On her solo debut album, Muffat Meets Handel, the successful young harpsichordist Flóra Fábri performs harpsichord pieces by precisely these two composers. Although the dates of the two musicians overlap for a period of almost seventy years, the same thing happened in this case as with many of Handel’s contemporaries: the two never met personally. However, unlike Bach and Mattheson, here musical awareness of the other did not operate in accordance with a »one-way-street principle«: it was not only Muffat who admired Handel and arranged his music; the process also functioned the other way around. In contrast to Handel’s Muffat arrangements, in his Handel arrangements Gottlieb Muffat dealt much more gently with the originals and left many parameters unchanged. Something like a relationship of “soul mates” can be detected in their mutual inclination to arrange each other’s works. This in turn forms the essential prerequisite for the dialogue of minds on which the program on this album draws: the adventure of a conversation between two exceptional musical talents without the use of language, without any direct physical contact, and over a distance of at least 1, 593 kilometers (as the crow flies). It is first when the creative production of the one flows into the other’s work that it has the chance to grow beyond itself.

Longstanding partners Sandrine Piau and Christophe Rousset have frequently performed the Stabat Mater, an emblematic work of the eighteenth-century Neapolitan repertory, both together and with other musicians. It was therefore a natural step for them to record this supreme masterpiece of sacred music. They are joined here by a relative newcomer to Les Talens Lyriques who has also become a regular partner with the ensemble, the American countertenor Christopher Lowrey (already heard on an Alpha album devoted to Monteverdi, Alpha 216). The programme is completed by a Beatus vir by Leonardo Leo (1694-1744), sung by Sandrine Piau, and a Salve Regina for alto by Nicola Porpora (1686-1768), two totally unknown works by two composers who were nevertheless very famous at the time – Porpora, for example, was Farinelli’s singing teacher and mentor to the youthful Haydn. Christophe Rousset finds in this music ‘an expression of very Mediterranean, very highly flavored piety, in which one moves from tears to laughter quite quickly’. Sandrine Piau sees in Leo ‘an elegance of style, a certain distance in sorrow’.

There are indeed many recordings of Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin, but the special thing about this particular recording is that it was produced following the performances of a scenic interpretation with the Spanish stage director Calixto Bieito. What now follows is a musical exploration forming a sequel to scenic occupation with the Vespers. Since 2017 Il Gusto Barocco has been the guest ensemble for the four-part Monteverdi cycle initiated by opera director Albrecht Puhlmann at the Mannheim National Theater. From the musician’s perspective, the scenic exploration of music rooted in the liturgy does in fact clearly differ from a performance during a religious service or a non-scenic concert performance. During the time-intensive process prior to the staging of an opera, scenes, images, and figures gradually take shape. In each stage figure the quest is for an emotional truth from which her or his artistic nature, aesthetic character, and credibility result – and ultimately word and tone, in order to produce empathy and engage the public. Another important aspect of this recording is the great number of diminutions in all the instrumental and vocal parts, all of which were improvised at the particular moment. During the shared scenic preparation for the opera stage, the individual movements of the Marian Vespers obtained a definite emotional space in the dramaturgical sequence. Accordingly, sections and their basic characters were defined and invented at the particular moment for each performance and for this recording.

Published in 1733, Pietro Locatelli’s L'Arte del violino for solo violin, strings, and basso continuo took both violin technique and the solo concerto as a genre into a whole new realm. The twelve concertos included in the collection also played a part in forming the image of the violin virtuoso, reaching its full bloom with Paganini towards the end of the century. Locatelli probably composed the set between 1723 and 1729, years that he spent mainly on the road performing at princely courts across Italy and Germany. While the unusually high technical demands of the solo part are obvious to the listener from the start, the great surprise comes at the end of the first and third movements of each of the concertos. Here Locatelli inserts Capriccios for the soloist alone of a difficulty previously unheard of, with a left hand technique making use of extensions, octaves, unprepared tenths, double and triple stopping, arpeggios and double trills. The writing also favors playing in extremely high positions: in Capriccio No. 22 (from the third movement of Concerto no. 11) rising broken thirds go as high as 17th position. Ilya Gringolts, whose discography includes the better-known caprices by Paganini, has accepted Locatelli’s challenge, and here performs three of the L’Arte concertos. He does so with the support of the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, which he conducts from his gut-stringed violin by Ferdinando Gagliano, ca. 1770.

REVIEW:

The whole thing sounds fabulous. First, there’s the sheer energy and joy radiating out from what is a deliciously luminously stringy sound from the orchestra. Then in comes Gringolts, equally full of stylish, multicoloured élan on his gut-stringed 1770 Gagliano – especially in the outer movements’ solo capriccios.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, March 2021)

"Tremendous fun!", "Scintillating!", wrote the journalists of Diapason and Classica about the most recent recording of Olivier Fortin and his ensemble, devoted to the rarely heard Romanus Weichlein, which received every honor from the French musical press (Diapason d'Or, Choc de Classica, FFFF Telerama). This year, the Canadian harpsichordist and his loyal band have decided to record Telemann, the 250th anniversary of whose death will be commemorated in 2017. Two anonymous musicians from the city of Hamburg wrote in 1728 that "Handel composes music" but Telemann composes "music and affects". The overture-suites by Telemann presented on this recording are written in a "mimetic' style: Les Nations, the Concerto Polonois, La Bizarre and the Burlesque de Quixotte explore a vast range of subjects and, even more than all his other works, reveal a man of the theatre, widely read, curious a humorist and a shrewd observer of the physical and political world around him.

