Tag: Vocal music

Steffani: Duets of love and passion

Post author By EMR2015
Post date August 3, 2018
No Comments on Steffani: Duets of love and passion

Amanda Forsythe, Emőke Baráth, Colin Balzer, Christian Immler SSTBar, Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble, Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs
71:02
cpo 555 135-2

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]rom the very first notes it is clear that everyone involved in this recital means business and knows exactly what they’re doing. BEMF have previously (2011) brought Steffani’s opera Niobe, Regina di Tebe to life. Now they complement this with a varied exploration of his chamber duets. As the notes observe, these show the influence of both French and Italian composers as a result of the composer’s studies and travels and in their time influenced Handel, who ‘borrowed’ ideas from them for his own compositions in the same genre.

All four singers are most accomplished as soloists and no less skilful in ensemble, however they are paired. Every time I thought I’d heard what would be my favourite track another came along and trumped it, or so I thought until the cycle began again! Questions have to be asked – and the performers ask them – as to whether or not Steffani would have deployed as rich a continuo palette as is heard here. In particular, I wonder if individual cantatas would have had a ‘you play this and I’ll come in here’ approach, but what is done in these performances is beautifully seamless and tasteful.

The notes (Eng/Ger) are informative and extensive and the Italian texts are translated into the same languages. Don’t write off Steffani as another composer who fell into a ‘black hole’ between Monteverdi and Vivaldi. Get this disc and meet your “Composer of the Month”.

David Hansell

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Tags Baroque, Vocal music

Recording

Un jardin à l’italienne

Airs, cantates & madrigaux
Les solistes du jardin des voix 2015, Les Arts Florissants, William Christie
74:41
harmonia mundi HAF 8905283
Music by Banchieri, Cimarosa, Handel, Haydn, Sarro, Stradella, Vecchi, Vivaldi & de Wert

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ecorded in 2015 and released in 2017, this is the showcase concert from Les Arts Florissants’s 7th ‘Le Jardin des Voix’ project, an intensive period of training/rehearsal for singers on the threshold of their careers. It was a staged ‘divertimento’ and recorded live, which explains a few places where the musical elements are not perfectly balanced within the soundscape. There are also ‘noises off’, some of which are the audience clearly enjoying a great evening’s entertainment. I absolutely take my hat off to the deviser of the programme which moves more or less chronologically from Wert to Haydn (via Stradella, Vivaldi, Handel and others), gives all six singers ‘stand out’ as well as ensemble moments and has a sense of narrative flow. Not all the music from the concert is on the CD (one of the essays – Fr/Ger/Eng – refers to music which we do not hear), but it’s still coherent and action-packed. Get this, complement and compliment it with a glass of your favourite and enjoy! I’d have loved a DVD.

Brian Clark

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Tags Baroque, Classical, Renaissance, Vocal music

Recording

Monteverdi: Madrigali

Les arts florissants, Paul Agnew
208:27 (3 CDs in a card box)
harmonia mundi HMX 2903777.79
CD1: Selections from books 1-3; CD2: ditto Books 4-6; CD3: ditto Books 7 & 8

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is a robustly packaged bringing-together of LAF’s three CDs of madrigals sampling Books 1-8. Individual discs have strong cardboard sleeves, there is a chunky booklet including thoughtful and comprehensive essays (Eng/Fre) with sung Italian texts and translations (also Eng/Fre), and the outer box is more solid than many. Vocal and instrumental ensembles are directed by Paul Agnew.

In recent years Italian groups have given us passionate, word-driven performances of this repertoire. I think that these LAF performances find a way to balance those series of micro-dramas with a sense of the bigger picture. I’m not saying that this is how to do it. With such amazing music there can be no one way. But this is a fine tribute to a great composer that will not disappoint, even if it sometimes irritates. Why on earth are there recorders in Chiome d’oro (Book 7)?

