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Godecharle: Sei Quartetti op. IV

CD cover Godecharle Sei Quartetti op. IV

Société Lunaire
73:26
Ramée RAM2207

The celebrated traveller and commentator on music Charles Burney heard a performance of Godecharle’s music for harp in Brussels in 1772, and although he identified him as German, in fact, we can add him to our list of famous Belgians as Eugéne-Charles-Jean Godecharle was a local boy born in that city in 1742. Such was the turbulent state of Europe during his lifetime that he was born in the Austrian Netherlands and died in the French First Republic, all without leaving Brussels! Burney heard a ‘young lady play extremely well on the harp with pedals’, an invention permitting more chromatic demands to be placed on the instrument, and indeed Godecharle’s six quartets are each in a different key. While the epicentre of harp playing and composition inevitably became Paris, with Queen Marie-Antoinette becoming proficient on the instrument, and the link with ‘young ladies’ also becoming almost ubiquitous, it was the Brussels maker Simon Hochbrucker who ensured the success of the pedal harp, and his two sons, both harp virtuosi, who ensured its spread throughout Europe. Perhaps it was for one of these players that Godecharle wrote his three Sonatas for harp with violin accompaniment and the present six Quartets. Godecharle’s music is relatively undemanding on players and listeners, but not without its charms, and the Société Lunaire and their harpist Maximilian Ehrhardt wisely let it speak for itself in these delightful recordings.

D. James Ross

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Ballade pour un violoncelle piccolo

CD cover Ballade pour un violoncelle piccolo

Hager Hanana
53:07
Seulétoile SE 06
Music by Weiss, Abel, Bach, Biber

A fine account of the sixth of Bach’s Suites for solo cello BWV 1012 on the violoncello piccolo is at the heart of this programme of music for this diminutive cello. When they first appeared, cellos existed in various sizes, and a couple such as the piccolo survived into the Baroque period, and Hager Hanana’s choice of repertoire hints at what they might have been playing. While this Bach Suite out of all the six he wrote seems to lie best for cello piccolo and was probably composed with the instrument in mind, Hanana fills out her programme with two pieces for viola da gamba by Carl Abel and music originally composed for lute by Leopold Weiss. She concludes her programme with a fine account of the Passagaglia, ‘The guardian angel’ from Biber’s Rosary Sonatas, originally for solo violin. It has to be said that all of this music works very well on Hanana’s chosen instrument, and, in the general absence of solo repertoire specifically for cello piccolo, these pieces seem like a valid option. Hanana plays her anonymous 18th-century cello piccolo with commitment, skill and musicality, and these performances are convincing and enjoyable.

D. James Ross

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Orlando di Lasso: Lieder, Chansons, Madrigale

CD cover Orlando di Lasso Lieder, Chansons, Madrigale

Die Singphoniker
51:51
Hänssler classic HC24007

This programme emphasises Lassus’s cosmopolitan status, working in Munich at the centre of Europe and composing secular songs in German, French and Italian – technically the title should read Orlandus Lassus, Rolande de Lassus, Orlando di Lasso! This remarkable chameleon composer manages to adapt completely to each of the musical worlds he enters. The German Lieder, many of them comic novelty songs, are wonderfully mischievous, an aspect fully exploited by the Singphoniker, a sort of German equivalent of our own King’s Singers. Like the latter, they produce a perfectly tuned, wonderfully unified and beautifully blended sound. The transition to the French repertoire is seamless, as is Lassus’ transformation into Rolande de Lassus, and they provide genuinely moving accounts of these delicious French lovesongs as well as trippingly lively performances of the comedy songs Quand mon mari, O vin en vigne, and Dessus le marché d’Arras. Perhaps of his three guises, di Lasso is least typically represented in the madrigals and villanelle, with the concluding extended Sestina setting Là ver l’aurora sounding much more French than Italian in style. Recorded back in 1992, this CD stands the test of time very well with thoroughly modern standards of recorded quality and performance.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Gentleman Extraordinary

CD cover Gentleman Extraordinary Weelkes

Weelkes: Anthems, Services, and Instrumental Music
RESURGAM, The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble, directed by Mark Duley
79:21
resonus RES10325

This collaboration between the choral ensemble Resurgam and The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble marks the 400th anniversary of Thomas Weelkes, and features a fine selection of his anthems, service music and instrumental pieces in beautiful performances. The combined sound of the wind instruments, organ and voices is magnificent indeed, while Weelkes’ lively musical imagination and his ear for rich textures are well served here. Resurgam, both as soloists and in full ensemble, sing with a lovely pure tone and blend beautifully with the instruments, while Mark Duley’s direction is purposeful while also allowing room for the anthems to unfold. To contrast with the full items for voices and instruments, we have several stately pavans and a fantasia played by the wind consort, as well as a couple of voluntaries for organ, played on an Organ Calcant fed by hand-operated bellows. In these instrumental interludes, as also in the accompaniments to the larger pieces, the wind instruments employ pleasing ornamentation. The acoustics of the Holy Trinity Church, Minchinhampton, seem ideal for this enterprise, and both soloists and full choir seem to enjoy its richness and depth. I am currently preparing a programme of 17th-century English verse anthems, and this CD has inspired me to include several of these magnificent works by Thomas Weelkes.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Le cabinet de curiosités

