sonatas composed by Schubert in 1816, he is playing an instrument made in 1782 by the most renowned member of a German family of makers, Martin Leopold Widhalm. As heard here the instrument has a bright, at times rather thin upper range, but satisfyingly full and rounded middle and lower gamut. Sheppard Skærved plays the sonatas using an early Tourte bow (c.1770-1780). Julian Perkins, his pianist on this occasion, plays on a square piano built by Clementi and Co in 1812. While it stresses the domestic purposes for which the music was composed, there are times in more demanding passages where I felt the need for an instrument with greater body. However, as Perkin’s modestly points out in his notes, this is just one of many ways of playing these works.

Both players are understandably protective about the music which as their comprehensive notes makes clear they have thought about in considerable detail and value greatly. All three are indeed pleasing if to my mind hardly memorable works in which, as in the sonatas of Mozart, the piano is often the leader when it comes to presenting thematic material. The D-major is the slightest of the three, having only three movements as opposed to the four of the two minor-key sonatas. But its Andante has a charming little march-like theme, the kind of thing one might expect to accompany a child playing at soldiers. Both the A-minor and G-minor sonatas explore both the melancholy and restlessness one might expect, though to my mind not too profoundly and I have to admit to finding the Mozartian echoes that Sheppard Skærved identifies in the latter to be rather distant ones.

It is so manifestly obvious that much thought, care and affection has gone into this project that it makes it exceedingly hard to confess that I find the results to be in major respects unsatisfying. The principle problem is that Sheppard Skærved’s tone, at least as recorded here, is less than agreeable, especially in the upper range where it too often sounds acidic. Neither is his intonation always reliable and one victim is his frequent perfectly legitimate use of portamento (or portes de voix). In respects such as bowing and phrasing, the violin playing is certainly musical, and in unassertive passages where the music sits in a comfortable mid-range – the beguilingly ambiguous opening of the A-minor’s finale for example – the results can be pleasing. Julian Perkin’s contribution is stylish and technically excellent, although as suggested above I’d have preferred a rather less modest instrument; it would have given a more dramatic sound to, for example, some of the stormier passages in the opening Allegro moderato of D.385.

In sum, this is a CD that deserves the attention of anyone interested in historical instruments and an intelligent approach to playing them, but despite the integrity of the performances I’m afraid it is simply not possible to overlook technical flaws.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Schubert: Lebensstürme

Lebensstürme Schubert music for piano four-hands

Music for piano four-hands
DUO PLEYEL (Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya, Richard Egarr)
77:11
Linn Records CKD 593

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As with most other mediums in which he worked, Schubert left a large legacy of music for piano four-hands, extending as it does to some sixty works. Largely little known today, most were composed for domestic use at the ‘Schubertiads’ hosted by the composer’s Viennese friends. The present selection includes two works dating from 1818, the Rondo in D, D. 608 and the Sonata in B flat, D. 617 along with three from 1828, the year of his death: the Rondo in A, D. 951; the so-called ‘Lebensstürme’ Allegro in A minor, D. 947; and his undoubted masterpiece in the form, the Fantasie in F minor, D. 940. They are performed by the Duo Pleyel (Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya and Richard Egarr) on a beautiful Pleyel fortepiano of 1848, an instrument capable of a range extending from the massive quasi-orchestral sonorities at times asked from it in D. 947 and D. 940 to pearl-like pianissimo cascades descending from high in the treble register, D. 951, in particular, providing exquisite examples. Above all, it demonstrates across the range a variety of colour and nuance not possible to achieve on a modern piano

In the course of a brief but interesting note, Egarr quotes Schubert as claiming that there is ‘no such thing as happy music’, a highly romantic concept that the 21-year-old composer himself contradicted to a considerable extent in D. 608 and D. 617. The Rondo is founded on a perky theme with the character of a German Dance and if there are later disturbed interludes, it is the warm, poetic glow of the final episode that lingers more in the mind. Likewise, the B-flat Sonata opens with an innocuous flowing theme, played here with beguiling, unaffected charm, even if the modulations of the development do wander through unsettled, briefly stormy territory. The main theme of the central Andante con moto occupies sad, ambiguous territory temporarily assuaged by the lovely lyrical secondary idea, while the animated Allegretto offers up the opportunity for Duo Pleyel to demonstrate virtuosity with their fleet and agile fingerwork.

The main theme of the A-major Rondo, too, offers up a mood of contented innocence, perhaps redolent of one of the happier early songs in Die Schöne Müllerin, though the first episode moves to fantasia-like uncertainly. The magnificent ‘Lebensstürme’ (the storms of life) movement, cast in sonata form, displays both instrument and performers at their grandest, the big, immensely impressive sonority matched by playing of magisterial authority. The magnificent Fantasie opens with one of those heaven-sent Schubertian melodies that occupies a fragile place between nostalgic, sad reminiscence and the Elysian fields. Thereafter the work becomes an epic, twenty minutes of continuous music that veers from dance to chords as fierce and jagged as bleak mountain peaks, from playful shimmering scalic showers to a contrapuntal development of the opening theme as uncompromising as anything Bach wrote.

It should already be apparent from the above that the performances are richly rewarding. Technically near-flawless – I noticed tiny moments of blurring of texture – with a judicious choice of tempo and highly sensitive to the wide emotional range, they can be recommended without reservation. And if you don’t know the music, especially the late works, then it is high time you made its acquaintance!

Brian Robins