Tag: Vocal music

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Kinderman: Opitianischer Orpheus

Chamber and vocal music by Erasmus Kindermann CD cover

Lieder nach Gedichten von Martin Opitz
Ian Siedlaczek soprano, Jana Kobow tenor, United Continuo Ensemble
66:57

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Erasmus Kindermann spent most of his 39 years of life in Nürnberg, and unfortunately for him it coincided largely with the Thirty Years War. He was lucky to spend the worst of it studying in Venice, and also enjoyed the considerable artistic upswing which greeted its conclusion, which saw the publication in 1642 of his settings of poems by Martin Opitz for solo, dialoguing or duetting voices with instrumental accompaniment. This coincided with the foundation of various literary societies in Nürnberg in which new literature was encouraged, but also the poetry of Opitz from 20 years earlier was read, performed and appreciated. A key figure in all of this was Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, whose ‘Poetic Funnel’ also of 1642 through which he boasted the art of German poetry (freed of Latin) could be poured in just six hours! Although Kindermann’s surviving portrait shows a man aged and haggard before his time, his Opitz settings are delightfully cheery, bucolic affairs with perky short-phrased tunes that seem to relate to the simplicity of folk music. The performances here are completely charming, with both singers instilling just the right amount of drama and expression into these beguiling songs. The cover of the first volume of Kindermann’s “Opitianischer Orpheus” depicts a small consort grouped around a table in a domestic setting presumably performing the contents of the publication, and the present forces evoke this delightful scene to perfection. The United Continuo Ensemble comprises two violins, gamba, harp, harpsichord and organ, and independently contributes a couple of violin sonatas by Kindermann to the programme. It is indeed a shame that Kindermann survived plague, war and financial ruin only to die just after peace promised a genuine cultural Renaissance in his home city. Remarkable too that his music seems genuinely so optimistic and without the shadow of the desperate times he had lived through. The same could be said of the poetry of Martin Opitz, regarded by many as ‘the father of German literature’, who died in 1639 at the age of just 43, having misguidedly demanded change from a beggar, who turned out to be suffering from the plague – a lockdown lesson for us all perhaps!

D. James Ross

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Amor, Fortuna et Morte

Amor Fortuna et Morte CD cover

Madrigals by de Rore, Luzzaschi, Gesualdo & Monteverdi
Profeti della Quinta
64:21
Pan Classics PC 10396

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This collection of madrigals has been compiled for the excellent reason that the singers of the Profeti della Quinta love singing them. Interestingly the composers they choose span the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries – Cipriano de Rore was born in 1515/6 and died in 1565, while Monteverdi was born in 1567 and died in 1643. While there is considerable variety here, various musical and thematic threads run all the way through the programme. The five male voices, joined in the later works by lute, achieve a remarkable blend and purity of intonation, and sing these madrigals with intense expression and musical intelligence. In addition to some very familiar material, we have an extraordinary madrigal by Scipione Lacorcia, who manages to outdo his model Gesualdo in harmonic eccentricity and melodic waywardness! The recording of Monteverdi’s “Lamento della Ninfa” (13) is a hair-raising aberration, as one of the group’s male altos hideously droops and swoops around Monteverdi’s melodic line in a style verging on caricature. Famously, Monteverdi asks the soloist to sing ‘at the beat of the emotions’ – however, this clearly means singing with a degree of mensural freedom rather than approximating the actual notes in a sort of anachronistic Sprechgesang. Just awful, but mercifully unique on the CD. Interspersed among the madrigals, we also have a number of pieces for solo lute, some of them very effective arrangements of madrigals. Founded in Galilee by the eminent singer/harpsichordist/director/composer Elam Rotem, Profeti della Quinta is now based in Basel.

