Tag: Vocal music

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The secret life of carols

The Tellin Secret Life of Carols CD cover

800 Years of Christmas Music
the telling
51:17
First Hand Records FHR94

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This selection of Christmas carols is gleaned from the 12th to the 20th centuries, sharing a sort of folk music quality, which suits the performance style of The Telling. Playing and singing in groups of at most three and sometimes solo, the two voices and two harps are at their best at their simplest. On the odd occasion, like track 3 “O Jesulein Süß”, when the two voices combine in harmony, the blend is less than comfortable, although each sounds fine in solo verses. The geographical range of the music seems neatly to match the cultural heritages of the performers, so we have mainly English, Irish, German and Finnish carols. I would have liked some more details about the medieval, baroque and ‘celtic’ harps played by Jean Kelly and Kaisa Pulkkinen, as well more information on the approach to the instrumental accompaniments – the iconic Gruber setting of “Stille Nacht” has a perfectly good accompaniment for guitar, but the accompaniment here on ‘celtic’ harp seems to be largely improvised. The stylistic range of the carols The Telling have chosen demands a considerable degree of versatility in performance, and I would confess that I don’t think they are equally effective with all the material – I think the medieval material seems best suited to the voices particularly. Reading their group CV, I think that their live performances usually include a dramatic dimension, and perhaps their recordings suffer a little by being deprived of this.

D. James Ross

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Rore: Vieni, dolce Imeneo

Vieni Imeneo Madrigals by Cipriano da Rore CD cover

La Compagnia del Madrigale
69:27
Glossa GCD 922808

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The invocation of Hymen, god of marriage, in the title of one of these madrigals by Cipriano de Rore, which in turn provides the CD with its title, is indeed felicitous. These works, all from late or posthumous collections, demonstrate the clear marriage of text and music for which Cipriano was renowned in his lifetime and for some time thereafter. Monteverdi was a great admirer, and it is fascinating to hear how the latter master picked up the Cipriano baton and ran with it in his own madrigals. The singing of La Compagnia del Madrigale is generally stylish and engaging – just occasionally the voices do a little ‘settling in’ in the opening phrase of a piece, and (fortunately also only very occasionally) they do some of the newly fashionable expressive ‘drooping’ in pitch, by which I remain largely unconvinced. Mostly though, this CD is an unadulterated musical delight, and I found myself wondering at Cipriano’s sheer facility and confidence in this genre. In an excellent and comprehensive programme note, Marco Bizzarini puts each madrigal in its historical, cultural and political context. To provide variety, some of the madrigals are performed with a mixture of voices and instruments, an utterly convincing option which works beautifully here.

D. James Ross

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Monteverdi: Madrigals Book 9

Monteverdi Madrigals book 9 Longhini CD cover

Scherzi Musicali
Delitiæ Musicæ, Marco Longhini
74:37
Naxos 8.555318

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As Marco Longhini reaches the last of Monteverdi’s Madrigal Books, the posthumously published 9th Book, I find I still have many of the same reservations that I had at the start of the series. The use of an all-male ensemble entails the group’s countertenors being cast as a range of lovelorn maidens, nymphs and shepherdesses, and for all the gusto with which they throw themselves into these roles, I remain unconvinced, particularly as there is no evidence that there was any sort of restriction on women singing this music. I’m afraid I am also less than convinced by Longhini’s countertenors themselves, who in contrast to the other male voices never seem entirely comfortable vocally. I remain similarly unconvinced by the prominent participation of harpsichord in the accompanying textures – often a madrigal is beautifully introduced by a continuo ensemble comprising various plucked instruments and cello only for a harpsichord to muscle in on the texture. Having voiced my main reservations, Longhini’s instinct for the potential drama in this music has not diminished during the project, and if it could occasionally be accused of being a little over-theatrical, it is certainly never dull. The singing is generally good, with only occasional intonation lapses, and is musically pretty convincing and delicately ornamented. The madrigal performances are introduced by a lovely instrumental Sinfonia by Biagio Marini, and the balance of the CD is made up of the Monteverdi’s Scherzi Musicali, a collection of ariettas published in 1632 and of which only a single copy survives. Interestingly, Longhini makes plausible use of a number of instrumental ritornelli which appear in the original publication, and which are normally ignored by performers, to link in conclusion a selection of the ariettas together. I found myself wondering how much the oddly immediate acoustic was to blame for my discomfort with some of the singing – although the recording was made in the Chiesa di San Pietro in Vincola, there is little hint of any bloom in the performance. This ‘in-your-face’ ambience is emphasised by the opening madrigal, in which the countertenor soloist emerges from a resonant distance abruptly to jump out of your speakers at you! Certainly theatrical, but oddly unsettling. I wanted to enjoy this CD more, and can only hope that some listeners derive more consistent pleasure than I did from what is clearly an important complete account of the Monteverdi Madrigals.

