The Italian-born violinist and dancer Jean-Baptiste Lully revolutionized music at the French court in the 17th century. Not only did he transform ballet entertainments into a spectacular new genre, the tragedie lyrique, but he set new standards in orchestral playing- with him the ‘modern’ orchestra was born. The Suite from Roland exemplifies the majesty of his ouvertures, the beauty of his dance movements, and the expressive depth of his chaconnes. Both Georg Muffat and Marin Marais were profoundly influenced by Lully, as their inventive suites show, and Muffat’s own preserved performance instructions have been closely followed on this recording. Named one of the top 25 ensembles in celebration of Early Musi cAmerica’s 25th anniversary in 2011, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra is dedicated to excellent and exuberant performance of 17th and 18th century music on period instruments. It is led by its artistic director, Barthold Kuijken.

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REVIEW:

Despite the rarity of these works, all the music breathes the spirit of the French court, with the influence of Lully clearly at work throughout. Is there more of this music in the pipeline? If not, please, Naxos, get back to Indianapolis and record it post-haste.

– MusicWeb International

Here, offering a further six concertos, is the latest instalment in Naxos’s recording of Vivaldi’s 37 bassoon concertos; 39 if one counts two incomplete specimens. Those who have invested in earlier volumes in the series (see below), all recorded by the same forces, will know to expect the enjoyable, fluent performances that are to be heard here.

The Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia use modern instruments but, under the direction of Béla Drahos they play with a crisp articulation that is, for the most part, stylistically convincing. Benkócs is a very fine bassoonist indeed, both technically extremely accomplished and musically imaginative. The outer movements – all six are in three movements, fast-slow-fast – frequently call for considerable fleetness of finger and certainty of breath control and Benkócs is never found wanting. There is rapid-fire virtuosity when needed and many delightfully dancing passages. In the slow movements Benkócs plays with lyrical expressivity, elegantly poignant and reflective in music which, as so often in the slow movements of Vivaldi’s concertos has a distinctly operatic feel about it.

Every one of these concertos offers things of real interest – Vivaldi’s musical imagination seems unflagging. There’s the way, for example, in which the opening allegro of RV 477 contrasts the tenor and bass registers of the solo instrument; or the dotted rhythms of the bassoon in the largo of RV 499. Or, particularly pleasant, the final allegro of RV 494 which is full of ingenious twists and turns.

It is puzzling that Vivaldi should have written quite so many concertos for the bassoon – the bassoon wasn’t generally a fashionable solo instrument in this period. Perhaps he wrote them for a specific instrumentalist; if so the identity of that musician remains unknown; certainly Vivaldi demonstrates a thorough understanding of the instrument’s possibilities. Whatever the circumstances which prompted the composition of these concertos, they certainly constitute a rewarding body of music and one of the many demonstrations of Vivaldi’s remarkable ability to produce seemingly infinite variations (and there really is variety here) on a basically simple formula.

A graduate of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Tamás Benkócs is a member of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. I haven’t encountered any other recordings by him outside this Naxos series of the Vivaldi concertos. He is such a fine player that it is to be hoped that he will go onto record more of the bassoon repertoire.

The one reservation – though it is not one that spoils my pleasure in the CDs – that I about this series concerns the rather understated penny-plain continuo, where the concertos would certainly benefit from greater embellishment. Very decent as the contribution of the Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia and Béla Drahos is, I would love to hear Benkócs playing these works with one of the best specialist baroque ensembles.

On balance though, this is an eminently worthwhile and enjoyable series, and this latest volume continues the good work begun by its predecessors. The recorded sound is pleasingly clear and well balanced.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

The Scarlatti family was famed across Europe, Alessandro for his operatic compositions and his son, Domenico, for his keyboard works. Employed by several royal families, Domenico moved to Madrid in 1728 following the marriage of his pupil, the Infanta Maria Barbara, to the heir to the Spanish throne. here, largely for her, he wrote a vast number of sonatas that remain amongst the most important of the eighteenth century. Duanduan Hao's previous recording for this series [8.572586 / Volume 14] was acclaimed by Classics Today. com for his 'crisp, well-poised finger work, centered sonority, and superb articulation [which] are ideal for Scarlatti'

The musical 1600's represent a period of particular ferment: the birth of opera in music, the practice of continuo playing, solo singing with instrumental accompaniment. Musical settings change as well, they are no longer small chambers for ''musica reservata'' but great rooms and theaters calling for powerful voices capable of filling them. The harp and the chitarrone are two striking examples of how ancient instruments, still nearly renaissance models, become modernized if not designed ex novo to adapt the power of their sound to these large speces.

LECLAIR Violin Sonatas, op. 2, Nos. 1–5, 8 • Adrian Butterfield (vn); Jonathan Manson (vdg); Laurence Cummings (hpd) (period instruments) • NAXOS 8.572866 (77:50)


Several years ago, the three Naxos discs comprising Adrian Butterfield’s performances of Jean-Marie Leclair’s first book of violin sonatas (Naxos 8.570888, 8.570889, and 8.570890) appeared, and I highly recommended them in Fanfare 35:3. Butterfield and harpsichordist Laurence Cummings have now returned, with Jonathan Manson rather than Alison McGillivray playing the viola da gamba, with an installment of six sonatas from the composer’s second book. Butterfield’s own notes relate that this set includes five sonatas for violin or flute (two occurred in the first book); and Butterfield emphasizes that Leclair intended these works for a wider group of performers.