The Musicalische Exequien of Heinrich Schutz, composed for the ceremonial obsequies of Heinrich II Posthumus, count of Reuß-Gera, is probably the best known example of German funeral music of the seventeenth century. However, it is not an isolated piece; there were in fact a great number of virtually unknown vocal compositions from the same period, which were commissioned to commemorate the death of specific personalities and performed at their funeral services. The third album from Voces Suaves on the Arcana label offers a fresh perspective on Schutz’s famous masterpiece, complementing it with works by other major German composers of the seventeenth century such as Rosenmuller and Schein. The music is performed by singers and a continuo group without any additional instruments, so that the focus remains throughout on a flexible vocal presentation of these striking and moving works.

On her third PENTATONE album Bach Unbuttoned, Ana de la Vega brings together a group of exciting young soloists and the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn to present a lively and fresh perspective on Bach as man and composer. The programme contains Brandenburg concertos Nos. 2, 4 & 5, a unique rendition on flute and oboe of the double violin concerto, as well as the breath-takingly virtuosic Badinerie for flute. Flautist Ana de la Vega’s presents her third PENTATONE album, after having released Mozart Myslivecek (2018) and Haydn Stamitz (2020). Oboist Ramón Ortega Quero also starred on the latter album, and is featured prominently on Bach Unbuttoned as well. Violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, trumpet player Cyrus Allyar, harpsichordist Johannes Berger and the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn all make their PENTATONE debut.

Dorothee Oberlinger writes: “All the recorder concertos on this release – chamber concertos or solo concertos – were written expressly for flauto or flautino and show the imagination, delicacy, freshness, virtuosity and sometimes even melancholy, which Vivaldi put into his writing for this instrument. We have intentionally chosen tuning at 440 Hz since, in Venice, in Vivaldi’s time, tuning was higher than in neighboring musical centers such as Rome, for example, where, at times, one even played at 392 Hz. With this high tuning, the sound of the gentle gut strings becomes clearer and more brilliant.”

Hans-Eberhard Dentler, a graduate medical physician but also an outstanding cellist and pupil of the renowned Pierre Fournier and founder of a Bach Society in Italy, has occupied himself with this opus over the course of many years. Because he finally wanted to realize Bach's score in a manner true to its spirit and sound, he found a concept for his ensemble ''L'Arte della Fuga'' that unifies its more profound scholarly background with practical musical and artistic aspects. The puzzle of this work can only be solved when one grasps its rootedness in the sphere of Pythagorean musical thinking. Dentler's edition, scored for violin, viola, violoncello, double bass and bassoon in an utterly well thought-out arrangement of movements will soon be published by Schott Verlag in Mainz.

Throughout his life, from his very beginnings right up to the end, Telemann wrote for the basse de viole (as the French called it) and especially in chamber music. Of course, the viola da gamba also plays an important role in works intended for larger formations, such as concertos and orchestral suites, church cantatas and, lastly, oratorios. According to the custom of the time, Telemann also used the viol in funeral cantatas. Furthermore, he wrote for it as a solo instrument: for example, the Sonata in D major, TWV 40:1, recorded here, or sonatas for two viols or for viol and basso continuo. The present recording brings together various works with solo viol, selected from different periods of the master’s output. Here one will find a double concerto for recorder, viol, strings and continuo, two solos with basso continuo, a sonata for solo viol and two quartets.

2020 offers a good opportunity to take a closer look at Giuseppe Tartini, 250 years after his death. A first-rate virtuoso, he was the violin teacher who most influenced 18th-century style: his pupils, who came to study with him from all over the world, went on to fill the best orchestras in Europe. By crafting melodically and harmonically original language on the violin, he best imitated the human voice by taking inspiration from poetry and its meter and using it as a model for his melodic phrases. Tartini, Corelli’s true descendent, went through various compositional phases by striving to find an absolute and natural style of music, close to the people’s soul. There remain abundant traces of his career in a large collection of letters, second only to Mozart’s correspondence. The general public is perhaps still unaware of the beauty which remains secret: hundreds of his compositions which are yet to be brought to light. This re-release publication accompanies the beginning of an Opera Omnia edition published by Barenreiter beginning in 2020: it is hoped that it may outline the illuminating profile of a great musician of the eighteenth century.

REVIEW:

Enrico Gatti has consulted various sources for the recording of these sonatas. He states that in the case of the slow movements there are no versions with ornaments by Tartini himself. He adds ornaments of his own, but does so in different ways in the two sets of sonatas. In the Op 1 he is more generous in this department than in the Op 2 sonatas, where - as he writes in his liner-notes - Tartini inserted many ornaments in the melodic line. This is an indication of the careful and thought-out approach to the interpretation of these sonatas. Gatti avoids spectacular effects - although certainly not eschewing virtuosity, for instance in his ornamentation - and rather emphasizes the intimate and poetic features of Tartini's music. Therefore this set is of great importance with regard to interpretation of Tartini's sonatas. The reissue of this set of discs is most welcome, and nobody interested in Tartini should miss it. Gatti was a pioneer of historical performance practice in Italy, which in the course of time has become mainstream there as it has north of the Alps. This set of discs is also a tribute to his art and his activities in the revival of baroque music. Here he receives substantial support from two other prominent representatives of the Italian early music scene.

– MusicWeb International