‘I play Bach every day,’ said Shostakovich in 1950, at an event to mark the bicentenary of Bach’s death. ‘For us, Bach's legacy is an embodiment of flaming emotion, soulful humanity and true humanism, which stands in contrast to the dark world of raw evil and contempt for humanity.’

Taking their inspiration from these words, and from the palpable influence of Bach on the solid forms and fluent counterpoint of Shostakovich’s own music, this quartet of musicians presents an entirely original pairing of the two composers, in which cantata arias and a major song-cycle are linked and interspersed by instrumental interludes.

The German soprano Dorothee Mields is renowned for her piercing musicianship and luminous tone in the music of Bach, working with such illustrious conductors as Rene Jacobs and Philippe Herreweghe. Her contributions to recent recordings in this field have been called ‘sensational’ and ‘ravishing’ by Gramophone.

Here she sings recitatives and arias from seven cantatas, including the meditative opening movement of ‘Ich bin in mir vergnügt BWV204’. The trio-sonata accompaniment brings her expressive handling of the text to the fore, and prefaces the arias with the G major Sonata BWV1021 for violin and continuo, while Luca Quintavalle contributes the sixth Prelude and Fugue from Book 2 of ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’. Switching to piano for Shostakovich, Quintavalle plays the D major Prelude and Fugue from the Russian composer’s counterpart to the WTC. The early Piano Trio No.1 makes a Romantically yearning preface to the late settings of Alexander Blok which Shostakovich composed alongside the song-cycle Fourteenth Symphony. These songs find the composer at his most introspective, unsparing and yet rewarding of the subtlety which Mields brings to them. The idioms of Bach and Shostakovich complement as much as they contrast, and they are drawn together here by performances of powerful eloquence.

During the first decades of the last century, Paris took over from Vienna as the center of the art-music’s universe. Ideas and styles exploded like fireworks from the French capital, and among the first figures sending them into the wider world was Claude Debussy. His Première Rhapsodie began life as a competition piece for clarinet, first performed in 1911, and while the later orchestral version is now more commonly heard, it is instructive to revisit the composer’s original, more subtly allusive first thoughts. Seven years later, by now dying of cancer, Debussy completed the last of three works in which he returned to the traditional form of sonata which he had avoided through much of his career in favor of tone-pictures such as the Préludes and suites for piano. The Violin Sonata counts among his most concise and refined works in an output touched throughout by those qualities, demanding the greatest subtlety and passion from its interpreters. In the same year as the Première Rhapsodie, Stravinsky had scored his career-defining succès de scandale with the premiere of Le sacre du printemps, and by 1918 he was established as a darling of the Parisian avant-garde when he composed L’histoire du soldat for a septet of instruments and narrator. The following year he arranged five self-contained numbers from the score into a suite, further reduced for a spiky instrumental trio and featuring the marvelously sly tango as well as the Rite-like final Danse du soldat. Milhaud’s Suite and Bartók’s Contrasts date from two decades later, but they are still infused with the absinthe and lemon of 20s Parisian culture. Heard together, the five works paint a portrait of a world of dazzling colours and restless momentum, sometimes bewildered by its own precosity, taking what it wanted from old cultures and always breaking new paths.

Richard Wagner began composing his Wesendonck Lieder during a stay in Zurich between November and December 1857. Originally conceived for female voice and piano alone, the five songs were later orchestrated, first by the Austrian conductor and composer Felix Mottl in 1893, and then later in 1976 by the German composer Hans Werner Henze, in a chamber setting. In fact Wagner had already orchestrated a version of "Träume” to be performed by chamber orchestra (with violin playing the voice part) on the occasion of his wife Minna’s birthday in 1857. Later, in 1870, for his second wife Cosima’s 33rd birthday, he enacted a similar gesture. Mixing new motifs with themes from his Ring cycle, he composed the Siegfried Idyll and had it performed by a small orchestra as a birthday surprise. Hanz Werner Henze’s orchestration of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder highlights the relationship between the words and the sounds. The agile yet intense scoring for ten wind instruments, harp and small string ensemble appears to be Henze’s way of finding an alternative to the original piano without taking the cycle outside the realm of chamber music or altering the lieder’s original image. Siegfried and Brünnhilde sing from the depths of their hearts returns here with the grace of a child’s nursery. Salvatore Sciarrino’s Languire a Palermo (Languishing in Palermo), composed in 2018, is predominantly built around the melody Tempo di Porazzi, a fragment composed by Wagner during a visit to Sicily in late 1881 and early 1882. Sciarrino describes the ‘allure of a distant unaccompanied melody, played by someone for their own benefit and entrusted to the wind’ and hypothesizes that it may correspond ‘to the sounds in Sicily that stimulate and amaze the ears...Mediterranean charm gushes from the throat of every street vendor.’

