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Recording

Haydn: Baryton Trios

Treasures from the Esterháza Palace 2

Treasures from the Esterháza Palace 2
Valencia Baryton Project
62:55
NAXOS 8.573504

Haydn’s employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterháza, was a proficient player of the baryton, essentially a bass viola d’amore – with strings stopped over a bridge and played with a bow and a series of sympathetic strings that resonate and can be plucked with the thumb. The composer was commissioned to write new music for the Prince and he produced over a hundred trios with viola and cello. Each begins with its longest movement, followed by a minuet and trio (or a similar dance), and concludes with a short, quick movement. Many of them are in A major because of the tuning of the baryton, but this selection of six by the Valencia Baryton Project (Matthew Baker as the Prince on baryton, Estevan de Almeida Ries as Haydn on viola, and Alex Friedhoff on cello) includes one each in C, D and G major. The music is – of course – charming, especially so when the viola and cello accompany the main attraction with plucked notes. I have heard several recordings of this repertoire (though not these particular pieces) before and have rarely been so aware of the sympathetic strings, the metallic buzz of the plucked notes. I mean that positively – the engineers have done an excellent job of capturing the sound quality without distorting it or upsetting the balance with the other instruments. I was sure a couple of tracks would be more than enough, so imagine my surprise when the music stopped – I’d happily listened to over an hour of Haydn played by the same three instruments! It really was a very pleasant hour.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Sperger: String Quartets op. 1

Sperger String Quartets op 1

Mitglieder der Kammerakademie Potsdam
55:51
cpo 555 470-2

Johann Matthias Sperger‘s three string quartets, opus 1, were printed by the renowned Berlin published Hummel in 1791, the year of Mozart’s death. Comparisons with the younger man’s work are inevitable. Although Sperger’s works very definitely deserve to be heard (and this excellent performance on modern instruments can only help lift the composer’s popularity), these three substantial pieces could have been written by a young Mozart, not the man who had just died. As noted in the booklet, Sperger’s more introspective moments (especially in the slow movements, but always when he wanders into a minor key) are his strongest. He was not a shy musician, dedicating his music to the Russian Tsar and the King of Prussia, and I think he had good reason to think his output good enough. There are at least six more quartets awaiting discovery – perhaps a period quartet out there would like to take up the baton?

Brian Clark

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Recording

Popora: Music for the Venetian Ospedaletto

jose maria lo monaco porpora

Josè Maria Lo Monaco contralto, stile galante, Stefano Aresi
67:36
Glossa GCD 923537

On the inside cover of the booklet, along with the other credits, we read: “This recording is an outgrowth of musicological research seeking new insights on historically informed performance practices based upon the acoustics of the Ospedaletto in Venice”. That all sounds great, but there is no further explanation or, indeed, any other comment on the actual performance apart from a half-hearted explanation of the presence of a cello concerto on an otherwise vocal programme because there it is known that one of the women in the orchestra there was a known virtuoso on the instrument…

While the disc is promoted as an exploration of music at the Ospedaletto, in fact it focuses very much on the activities of a single singer for whom Porpora conceived a valuable body of work during his several years there (having also worked at the three other similar institutions in Venice), the alto Angiola Moro. With a range from the A below middle C to the E flat at the top of the treble clef, she apparently had no problem with chromatic scales, wide arpeggios and leaps, or rapid scales. As the “early music voice” seems to get bigger and bigger, it is no surprise to find a singer of the calibre of Josè Maria Lo Monaco tackling this repertoire, and she does it very well.

Whether or not it was played by Niccolosa Fanello, Porpora’s G major cello concerto is beautiful; its opening movement was very reminiscent of some of the slushier passages from the concertos attributed to Wassenaer. The booklet notes tell us that Porpora’s official appointment (after two years of working for free – musicians, it was EVER thus!) the violin teacher asked for extra resources to support him in getting his musicians up to the standards of the “new music”, and – if they were up to playing this piece – he clearly succeeded.

