Tag: Vocal music

Christopher Purves, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen
77:11
hyperion CDA68152

Less celebrated than Handel’s succession of castrato singers were a string of equally talented basses who animated a series of Handel’s most memorable characters from his early operas to his late oratorios, and there is even an early Italian Cantata for Bass voice performed here with considerable flair by Purves. This latter work is one of those showpieces for a singer with an extended range from pedal bass notes to high baritone, and Purves copes admirably with the extreme demands. I was unfamiliar with this piece, but also with many of the other arias here. If asked to anticipate what music would have been included, off the top of my head I would have suggested ‘O Ruddier than the Cherry’, ‘The Trumpet shall sound’ and ‘Revenge, Timotheus cries’ and then I would have been floundering. In fact, the present performers had already included two of my suggestions in the widely acclaimed volume I, of which this is the excellent follow-up, and this time they range far and wide among the less familiar operas and the oratorios, coming up with some superb music. Christopher Purves has a wonderfully expressive voice bringing a wide range of lamenting, revenging and wooing characters vividly to life against the wonderfully responsive backdrop of the orchestral forces of Arcangelo directed by Jonathan Cohen. This impressive and entertaining collection has sent me back to oratorios such as Joshua and Esther, and brings home (yet again) how much fine Handel vocal music there is. Christopher Purves’s powerful artistry emphasizes how much of it is for bass voice – and they haven’t even touched upon Samson yet. I sense a volume III coming on!

D. James Ross

Cappella Musicale di San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna, Roberto Cascio
129:44 (2 CDs in a single jewel case)
Tactus TC650790

Each of these two CDs is devoted to a specific publication by Ippolito Ghezzi, an Augustinian Friar active in and around Siena at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century. His Salmi a 2 Voci are unexceptional Baroque fare, given rather routine performances by these Italian singers – a succession of solo voices seem to a greater or lesser extent a bit ‘slap-dash’ about intonation, and have a range of vibrato which at its broadest can be off-putting. You may be prepared to put up with these shortcomings in pursuit of music by a nowadays practically unknown composer, but (on extended listening) they do get annoying and the virtues of Ghezzi’s music seem to fade. The second CD features Ghezzi’s Dialogi Sagri dating from 1708 almost a decade after the Psalms, and clearly showing how the composer’s skills had developed in the interim. These are more imaginative settings in which the instruments play a more active obbligato role, while the singing is much more polished and secure. It feels to me as if having got this CD ‘in the can’ it was decided to use the forces to also commit the Psalms to CD to make a double album. This discrepancy in standards between to two is marked, due (I fear) to relative lack of preparation but also the inferior standard of the compositions. Perhaps, if we regard the second, longer and better CD as the main item and the first CD as a free bonus it makes the package more palatable. At his best, Ghezzi is an imaginative and technically adept composer, and for his dramatically animated music perhaps texts and translations (not provided) are desirable.

D. James Ross

Cantatas for bass
Sergio Foresti, Stile Galante, directed by Stefano Aresi
66:22
Pan Classics PC10389

Solo chamber cantatas for bass voice are extremely unusual, the genre being one overwhelmingly dominated by either the soprano or alto voice. I suppose if any composer was going to have devoted himself to them, the prolific Antonio Caldara would be a good bet since his vast catalogue of compositions includes around 350 secular cantatas. Further, as the notes for the present CD suggest, there is another probable explanation for Caldara’s secular bass cantatas and it is one that helps date them. From 1716 to 1736 the composer was in the employment of Emperor Charles VI at the Habsburg court in Vienna, a musical ruler with a particular penchant for the bass voice.

It therefore seems almost certain that the six cantatas recorded here for the first time were composed during Caldara’s Viennese years, a claim supported by the fact that the only one that can be positively dated, Il Dario, belongs to 1727. Although not mentioned in Pan’s notes, it is my belief that such strong circumstantial evidence takes on even greater credibility when the identity of the singer for whom the cantatas were written can be established with near certainty. This was Christoph Praun (or Braun), who took the serious bass roles in the operas of composers such as Caldara and Conti staged at the Imperial court between 1718 and 1732. Evidence that these cantatas were written for Praun is further enhanced by comparing the style of them with the two arias written for him in the role of Saturna in Caldara’s serenata La Concordia de’ pianeti of 1723. Here we find the same virtuoso demands that predominate in the cantatas: a wide tessitura involving frequent leaps requiring great flexibility, coupled with demanding chains of passaggi, characteristics that suggest a singer with a not inconsiderable technique.

