LASSUS: MUSICA DEI DONUM, LAUD

BACH Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (complete) • Sigiswald Kuijken (vn) • DEUTSCHE HARMONIA MUNDI 77043 (2 CDs: 128:22)


British musicians of the tempo-strict style have so dominated the historically informed performance scene that I fear many listeners have forgotten that there were other schools of thought vying for public support during the 1970s and early 1980s. Dutch musicians were, in contrast to many English and some Americans, more concerned with inflection, rubato, a singing tone, and what modern Yuppies call a “holistic” approach. They bound the solving of technical problems to matters of interpretive individuality. The primary, but not the only, musicians of this school were harpsichordist-conductor Gustav Leonhardt, recorder player Franz Brüggen, and the Kuijken family: Sigiswald (violin), Wieland (viola da gamba), Barthold (flute and recorder), and Piet (celesta and harpsichord). Sister Marie was also sometimes in the picture as a mezzo-soprano. All of the principal movers and shakers of the Dutch school (excepting Marie Kuijken, of course) were present and accounted for on Leonhardt’s groundbreaking recording of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos in 1975. It was a statement of musical principle even more so than a performance that proved a HIP orchestra could not only play in tune, but also could clarify the textures of orchestral playing better than most modern-instrument groups.


Yet it was this groundbreaking album featuring one solitary instrument that burst on the HIP world like a bombshell in 1983. Up to that point, it had been assumed that Bach’s solo violin works could only be performed in a more-or-less angular style, that the counterpoint and different “voices” of the music dictated their tempo, contour, and shape. Sigiswald Kuijken proved everyone wrong. He even proved that you could indeed play the Baroque violin without holding it either against the chin or chest, but against the shoulder; that the bow pressure need not be as loose as the Dolmetsch family had insisted, nor as hard as the British insisted; and that the musical style could be curved, even circular in general motion, rather than linear. That this may very well have been the way Bach conceived these works is further suggested by the single page of the manuscript reproduced in the record’s booklet. Bach never wrote the stems or flags of his 16th, 32nd, or 64th notes in a straight line, not even as approximately straight as Mozart and Beethoven did. They were as curvy and irregular as a roller-coaster ride.


I can still remember, in generalities, the lengthy, well-written, and extremely persuasive review of this recording by William Malloch, possibly America’s greatest musicologist, in a 1983 issue of Ovation magazine. In essence, he said (at much greater length) all the things I said in the above paragraph. And he was right. After a hiatus of about three years, when this recording suddenly disappeared from the shelves in 1987, it was issued on CD by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi in 1990. The fact that it has never left the catalog since is, I think, proof enough of its enormous ability not only to persuade the listener but also please the senses.


Above and beyond all the technical hurdles Kuijken overcame and musical decisions he made, these are performances of tremendous love and passion. This is Bach breaking through the glass ceiling of academia and speaking to us across the centuries. This is immense hard work and musicological research forged in the crucible of one man’s heart and soul and put forth for the world to judge its intrinsic worth. More than a quarter-century after they were recorded in November and December of 1981, they have been judged unassailable—not, perhaps, “definitive” readings, but better than definitive. They opened the doors to other individualistic interpretations, equally valid, none of which have anything to do with Nathan Milstein—fine musician though he was—sawing away in strict tempo and one volume level through them.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

This disc is also available as part of a 4-CD set (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 26617).

Barbara Thornton and Benjamin Bagby here reaffirm their position as two of the most lucid and imaginative singers of medieval music that we have.

Quite suddenly it seems to be the turn of the Notre-Dame era to get first-rate, concentrated and intelligent attention from performing groups. Here to join the Gothic Voices record of "Music For The Lion-Hearted King" (Hyperion 0 CDA66336, 10/89) and the Hilliard Ensemble's collection of music by Perotinus (ECM/New Note 0 837 751-2, 2/90), we have a record devoted to the leading poet of the Notre-Dame movement, Philippe the Chancellor.

Nobody's work could be more welcome at the moment. One of the many astonishing and brilliant passages in Craig Wright's magisterial new book on Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris (Cambridge University Press: 1989) shows almost conclusively that Philippe and Perotinus were extremely close colleagues; they probably sat in opposite seats in the church daily for some 20 years before Philippe's death in 1236; they were joint signatories of several documents; and not only did Perotinus demonstrably set at least one text by Philippe but Philippe wrote several poems to existing music by Perotinus.

Further to that, the extremely informative note that Peter Dronke contributes to this new record mentions his own new (apparently still unpublished) reconsideration of Philippe's work, bringing its total to almost 90 songs. How much of this music for them is by Philippe himself, it is too soon to say; but he must in any case now take his place as one of the most important figures in thirteenth-century music. And a signal benefit of this record is not only that the texts are newly reedited and translated by Dronke but that they are given the literary explanation that seems indispensable for music of this kind.