Brian Clark

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Apollo’s Cabinet: Musical Wanderlust

Charles Burney’s European Travels in Pursuit of Harmony
Apollo’s Cabinet, Alexander Armstrong narrator
Prima Classic PRIMA036CDEN

What a jolly time Dr Burney must have had! This is a proper romp around Europe – with performances by the children of Red Priest and an excitable percussionist. The musical items include some balletti by Schmelzer, movements from a Vivaldi concerto pushed to its limits among a smorgasbord of bleeding chunks (Goldberg Variations, a Tuma partita, some Loeillet of Ghent, an aria from a Telemann opera, some folk tunes among them. I fear few of the composers would recognise their music, but who cares? This sort of disc isn’t an academic recreation, it’s taking Burney’s diaries (extracts of which are read by Mr Pointless, Alexander Armstrong) and fleshing out his comments on music and entertainment with lively (sometimes bonkers) arrangements of music he might have heard on his travels. It’s the sort of disc that will sell VERY well after live gigs, and will thrill concert-goers when they play it and remember a fabulous evening’s entertainment. And – very appropriately for Mr A – it’s absolutely perfect for Classic FM listeners!

If I get a chance to see these guys live, I will leap at it – while I don’t think it’s the sort of CD I will often listen to at home, I can certainly imagine how gripping they’ll be in the flesh. Check out their website

Brian Clark

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Recording

Couperin: Concerts

Emanuel Abbühl oboe/oboe d’amore/cor anglais, David Tomàs bassoon, Carla Sanfelix baroque cello, Miklós Spányi harpsichord Benoït Fallai theorbo
77:22
Genuin GEN 24873

Although Pascal Duc’s booklet note tells us almost everything we could ever need to know about the five suites on this CD, he never once refers to the performances on it – for some people, there may be no need to justify an ensemble that juxtaposes two modern instruments and three baroque ones. Indeed, why not? Surely it is just a different sound world… Yet, for me, there is something missing – technical improvements over time have ironed out all the quirks of early woodwind instruments in order to ensure equality of sound quality over the entire range of the instrument. While I would never criticise the quality of music making here – these are outstanding musicians at the very top of their game – even two harmonic continuo instruments are insufficient to balance the oboe and bassoon. Others will undoubtedly disagree, but I am afraid this is not a recording I shall often return to when I feel the need for Couperin (which does sometimes happen!)

Brian Clark

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Recording

David Pohle: Complete Sonatas & Ballet Music

CD cover David Pohle Complete Sonatas & Ballet Music

Clematis
152:16 (2CDs in a card triptych)
Ricercar RIC460

I don’t imagine for a minute that many readers will be familiar with Pohle’s music. He was acquainted with several better-known figures: a student of Schütz in Dresden, later in life he was a friend of Handel’s father in Halle. In between, he worked for the chamber music-loving Margrave Moritz in Kassel, and then the court of Gottorf. In Halle, he wrote a cycle of cantatas for the entire church year, among the first to do so.

Founded in 2001, Clematis most recently impressed me with their recording of Legrenzi’s music and these new discs have merely enhanced my impression. The majority of Pohle’s surviving sonatas are for five or more instruments; he exploits every possible combination of voices in intricate patchwork pieces where counterpoint and homophonic passages – often of striking harmonic richness – are juxtaposed. It’s just the kind of mental stimulation I love! That is why I set out to publish all his surviving manuscript music, in collaboration with the author of the booklet note, Gottfried Gille, and a German postgrad, Juliane Peetz. While it is nice to see my editions credited in the booklet, it is rather frustrating to read that reconstructing the missing first violin part for four of the sonatas was more difficult than 13 of the others, but not that Clematis played my solutions! The second time I’ve been written out of musical history in the past few years…

Be that as it may, the performances are fabulous – the violins are bright, the violas crisp, the winds suitably raspy, and the continuo largely content to supply a backdrop for all the activity in the obbligato parts.