CD cover Le cabinet de curiosités

Trésors oubliés du clavecin des Lumières
Anastasie Jeanne harpsichord, Emilie Clément Planche violin, Julianna David cello
65:00
L’Encelade ECL 2403

Playing a 2023 harpsichord by Marc Ducornet, inspired by the instruments of the Parisian maker Jean-Henri Hemsch, Anastasie Jeanne focuses her attention on the music of Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier and Simon Simon, two unfamiliar composers born in the same year and whose respective op 1s she mines to great effect. Beauvarlet-Charpentier’s Premier Livre de Pièces pour Clavecin, essentially a collection of single-movement character pieces, and Simon’s Pièces de Clavecin Dans tous les Genres avec et sans Accompagnement de Violon, a set of suites for solo harpsichord as well as Suite Concertos with violin and cello “offer us a glimpse of all the brilliance, elegance and virtuosity of the harpsichord repertoire at Louis XV’s court”, as the CD note concisely puts it. The concept of the Cabinet of Curiosities is also not misplaced, as these are eccentric pieces by clearly eccentric composers. For the last ten years of his life, Beauvarlat-Charpentier was organist at Notre Dame de Paris and by this time was celebrated as an organist and composer. Simon, by contrast, is remembered largely as the teacher of the young members of the royal family under Louis XV, remaining at Versailles during the reign of Louis XVI, and despite his royal associations surviving the French Revolution. Both men lived in colourful times during something of a golden age for the harpsichord, before it was remorselessly replaced by the early piano. Anastasie Jeanne’s performances on her pleasantly-toned harpsichord are elegant and expressive, and powerfully emphatic when appropriate, and she is ably and sympathetically supported in the Simon Suite Concerto by violinist Emilie Clément-Planche and cellist Julianna David.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Newe Vialles: Old Viols

CD cover Newe Vialles Old Viols

Henrik Persson, Caroline Ritchie, Lynda Sayce, James Akers
65:26
Barn Cottage Records BCR 027

The Newe Vialles of the title is the name taken by this excellent group of musicians: the “Old Viols” are the bass viols by John Pitts (1675) and Edward Lewis (1703) respectively, which come together on this CD in the capable hands of Henrik Persson and Caroline Ritchie. The latter’s engaging programme note makes it clear that the players set out by imagining what the two owners of these venerable instruments might have played if they had encountered one another. The result is a beautifully varied programme of music by Benjamin Hely, Christopher Simpson, John Jenkins and William Young with interludes for guitar and theorbo/lute by Nicola Matteis and Daniel Norcombe and from the Balcarres Lute Book. As in Henrik Persson’s CD of solo bass viol music, which he plays on the Edward Lewis viol, the stars of this recording are the “Old Viols” whose sonorous tone and immediacy of articulation belie their extreme old age. Both instruments have been extensively restored, but we can be sure that it is their richness of tone which, in part, has ensured their survival to the present day. It is thrilling to hear these remarkable musical survivors in the hands of expert players such as Persson and Ritchie, while the selection of repertoire, which goes far beyond the obvious, provides a compelling picture of music-making in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The choice of Baroque guitar and theorbo/lute for the continuo role, on the basis that these are instruments likely to be found in most households at the time, provides a satisfying consort sound that complements the viols to perfection.

D. James Ross

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Recording
CD cover Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori

Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori
Nahuel Di Pierro bass, Ensemble Diderot, directed by Johannes Pramsohler
74:02
Audax Records ADX 11210

This CD traces music written for the solo bass voice from the compositions of Monteverdi to Handel. While the obvious stars of the Baroque opera scene were mainly the sopranos and castrati, as the CD notes concede, in selecting the music for this programme cleverly, conductor Johannes Pramsohler and bass Nahuel Di Pierro bring the Baroque bass convincingly out of the shadows. Di Pierro has a beautifully rich voice and sings with technical authority, dramatising the music extremely effectively. As we proceed through history, the instrumental ensemble expands appropriately from the string ensembles needed for Rossi, Monteverdi, Cavalli and Sartorio, acquiring brass, woodwind and percussion supplements for Marc’Antonio Ziani, Antonio Giannettini, Giovanni Bononcini, Alessandro Scarlatti and Antonio Vivaldi before we get to Handel. While several arias are striking for their flamboyant martial flavours, what emerges is the huge range of moods the Baroque bass singer is asked to represent. He is as often a lover or a lamentable victim as he is a hero, and Di Pierro captures this full kaleidoscope of moods in his marvellously varied vocal tones. The singing of three supplementary vocalists (Nicholas Scott, Guillaume Gutierrez and Nicolas Brooymans) in the ensemble “Amici, è giunta l’hora” from Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea is superlative, and the orchestral playing throughout is beautifully concise and supportive. Incidentally, in addition to directing, Johannes Pramsohler joins Roldán Bernabé in some stunning obbligato violin duetting, particularly in the magnificent aria “Occhi belli”, occhi possenti from Bononcini’s Il ritorno di Giulio Cesare, one of the many highlights of this excellent disc.