In comparison with the two discs already mentioned, the ensemble singing of Sequentia may occasionally seem a little rough in intonation, blend and balance; but it is nevertheless very fine, distinguished by a forthright declamatory manner that is well suited to the mood of these heavily political and polemical poems. There might also be some room for suggesting that the emphasis on very slow declamation in the solo songs rather fights against the inbuilt momentum and mordant wit of the poems; Si vis vera takes 13 minutes when about three should have been plenty; though in the same breath one must add that Barbara Thornton and Benjamin Bagby here reaffirm their position as two of the most lucid and imaginative singers of medieval music that we have. Whatever my slight reservations in the light of other recent records, then, this is an important and highly impressive record.

-- Gramophone [11/1990]

A major achievement - John Elwes is a stylish and eloquent Zoroastre and Gregory Reinhart makes a formidable Abramane with a commanding vocal presence. Rameau's Zoroastre should afford enduring pleasure.

Here once more, but in a new CD format, is Zoroastre, Rameau's penultimate tragedie-lyrique. Readers who bought the earlier CD issue when Deutsche Harmonia Mundi were distributed by EMI (1/88) will not be amused to learn that a new booklet has been prepared for the BMG release; this contains the full text of the opera, legibly printed and now with an English translation. Thanks are due to BMG for repackaging an otherwise excellent product, thus making it accessible to a wider listenership.

Zoroastre was first performed in Paris in 1749 and was, by and large, well received. But the librettist, Cahusac was taken to task by some for relegating the love element in the opera to a secondary place. When it was revived in 1756 Cahusac made shifts of emphasis within the plot and it is this version as it first appeared, rather than that which involved yet further small changes later in the season, which is performed here. The libretto deals with the conflict between Good and Evil or Light and Darkness central to Zoroastrianism. Oromases, King of the Genies, represents the former and has Zoroastre as his high priest, while Abramane, high priest of the Temple of Darkness represents the latter. The chief protagonists in the drama are Zoroastre and Abramane who vie for power, glory and love; their characters are skilfully and often strikingly portrayed by Rameau, whose score is richly endowed with bold dashes of colour.

I very much liked this performance when it was first issued on LP in 1984 and feel much the same about it now. John Elwes is a stylish and eloquent Zoroastre and Gregory Reinhart makes a formidable Abramane with clear diction and a resonant, commanding vocal presence. His "Osons achever de grands crimes" (Act 3 scene 2) with its syncopated accompaniment and characteristically effective bassoon writing, is especially noteworthy. As I have remarked in previous reviews, the three principal female roles are sung well though I should have liked greater aural contrasts between them. Agnes Mellon as the innocent Cephie is a particularly happy piece of casting, though Mieke van der Sluis as the jealous Erinice is rather less so. Her voice is a warmly alluring one but seems ill-suited to the darker shades of this character. Greta de Reyghere brings warmth and clarity to the role of Amelite though she does not entirely succeed in conveying the danger and unpleasantness of her predicament.

La Petite Bande is on its liveliest form and Sigiswald Kuijken's direction reveals an insight into and affection for Rameau's music. In spite of some reservations, this is a major achievement and the work one that should not be omitted from any serious opera or baroque enthusiast's library. The recorded sound is excellent and as I have already indicated, the discs are now accompanied by an informative and helpful booklet. Rameau's Zoroastre should afford enduring pleasure.

-- Gramophone [6/1991]

Tafelmusik are a Canadian period-instrument group who bring plenty of spirit and enthusiasm to their performances. I have chiefly heard them before in baroque repertory, to which their rather direct and even slightly edgy tone may be better suited than it is to the more suave Boccherini. The B flat Symphony they offer here, Op. 21 No. 4 in Boccherini's numbering, is not to my knowledge otherwise available; the chief interest resides in the first movement, a typically exuberant piece, full of repeated notes and dashing off every now and then into brilliant semiquaver passages, though there is some characteristically charming pathetic music in the andantino. The players here make a hairsbreadth pause before each accent in the first movement (and there are rather a lot of them), which seems to me disturbing to the rhythm. They also offer the D minor Symphony, La casa del diavolo, based in part on Gluck's Dance of the Furies from Orphee. They play the first movement at a tremendous speed and with great vigour, the slow movement rather dully and the finale, again, very fast and duly diabolically. Here, however, they run into competition with the disc by Ensemble 415 (Harmonia Mundi), which offers a superior performance; tighter and more controlled, more graceful as well as sweeter-toned in the middle movement and less reliant on breathtaking thrills to make the fast movements effective.

But with Anner Bylsma playing two concertos, this is certainly a disc to be considered seriously. His performance of the G major work is far more appealing than that of the relatively staid Wouter Willer on the EMI disc cited above, its quick movements quicker, its slow movement slower— and played with remarkable control (you cannot hear the changes of bow) and with much poetry. And there is some dazzling playing at the very top of the instrument in the finale. The D major work is perhaps slightly more ordinary, but that vein of pathos is again much in evidence in the andante lentarello (a typical Boccherini marking, whatever it may mean), where the cello duets with a solo oboe. A record, then, that in spite of some flaws the Boccherinian will want to have.

-- Stanley Sadie, Gramophone [2/1990]