Bass roles in the operas of this period were usually given to villains, military men or those of commanding character, so it is little surprise to find that the protagonists of these cantatas include Brutus, Polyphemus, Samson, and Darius, the Persian king defeated by Alexander the Great. The remaining two cantatas conform to the more familiar pastoral tradition. All are scored with continuo accompaniment (here cello, theorbo and harpsichord) and take the customary form of alternating recitative and aria, though ‘A destar l’alba col canto’ (one of the pastoral cantatas) and Il Dario both open with an aria, The latter seems to me the finest of these works, Caldara capturing Darius’ grief at the supposed loss of his wife in an opening aria of real depth and tragic mien, the desolation articulated in powerfully expressive chromatic writing. An extended central recitative calls poignantly on the gods to relieve Darius of his suffering, while the final aria is a heartfelt plea to the shade of his beloved wife to return, its poignancy again stressed by chromaticism. Nothing else quite reaches this level, though the dignity of the blind Samson’s first aria ‘Di quest’occhi è spento il lume’ certainly deserves special mention.

Although Sergio Foresti brings considerable insight to interpreting these cantatas, with much expression and a keen awareness of text, I doubt that his performances will be much to the taste of readers of a specialist platform such as EMR. Though the voice projects authority, there is a persistent wide vibrato that for early music listeners is likely to consistently detract from the virtues of the performances. This along with woolly, approximate articulation of ornaments and a lack of flexibility in the many demanding passaggi mar the performances seriously, as do the rather too frequent problems Foresti has with pitch. Stile Galante provide unexceptionable support, with the familiar caveat that the theorbist is far too active. An interesting CD that basses might want to explore for the repertoire, but one unlikely to attract too many early music specialists.

Brian Robins

Monika Mauch, Nicole Pieper, Georg Poplutz, Klaus Mertens SATB, Kölner Akademie directed by Michael Alexander Willens
76:50
cpo 555 254-2
TVWV 1:745, 926, 1251, 1431

The three oratorios recorded here, all recently discovered, date from 1730 or 1731 to cover a church year designated by Telemann to be devoted to oratorios. They were composed for the Hamburg churches for which he was responsible for supplying music, all having librettos by the local poet Albrecht Jacob Zell. The oratorio differed from the cantata and other forms of church music by giving the music to named characters, here allegorical figures that pronounce on various theological and philosophical topics linked to the Nativity. Much ofthe poetry will seem arcane to the modern reader, but it has themerit of providing the composer with opportunities for colourfulcontrast in addition to mimetic writing. It hardly seems necessary toadd that these are opportunities seized upon eagerly by Telemann.

The most immediately striking of these works is Schmecket und sehet, composed for the 1st Day of Christmas, not least because it is composed for eight soloists (SSAATTBB) and features a large orchestra including trumpets and drums. Here the soloists take the parts of Love, Prayer, Faith, Hope, Joy, Reverence, Fidelity and Prudence, their parts doubled in the choruses. At its heart lie three dialogues, the first an extended da capo aria between Joy – the ever-dependable bass Klaus Mertens – and a ‘Choir of Joyful Souls’, cast in the favouriteBaroque form of questions and answers in which Telemann makes effective use of contrasting the florid passaggi for bass soloist with the terse questioning of the chorus. The last is an elaborate 8-part aria in which the two SATB groups are again starkly contrasted, the first SATB group soft legato (‘So rest gently’) dynamically contrasted with the trumpets and drums reply (‘God awakens, so I may rest!). The other notable number is for alto (Prayer), ‘Mein Herze wallet’, a delicate, flute-inflected area sensitively sung by Nicola Pieper, a real discovery among the soloists. This is a lovely, warmly-rounded voice, evenly produced across its range and Pieper’s technique is excellent, with finely articulated ornaments; the ornamentation of the da capo repeat is a model of style.

The second oratorio, Im hellen Glanz, scored for SATB and lightly orchestrated, seems to me less interesting, with the exception of the opening aria, well delivered by Georg Poplutz’s pleasing light tenor, in which Telemann imitates the ‘snow melts, running off’ with descending scalic figuration. The work seems to engage the performers less, too, conveying less conviction than elsewhere. Herr Gott, dich loben wir, for New Years’s Day, on the other hand, is an engaging piece with SATB parts for Trust (sop), Holy Longing (alt), Contemplation (ten) and Knowledge (bs), with a ‘Choir of Observing Souls’. As the names suggest, the overall mood here is more reflective. There is another question and answer dialogue between the bass and choir, the solo part accompanied by an obbligato bassoon and fine arias for tenor and alto, the former including touches of tonal ambiguity and further mimetic writing. The choruses of both this and the preceding oratorio sound to me to have been clearly intended as one-voice-per-part, the ornamental turns in the B section of thefinal aria sounding uncomfortable when doubled up, as here.