D. James Ross

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Barbara Strozzi: Virtuosa of Venice

Barbara Strozzi CD cover Fieri Consort

Fieri Consort
67:18
Fieri Records FIER003VOV
With music by Ferrari, Fontei, Kapsperger, Maione, Monteverdi & Selma y Salaverde

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It is good to see Barbara Strozzi’s music receiving more attention – as more of it becomes familiar, it is clear that she deserves her own place in the history of early Baroque music. As a female composer and performer, her considerable success was greeted with some suspicion in her own lifetime, and even in our own day, acceptance of her skills has been slow and grudging. Her image as a serious performer/composer is perhaps not helped by the familiar bare-breasted portraits, but she was a pupil of the Monteverdi’s pupil, Francesco Cavalli, and was a prolific composer with seven books of madrigals, arias and cantatas plus a collection of sacred music to her name. That this large body of work was published is sometimes ascribed to the prominence of her father as a member of the prestigious Accademia degli Incogniti, but, as more and more of her stylistically varied music comes to be performed, it becomes clear that she was probably being published entirely on her own merits. The Fieri Consort fields six voices in various permutations with gamba, lute/theorbo and harp to present a selection from throughout the composer’s musical life. Thus we travel from the flirty music of the early madrigal collections to the more intense music of the late more profound lagrime. The fact that her music stands up very well beside the pieces by Monteverdi, Nicolò Fontei and Kapsperger with which the consort alternate her songs is a mark of their quality.  The singing and playing are generally good, if the ornamentation occasionally sounds a little laboured, and I like the variety of voices, which appear mainly in dialoguing pairs, as well as the subtlety of the instrumental accompaniments. 

D. James Ross

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Welcome home, Mr Dubourg!

Irish Baroque Orchestra, Peter Whelan CD cover

Irish Baroque Orchestra, Peter Whelan
60:58
Linn Records CKD 532

The music of Matthew Dubourg is a genuine discovery, and one still in the making. This timely CD provides a useful taster of what scholarship may be able to salvage in the future. A contemporary and associate of Handel, nowadays chiefly known for his association with the latter’s visits to Dublin, Dubourg was in his day an admired violin virtuoso and composer in his own right. Opening with the spectacular ‘Hibernia’s Sons your voices raise’ from the Ode for Dublin Castle 1753, the CD goes on to supply Dubourg’s only surviving violin concerto and movements from other Dublin Castle Odes as well as a concerto for two violins by Vivaldi and Corelli’s violin sonata op 5 no 9, provided with quirky ornamentation by Dubourg. Interspersed among these larger works are charming small traditional Irish pieces which Dubourg either wrote down or arranged. Along with an excellent line-up of soloists, The Irish Baroque Orchestra provide energetic and evocative performances of this unfamiliar repertoire – Dubourg was clearly influenced by the music of Handel, but inflections also find their way from the traditional music he clearly loved and appreciated into his more formal compositions. It seems extraordinary that this substantial body of music by a talented local composer has escaped the attention of Irish musicologists until now, and they have their work cut out for them now reconstructing the Odes and other music from fragmentary sources. Only then will we be able truly to evaluate Dubourg’s oeuvre. The title of the CD comes from an incident when Dubourg was playing for Handel and after a particularly wayward cadenza, Handel is supposed to have shouted, ‘Welcome home, Mr Dubourg!’ I have heard the same anecdote applied to Handel’s favourite soprano Mrs Cibber – it is a mark of Dubourg’s undeserved obscurity, that it has perhaps been felt expedient to transfer this anecdote from the forgotten violin virtuoso to the more familiar soprano whose reputation has fared better in our own times! The event is touchingly evoked at the end of the CD when violinist Sophie Ghent ‘goes off on one’ and is welcomed back home by Mr Handel!

