BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9 • Jan Willem de Vriend, cond; Annemarie Kremer (sop); Wilke te Brummelstroete (mez); Marcel Reijans (ten); Geert Smits (bar); Consensus Vocalis; Netherlands SO • CHALLENGE CC72532 (SACD: 63:14)

Jan Willem de Vriend completes his survey of the Beethoven symphonies with this exciting new Ninth. His excellent orchestra is a modern ensemble with the addition of period brass (I presume from the sound that natural horns are employed). This cycle is the latest addition to the relatively small number of sets available in SACD multichannel sound; for that reason alone it deserves some attention.

The performance begins with a dramatic, emphatic opening with timpani pounding home the punctuation. Vriend creates excellent tension through the contrasting major and minor modes, the former theme especially poignant. Philip Herreweghe, in the Ninth included in his own compendium of the symphonies, isn’t as intensely dramatic, and his touch is lighter in the percussion. I prefer Vriend, who is closer in spirit to Paavo Järvi (RCA), though Järvi employs a brisker tempo, and his orchestra hasn’t got the punch of Vriend’s full-size outfit.

The exuberant energy of the Scherzo is manifest in this performance, and the timpanist is once again an impressive presence. Repeats are observed, and the tempo seems perfect, the Trio not too fast but still providing contrast with the Scherzo theme. Vriend allows the Adagio to take its time without any sense of drag; Herreweghe is about 30 seconds quicker but doesn’t inject quite the same level of cantabile phrasing as is heard in this new account.

The clamorous opening of the finale is fast and furious; the basses and cellos then have their say—Vriend has his cellos up front to the right, with basses behind, so this episode is especially vivid. Baritone Geert Smits has the timbre of a bass-baritone, and his delivery is heroic but never brusque. The Consensus Vocalis sounds like a medium-size choir, numerous enough to add heft to their contributions. Vriend’s Turkish March allows Marcel Reijans the space to hold forth with spirit (and breath). The double fugue is truly joyful, while the four soloists are exemplary in their subsequent quartet. Vriend guides the symphony to a triumphant close with a presto that is coherent but exhilarating.

The sound is excellent, though some may prefer an aural perspective that is closer. I initially felt that the production was bass-shy, but within this mid-hall perspective, the orchestral balance is actually truer than productions that feature a booming bass sound, and the amount of instrumental detail is also notable.

With this release, Vriend’s entire cycle is enhanced, so that I would now place it on par with that of Herreweghe on PentaTone (though this Challenge set now consists of six discs to the five of Herreweghe). Given the overall excellence of the performances and sound, I can recommend this new Ninth as worthy of even the more fully stocked Beethoven collection.

FANFARE: Christopher Abbot

Chamber music arrangements of symphonies were very common in the late 18th and early 19th century, and it is probably true that a large proportion of the people who were familiar with the symphonic repertoire at the time were so because of them. The Second Symphony is the only one for which Beethoven himself produced an arrangement, although there is evidence that his student Ferdinand Ries did the bulk of the work, with Beethoven adding the finishing touches. One of the three piano trios published under op. 1, the second announces its pretentions to the symphonic genre earlier than its siblings and has several common points with the Second Symphony that was written ten years later. The Allegretto in E flat, Hess 48, probably was one of the first works for piano trio that Beethoven wrote, dating back to the early 1790s. Its form is a short, but humorous conversation between three different instruments.

Beethoven’s primary reason for settling in Vienna in 1792 was to study with Joseph Haydn, who at the time was widely considered the greatest living composer. Beethoven’s three Piano Trios op. 1 were the first compositions that he deemed important enough to give an opus number. They were dedicated to Prince Karl Lichnowsky, a patron of Beethoven in whose house he lived for some time. According to Beethoven’s lifelong friend Ferdinand Ries, Haydn was complimentary about the set of trios. The trios combine various elements that would have been familiar to Beethoven’s contemporaries. Less familiar, however, would be the fact that the trios contain four movements rather than the three that had been traditional in this genre. Although changes from major to minor had been common in the music of previous generations, where they would normally apply to just the last chord, Beethoven employs this technique more extensively here than was probably common at that time. This recording was made using a Chris Maene Concert Grand built in 2017. This remarkable instrument combines the knowledge and materials used in modern piano building with those found in older historical instruments.

