Tag: Vocal music

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CD cover Telemann Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst Vol. 8 Kielland Bergen Barokk

Marianne Beate Kielland, Bergen Barokk
65:51
Toccata Classics TOCC 0266

This is the eighth instalment of this noteworthy project to record the complete cycle of the Harmonischer Gottesdienst, a wonderfully crafted and mellifluous cycle of 72 chamber cantatas from 1725/6, which are firmly couched in the Scriptures, and have the multi-function trait of being ideal for moralistic, musical accompaniment to a sermon, or suitable for domestic worship, and even musical home practice. Although the CD indicates there is one premiered piece, you would have to buy about four or five CDs to cover all these works in one go (Dux, Enchiriadis, Canterino=Brilliant classics) so several of these will be new to many listeners. What better endorsement would one need, than Handel’s? |You can hear why he chose to examine and indeed use some of the melodic content found here. The responsive mezzo-soprano tackles these pieces with just the right attack in her declamation, delivering some wonderful moments, with clever modulations and increased intensity when required. The violin (the back-up instrument if recorder and oboe players weren’t available) makes a perfect partner to this well-honed, mid-ranged voice, and the rest of the ensemble offer admirable supporting roles.

While the texts of the first and third cantatas may even be from Telemann’s own quill, the vast majority were written by the jurist and literatus Mathaeus Arnold Wilckens (1704-59), an obviously gifted 21-year-old. This would not be the last time Telemann approached young Hamburg poets of high quality. There are a few textual nuances to observe in Andrus Madsen’s translation: for example, in German, “Lust” as a singular noun tends to be a positive (joy or pleasure), while in the plural it equates more to vice and debauchery. There are several others but focussing on them might detract from the thoroughly satisfying performances on the disc, so let me just say: caveat lector!

The CD booklet contains a rather splendid essay on Telemann and Neumeister by Sjur Haga Bringeland, an important working relationship which yielded some four or five cycles. One has to question what it is doing here, though – while it is useful page-filler, it has nothing to do with the music on the disc.

As one progresses through these fine sparkling gems of spiritual music, one feels the dramatic effects and cogency, perfectly set to some engaging music, so well suited for their intended purpose. The opera composer is not very far away either. This is a really worthy addition to Toccata Classics’ on-going survey of Telemann’s music.

David Bellinger

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Pohle: Liebesgesänge

CD cover Pohle Liebesgesänge Benjamin Lyko Alex Potter
Benjamin Lyko, Alex Potter, e.g.baroque
61:19
audite aud 97.803
 
While Pohle’s instrumental music is gaining popularity (partly through my own efforts to publish his surviving output, as well as his complete church music, in collaboration with Gottfried Gille and Anna-Juliane Peetz-Ullman), his other output is relatively unknown. The present CD presents a set of 12 love songs for altos with a pair of violins and continuo, originally dedicated to the composer’s new employer, Wilhelm VI of Hesse-Kassel. These are not duets in the sense of lovers singing to one another. Rather, the two voices present the same texts in alternation, imitation, and intertwining counterpoint. Sometimes, they are strophic with violin ritornelli; in others, Pohle uses the same bassline but varies the melodic line (much as Buxtehude would later do in “Membra Jesu nostri”), while the violins join with the voices in yet others. And the violin parts are not mere fillers – the 11th song, “Will sie nicht”, demands some very virtuosic scales! Paul Fleming’s texts tell of his unhappy love life; the first sister that he fell in love with (in Tallinn, as Reval is known to English speakers) married someone else in his absence, then on his way to marry her sister, he died, aged only 30. They are printed in the booklet without translations, which unfortunately – I suspect – will put some people off buying what is a fine CD. Lyko and Potter’s voices are a good match, the former possibly a little edgy at the top of his range. Both declaim the texts well and produce a lovely warm sound. The sequence of songs is broken by the first of a set of 12 trio sonatas by Pohle’s successor as Kapellmeister in Halle, Johann Philipp Krieger. There was space on the disc for more of the set (which has been recorded complete).

Apologies to the musicians and the recording company for the delay in reviewing this wonderful recording; I have just found it in a box that was put in my attic (and “lost”!) when I moved house.

