REVIEW:

Çedille’s collection of German violin sonatas opens with Johann Schop’s brief  Noblemen , a set of “divisions” influenced, according to the notes, by the English style. It offers Rachel Barton Pine an opportunity for engaging in the kind of brilliant rapid passagework that characterizes pieces of this kind. Throughout the program, Pine plays with a sound that falls a bit on the nasal, pinched side of the spectrum, yet without the timbral (or technical) mannerisms in which earlier period instrumentalists with similar timbral predilections used to indulge. The repertoire provides for a kind of collegiality in which the Trio revels in this varied program, and the engineers have balanced the performers in an ambiance that’s just reverberant enough to enhance the sound of their ensemble. Strongly recommended for its exuberant, virtuosic music-making, elegant yet without a trace of slickness and serious without a trace of ponderousness. 

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

The pieces on this album originate largely from the Christmette by Michael Praetorius. In addition, nativity hymns by a range of different composers from the same era have been compiled. In Lutheran style the compositions on this album include solo pieces, choir arrangements, double choral motets, instrumental pieces and of course the church organ repertoire. The listener can also hear pieces, which were not necessarily meant for Christmas, but fit the program very well. The function of some of the pieces is liturgical, like “Gloria,” “Our Father,” or the mighty Entrance-Prelude. Two other pieces are meditative moments about the name of Jesus. Many of the songs are well-known. However, the arrangements for soloists and/or choir from Praetorius and his contemporaries are rarely performed. The Early Music ensemble Margaretha Consort was founded in 2009. The ensemble is based in the Netherlands, but the singers and instrumentalists are from all over Europe.Over the years a very skilled team has been created, where knowledge, musicality, and congeniality go hand in hand.

The Hanseatic wealth of North Germany in the 17th century is reflected in its magnificent cathedrals, and the enormous grandeur of its church music was composed to fill the rich acoustics of these spaces. This programme presents a wide range of Easter music that displays the wealth of inventiveness in this period, enhancing the texts and finding different colors and surprising effects through improvisation and adaptation of the manuscripts. This early music is brought vividly to life by the acclaimed Margaretha Consort.

REVIEW:

This recording offers an excellent overview of the kind of Lutheran Church music one would have heard in the major cities and noble courts of northern Germany in the 17th Century. Jacob Handl’s ‘Ecce, Quomodo Moritur Iustus’ stands out as the only Latin motet on the program. Otherwise, it consists of German sacred concertos of varying dimensions. For instance, ‘Jesu Meines Lebens Leben’ by Dietrich Buxtehude sounds like a polychoral concerto, and Schütz’s ‘O Süsser, O Freundlicher’ sounds more like a sacred cantata, scored for solo tenor and continuo. Some pieces sound as though they replicate the timbre of a church congregation performing a strophic chorale melody to Sietze De Fries’s improvised organ part. Between the choral works, De Fries offers further improvisations, for example on the chorale melody ‘Jesu, Meine Freude’.

I am very taken with this recording, both for the selections and for the quality of the performances. Most of these works exhibit hallmarks of the stile moderno and indulge in the expressive properties of chromaticism and unusual harmonic juxtapositions. The notes are in English, but one will have to look elsewhere for the texts.

-- American Record Guide

It often takes one man to encourage excellence in the arts and in the flourishing Portugal of the 1600s, at the forefront of world exploration; Dom Joao IV was very much that man. In his court, his favoured composers developed a unique style within the European heritage of sacred music, distinctly and devotionally Portuguese. Resplendent ... The Sixteen bring a wonderfully intense sense to this music. "All the music is of a high quality, and it is excellently performed... The singers are quite superb... one of the best and most interesting discs by The Sixteen in recent years, and the sound is excellent." Gramophone

There are two themes to this recording: the time-honored genre of the folia, and an instrument made for and played by the greatest guitarist of the 20th century, Andres Segovia. With his determination to expand the repertoire of guitar music and extend the instrument beyond its associations with his native Spain, Segovia commissioned three works played here by Javier Somoza: the Variations à travers les siècles by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Variaciones y Fuga sobre la Folia de España by Ponce and a set of Four Short Pieces by Frank Martin. Segovia eventually decided that Martin’s idiom was too dissonant for his taste and so never played them, but the pieces have since become classics of the mid-20th-century repertoire alongside works by Britten and Henze. As their titles suggest, however, the other two works have a conscious relationship with the history of the guitar and its repertoire, developed from the lute and vihuela of previous centuries. Ponce only partially fulfilled Segovia’s request for ‘a series of brilliant variations on the Folias de España theme […] in the Classical Italian style of the 18th century.’ What resulted was a monumental, thoroughly eclectic work definitely not in 18th-century style. Segovia, again, decided to adapt the piece for his own ends but Somoza has returned to the original. Meanwhile Castelnuovo-Tedesco, in his first work for the guitar, also consciously embraced eclecticism in a series of different idioms: a stylized chaconne reminiscent of early music; a free variation, a waltz, and a foxtrot. There is one more modern work on the album – the dazzling Tiento by Maurice Ohana that also looks back to 18th-century Spanish idiom – which functions as a pivot between the ages. Two examples of the folia theme-and-variation form by Santiago de Murcia date from roughly 1730; and to open, Somoza travels back in time to the tientos of 16th-century Spain with three brief works by Alonso Mudarra. ‘A Guitar for Segovia’ is both an absorbing journey through the history of guitar music and an important record of a Segovia instrument: a significant addition to the expansive library of guitar music on Brilliant Classics.