Willens does employ single voices for the final work, Und das Wort, a cantata describes here as Kirchenmusik (Church Music), a term Bach used to describe many of his church cantatas. Composed for the 3rd Day of Christmas, it is a small-scale work, scored for SAB only and a small string ensemble. Its theme is one of the central mysteries of the Nativity, St John’s ‘And the word was made flesh’, which opens a modulating contrapuntal chorus on the whole text. There are areas for only the soprano and alto, the former surprisingly Italianate, separated by a chorale based on ‘In dulci jubilo’. The repeat of the opening chorus at the end gives the cantata a satisfyinglycyclical shape.

The performances are throughout thoroughly idiomatic, with fine singing from all the soloists and tidy, accomplished orchestral playing under Willens. Listening to the CD a week before Christmas proved a highly agreeable way of embracing the true spirit of the season, but I have little doubt that it will make for rewarding listening at any time of theyear.

Brian Robins

Les Arts Florissants, directed by Paul Agnew
67:05
harmonia mundi HAF 8905300

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he concentration on Paris as the hub of musical life has tended to obscure the work of French 17th- and 18th-century composers active in the provinces. The disc to hand includes music by two such composers, who if not totally neglected – both major works on the CD have received previous recordings – are not exactly household names. The better known is Sébastian de Brossard, but even he is today probably more famous as an indefatigable collector and historian who published the first French dictionary of music than as a composer. An aristocratic cleric, Brossard spent most of his life at the cathedral at Strasbourg, to where in 1687 he was one of those sent by Louis XIV to restore Catholicism after the re-capture of Alsace. In 1698 he went to Paris, hoping to be appointed maître de musique at Sainte Chapelle, but the post went to Charpentier. Brossard’s final post was at the cathedral in Meaux, where he died in 1730.

It is to Brossard that we owe the survival of the known sacred music of Pierre Bouteiller, who was born around 1655. A shadowy figure, he is first heard of as director of music at Troyes Cathedral in 1687. Following a period in the equivalent post at Châlons-en-Champagne, Bouteiller returned to Troyes, remaining there until 1698, when he moved to Paris. There he established himself as a performer on the viola da gamba ‘and other instruments’. Other than a commissioned Te Deum no record of Bouteiller’s being active as a composer in Paris exists, although he apparently remained in the city until his death, which occurred around 1717.

Brossard recounts a meeting with Bouteiller in Châlons, at which time the latter gave the collector manuscripts of 13 ‘excellent’ petits motets, and a ‘very good Mass for the Dead’ in exchange for Brossard’s recently published first book of motets. Brossard took great care of the manuscript, which he considered to be ‘one of the best I have’, the works included in it remaining all that is extant of Bouteiller’s output of sacred music. The present disc includes the Missa pro defunctis (Requiem), which is scored in five parts with continuo accompaniment. Many hearing it in this wonderful performance will likely consider Brossard’s description to be an exceptional example of masterly understatement. Anyone who regularly reads my reviews will know I’m not prone to hyperbole, but my verdict be that the work is a sublime masterpiece, a largely polyphonic setting in stile antico that throughout demonstrates Bouteiller’s mastery of contrapuntal technique and manipulation of varied textures, including telling touches of affective chromaticism. Especially lovely is the in alternatim setting of the Kyrie, the plainchant set off to great effect by the polyphony. Equally as impressive is Bouteiller’s response to his text, which concentrates on the consolatory and even uplifting, the latter exemplified by the buoyant, confident setting of a verse from Psalm 23 in the Graduel (‘Though I walk’ etc). Yet the overall impression left by this exquisitely lovely work is of heart-easing transcendence.

The major work of Brossard’s here is his Stabat Mater, a large-scale 8-part setting. Divided into 17 sections, it is richly diverse, ranging from grand motet passages like the opening to the chamber-like ‘O quam tristis’ a grief-filled setting of the utmost beauty for solo quartet. The final sections, at first deeply penitential then increasingly ecstatic, culminate in an animated radiance that brings this splendid work to a deeply satisfying peroration. In addition there are two further works by Brossard, a Miserere mei Deus in which two soprano soloists alternate verses with the choir, made especially effective by the recessed placing of the latter, and a 5-part a capella setting of Ave verum corpus, a tiny gem that the brings the disc to an ineffably satisfying close.

As already suggested the performances are outstanding, with beautifully balanced choral singing in the more fully-scored passages and unfailingly sensitive solo work from the seven soloists selected by Paul Agnew from within Les Arts Florissants. This is not only the most deeply affecting CD I’ve heard in some time but also unquestionably one of my records of the year.

Brian Robins