BACH 6 Partitas, BWV 825-830 • Ton Koopman (hpd) • CHALLENGE 72574 (2 CDs: 144:46)


As the excellent program notes by scholar Christoph Wolff point out, Johann Sebastian Bach was expected to establish himself as a keyboard expert for his new position in Leipzig. There were, of course, numerous ways of going about this, but he chose to issue sets of suites, a form that had already been popularized by his predecessor, Johann Kuhnau, some two decades earlier, regarding them mainly as pedagogical works since he was not really in a position to begin a secondary career as a keyboard virtuoso. In the fall of 1726 he announced their publication in the town newspaper, eventually completing the set of six in 1730. Wolff makes a persuasive case that the full set ought to have contained seven partitas, but Bach preferred six, mixing up the major and minor modes and avoiding the flat seventh (Bb) in order to achieve a complete set.


It should be remembered that these six suites are primarily meant as keyboard exercises, both for performers and potential composers who needed to learn how to write the “Praeludien, Allemanden, Couranten, Sarabanden, Giguen, Menuetten, und andere Galanterien” that the genre required. As such, they were invaluable as educational tools, regardless of whether or not one studied them with a teacher. It is also somewhat debatable if they were actually intended to be performed, as were George Fredrick Handel’s 1720 Great Suites . Of the many exercise books that musicians have struggled with over the ages on all instruments, from Rode to Czerny, live performance would be a soporific experience, though of course a recording could be used as a comparative model (which is probably why such things are done at all). For these works, however, the variety supersedes such questions. What never ceases to amaze me is the variety of ways that Bach interprets each movement of each suite. From the gentle imitation of the opening to the first partita to the powerful full-voiced dotted rhythms and complex melodic line over a meandering bass of the second section of the second partita to the fantasy-filled sweeps of the sixth (titled Toccata), there is depth and variety. This of course extends to the other movements as well. Personally, I often like to judge the performances by the various “gallantries” that Bach inserts, such as the Rondeaux and Capriccio of the second partita, the Burlesca and scherzo of the third, the Gavotta of the sixth, and the Passepied of the fifth.


Of course we have a number of excellent recordings of this set, including that by Christophe Rousset on L’Oiseau Lyre. The venerable Ton Koopman now adds his rendition to the mix, and I am pleased to say that it measures up. His tempos tend towards the more lively, and his decisive articulation and phrasing bring out some of the more subtle details of the suites, such as his pointed version of the Rondeaux from the second partita. This is not mere grinding out of repetitive sequencing, but a nicely detailed set of performances, all of which serve to highlight the multiple tasks for which these partitas were intended by their creator. If you do not have a harpsichord version in your collection already, this is one you might well include.


FANFARE: Bertil van Boer

BACH Musical Offering • Ton Koopman (hpd, cond); Amsterdam Baroque O (period instruments) • CHALLENGE 72309 (57:03)


In his notes Christoph Wolff points out that “ Musical Offering is the only instrumental work of Bach of which we have a more detailed knowledge of its origins,” which is pretty remarkable when you think about it. But we still don’t know how—or whether—Bach intended it to be performed. Of course, Bach played a version of the three-part ricercar for the king, and I’m sure he hoped that the royal flutist would play the trio sonata for his court. But I rather doubt that he expected the complete Musical Offering to be performed at public concerts. Except in the trio sonata, there is no indication of instrumentation, nor is there any indication of a performing sequence. The canons are music for connoisseurs, more suitable, perhaps, for private scrutiny than for mass entertainment. Nor do we know how Frederick reacted to this gift. Frederick was a composer himself, but his compositions show a preference for the simpler gallant manner that was ascendant. He had little patience for the old “ecclesiastical” style. In challenging “Old Bach” to write a six-part fugue on the royal subject, he was probably more interested in seeing whether it could be done than in hearing the result.


Now we take it for granted that the complete score should be performed as an entity, so it is left to the performers to determine the order and instrumentation of the numbers. Koopman has chosen to start with the three-part ricercar as a harpsichord solo, to follow it by the 10 canons, then the trio sonata, and to conclude with the six-part ricercar. His special twist is to play the six-part ricercar twice: first with the whole ensemble, and afterward as a duet for two harpsichords. Tini Mathot is the second harpsichordist. The canons are played mostly by the strings, joined by the flute in the middle group. The trio sonata, as noted, is scored for flute, violin, and continuo. Our old friend Wilbert Hazelzet does the honors on the traverso (flute); Catherine Manson is the violinist. All the enthusiasm and precision that we have come to expect from Koopman and his band are on display in these splendid performances—even in the canons, not always Bach’s most captivating inventions. This is one Offering that you ought not refuse.


FANFARE: George Chien

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Bach's St. Matthew Passion, according to the arrangement by Felix Mendelssohn dating from 1841, graces this splendid live recording. The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, with Chief Conductor Jan Willem de Vriend, has expanded it's repertoire to cover music from four centuries. The use of period instruments in the Classical repertoire gives the orchestra a distinctive and highly individual character.

