Tag: Vocal music

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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

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Aliotti: Il Trionfo della Morte

Aliotti Trionfo della morte CD cover

Les Traversées Baroques, Etienne Meyer
94:52 (2 CDs)
Accent ACC 24368

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I wonder if Aliotti, the composing Franciscan friar from Palermo, had seen the fresco “Il trionfo della morte” in the Scafani Palace in the city of his birth and early years. Death, furiously mounted on a wild skeletal horse is dishing out arrows and striking down the privileged orders of society – Franciscans included – whilst sparing the common folk and musicians. It is difficult to imagine not, as this eponymous oratorio evokes the wildness and drama, and possibly sympathies, of this striking image from two centuries earlier. It bursts onto the scene with all the bounce of the baroque, and the energy continues unabated throughout – albeit through a spectrum of moods and pace. The particular elaboration of the theme taken by the oratorio is the origin of the triumph of death: the fall of Adam. It allows this two-CD extravaganza to explore every angle and nuance of the battle between reason and passion, hope and regret, good and evil. The characterisations rendered by the singers capture the tensions and vacillations perfectly – it is so wonderful and refreshing to hear performers entirely given over to the projection of the characters’ inner debates and torments, without a hint of staginess. The technical quality of the singing, playing and recording is extremely impressive: sparkling and immediate. I mentioned the energetic and attention-grabbing opening, where against the overall energy are lyrical, repeated falling phrases which presage the forthcoming story, and beautifully played by the outstanding cornettists. Also worthy of note is the end of the prima parte; the Coro di Demoni Furie Feroci – you can imagine! – culminating in a clever musical falling to earth, matter of fact, but shocking. Another is the heart-rending lament of Eve in the realisation of what has just been precipitated. In shades of Ovid’s telling of the Arethusa and Alpheus metamorphosis, she wishes to liquefy herself and disappear, trapped in a cloying whirlpool of circular harmonies from the viols; a metaphor which therefore spans the parallel religious and humanist worlds of Aliotti’s lifetime. I thoroughly recommend this recording to anyone – it is a must-listen of wide appeal.

Stephen Cassidy

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Graupner: Das Leiden Jesu

Volume 3 of Graupner: Das Leiden Jesu CD cover

Passion Cantatas III
Ex Tempore, Mannheimer Hofkapelle, Florian Heyerick
69:27
cpo 555 230-2
GWV 1119/41, 1124/41, 1126/41

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This is the third instalment of a series of selected Eastertide cantatas by Christoph Graupner to appear on CPO, based on the refined texts of the pastor, theologian, polymath Johann Conrad Lichtenburg (1689-1751) who besides interests in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and architecture, was a very gifted religious poet – librettist, who wrote some 35 annual cycles, I. e., over 1500 sacred texts! He studied at Leipzig and Halle, the latter a bastion of pietism, which took hold in Germany in middle of the 18th century. Of the 1400 extant Graupner cantatas, some 1190 are from the most able quill of J. C. Lichtenburg; obviously a fruitful collaboration was at work! These cantatas from the 1741 cycle described as “Betrachtungen” (contemplations/reflections) on the circumstances surrounding the “Versöhnungsleiden” redemptive/propitiatory sufferings of our Saviour. The definition used here for “Reflections” shows alert respect for the prevailing Passion-oratorio format, and feels equally influenced by the text of B.H.Brockes’ Passion-oratorio set by many composers of the age; there are also hints of the other famous theologian, librettist, pastor Erdmann Neumeister (1671-1756) who had previously helped shape the incipient cantata for.

The CD opens with the work for the last Sunday (Estomihi) before Passiontide itself, with some strikingly original strokes of declamatory expression, more akin to an actual Passion’s chorale workings than a mere cantata. Some very bold, original writing, one might say in a hybrid style?

Not only are the thematic details well-observed with pertinent word-painting, but the attention to deftly applied instrumental colours depicting each of the subsequent tableaux, is most befitting, from two oboes, strings* and continuo in GWV1119/41, next we have flute, two oboes, bassoon and strings in GWV1124/41, and finally flute, three oboes and strings in GWV1126/41; the oboes are richly sonorous and plaintive.

At turns these works feel conventional, then surprise with clever twists, almost in a casual, experimental way, yet never straying far from elegiac or edifying. The chorales deserve a special mention, coming across as beautifully woven final flourishes; as with the famous last one on the CD (O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig am Stamm des Kreuzes geschlachtet). With more explorations of Graupner’s cantatas, we are beginning to see why he was indeed a worthy choice for the Leipzig post in 1722, and why his employer, the Landgraf of Hessen-Darmstadt, wanted to hold onto him. Florian Heyerick is a very alert and sensitive conductor, bringing the very best out of his choral and instrumental forces; the sopranos and basses seemed to me to really shine and excel.

This is a warmly recommended, third instalment of the Graupner/Lichtenburg cycle for Easter 1741 with some noteworthy additions to the Passiontide repertoire.