I am surprised that I had not noticed the passage around two and a half minutes into Sonata 6 in A minor that is more than a little reminscent of Monteverdi’s Ballo delle ingrate. The Dances in F (G. 28) survive in the library in Kassel, prefaced by a work called “Le Testament” by a Sr. Belleville; I have to say that they are quite like anything else in the set – I hear Georg Muffat…

Brian Clark

 

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Recording

Vivaldi: Concerti per violino XI

CD cover Vivaldi Concerti per violino XI Fabio Biondi

‘Per Anna Maria’
Vivaldi Edition vol. 71
Fabio Biondi, Europa Galante
62:54
naïve OP 7368

Whoever it was who infamously quipped that Vivaldi had written the same concerto several hundred times clearly had never heard the Red Priest’s Concerto in D RV 229 – I just about jumped out of my seat when it started! The double-stopping soloist did more than rouse the band with the dramatic opening bars. Even if there is (inevitably, given that music of the period was largely dominated by ritornello form) a degree of repetitiveness across a large number of his works, the six concertos on this wonderful recording (together with an ornamented version of a slow movement re-used in another) demonstrate the composer’s richness of imagination and command both of his instrument and musical form. All in major keys, the solo parts are all that remains of one source – a volume of 31 pieces (including 24 by Vivaldi) that belonged to one of the Pietà’s stars, Anna Maria. The wonderful Fabio Biondi and his band, Europa Galante (3322 strings and continuo), bring energy and sparkle, and reflection and pathos in equal measure for some exemplary performances of this repertoire. The typically informative booklet note sets the scene for a new appreciation (on my part, at least) for the women behind the grilles of the ospedali…

Brian Clark

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Recording

Mozart: Piano Concertos

CD cover Mozart K238, 242, 246 Levin AAM

K238, 242, 246
Robert Levin, tangent piano, Ya-Fei Chuang, fortepiano, Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings conductor & harpsichord
60:43
AAM AAM044

I referred to this performance of the three-piano concerto, K242 in my review of its previous incarnation in the series in December 2023. On the earlier disc, it was played by husband and wife team Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chuang in the adaptation for two pianos made by Mozart, the third piano part being near-redundant (it was composed for the young daughter of one of Mozart’s patrons). As I mentioned at the time – and please refer back to the earlier review for a more detailed introduction to the work – the idea of doing it again in its original version seems to be carrying the concept of the intégrale to extreme lengths. Ah, but there’s a gimmick (or fresh idea, if you prefer) here too, for the performance is given on three different instruments, with Levin playing a modern reproduction of a tangent piano built by Spath and Schmahl in 1794, his wife a copy of an Andreas Stein fortepiano of 1787. Oddly, given the usual sumptuous booklet provided by AAM, the harpsichord played by Laurence Cummings is not identified, hardly a major problem in this case given the instrument is virtually inaudible for much of the time.

The line-up is of course one that Mozart would never have employed and thus rather pointless, though Cliff Eisen argues for it in his usual scholarly fashion. This is particularly pertinent given that the sonority of the tangent piano is not particularly appealing, its upper register being weak and thin, to my ears considerably less attractive than the fuller-bodied, mellow sound of Chuang’s Stein. Unsurprisingly the performance is not greatly different from that on the earlier disc, as the relative timings suggest. As with that performance, the most satisfying and sensitive playing comes in the central Adagio, with, dare I say it, Mrs Levin just edging it for expressive playing over her one-time teacher when she takes up the theme. Needless to say, Levin’s spontaneous extemporary embellishment is as much a pleasure as ever; moments such as the playful second return to the rondo theme of the finale are sheer delight.

Both K238 in B flat and K 246 in F (Numbers 6 and 7) were composed in Salzburg during the first half of 1776. They mark the end of Mozart’s apprenticeship as a piano concerto composer; his next essay in the form would to be the Concerto in E flat, K271, dating from the following year, his first outright masterpiece in the form. Nevertheless, K238 in particular is an especially lovable work, with a slow movement that is the first in the long line of dreamy, moon-lit andantes, here played with real sensitivity. I sensed the opening Allegro aperto (meaning ‘brightly’) was taken a trifle brusquely, but it is slower than that of Malcolm Bilson (Archiv), a warning of the dangers of paying too much attention to timings when other factors may also be involved. The final is spirited and emphatic,  Levin’s imaginative treatment of the final appearance of the rondo theme again joyously improvised. K246, written for Countess Lützow, makes fairly modest demands on the soloist and is less distinctive, though the thrusting energy of the opening movement is compelling. The rondo finale is again played here in slightly too staccato a style for my taste, but otherwise the performance is unexceptionable.