Brian Clark

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O Jesulein

CD cover O Jesulein A Christmas oratorio Clematis
A German Baroque Christmas oratorio
Clematis
71:23
Ricercar RIC444
 
Rather than an oratorio in the strict sense, this gorgeous disc offers up a selection of beautiful settings of texts that tell the Christmas story by some of the next composers of the 17th and early 18th centuries. Beginning with the Coronation of the Virgin, we have the Annunciation, music for the angels, the shepherds and the adoration, the angels appear to Joseph, then the Magi arrive, followed by the Presentation in the Temple, then “fast forward” to Jesus preaching there, and finally some general rejoicing. Much of the repertoire will be unfamiliar to most readers – though as popular in their day as their now better-known contemporaries, Michael Praetorius, Buxtehude and Schütz, the likes of Schelle, Hammerschmidt and Briegel are shockingly neglected nowadays, let alone Christoph Bernhard, Christian Flor and David Pohle. Six singers (SScTTB) and 10 instrumentalists (on strings, recorders, bassoons and crumhorns – as well as schalmey, bombard and rackett!) mix and match as the programme proceeds, and there is not a weak link among them. The voices combine beautifully – try the Gesualdo-like passage in Andreas Hammerschmidt’s “Ach mein herzliches Jesulein” for proof – then relax into the warmth of the string consort at the opening of Tunder’s “Ein kleines Kindelein”. Then get set for the crumhorns in Praetorius’ “Puer natus in Bethlehem”, which weren’t quite as rollicking as I’d expected, but the reedy sound was perfect. Some works are performed purely instrumentally. The informative booklet note is given in English, French and German. For the sung texts and their translations, you’ll have to go to the record company’s website to download a PDF (no great hardship!) If you need a musical background when wrapping Christmas presents or while stirring the Christmas cake for the 20th time, let me recommend the many forgotten gems on this beautiful CD.
Apologies to the musicians and the recording company for the delay in reviewing this wonderful recording; I have just found it in a box that was put in my attic (and “lost”!) when I moved house.
Brian Clark
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Mogens Pedersøn: Pratum spirituale

CD cover Mogens Pederson Pratum spirituale Weser-Renaissance
Motets & Hymns
Weser-Renaissance Bremen, Manfred Cordes
60:15
cpo 555 216-2
 
If you have heard of this Danish composer at all, it will almost certainly be through his madrigals. Like many a northern European disciple of the Gabrielis in Venice, his “right of passage” publication was a book of secular music to demonstrate his complete immersion in the Italian style of day. Less well known – but equally impressed for combining that with the needs of the Lutheran church (again, like many of his contemporaries) was his 1620 “Pratum spirituale”, a collection of “masses, psalms and motets… for use in Denmark and Norway”. This engaging recording (you should never expect any less from these forces!) presents a selection of pieces, including a mass for five voices, Latin motets and hymns in Danish. Some are performed tutti, some with solo voice(s) and groups of strings (violin with gambas) or winds (cornetto with sackbutts and dulcian) and continuo, sometimes varying the scoring of the various verses of the hymns. (The booklet listing is wrong for “Ad te levavi”, as only one singer is credited, where I can hear two.) The booklet notes mention Venetian two-choir writing several times, but do not expect to hear any here; “Pratum spirituale” is for five voices. This is a valuable project for illustrating the performance of Latin-texted music (including that mass with its curtailed Credo and Benedictus-less Sanctus!) within Lutheran liturgies, and also for confirming the quality of Pederson’s output.
 
Apologies to the musicians and the recording company for the delay in reviewing this wonderful recording; I have just found it in a box that was put in my attic (and “lost”!) when I moved house.
 