D. James Ross

 

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Johannes De Cleve: Missa Rex Babylonis

Cover of Cinquecento CD of de Cleve and Vaet

Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal
71:06
hyperion CDA68241

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Johannes de Cleve (1528/9-1582), while an almost exact contemporary of Palestrina, composed in a recognisably Franco-Flemish style, with its debt to Gombert and, earlier still, Josquin, while there are a few audible nods towards Italy. Originating from modern-day Kleve, the same neck of the woods as Henry VIII’s fourth wife, on the borders of modern Germany and the Netherlands, it is assumed that he was trained in the Low Countries before, in 1553, fetching up in Vienna and having his first book of compositions published in Antwerp. Their almost exact contemporary, the definitely Flemish Jakob Vaet (pronounced “vart”), born in what is now Kortrijk, also fetched up in Vienna, and provides the motet on which Cleve bases his mass. While Vaet is relatively well represented on disc, thanks in no small part to Cinquecento, Cleve is a virtual newcomer. Does his music deserve this extended recognition?

There is no getting away from the fact that Call-me-Vart is the better composer, for all his limited appearance on this disc. His motet lasts over nine minutes, and its sweeping musical narrative puts Cleve into perspective. In Cleve’s mass, there is a lack of subtlety in his use of salient features from Vaet’s motet which suggests that originality is in short supply. There is some stilted homophonic writing in the first section of Carole qui veniens just before some rather by-numbers syncopation, though there is compensation in a striking chromatic passage during the second section. That said, most of his works possess some good moments. His use of dissonance which, like his chromaticism, is touted in most commentaries about him, shows its head assertively in both settings of the Agnus in the Mass. The same animated and affecting Hosanna concludes the Sanctus and Benedictus. And there is some mellifluous polyphony in the Kyrie.

Recently for this journal, I reviewed a disc, sung by the Brabant Ensemble, of music by members of the Franco-Flemish wolf pack, Lupus Hellinck and Johannes Lupi (Hyperion CDA68304). Born three decades before Cleve, there are aspects of their music – fluency, spontaneity, originality, breadth and independence of creative thought – which make it superior to his agreeable competence. As for the performance, Cinquecento produce a rather thick texture and, as a male ensemble albeit with a falsettist, tend to gravitate to lower in the vocal range than a choir such as the Brabant Ensemble, which includes females, and whose renditions are a tad (very acceptably) rougher but whose vocal textures tend to be brighter. As I remarked in my recent review of Cinquecento’s recording of the second book of Palestrina’s Lamentations (Hyperion CDA68284), this rendered them perfect exponents for this more intense and static music, but it can lead to some monotony especially when applied to a composer such as Cleve.

Cleve’s well-wrought dissonances and chromaticisms, within his competent yet still conservative technique, earn him this revival by a major ensemble on a major label. Other composers tell a better story over the piece, but even a lesser composer within the Franco-Flemish School, albeit right at the end of its span, is better than a lesser composer from most other such circles.

Richard Turbet

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Akoé: Nuevas Músicas antiguas

Akoé Nuevas Musicas Antiguas CD cover

Taracea
51:13
Alpha Classics 597

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Anybody old enough like me to remember Jacques Loussier and his renditions of Baroque music in a jazz idiom will be slightly prepared for this CD of ‘reworkings’ of early music. There is certainly the same mellow, laid-back atmosphere here, as a broken consort to end all such (flute/recorder, vihuela, double bass, voice, percussion and serpent) go to work on Dowland, Caccini, Isaac, Encina, Josquin, le Roy, Hildegard and Claudin. I have to say that I disliked both what the ensemble was doing to the music and the end result. Unlike in the case of Loussier, there seemed no consistent style into which the music was being translated – this, to me, was just a mess of folky and experimental jazz influences mashed together. The pretentious programme note failed either to explain or convince – ‘This is the very core of Taracea’s Akoé : the thorn, the stinging spur of curiosity, and the memory of past sounds, the integral genetic inheritance of every composer and musician.’  Many of you will also remember pseuds’ corner… Annoyingly, the obvious musicality of the individual players could have been put to much more worthy ends, but there was a worrying inclination towards iconoclasm (e.g. track 3 Caccini’s Amarilli, mia bella being caricatured on a serpent) and a pretentious self-indulgence about this whole project which I found it very hard to warm to. Certainly not hip in either sense of the word!

D. James Ross

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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