Throughout Levin is capably accompanied by a smallish body from the AAM. As with previous issues since this series was resurrected the sound is not ideal, being a little restricted through speakers, although less so through headphones. If my calculations are correct there’s now just one to go in this valuable series.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Fantaisie Romantique

James Akers Fantaisie Romantique CD cover

19th-Century Eastern European Guitar Music
James Akers
63:07
resonus RES10334

With this charming CD, James Akers continues his exploration of guitar music from 19th-century Ukraine and its neighbours. He plays music by seven composers on three different guitars: by Pietro Pettoletti (c. 1795-c. 1870) on a six-string guitar; by Johann Dubez (1828-1891), Nicolai Petrovich Makaroff (1810-1890), and Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856) on an eight-string guitar; and by Mikhail Polupayenko (1848-1902), Johann  Decker-Schenk (1826-1899), and Nicolas Pavilstscheff (1802-1879) on a nine-string guitar. All three instruments have their first six strings tuned the same as a conventional Spanish or classical guitar from Western Europe (EAdgbe’), and although some of these composers also wrote for the seven-string Russian guitar with its distinctive open G tuning (DGBdgbd’), none of that repertory is included on the present CD. The instruments with two or three extra strings may at first sight look weird, because the extra strings are fixed equidistant from the other strings at the bridge, but splay out away from the sixth string to their own separate nut leaving quite a gap between the sixth and seventh strings. I guess that this enables the instruments to feel the same at the nut end, and allows the player space for his left-hand thumb to reach round the neck to stop notes on the sixth string.
 
The harmonic palette of these guitarist-composers is at times somewhat restricted – take away all the tonic, dominant and diminished seventh chords, and there is not always so very much left – but the simple melodies decorated with appoggiaturas and acciaccaturas, occasional chromatic touches, flourishes of arpeggios up and down the neck, and a tessitura widened by extra strings in the bass and extra frets at the treble end of things, combine to create an overall effect which is pleasing to the ear, and would have provided easy listening for salon audiences. No doubt the listeners would have felt at home if they recognised popular folk melodies or well-known tunes from operas, and would have been impressed by the virtuosity of flashy, extrovert variations. Each item is quite short – a total of 39 tracks lasting a mere 63 minutes.
 
From Oleg Timofeyev’s interesting and informative liner notes we learn that Mikhail Polupayenko was born in Kharkiv, studied medicine in Kharhiv and Kyiv, and gave guitar recitals throughout the Ukraine. His last performance was in Bakhmut in 1902. His Fantasia on Zaporozyhe Themes consists of five short contrasting movements, now slow, now fast, ending with an exciting Allegro vivo where repeated riffs get faster and faster. It brings to my mind Cossack dancers wearing furry hats, with baggy trousers tucked into their boots, kicking out as they crouch down, and calling out with triumph and joy. One thing is for certain: Polupayenko’s music is pleasantly brought to life with Akers’ interpretation and his subtle contrasts of tone colour.
 
Polupayenko’s Fantasia was dedicated to his friend, the Austrian-born guitarist Johann Decker-Schenk, who moved to Russia in 1861. There is much variety in his music too: Ukrainische Weise is enhanced by some delicate harmonics, and the third movement of his Fantaisie Romantique has a tremolo effect sounding like a Neapolitan mandoline.
 
Unlike the other composers represented here, Johann Dubez was Austrian. He was a versatile musician who played the violin, harp, mandoline and zither, as well as the guitar. His flamboyant Fantaisie sur des motifs hongrois pour la Guitare consists of 11 short items, including Tempo di Marcia, a setting of the well-known Rácóczi March. The music for the Fantaisie is available online for free download from the IMSLP website, where you can see evidence of his extravagant style, including an Allegretto with fast, arpeggios up and down the neck of the guitar followed by five sextuplets, a passage of descending quavers, rounded off with a super-fast rising scale in broken octaves, diatonic for the first octave and chromatic for the second.
 
Virtuosity is a constant feature of the music of Nikolai Makaroff, and his Fleurs du Nord, Op. 3, No. 1, also available on IMSLP, are no exception. He finds various ways of catching a casual ear’s attention, including a tricky passage in “Down on Mother Volga”, where the melody is played entirely in harmonics. James Akers makes it all sound so easy, but it most certainly is not.
 