The apogee of the French harpsichord came in the 18th century with the publication of the musical works of François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau, the two leading representatives of the French harpsichord school. These were followed by numerous livres de clavecin written by a new generation of composers such as Claude Balbastre, Pancrace Royer, Jacques Duphly, and Michel Corrette.

It is within this rococo-galant context, which marked the final glory days of the harpsichord, that we encounter the music of Jean-Baptiste Parant, a composer for whom only scant biographical details are known. Parant’s Premier Livre de Pièces de Clavecin, published in 1762, contains 16 pieces written in the light and carefree rococo style, which makes them a true reflection of the music that would have been heard at this time in the salons of aristocrats and patrons such as the Prince de Conti and Monsieur de La Pouplinière or at the literary salons of Madame du Deffand, Julie Lespinasse, and Madame Geoffrin.

The titles of the pieces allude to persons from Parant’s circle, such as La Angôt and De la Bauve, or to places such as Passy (most probably a reference to the Château de Passy, the residence of the aforementioned important and very wealthy musical patron Alexandre de La Pouplinière) and Lyons (‘La Lionoise’). His sources of inspiration are also to be seen in such evocative titles as ‘Les Cascades’, ‘La Majestueuse’ or ‘La Pétulante’. Running throughout his music are the dances most commonly found in French suites, such as the menuet, rondeau, allemande, gavotte, and lourée.

The 19th century salon was a major vehicle for the spread of culture and the transmission of new artistic and literary trends in Europe, as well as being a space overtly dominated by women. Aiming to recreate the musical atmosphere of a 19th-century salon, this recording revolves around two fundamental objectives. The first, to perform music by women who, as composers, performers and hostesses, were absolute cornerstones of these spaces. Second, to perform the songs, originally accompanied by piano, with newly made guitar arrangements.

The arrangements on this album have been made following a scrupulous transcription from the piano parts, retaining the harmonic essence whilst capturing the full polyphonic interplay. Several guitar effects have also been incorporated (tambora, harmonics, strumming, etc.), bringing a fresh twist to the original versions. All this contributes not only to expanding the guitar repertoire, but to the discovery of unfamiliar works.

Pauline Viardot (1821–1910) was born in Paris to a highly musical Spanish family and enjoyed an illustrious career as a singer. Returning to Paris in 1870, she established one of the most important musical salons of the time. Viardot’s songs have palpable Spanish roots, and her later pieces, like ‘Caña española’, were likely influenced by her father’s compositions. María Malibrán (1808–1836), Viardot’s elder sister, is most famous as an illustrious Spanish opera diva. Isabel Colbrán (1784/5–1845) was a Spanish opera singer and the first wife of composer Gioachino Rossini. In the early years of her career, she composed 24 short Italian arias which bear a certain Rossinian stamp. That said, as those arias were written before she met Rossini, it must be queried who influenced whom.

Pauline Duchambge (1778–1858) is perhaps the least known of these composers, and this album showcases a number of her songs that have never previously been recorded. A pianist, singer and guitarist, Duchambge studied composition with Cherubini and Auber, mainly composing romances on idealised romantic or historical themes (for example, ‘Celle qui voudrait m’aimer’).

Fanny Hensel (1805–1847) was the elder sister of Felix Mendelssohn. Although she received a thorough musical education, Fanny’s father barred her from publishing her compositions. Several of her songs were published under Felix’s name, including ‘Die Nonne’, but she later published the set containing ‘Schwanenlied’ under her married name. She hosted the so-called ‘Musical Sundays’, soirées attended by leading artists and intellectuals of the day, including Clara and Robert Schumann, Heine, Paganini, and Gounod.