Brian Clark

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Tags Baroque, Vocal music

Recording

Blow: An ode on the death of Mr Henry Purcell

Post author By EMR2015
Post date August 3, 2018
No Comments on Blow: An ode on the death of Mr Henry Purcell

Samuel Boden, Thomas Walker, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen
76:36
hyperion CDA68149
+Begin the Song!, Dread Sir the Prince of Light, The Nymphs of the wells, Chaconne a4 in G, Ground in g, Sonata in A

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter listening to these exquisitely turned performances I feel that we need more CDs and concerts dedicated to the music of John Blow (though Venus and Adonis does quite well). By and large, it is cathedral/collegiate choirs who have kept his flame burning with the motet Salvator mundi and some of the Anglican canticle settings. Now, Arcangelo, with assistance from musicologist Bruce Wood, round out that rather restricted view by means of a programme of secular music centred on the setting of Dryden’s Ode on the death of Mr Henry Purcell. Inhabitants of EMR-land will surely know that this is a quite superb work for two singers, two recorders and continuo. The low pitch adopted here facilitates performance by high tenors and Thomas Walker and Samuel Boden do not disappoint, relishing the many choice verbal and musical moments poet and composer offer them. Their fellow singers, in the other vocal vocal works, also bring admirable qualities to their performances, not least the ability to deliver lines such as ‘But here comes a Druid and we must retire’ without corpsing! The string ensemble delivers crisp performances of three chamber works: Purcell wasn’t the only one who could knock off a cracking good ground. The only slight disappointment – of scale, rather than substance – is the final New Year ode. The booklet (comprehensive, though in English only) tells us that such works were performed by the full Chapel Royal choir and the Twenty-Four Violins. However, here the chamber forces used elsewhere prevail. If you know anyone who thinks that English music between the Restoration and the arrival of Handel means Purcell and little else, treat them to this disc. And don’t forget everyone else you know. And yourself.

Brian Clark

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Tags Baroque, Chamber music, Vocal music

Recording

Splendour

Organ Music & Vocal Works By Buxtehude, Hassler, Praetorius & Scheidemann
Kei Koito, Il canto di Orfeo, Gianluca Capuano
73:14
deutsche harmonia mundi 8 89854 37672 7

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he star here is the 1624 (restored 1994) Scherer organ in the Stephanskirche, Tangermünde. The repertoire is that of ‘precursors of Bach’ who are, of course, all very competent in their own right. The principal pillars of the programme are ‘free’ organ works by Tunder, Scheidemann and Buxtehude and between them are placed chorale-based music – sometimes extracts from longish sets of variations. We also hear vocal settings of these same melodies contemporary with the organ music, a valuable programming device which others would do well to copy. The playing is sometimes a little laboured but never impossibly so and we certainly get to hear this marvellous instrument in all its glory. The essay (Ger/Fre/Eng) focusses informatively on the music. Further information – including the organ registrations, sung texts and their translations, and artist biographies are available online.

David Hansell

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Tags Baroque, Organ music, Vocal music

Sheet music

Motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles

Post author By EMR2015
Post date July 31, 2018
No Comments on Motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles

Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, 42
Edited by Gaël Saint-Cricq with Eglal Doss-Quinby and Samuel N. Rosenberg
lxxxiv + 192pp. $360.00.
ISBN 978-0-89579-862-6

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]on-specialists will, I fear, be terrified by this new edition of early one-, two- and (rarely) three-voice motets, such is the overwhelming amount of information contained in the introduction, the discussions of the words and the critical notes. When it comes to the music itself, it is difficult to know quite where to start; as an extreme example, let’s take 26. Bien doit joie demener / IN DOMINO. Firstly we have an “unmeasured transcription” which presents the two parts as they appear in the manuscript (which one can see in glorious colour on the gallica.fr website!), the French texted part in C2 clef and the lower part (which just the first two words of the Latin text) in C3. This is followed in the edition by not one but two measured transcriptions, the second of which lengthens the rests between the phrases (there are only two, which are repeated in a varied sequence) and inverts long and short note values, with a knock-on effect upon the stresses of the underlaid words. I spend my life transcribing manuscript sources and consider myself to have quite sharp logical and pattern-discerning eyes, and I also understand that there are often several ways to interpret what one sees, but – try as I might – I just could not see how some of the measured transcriptions could have been extrapolated from the unmeasured ones. I can, however, understand that there are singers who will be terrified by the original notation but who would like to sing the music, so editions like these are necessary to enable that. At $360 a copy, though, I don’t see it tempting many new singers into the field – this is more likely to end up with all its esteemed forebears on a library shelf where it will be invaluable for scholars of both early motet texts and their music.