Brian Clark
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Legros : Haute-contre de Gluck

CD cover Legros Haute-contre de Gluck Renioud van Mechelen A nocte temporis

Reinoud de Mechelen, A Nocte Temporis
72:19
Alpha 992

This CD brings together repertoire by a variety of composers for the uniquely French haute-contre or high tenor voice, personified here by the excellent soloist Reinoud van Mechelen. Also directing the ensemble A Nocte Temporis, van Mechelen presents a selection of haute-contre arias which would have been sung by the operatic tenor Joseph Legros who dominated the Paris Opéra for twenty years from his appointment in 1764. During his tenure, he sang the music of still familiar composers such as Gluck and JC Bach, as well as now less familiar composers such as François-Joseph Gossec, André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry and Niccoló Piccinni and practically forgotten musicians such as Jean-Benjamin de la Borde, Pierre-Montan Berton, Jean-Claude Trial and Joseph Legros himself. Reinoud van Mechelen has a lovely effortless high tenor voice, instantly accounting for the enduring popularity of Legros. Supported by a superb instrumental ensemble, he wisely lets them occasionally play a purely instrumental piece for variety, but the main virtue of this CD is his lovely vocal interpretation of this unfamiliar repertoire. Perhaps inevitably, the musical standards take a marked upturn with the advent of Gluck, just as his arrival at the Paris Opéra in 1774 seems to have well and truly shaken things up. The reported tension between Legros and Gluck may have been largely confected, and certainly the music Gluck wrote for Legros to sing exploited his gifts in a thorough and musically imaginative way. An aria composed by Legros for himself to sing has an insouciant charm, but he was probably right to keep on the day job, singing the music of his compositional betters! This CD, the third in a series exploring music written for haute-contres and preceded by Lully and Rameau’s star tenors, very usefully and stylishly brings together some beautiful music, and I feel a singer who also directs his accompanying ensemble brings a further dimension to this fascinating and enjoyable repertoire.

D. James Ross

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Hélène de Montgeroult

CD cover Montgeroult Hadjimarkos

Portrait d’une compositrice visionnaire
Marcia Hadjimarkos fortepiano, Beth Taylor mS, Nicolas Mazzolini violin
61:51
Seulétoile SE09

The composer and pianist Hélène de Nervo, Marquise de Montgeroult by marriage, 1764-1836) lived through tumultuous times in her native France. With such a colourful career and such characterful music as the performers have found here, it is remarkable that she has passed below the radar for so long. A student of Dussek and Clementi, Montgeroult benefited from the rapid development of the piano-forte during her lifetime, a process she was able to take full advantage of during her years in Paris. Pianist Hadjimarkos also takes full advantage of the developing pianoforte in her choice of some striking stops in her performances of the solo Etudes (1812 and 1816) and accompanying Beth Taylor’s powerful accounts of the Nocturnes (1807). She plays a beautiful 1817 pianoforte by Antoine Neuhaus. The piano works appear as an appendix to a Complete Method for Piano, and while seven of the Etudes recorded here are for both hands, a further three focus more intently on the right hand and yet another on the left – presumably Montgeroult’s intention was to strengthen both hands of the performer independently and to build up their distinctive roles. Given their very practical purpose, these Etudes are remarkably imaginative and effective, and are given superbly expressive performances here. The subtitle of the CD is ‘Portrait d’une compositrice visionnaire’ and this aspect of Montgeroult’s strikingly individual musical style is very much to the fore in the performers’ minds. Mezzosoprano Beth Taylor gives beautifully eloquent accounts of the six short Nocturnes op 6 for solo voice and piano accompaniment. In the style of the time, the opus 2 Sonata no 6 (1800) for piano with accompaniment by the violin is just that, a piece very much led by the piano with fairly restrained commentary from the violin. It too is imaginatively presented by Hadjimarkkos with violinist Nicolas Mazzoleni. Montgeroult’s biographer Jérôme Dorival considers her the missing link between Mozart and Chopin, and while she might not be the only deserving candidate for this title, she is clearly an important composer who thoroughly deserves a place in the history of the early piano and in composition generally. These performers have done us all a great service in shining such a musically convincing spotlight on a composer who clearly merits much more attention.

D. James Ross

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Marc’Antonio Ziani: La Morte vinta sul Calvario

CD cover Ziani La Morte vinta

Les Traversées Baroques, directed by Etienne Meyer & Judith Pacquier
73:18
Accent ACC 24402

Often confused with oratorios, the sepolcro is a peculiarly Viennese form best thought of as a cross between opera and oratorio. The genre flourished at the Hapsburg court during the reign of the highly musical and deeply religious Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (1658-1705), its best-known practitioners being Antonio Draghi (1634-1700) and Marc’Antonio Ziani (1658-1715). Sepolcri can be defined as semi-staged dramatic works performed on Good Friday in either spectacular fashion in the Hofkapelle or more intimately in the private chapel of one of the senior members of the Imperial family. The characters depicted were nearly exclusively allegorical, thus similar to the type of libretto familiar today from Handel’s early Roman oratorio La resurrezione (1708).