Pietro Pettoletti was born in Norway, lived for a while in Germany, moved to Sweden when he was 25, and eventually settled in St Petersburg. In his liner notes Oleg Timofeyev explains that Pettoletti’s Fantaisie sur une Romance favorite de Paschkoff, Op. 31, consists of variations on the song, “He fell out of love with me”, by Alexander Guriliov (1803-1858), and that there are no apparent links to the eponymous Paschkoff.
 
Akers ends his CD with Nicolas Pavilstscheff’s Grande Fantaisie sur un motif de l’Opera “La fiancée” d’Auber, Op. 25 – a splendid showpiece deserving much applause.
 
Stewart McCoy
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Recording

Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine

CD cover Monteverdi Vespers Pichon Pygmalion

Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon
102:00 (2 CDs in a cardboard box)
harmonia mundi HMM 902710.11

Raphael Pichon’s account of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 has been through a process of metamorphosis since a rather unsatisfactory Proms performance in 2017 followed by a much more convincing account, filmed live in the Versailles chapel which I reviewed enthusiastically in 2019. This version still attempted to set Monteverdi’s music in something of a liturgical context, while unfortunately the DVD subtitles and support materials did a poor job in identifying the interleaved plainchant. This latest CD version for harmonia mundi accepts the current thinking that, far from being a discrete ‘piece’, the publication is a collection of Monteverdi’s best service music written for lavish celebrations of St Barbara at the Gonzaga court of Mantua and gathered together in a portfolio dedicated to the Pope in the hope of employment in one of the important papal institutions in Rome. The failure of this enterprise and Monteverdi’s subsequent career in Venice has frequently influenced performances of this extraordinary music, but actually the important point of reference ought to be the musically flamboyant court of Mantua. The practice of combining the sacred and secular musical resources for the most magnificent Mantuan services for St Barbara justifies the truly epic scale of Pichon’s presentation. It also obviates the need for a liturgical context, and even allows for the aesthetically satisfactory return to the opening fanfare set to relevant text to bookend the whole performance. Epic is the word that keeps coming to mind in describing this latest version of the Vespers, with over seventy musicians performing in the resonant acoustic of the Temple du Saint-Esprit in Paris. Pichon’s control over these large forces is breath-taking, and as previously his line-up of superlative soloists provides us with exquisitely decorated accounts of the solo and small ensemble material. Also prominent in these more intimate moments, although also adding magically to the tutti textures, is a superb team of continuo players, including two harpists, three theorbists, and three harpsichordists, one doubling organ. Their contribution is wonderfully imaginative and perfectly responsive to the voices. The brass and string sections, particularly the two double basses, provide an impressively rich texture to the tutti passages, while the four cornettists contribute virtuosic cadential embellishments which are simply stunning – just listen to them in the concluding doxology of Laetatus sum! Singing at ‘high’ pitch, Pygmalion’s chorus exudes energy and musical purpose and is a model of perfect phrasing and unanimity, while the harmonia mundi engineers have captured this whole remarkable sound in all its vividness. You can tell that this is a performance of a now familiar work which I found thrilling and engaging – it caused me to look back at my favourite accounts by Suzuki, Christophers, and Gardiner’s three versions, and further back to pioneering accounts in the early 1950s by Eugen Jochum and even Leopold Stokowski. What struck me is that for all their scholarly and stylistic shortcomings, the earliest versions had an epic sweep, which has sometimes been missing in later versions. It strikes me that Pichon has managed to embrace the scholarly and the epic dimensions of this music, while modern standards of recorded sound capture this in all its richness and subtlety. This version is not without its quirks – not everybody will like the rather ‘romantic’ dynamic variations (including the curiously ‘cowed’ opening of Dixit Dominus), while the decision to perform the opening and concluding verses of Ave maris stella a capella, when previous conductors’ instincts have been to combine the vocal and instrumental forces accrued in all the other verses, is a curious one. The fact is we have very little idea of the details of performance styles at the time, but knowing that opera singers joined forces with sacred musical forces for the larger-scale religious celebrations suggests that the inherent drama of the music might have been further enhanced for these courtly spectacles.

D. James Ross