D. James Ross

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The Lute Songbook

CD cover The Lute Songbook

 

Lautten Compagney Berlin
69:00
deutsche harmonia mundi 19802802402

If you accept the thesis of this CD, that ‘the wonderful sound of the lute and small Baroque ensemble perfectly fits these short pieces from Renaissance and Baroque to the music of the Beatles or Massive Attack’, then you will be perfectly happy with this unorthodox programme. However, while I am a little impatient with the growing fashion of playing pop music on early instruments – I find it hard to believe that anybody buying a CD of music for lute consort is yearning to hear its rendition of Massive Attack’s Psyche, Percy Mayfield’s Hit the road Jack or John Lennon’s Norwegian Wood – lautten compagney BERLIN go a stage further by allowing their tastes in contemporary pop to spill into some of their interpretations of the early material. Thus, my usual approach of just programming out the silly pop numbers and listening to the ‘proper’ repertoire is thwarted, as many of the tracks are influenced to an extent by the pop approach. Annoyingly, when they are playing ‘straight’, the ensemble produces lovely, convincing performances of their chosen material, but blundering into a Dowland track with an appalling skiffle accompaniment throughout made me wary of all the apparently early music on this CD. So as you will gather this CD is definitely not for me, but I do struggle to conceive who it is for – it is always fun for musicians to mess about on period instruments with wildly inappropriate music, but unless potential purchasers of a lautten compagney Berlin CD innocuously entitled ‘The Lute Songbook’ scoured the back for more detail they would be in for a disappointment. Where was ‘the grown-up in the room’ during the planning and execution of this CD?

D. James Ross

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J-B Loeillet: Six suits for the harpsichord

CD cover Loeillet Six Suits

Maria Banaszkiewicz-Bryła harpsichord
111:24 (2 CDs)
Prelude Classics PCL2400701

It has to be said that when I put on the first of this two-CD set, I was instantly impressed with the wonderful clarity of the sound. On further reading, I discovered that it is an example of ‘hybrid multichannel super audio’ of which much more detail in the copious programme notes for those interested in this aspect. Details of recording venue and method have been carefully considered by sound engineer and producer Michal Bryła, evidently a team effort! I wanted to make the point that for one not primarily interested in the recording process, the results spoke for themselves. Another important factor in the rich sound is the instrument Maria Banaszkiewicz-Bryła plays, a fine modern copy by Reinhard von Nagel after a Blanchet original of around 1730. It has a wonderfully rich voice and a rewarding range of stops, which the player uses to great effect. Her playing throughout these demanding works is unerringly musical and expressive, and above all, intelligent. Given that Loeillet advertises his Suits as being ‘in most of the keys’, I wanted to know a little more about the tuning of the harpsichord than was provided by the CD notes. Loeillet also highlights ‘the variety of passages (passaggi) and variations’, suggesting that his Suits are a training ground for the would-be improviser – music of any period, which includes written-out ornamentation, is a treasure trove for performers, and indeed this is the case with these Suits. A pleasing blend of the French and Italian styles, they develop in format – the first three contain an Aria along with the traditional Allemande, Corente, Sarabanda, Minuet and Giga, whereas the concluding three replace this with a Gavotte. Recorded in Poland by a Polish musician and a Polish recording team, this package, with its superb international CD notes and superlative sound, is a powerful testimony to the growing importance of Poland as a centre of historically informed performance and recording.

D. James Ross

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Recording

The Secrets of Andalusia

CD cover The secrets of Andalusia Vox Musicae London

Lux Musicae London with Victoria Couper, Konstantinos Glynos and Ignacio Lusardi Monteverde
71:14
First Hand Records FHR157

This attractive mixture of traditional Andalusian and early music from Spain and elsewhere works very well as a programme. Oud, kanun and flamenco guitar rub shoulders with recorders, Baroque harp and guitar, lute, viola da gamba and soprano and tenor voices in a creative interface in which each of these two styles cross paths and influence one another. As with recordings by Jordi Savall and others who endeavour to introduce the spice of their traditional roots into performances of early music, there are revelations but also some slight stretching of the historically informed rules – if you set out to trace the roots of flamenco in early music, you will generally find them! However, there remains a gulf between the flamenco guitars, oud and kanun, generally modern instruments, and the ‘early’ instruments, copies of historical examples, while the kanun and oud are tuned to one scale and the modern guitar and early instruments to another, while of course as part of a living tradition the music for flamenco guitar engages with a thoroughly modern harmonic world. This gap even extends to the singers – soprano Victoria Couper using a thrilling flamenco-type voice production and Roberta Diamond and Daniel Thomson generally using a more orthodox style of singing, although these versatile singers are also able to move in a more traditional direction when necessary. If you accept this CD as a dynamic amalgam of traditional and historically informed approaches, it makes for a joyful listen, and in their work with their traditional music guests, Lux Musicae London have undoubtedly found sympathetic echoes in the early material they perform.

D. James Ross