The Venetian opera composer Ziani arrived in Vienna in the wake of Draghi’s death, appointed vice-Kapellmeister in 1700. For the Viennese court he composed operas, oratorios and eight sepolcri. His La Morte vinta sul Calvario dates from 1706, when it was given in the Hofkapelle on the evening of Good Friday and has for its subject matter Christ’s triumph over death as a result of his dying on the Cross at Calvary. The topic is explored in P A Bernardoni’s libretto by five allegorical characters: Il Demonio (Satan), La Morte (Death), La Natura Umana (Human Nature), La Fede (Faith) and L’Anima d’Adamo (the Soul of Adam). The ‘action’ is carried on through alternating brief da capo arias and recitative, a typical sequence being aria-recitative-aria for the same character. There is also a duet (for Il Demonio and La Morte) and a final madrigalian chorus. A number of the arias are fairly florid, Il Demonio opening the work with a particularly bravura piece in a role sung at the first performance by the bass Rainaldo Borrini, one of the most highly paid singers at the Viennese court. The taste for contrapuntal writing at the court is much in evidence, with chromatic seasoning also strongly featured in Ziani’s score. Some of the cantabile arias have considerable beauty, La Natura Umana’s ‘Io languia’ (no. 30) being a particularly winning example. Accompaniments feature a rich assortment of brass and wind – pairs of cornetti, recorders, sackbuts and bassoons in addition to the strings, which include violas da gamba. It is a weakness of the present recording that only single strings to a part are employed, since we know sepolcri employed the substantial forces available at the Viennese court, which just a few years later is recorded as employing over 30 string players.

The demands made on the singers are in the main too great for the present performers, though the performance is obviously one of great integrity. Yannis François’s is a lightish bass-baritone whose voice carries neither sufficient authority nor personality for Il Demonio. La Natura Umana is sung by Vincent Bouchot, listed as a tenor but who, particularly in his first aria, sounds more like an haute-contre. La Morte, a countertenor part, is sung by Maximiliano Baños pleasingly enough but without making any significant impression. Much the most satisfying performances come from the two sopranos, Dagmar Šašková’s in particular bringing to the role of La Fede a sense of real commitment lacking elsewhere, along with some highly impressive chest notes in her angry recitative exchange with Il Demonio (no. 25). However, both she and the charmingly fresh-sounding L’Anima d’Adamo of Capucine Keller had difficulty controlling a few notes above the stave. The instrumental playing is good.

Although the performance is not ideal it is praiseworthy for its honesty and intentions. Les traversées Baroques deserve praise for reviving a splendid example of a repertoire little known today.

Brian Robins

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Ockeghem: Complete Songs volume 2

CD cover Ockeghem Songs Vol 2 Blue Heron

Blue Heron, director Scott Metcalfe; Dark Horse Consort
Blue Heron BHCD 1013
70:27

To say that Blue Heron’s second and final disc of Ockeghem’s songs has been awaited eagerly is an understatement. My review of the first volume (BHCD 1010) is dated 21 February 2020, and shortly afterwards (15 October 2020) I reviewed a double album of all Les Chansons released by another American ensemble Cut Circle (Musique en Wallonie MEW 1995). Both of these releases are superb and in their different ways whetted the appetite for Blue Heron’s second excursion into this repertory. Has the wait – four years – been worthwhile?