The life of Clara Wieck (1819–1896) was demanding, given that she had to be the bread-winner for her eight children as a concert pianist, owing to her husband Robert Schumann’s mental illness. The two lieder on this album are from Clara and Robert’s jointly published Zwölf Lieder song cycle.

Hans Sitt (1850–1928) was an extremely important personality in the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, and also a remarkably prolific composer. Among all this activity, he found the time to transcribe all (!) of Beethoven's nine Symphonies, among others. 

His decision to transcribe them for violin and piano instead of for two piano so common in hus era, allows him to make the violin a part among parts, to immerse it in the (very rich) piano fabric, sometimes giving it a thematic role and sometimes not. 

His transcription of the Ninth ends up revealing many aspects of the original score of which one had never been aware. In addition to being splendid to listen to, if only in that obvious sense of the formidable challenge it poses to the performers, it becomes an important and unexpected tool for delving deeper into the structure of the Beethovenian masterpiece. And for this we shall forever have to thank him.

REVIEW:

Sitt has succeeded magnificently in distilling the original material, but it also presents a great technical challenge for the two performers, which Loguercio and Piemonti meet with bravura. But it is not only the virtuoso that they rise to, for their playing is musically satisfying as well, especially in the slow movement, where they make the music effective with subtle moods.

-- Pizzicato

François Devienne (1759–1803) was a contemporary of Mozart and one of the few virtuosos who didn’t have to flee his own country to get noticed. Born in Joinville, France, the youngest of the 14 children of a saddle maker, Devienne received his formative musical instruction as a choirboy in his hometown and quickly developed into a flute player of formidable gifts, studying with Felix Rault. He was active in Paris as a flautist, bassoonist and composer and played bassoon at the Paris Opera. He was also a sergeant and member of the Military Band of the French Guard, where he was given the responsibility of teaching his military band colleagues’ children in its Free School of Music. After the Revolutionary period, when the Free School became the National Institute of Music, later chartered as the Paris Conservatory in 1795, Devienne was appointed as flute professor, where he taught from 1795 to 1803. He also wrote the Méthode de Flûte Théorique et Pratique (1793), which was reprinted several times and did much to improve the level of French wind music in the late 18th century.

His output includes opera, extensive educational work, and approximately 300 instrumental works that were mostly written for wind instruments. There are about 20 flute concertos, mainly written for his own use, and many of his works are still popular today in standard flute repertoire. His VII Concerto in E minor, for example, contains all the poetry and aesthetics of his music – it is quintessentially beautiful, charming, melodious and witty. Devienne's compositions for flute, revived by Jean-Pierre Rampal in the 1960s, became well-known among flutists. Unfortunately, Devienne’s fortunes declined suddenly in the new century and he died in 1803, four months after being committed to the Charenton insane asylum.

The Six duos Op.2 were written in 1786 for the captain of the guard of the Artois Count. They are a collection of six duos for two flutes, each of them divided into two movements. The general atmosphere exuded throughout the set is playful, fresh and bright, possibly because of the absence of the slow and thoughtful second movement that traditionally would have been placed between the first and last allegros. There is no shortage of singable and lyrical melodies, though: the Gracioso con Variatione, the second movement of the third duet, is a prime example. The movement markings chosen by Devienne are primarily Allegro, Rondeau, Gracioso and Menuetto. Every tempo mark is set between a moderate and a fast, lively tempo, in order to develop either the lyrical themes or display the shimmering virtuosity of the flutes. In fact, it seems that the composer’s aim was to make the listener feel like there is only one flute playing instead of two: the sound, the articulation and the phrasing of each must be as similar to one another as possible. Needless to say, these are the greatest difficulties to deal with for the musicians. Furthermore, the pieces were written to accompany the lives of the aristocracy, for example celebrations and tea parties, which is why this kind of music is also called ‘salon music’. The two flutists made their recording using the first edition sheet music published by Sieber in Paris, c.1786.