The program, in order, opens with one of the sonatas in which Leclair offered the choice of violin or flute. Its four movements begin with an arch Adagio in which Manson displays the richness of the seven-string gamba made in 1978 by Curtis Bryant (Butterfield plays a violin made by David Rubio in 1996 after the 1734 Rode Guarneri del Gesù, while Cummings plays a 2000 harpsichord by Andrew Garlick based on a 1748 model). The book of sonatas appeared in 1728, after, according to Butterfield, Leclair had studied for a time in Turin with Corelli’s student, Giovanni Battista Somis. William S. Newman suggests that, through Somis, Leclair made the acquaintance of the music of both Corelli and Vivaldi; and later he would come under the spell of Corelli’s student Pietro Locatelli, whose devilish virtuosity appears, though restricted mainly to the lower positions, in Leclair’s later books of sonatas. Butterfield draws comparisons between Leclair’s allegro s and Corelli’s, but Somis’s sonatas, at least the later ones of op. 4 (written in 1726, about the year Leclair visited him), fall into three rather than four movements, as all these do. Somis’s works also don’t push the technical envelope far beyond Corelli’s—they’re very tame, as these by Leclair, for the most part, prove to be. Nevertheless, the Second Sonata in Leclair’s set employs double stops freely, and represents generally a more advanced technique. But Butterfield and his ensemble find the commonalties in these works, whatever their instrumentation or technical demands, in the starchy French style in which they present what Leclair had absorbed of the Italian style from his travels. And in the Finale of that Second Sonata, they abandon themselves to an Italian energy that recalls Vivaldi’s, featuring cadenza-like passagework.


The Third Sonata returns to the instrumental choice offered by the First Sonata—violin or flute—and therefore to the more moderate technical demands such a choice implies. Butterfield points out in the notes the melodic affinities of the opening movement of the Fourth Sonata to Corelli’s style, a parallel he and the ensemble exuberantly draw in the performance itself. But those familiar with Somis’s sonatas may find that these works resemble his as closely as they do Corelli’s. In any case, the ensemble brings sonorous virtuosity to the third movement, a double-stopped “Aria: Gratioso .” The Finale combines Corelli’s melodic manner with technically more demanding swirling double stops.


The Fifth Sonata again suggests the simplicity of an arrangement for violin or flute, but its first movement offers Manson, again, an opportunity to display the richness of both his tone and his musical imagination. After a Corellian (or Somisian) Allegro of considerable melodic and rhythmic verve—at least in this performance—the Sonata proceeds through an elegant Gavotte to a piquant Finale, in which Butterfield’s tart ornamentation lends a brisk energy. Butterfield points out that Leclair conceived the Eighth Sonata as a sort of duet for violin and gamba, and his interaction with Manson in the first movement bears out this observation. Its imitative second movement takes advantage of the same manner of writing, even if it isn’t so thorough-goingly polyphonic as similar passages in Corelli’s church sonatas. But Corelli’s personality shines through this movement’s melodic contours as well as through its counterpoint. The Sarabanda offers particularly rich opportunities for conversation between the violin and gamba; the Finale contains chains of trills that enliven its melodic discourse.


Butterfield remarks that violinists have not taken up Leclair’s first two books of sonatas, perhaps because of their modest demands; perhaps his insightful and cleanly-recorded performances (along with those of the first book) will revive some interest in them. Strongly recommended—and not just for the violinistic moments.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Ramón Ortega Quero combines dazzling technical and musical expertise with an infectious love of music-making; once on stage the audience is soon in his thrall.He took 1st prize at the 2007 ARD Competition and can already lay claim to two ECHO Klassik awards.The solo oboist with the BRSO, he is also pursuing a parallel international career as a sought-after soloist and chamber player.His Berlin Classics debut CD features J.S. Bach’s oboe sonatas.Luise Buchberger on the Baroque cello and harpsichord Peter Kofler offer support; his wife Tamar Inbar is second oboist on the Trio Sonata BWV1039.

Francesco Cavalli was the most successful Venetian opera composer of the mid-seventeenth century. This new production is orchestrated and conducted by the internationally reputed baroque specialist Federico Maria Sardelli. It is directed by the young Frenchwoman Mariame Clement, who is currently making a name for herself with her infectious directing in German and French opera houses. The title role is sung by the promising counter-tenor Christophe Dumaux.

For his recording of Bach's The Art of Fugue, harpsichordist Sébastien Guillot includes the composer's early autograph versions. Although Bach's more familiar revisions generally were for the better, his first thoughts make for fascinating comparison. Contrapunctus 1's first version contains alternate note readings and lacks the gorgeous coda Bach added as an inspired afterthought. If the piece often referred to as Contrapunctus 10 sounds as if it starts mid-stream, so to speak, that's because we're used to the 22 sublime bars Bach subsequently tacked on to the beginning. The early version of the canon in augmentation and inversion is fascinatingly florid, but without the revision's extraordinary chromatic tension and melodic humor that Guillot brilliantly conveys. Other differences involve ornamental more than compositional refinements.

In an era where a few too many harpsichordists embrace these pieces with fussy agogics, crawling tempos, and a reverential halo, Guillot's fleet, uncluttered, and enlivening interpretations are positively refreshing. Ornaments and cadenzas are infused with improvisatory joy, while Guillot's rolled chords contain more gestural and expressive variety than we often hear. Should you prefer more repose and austerity (and some listeners undoubtedly will), I'd stick with Robert Hill, Gustav Leonhardt, and Davitt Moroney. But if Guillot's extroversion entices, then by all means supplement your collection with this inexpensive, beautifully engineered release.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com