Back in 1993 I attended the 21st Annual Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Music at Bangor University. I was giving a paper on Byrd – who in those days we still thought had been born in 1543 – and he shared much of the programme with papers about Ockeghem, the quincentenary of whose death was imminent (1997) and the subject of eager preparations. Knowing nothing of the composer except by reputation, I attended these sessions, some of which were illustrated by excerpts from those commercial recordings of his music – on this occasion his masses – then available. To me, compared with how well Byrd was beginning to be performed on disc, these recordings were atrocious (think postwar close harmony groups with crewcuts, clicking fingers and chortling “shoobie-doobie-doobie-doo-WAAAHHH”), and in one lecture I started to guffaw, stifling my contempt when I realised that my fellow attendees were listening without adverse reaction. Before long I was in the bookshop at Lincoln Cathedral, still pursuing Byrd. In lieu of simply making a donation, I impulsively bought a disc of The Clerks’ Group version of his Missa Ecce ancilla Domini, partly by way of contributing to the Cathedral’s funds, and partly remembering Bangor and thinking that there must be more to Ockeghem than the racket that I had heard there.

And so there is. More wonderful recordings of Ockeghem’s masses by Edward Wickham’s excellent ensemble have been followed by, amongst others, two recordings of his complete secular songs which I mentioned above, made by a couple of outstanding American vocal groups with not a crewcut in sight and no clicking of fingers. Suffice to say this second disc by Blue Heron continues the good work of the first. The quality of Ockeghem’s songs is such that they deserve to be performed and recorded by the best ensembles after the indignities his masses suffered on disc during the latter decades of the previous century.

Unlike Cut Circle, Blue Heron employ instruments on some tracks, more so on this second disc than on their first. This is always done sensitively, and the reasons for doing so are given clearly in the accompanying booklet. For instance, Cut Circle perform La despourveue as a vocal trio whereas Blue Heron give it as a solo song accompanied by two stringed instruments, a fourth higher, so that the soprano Sophie Michaux (where do these amazing singers keep coming from?) does not have to descend so far into her mezzo range as did the differently impressive Sonja DuToit Tengblad. And on Ung aultre l’a the “intriguing downward octave scale in the [sung] bass part”, to which I referred in my review of Cut Circle, is played sweepingly on the harp. Throughout this recording, Blue Heron sing with the ideal balance of intensity and engagement – an engagement with the songs themselves and also an engagement with the listener: in other words, this engagement not only extends from the musicians to the music, but also reaches out and embraces the listener – they penetrate the meanings of the songs but also project these meanings outward to their audience. This is expressed as well as anywhere in Baisies moi in which the three singers achieve an ideal balance of intimacy and animation.

Three of the works on this disc are not by Ockeghem himself. The Dark Horse Consort, a quartet of brass instruments, plays an anonymous arrangement of the almost heartbreaking Je n’ay deuil of which the singers perform the four-part version on the preceding track. Of the other two songs, one is by Binchois and the other is by the Spaniard Juan Cornago, but their links to Ockeghem and his music are explained in the booklet, a most helpful and illuminating document written by director Scott Metcalfe and musicologist Sean Gallagher.  Scott himself participates on the harp and fiddle and, as on the first disc, is joined by Laura Jeppesen also playing the fiddle. Cornago’s lovely song for three voices Qu’es mi vida is the penultimate track, and the disc, indeed the project, is brought to a close by Ockeghem’s four-part transformation, given here by Sophie Michaux and three instruments: the fiddle played by Scott plus a doucaine and – as a nod to the song’s Spanish provenance – a vihuela de arco. It is difficult to imagine anything more beautiful.

Richard Turbet

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Popora: Music for the Venetian Ospedaletto

jose maria lo monaco porpora

Josè Maria Lo Monaco contralto, stile galante, Stefano Aresi
67:36
Glossa GCD 923537

On the inside cover of the booklet, along with the other credits, we read: “This recording is an outgrowth of musicological research seeking new insights on historically informed performance practices based upon the acoustics of the Ospedaletto in Venice”. That all sounds great, but there is no further explanation or, indeed, any other comment on the actual performance apart from a half-hearted explanation of the presence of a cello concerto on an otherwise vocal programme because there it is known that one of the women in the orchestra there was a known virtuoso on the instrument…

While the disc is promoted as an exploration of music at the Ospedaletto, in fact it focuses very much on the activities of a single singer for whom Porpora conceived a valuable body of work during his several years there (having also worked at the three other similar institutions in Venice), the alto Angiola Moro. With a range from the A below middle C to the E flat at the top of the treble clef, she apparently had no problem with chromatic scales, wide arpeggios and leaps, or rapid scales. As the “early music voice” seems to get bigger and bigger, it is no surprise to find a singer of the calibre of Josè Maria Lo Monaco tackling this repertoire, and she does it very well.