D. James Ross

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Caresana: Secular Chamber Cantatas

Caresana secular cantatas CD cover Brilliant Classics

Juliette de Banes Gardonne mezzo-soprano, Ensemble Démesure
53:23
Brilliant Classics 95923

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Perhaps it is the effect of ‘lockdown’ or the remarkable number of recent CDs featuring Italian cantatas of the late 17th and early 18th centuries which I have been reviewing, that when I put this one on I had a serious attack of déjà entendu, and had to doublecheck that I hadn’t already reviewed it and put it in the wrong pile. Of course, it isn’t the fault of Caresana or the present performers that I have overdosed on Italian cantatas, and I wasn’t very far into the programme notes and the CD when I realised that this was reasonably distinctive music from a distinctive context. Venetian by birth, Caresana moved to Naples in 1659 and as a protégé of Monteverdi pupil, Francesco Cavalli, was soon at the heart of Neapolitan music-making. This was a crucial period in Naples, before the arrival of Alessandro Scarlatti in 1683 and the subsequent remarkable flourishing of opera there. As a unique survival of the secular cantata just before these dramatic developments, Caresana’s cantatas, of which we have seven recorded here, are after all of considerable interest. Despite my initial reaction, the Ensemble Démesure has done a fine job in selecting seven contrasting pieces, which demonstrate Caresana’s versatility. Mezzo-soprano, Juliette de Banes Gardonne, has a rich, full voice and imbues the music with considerable drama, negotiating its intricacies impressively, although she has an annoying habit of ‘scooping up’ to notes and her intonation in the upper range isn’t always entirely convincing. She is ably supported by her continuo ensemble of harpsichord, theorbo and cello.

D. James Ross

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Routes du café

Cantatas by bernier and Bach on the theme of coffee's arrival in Europe CD cover

Ensemble Masques, Olivier Fortin
71:39
Alpha Classics Alpha 543
Music by Bach, Bernier, Locke, Marais & Nâyi Osman Dede (+Tanburi Cemil Bey & Kathleen Kajioka)

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This clever CD charts the spread of coffee through Europe, starting with the original cafés in Turkey and then finding music associated with its arrival in France, England and Germany. The famous coffee cantata by Bach finds an equally witty contemporary French counterpart in the cantata Le Caffe by Nicolas Bernier, while France is also represented by the viol piece Saille du caffé by Marin Marais. In London Matthew Locke’s Consort of Fower Parts, we have the sort of music he and Pepys might well have played together when they met in the Turk’s Head coffee house around 1660. The rest of the music is Turkish traditional music played either by a Turkish instrument ensemble or by Kathleen Kajioka on the violin to the accompaniment of Turkish percussion. The Bernier with its obbligato flute part is charming, while the Bach, also with obbligato flute, is very effectively dramatised by the three singers. Soprano Hana Blažíková sounds a little taken by surprise by some of the more eccentric musical phrases in the Bernier and doesn’t sound entirely comfortable in the higher passages in the Bach, but the two men help to keep things on the rails. The mixing of Baroque music and the traditional music of the east doesn’t always work, but here I feel it does so very well. In particular, Kathleen Kajioka’s violin Taksim and Wahda sound very much like the sot of music that might have been played in the cosmopolitan London coffee houses of yore!

D. James Ross

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Oratorio by Perti on French music label CD cover

Maria Cristina Kiehr Anne de Bretagne, Lucile Richardot Louise d’Angoulème, Valerio Contaldo Charles VIII, Stephan MacLeod St Francis de Paola, Concerto Soave, Jean-Marc Aymes
75:30
Lanvellec Editions LE00002

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Such is the embarrassing abundance of gifted Italian composers in the 17th and 18th centuries that the likes of Giacomo Antonio Perti, a composer of operas and oratorios, could be completely forgotten until virtually our own times. Boasting probably the longest career in the history of music, he began composing in 1678 at the age of 17 and was still composing when he died in 1756 at the age of 95! The musicologist Franco Lora has been able to ascribe this anonymous and rather curious oratorio to Perti on the basis of circumstances, style and sheer quality. Three of the four vocal parts are French Royals and the fourth is St Francis, and the music is democratically divided between all four with each receiving the same number of recitatives and arias. Surprisingly each half concludes with a duet, seemingly a convention which allowed the audience to prepare their exit! The piece demonstrates Perti’s inventive sense of melody and skill with his voices and orchestral forces. For me, the highlight of the casting is the presence of alto Lucile Richardot, whose lovely full contralto voice and innate musicality I noticed immediately before consulting the cast list. Unfortunately, the singing is not uniformly of this superlative standard – the two men are fine, but soprano Maria Cristina Kiehr sounds a little uninspired and vocally lazy by comparison. Perti’s reputation is slowly returning in the light of performances of his work, and if this piece is by him, it further enhances the reputation of a man much admired as a composer and teacher in his own very long lifetime. A star pupil of Celano, in turn the star pupil of Carissimi and in turn the teacher of Torelli and Padre Martini, he occupies a pivotal position in the development of Italian music, and like Clementi a century later, his sheer longevity and constantly evolving style ensured that he was extensively influential. 