Brian Clark

Tags Medieval, Vocal music

Sheet music

Francesco Barsanti: Secular Vocal Music

Post author By EMR2015
Post date July 31, 2018
No Comments on Francesco Barsanti: Secular Vocal Music

Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 197
Edited by Michael Talbot
xxv, 2 + 71pp. $145
ISBN 978-0-89579-867-1

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]erhaps best known for his recorder sonatas and the recently recorded concerti grossi he published in Edinburgh, Francesco Barsanti’s secular vocal music fills a fairly modest volume. Consisting of five Italian cantatas and six French airs for solo voice and continuo, a four-voice Italian madrigal and two catches in English for four equal voices, it provides another viewpoint from which to consider one of Handel’s contemporaries. With typical thoroughness, Talbot gives as lively a portrait of the composer as is possible, and – as well as comprehensive critical notes – idiomatic translations of the non-English texts are provided. All in all, this is an excellent volume which will be partnered in due course by Jasmin M. Cameron’s versions of the composer’s surviving sacred music. The recitatives are dramatic and the arias tuneful; the three longer French airs might overstay their welcome unless the singer has some impressive ornaments up his or her sleeve; the madrigal might make a welcome and novel addition to an amateur vocal group’s repertoire? Either way, Barsanti’s music deserves to be more widely known, and one hopes that its availability (even if the cost might mean only libraries can afford to buy it!) will encourage performers to explore it.

Brian Clark

Tags 18th century, Baroque, Vocal music

Recording

Couperin: Leçons de Ténèbres & motets

Post author By EMR2015
Post date July 7, 2018
No Comments on Couperin: Leçons de Ténèbres & motets

Chantal Santon Jeffrey, Anne Magouët, Benoit Arnould SSB, Les Ombres, Margaux Blanchard, Sylvain Sartre
62:00
Mirare MIR 358

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’m not unsympathetic to these singers’ desire to explore the drama and passion of Couperin’s remarkable Leçons, but as soloists they are too heavy in tone with too much vibrato for my taste. In duet they sing more gently but much of the delicate filigree ornamentation is still very laboured. I enjoyed the shorter, much less familiar items that complete the programme rather more (one first recording here) and was rather surprised that they rate scarcely a mention in the notes. And quite what a brief movement from an organ mass is doing in the middle of the programme I have no idea. I’m afraid that on several counts this is a case of ‘should have done better’, though the singing of bass Benoit Arnould is consistently of a high standard.

David Hansell

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Tags Baroque, Vocal music

Recording

Monteverdi: Scherzi Musicali (Venezia 1607)

Post author By EMR2015
Post date July 4, 2018
No Comments on Monteverdi: Scherzi Musicali (Venezia 1607)

L’Esa Ensemble, Baschenis Ensemble, Sergio Chierici
64:02
Tactus TC 561309
World premiere recording

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ny first recording of music by such a major figure as Claudio Monteverdi should be celebrated; the fact that his Scherzi Musicali (published by his brother, who also contributes two pieces, in 1607) have not previously made it on to disk is that 17 strophic arias sung in three parts but up to six sopranos and a single voice, separated by ritornelli in which the violinists and recorder player compete to add as many ornaments as they can, accompanied by keyboards, pluckers and a symphonia with drone, might be a challenging experience – and so it turned out. Enthusiastic as the singers are, and sweet as their voices might be, they should not have been persuaded to consent to allowing themselves to be recorded; I gain nothing by being hyper-critical, so will leave the review there. To be fair, though, I don’t think I ever want to hear another recording of the set – perhaps one or two pieces in the context of a more varied concert.

Brian Clark

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Tags 17th century, Baroque, Vocal music

Recording

Johann Simon Mayr: Venetian Solo Motets

Post author By EMR2015
Post date July 4, 2018
No Comments on Johann Simon Mayr: Venetian Solo Motets

Andrea Lauren-Brown soprano, Markus Schäfer tenor, Virgil Mischok bass, I Virtuosi Italiani, Franz Hauk
61:35
Naxos 8.573811

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen Clifford and I started Early Music Review, we always said we would review HIP CDs and others that featured world premiere recordings; all eight tracks – of repertoire dating from 1791 to c. 1802 – on this CD are just that, and (in some respects, despite myself) I enjoyed the experience of hearing them. Mayr is better known these days as an opera composer and these four Marian antiphon settings (no fewer than three Salve Reginas!), three multi-movement motets and a 12-minute dramatic Italian piece confirm his gift for both capturing the mood of words and writing for the voice. The six of the eight works are for soprano (one Salve Regina is a duet with bass), while the Salve Regina in B flat and the Italian piece (Qual colpa eterno Dio) are for tenor. The booklet notes contain a wealth of information about the sources and lament the lack of a comprehensive study of this aspect of Mayr’s output; on the basis of this recording, that would seem a fair assessment. Indeed, perhaps some HIPsters would like to explore the four oratorios he wrote for the Mendicanti in Venice?

Brian Clark

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Tags Classical, Vocal music