David Bellinger

(*Graupner specifies “Violette”, possibly a smaller member of the viola family; the Mannheimer Hofkapelle use violas)

NOTE: Apologies to the performers, the record company and the reviewer; this somehow fell through the cracks and is being published A YEAR LATE! Keen fans of Graupner may already have the 4th instalment in the series, since cpo released that to coincide with Easter 2020!

 

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Albinoni: 12 Cantatas for Soprano and Contralto Op. 4

Cover of CD Albinoni op 4 cantatas for soprano and alto

Silvia Frigato soprano, Elena Biscuola alto, L’Arte dell’Arco
99:48 (2 Cds in a single case)
Brilliant Classics 95600

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As an amateur musician of independent means (his family’s paper business supported his initial musical career), Albinoni was able to approach composition without the need of financial success, allowing him a degree of creative freedom denied composers following a more hand-to-mouth existence. As his career as a composer of instrumental music, but primarily as an opera composer, flourished, he gradually dispensed with the financial prop of family money and with the soubriquet ‘amateur’. His opus 4, six cantatas each for soprano and contralto with continuo, his only published vocal music, seem to be early work of around 1700 when such pieces were in considerable vogue in Italy. It is a chastening thought that the opus 4 collection was lost until the early 20th century when a single copy was identified by Edward J. Dent – the situation had been complicated by the issuing of a pirate opus 4 of instrumental music by Albinoni! These cantatas are charming works dealing with a variety of love scenarios, and entirely distinct in style from the later operas. The featured singers – soprano Silvia Frigato and contralto Elena Biscuola – have beautifully appropriate voices, singing expressively and with elegantly discrete ornamentation, while the accompanying ensemble take the wording of the title page of the cantatas literally and feel free to reduce the accompaniment at certain points to either cello or harpsichord. These are wonderfully nuanced performances of utterly charming repertoire vividly captured by the sound engineer, Matteo Costa, and presented in an exemplary package by this excellent budget label.

D. James Ross

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La Historia del Beato San Martino

Cover of St Martino CD

Cappella Musicale di San Gaicomo Maggiore in Bologna, Roberto Cascio
61:47
Tactus TC 520003
Capirola, Cara, Dalza, Hedus, Josquin, anon & Cascio

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The first 17:44 of this CD consist of a recitation by Robert Cascio of the 1520/1558 Historia text with one or two (unidentified) musical interpolations – while the text along with the texts of the ensuing musical items appears on the Tactus website, I was unable to find any English translations. The programme notes appear in Italian and English with the CD, and the idea of associating the Historia with roughly contemporary Italian music is an interesting one. The musical part of the CD consists of Lauds, Chansons and Frottole from the late 15th and early 16th centuries, which appeared from the Petrucci Press in Venice from the early 16th century, so roughly contemporaneously with the prints of the Historia. However, there the link with St Martin ends – none of the music is specifically related to the saint or mentions him at all. I can’t help feeling that a Saint who warranted magnificent cathedrals in the likes of Lucca and Venice must have had poetry other than the Historia written about him, which in turn would have been set to music. Anyway, while it is not clear whether the term ‘world premiere recording’ on the CD refers to just the Historia or all of the material, the musical part of the programme is unfamiliar and generally well presented with a mixture of instruments and voices. The instrumental playing is generally good, while the solo vocalists are generally OK on their own, although sadly the same can not be said of the vocal ensemble pieces, in which the tuning is so uncomfortable that it fails to settle even at cadences. As sometimes happens, this has the feel of a concert programme, which probably went down really well live, being committed to CD without the additional work necessary to bring it up to standard.

D. James Ross

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de Grigny: [Premier] Livre d’orgue | Lebègue: Motets

Cover of CD set De Grigny and Lebègue

Nicolas Bucher, Ensemble Gilles Binchois, [Marion Tassou dessus, Vincent Lièvre-Picard taille]
159:13 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Edition Hortus 184

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You have to work quite hard to divine what music these discs offer so here’s a summary. Disc 1 is Nicolas de Grigny’s organ mass from his sole Livre d’orgue, with appropriate plainchant insertions (three cheers for this!). On Disc 2 there are his alternatim hymns, again complete with the necessary chant, and settings of those same texts by Lebègue. The booklet (French and English) contains neither the texts/translations nor any real commentary on the music (not a word on the Lebègue) and the English translation is often more a string of words than meaningful sentences. Also missing are full details of the organ, and I couldn’t find them on the website to which reference is made either, though it’s sonically quite splendid – four manuals and all the colours. However, like all the modern players I have heard, Nicolas Bucher eschews the tremblant fort when it comes to the grands jeux though I can’t believe that there isn’t one.

Bucher does, however, play with great love of and understanding of the style (he is the general director of CBMV) – noble is the word that springs most readily to mind to characterise his approach. This would also be an appropriate epithet for the singing of the well-researched chant – though sometimes it does verge on the ponderous, as if a concern for perfect ensemble were over-riding a true feel for the lines.

I’m afraid that the performances of the Lebègue motets contributed little to my enjoyment of the programme.

So, poor supporting materials, some thrilling organ sounds and music good enough to have attracted the interest of JSB, no less. But that’s another story.

David Hansell