D. James Ross

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Makaris: Wisps in the dell

Makaris Classical arrangements of Scots and Irish folksongs CD cover

Classical era arrangements of traditional Celtic folk songs
67:54
New Focus Recordings FCR916

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This delightful CD offers a selection of Scottish and Irish folksongs in arrangements by classical composers. As part of the vogue in things Celtic which followed the Jacobite rising and the Ossian craze, a number of enterprising publishers in London secured the services of leading continental composers to ‘set’ mainly Scottish folk songs. In this process of ‘setting’, the angular modality of the melodies was generally ironed out, while the texts often had to be ‘civilised’ too – this would seem to us to water down the original appeal of the traditional music and powerfully raw folk texts, but this was the price of capturing the attention of the large amateur market which would make this enterprise viable. The settings by Haydn and Beethoven are relatively familiar, but the Makaris have spread their net wide and trawled in settings by Schubert, Pleyel, Hummel, Neukomm, Weber, Kuhlau, Kozeluch and Clementi. They take a free approach to the realisation of these settings, both from the point of view of instrumentation and elaboration of melodies and counter-melodies. In some accounts, a heavy fortepiano backbeat sounds a little bit of an indulgence, but elsewhere their approach definitely enhances their material. Vocalist Fiona Gillespie opts for a distinctly folky voice production, but her delightfully pure voice and subtle ornamentation represent a winning combination. Knowing many of these original folksongs, it is fascinating to hear the fingerprints of the better-known composers on their settings. Particularly striking is Beethoven’s uncompromising approach – his publisher worried that the settings would be beyond the amateurs he was targeting, but Beethoven refused to compromise! Equally charming are settings by Hummel and Weber, who fresh from the triumph of his ‘Freischütz’ is thoroughly imbued with folk melody. In a delightful touch, the band have commissioned their bass player to add to the repertoire with his own setting of ‘The Bonnie House o’ Airlie’ which takes this 18th- and 19th-century tradition firmly into the 21st century!

D. James Ross

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The Food of Love

The Baltimore Consort perform music related to Shakespeare

Songs, Dances and Fancies for Shakespeare
The Baltimore Consort
68:04
Sono luminus DSL 92234

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It really is quite surprising that no music contemporary with Shakespeare’s plays which can be directly associated with them has survived, but this has not prevented musicians from compiling programmes based on music from the playwright’s lifetime which ‘relate’ to his plays or from just after his lifetime which reference the plays. There are some old friends here, played with imagination and sensitivity by the Baltimore Consort. They are at their most convincing when creatively riffing on some of the more traditional related material, but I found the same shortcomings as with another recent CD by the revived Baltimore Consort. Compared to the wonderful spontaneity of the vintage Baltimore recordings, the tempi here seem a bit ponderous, the ‘riffing’ a little contrived. Sadly, this may just come down to the change in personnel, and the departure of a couple of truly remarkable musicians. Even in ‘the golden days’, the group’s account of vocal music seemed its Achilles heel, and this still seems to be the case. Soprano Danielle Svonavec has a pleasantly pure voice and ornaments delicately and idiomatically, but there is something mannered and laboured about her pronunciation and presentation of the texts which makes the songs sound a little twee. I can’t help feeling that in my eyes these new Baltimore recordings suffer largely from comparison with the group’s own remarkable back-catalogue, which is possibly a little unfair, and it could be that listeners coming fresh to these recordings will be perfectly happy and, indeed, charmed by the group’s undoubted affinity with and creative approach to this repertoire. The playing and singing are technically impeccable and the recording admirably vivid.

D. James Ross