Whether or not it was played by Niccolosa Fanello, Porpora’s G major cello concerto is beautiful; its opening movement was very reminiscent of some of the slushier passages from the concertos attributed to Wassenaer. The booklet notes tell us that Porpora’s official appointment (after two years of working for free – musicians, it was EVER thus!) the violin teacher asked for extra resources to support him in getting his musicians up to the standards of the “new music”, and – if they were up to playing this piece – he clearly succeeded.

Brian Clark

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Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine

CD cover Monteverdi Vespers Pichon Pygmalion

Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon
102:00 (2 CDs in a cardboard box)
harmonia mundi HMM 902710.11

Raphael Pichon’s account of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 has been through a process of metamorphosis since a rather unsatisfactory Proms performance in 2017 followed by a much more convincing account, filmed live in the Versailles chapel which I reviewed enthusiastically in 2019. This version still attempted to set Monteverdi’s music in something of a liturgical context, while unfortunately the DVD subtitles and support materials did a poor job in identifying the interleaved plainchant. This latest CD version for harmonia mundi accepts the current thinking that, far from being a discrete ‘piece’, the publication is a collection of Monteverdi’s best service music written for lavish celebrations of St Barbara at the Gonzaga court of Mantua and gathered together in a portfolio dedicated to the Pope in the hope of employment in one of the important papal institutions in Rome. The failure of this enterprise and Monteverdi’s subsequent career in Venice has frequently influenced performances of this extraordinary music, but actually the important point of reference ought to be the musically flamboyant court of Mantua. The practice of combining the sacred and secular musical resources for the most magnificent Mantuan services for St Barbara justifies the truly epic scale of Pichon’s presentation. It also obviates the need for a liturgical context, and even allows for the aesthetically satisfactory return to the opening fanfare set to relevant text to bookend the whole performance. Epic is the word that keeps coming to mind in describing this latest version of the Vespers, with over seventy musicians performing in the resonant acoustic of the Temple du Saint-Esprit in Paris. Pichon’s control over these large forces is breath-taking, and as previously his line-up of superlative soloists provides us with exquisitely decorated accounts of the solo and small ensemble material. Also prominent in these more intimate moments, although also adding magically to the tutti textures, is a superb team of continuo players, including two harpists, three theorbists, and three harpsichordists, one doubling organ. Their contribution is wonderfully imaginative and perfectly responsive to the voices. The brass and string sections, particularly the two double basses, provide an impressively rich texture to the tutti passages, while the four cornettists contribute virtuosic cadential embellishments which are simply stunning – just listen to them in the concluding doxology of Laetatus sum! Singing at ‘high’ pitch, Pygmalion’s chorus exudes energy and musical purpose and is a model of perfect phrasing and unanimity, while the harmonia mundi engineers have captured this whole remarkable sound in all its vividness. You can tell that this is a performance of a now familiar work which I found thrilling and engaging – it caused me to look back at my favourite accounts by Suzuki, Christophers, and Gardiner’s three versions, and further back to pioneering accounts in the early 1950s by Eugen Jochum and even Leopold Stokowski. What struck me is that for all their scholarly and stylistic shortcomings, the earliest versions had an epic sweep, which has sometimes been missing in later versions. It strikes me that Pichon has managed to embrace the scholarly and the epic dimensions of this music, while modern standards of recorded sound capture this in all its richness and subtlety. This version is not without its quirks – not everybody will like the rather ‘romantic’ dynamic variations (including the curiously ‘cowed’ opening of Dixit Dominus), while the decision to perform the opening and concluding verses of Ave maris stella a capella, when previous conductors’ instincts have been to combine the vocal and instrumental forces accrued in all the other verses, is a curious one. The fact is we have very little idea of the details of performance styles at the time, but knowing that opera singers joined forces with sacred musical forces for the larger-scale religious celebrations suggests that the inherent drama of the music might have been further enhanced for these courtly spectacles.

D. James Ross