This is the first volume in a complete survey of Bach’s harpsichord concertos, recorded by La Risonanza in one-to-a-part practice performance. With his Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, Bach had created the first ever harpsichord concerto. In Leipzig, the opportunity arose to continue this experiment: each week at Café Zimmermann he conducted his Collegium musicum in orchestral concerts that lasted around two hours. In the summer of 1733, he took delivery of “a new harpsichord, the like of which has not been heard before around here.” This magnificent instrument, which featured in the Zimmermann concerts, urgently called for concertos to be played by Bach himself as soloist, and even more so his sons and students. Not only in Saxony but also well beyond, Bach was considered to be the absolute authority on all things harpsichord and organ; he thus had to make his own contribution to the emerging genre of the ‘clavier concerto.’ The manuscript of his six harpsichord concertos should therefore be understood as a repertoire collection for his Collegium musicum, and as a personal manifesto.

REVIEWS:
"...Lisa Larsson and Klaus Mertens are superb, and Koopman directs with an appropratiely light touch....all round a strong recommendation for persuasive performances of Bach's too-seldom-heard early Leipzig cantatas."

Classical Music

Includes cantata(s) by Johann Sebastian Bach. Ensemble: Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Conductor: Ton Koopman.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensembles: Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Conductor: Ton Koopman.

Includes cantata(s) by Johann Sebastian Bach. Ensembles: Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Conductor: Ton Koopman.

In evaluating a Bach cantata recording, there are so many variables to consider--programming choices; quality and type of soloists; tempos and balances among soloists, orchestra, and chorus; quality of choir and orchestra; use of alternate arias (or voices for a particular aria); version of the score (where more than one exists); instrumentation (period or modern instruments; configuration of continuo); and of course, the quality of the recorded sound--that comparisons between different recordings often become more descriptions than critiques. No matter how "good" a performance is, if you don't like period instruments you won't like Herreweghe or Koopman; likewise, if a certain countertenor soloist bugs you, you'll be unlikely to enjoy a cantata in which that singer is prominently featured, no matter how wonderful the work's other movements sound. On the other hand, if you like Koopman--or Herreweghe, both of whom are the most interpretively consistent among period-instrument practitioners (Rilling fits that bill in the modern-instrument category; "periodists" Gardiner and Harnoncourt are notoriously unpredictable)--then you'll likely be pretty satisfied with most of their efforts in this repertoire.


The current volume is a reissue of Vol. 1 from Koopman's Bach cantata series launched in the mid-1990s on Erato, a series that had reached 15 volumes (12 of which were released) when the label's parent company, Warner Classics, cancelled the project. Koopman has since created his own label, Antoine Marchand (a sub-label of Challenge Classics), and promises not only to re-release the previous volumes but to finish the project with a total of 22 volumes, the last to be issued in 2006. So, if you already own the earlier Erato/Koopman discs, there's no need to buy this identical re-issue. (You will, however, be interested in Vol. 13, to be released in July, with Nos. 14 and 15 to follow later this year.)


For newcomers to the Bach-cantata canon, Koopman's series, which features a generally top-notch array of solo singers, some of the world's best Baroque instrumentalists, and a superb chorus, coupled with crisp, clearly articulated performances, richly colored orchestral timbre, and intelligently, affectingly moderated tempos and expressive effects, is a perfect place to begin. What's more, in his desire for completeness, Koopman includes alternate versions of movements for some cantatas, in this case Nos. 4 and 21, where changes to the instrumentation make distinct differences in the sound. While it's impossible to be satisfied with all the soloists all the time, those featured here are very fine. My only problem is with Barbara Schlick (who's also a favorite of Herreweghe), whose unusually quivery delivery gives a sorrowful, fragile edge to her solos that may be consistent with the texts but ultimately makes her sound nervous and strained.


As mentioned, chorus and orchestra are first rate, and Koopman manages his forces to effectively capture and deliver the many profoundly moving moments found throughout these scores--notable right from the opening Sinfonia of BWV 21, with its plaintive oboe solo setting the stage for the mood of one of Bach's most famous choruses, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, which is followed by the soprano's "sighing, weeping" aria, accompanied by the oboe's commiserating melodic commentary. The sound on these early discs is slightly bright but uniformly well-detailed and balanced. Importantly, you can approach these performances knowing that at the helm is a true Bach expert who also loves this music and is committed to bringing this economically risky project to fruition in world-class fashion. And that's something that for Bach fans certainly will warrant continued attention. Stay tuned.
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music