INTERMEZZO

MASS IN A-MAJOR OP. 12

This new release is a musicological overview of harps, dulcimers, and hurdy gurdies from across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Gef Lucena and David Wilkins head up this project, and are heard on most of these tracks. Some of these tracks are studio recordings which boast excellent sound quality, while some are field recordings, encapsulating the authenticity of these unique and sometimes ancient instruments. The booklet features in-depth explorations of each of these string instruments, written by experts. This release is a must-see for any string player, or for any musician interested in the history of these folk instruments.

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Holmen: Oort Cloud

" Mixed Company is the world premiere recording of a remarkable cycle of works by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (b.1932) presented by London Sinfonietta, Theatre of Voices and conductor Paul Hillier. Composed around John Dowland’s iconic Lacrimae, these seven new pieces have all been tailored to the excellent “mixed company” of Danish and English vocal and instrumental performers gathered in Copenhagen to celebrate the Danish composer in 2012."

Louis Spohr composed string quartets throughout his career, the String Quartet No. 36 being his last completed large-scale work, composed in 1857 and modelled on those of Haydn and Mozart.

The Danish composer Per Nørgård (b. 1932) finds inspiration for his outstanding percussion music in the forces of nature, eastern mysticism and exotic rhythms. In the four works on this CD we encounter a melodic side to percussion, when for instance the soloist uses a violin bow to play the vibraphone and the musical saw. Two of the works were written especially for the Colombian-born percussionist Christian Martínez, who plays here with the Esbjerg Ensemble conducted by Petter Sundkvist.

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CORELLI VARIATIONS, PIANO SONA

Those who enjoyed the London Baroque's 1985 Harmonia Mundi recording of Bach's trio sonatas needn't worry about duplication on this new BIS offering. This time violinist Richard Gwilt has transcribed six of Bach's sonatas BWV 525-530 that survive in manuscript form for organ (which scholarship has since revealed were transcriptions themselves). Also unlike the London Baroque's previous recording, Gwilt has scored no wind parts in favor of a more straightforward "classic combination" of two violins and continuo. What has not changed is the evident passion and plain joy the group still continues to bring to Bach.

A comparison of Gwilt's transcription of Sonata BWV 525 with the equally lovely though very different recent BMC offering by the Gyöngyössy-Hadady-Lakatos-Dobozy ensemble (see review Q5061) not only testifies to the versatility and durability of Bach's music, it also explains why because of those possibilities so many musicians return to it. First, the London Baroque account is performed on period violins while the G-H-L-D ensemble utilizes a modern flute and oboe. The tempos also vary, with the London Baroque favoring slightly swifter tempos throughout, particularly in the opening and closing movements. Both of these widely differing interpretations are equally captivating and offer much to enjoy; choice will depend strictly on whether you prefer the more crisp-sounding, sprightlier performance on BIS or the gentler, more pensive wind account on BMC. My advice is to not miss out on either; and while you're at it, add the sumptuously diabolical Rare Fruits Council recording on Astrée/Naïve for a trilogy of Bach trio sonata heaven!

BIS's sound is up to its usual audiophile standards. Gwilt's engaging notes are on par with his equally stylish fiddle playing and the shining performances of veteran colleagues violinist Ingrid Seifert, cellist Charles Medlam, and relative newcomer, harpsichordist Terence Charlston. A winner!
--John Greene, ClassicsToday.com

PAGANINI: Music for Violin and Guitar, Vol. 2

Concertgoers and critics alike rave about Silke Aichhorn’s entertainingly moderated concerts, and her goal is nothing less than the redefinition of the image of the harp! Active as a soloist and chamber musician, Aichhorn is one of the most sought-after and versatile harpists of her generation. Following her release featuring Eichner’s harp concertos, she now interprets for cpo three harp concertos by Johann Wilhelm Hertel, a composer regarded as one of the most important representatives of the empfindsamer Stil during the German preclassical period. His concerto oeuvre comprises some fifty solo concertos, and seventeen harpsichord concertos by him are known today. Three works – heard on this release – are assigned to the harp or harpsichord: "Concerto per la Harpa o il Cembalo concertato." The harp’s softer tone seems to make it the more suitable instrument for these charming works of brilliant virtuosity offering top-quality entertainment. Genuine enrichments of the quite compact harp repertoire are in store!

More than just the siege of a city on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, the Cretan war was an all-out war between the Muslim East and the Christian West lasting 24 years (1645-1669) involving the major players of the time: the Turkish Empire and her unquiet barbarian vassals from North Africa on one side and on the other a coalition consisting of the Republic of Venice, the Knights of Malta, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States, France, Savoy and the Hapsburg Empire. The conflict brought the two major players - Venice and the Ottomans - to their economic knees. Lastly, a recent essay by Rumanian musicologist Nicolae Gheorghita had left us feeling perplexed that lack of evidence renders almost impossible an exact reconstruction of the musical repertoires in Crete under Venetian rule. However, quite a few clues emerged which enabled us to construct "an imaginary musical fresco", meaning a journey through the sounds of the Greek and Turkish traditions combined with the Venetian school of the mid-1600s. This ideal reconciliation of cultures and arts places such eminent figures of the western traditions as Francesco Cavalli and Giovanni Legrenzi alongside anonymous bare-bones Greek and Ottoman melodies which have come down to us orally or in transcriptions by Polish aristocrat Wojciech Bobowski, aka Ali Ufki Bey, or by the Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir. It is worth remembering that without the pioneering work of these two Christian hostages, early music from the Ottoman court would today be ltitle more than a black hole.

MOZART Piano Trios: Nos. 4–6; in D, K 442 (compl. Stadler) • Kungsbacka Pn Tr • NAXOS 8.570519 (76: 42)


This may well be the shortest entry I’ve ever submitted; for assuming that my review of Volume 1 of the Kungsbacka’s Mozart piano trios appeared in the 32:5 issue, there’s little to add. The current Volume 2 completes this ensemble’s run of Mozart’s six official trios for violin, cello, and piano, filling out the disc with an additional three-movement trio cobbled together by the Abbé Maximilian Stadler from fragmentary odds and ends that were probably intended for other pieces.


To restate what I said in my previous review, “The Kungsbacka Trio is a modern-instruments ensemble, but it plays stylishly and tastefully. Translation: articulation is crisp, vibrato is minimal, tempos are spirited in allegro movements and forward moving in andante movements, open strings are not avoided, and first movement exposition repeats are taken. For those who don’t already have one or more versions of these trios in their collections and/or who are not uncompromising advocates for period instruments, the Kungsbacka Trio can be recommended for very fine playing, and Naxos’s recording, at a price that can’t be beat, is excellent.”


Now that this cycle is complete, it definitely vies for equal favor with other preferred versions by the Florestan, Parnassus, and Gryphon Trios. And at budget price, it possibly edges them out slightly. Strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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Critically acclaimed composer John Luther Adams, who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Music, offers the first recordings of three of his recent string works: two string quartets, featuring the much-lauded JACK Quartet, and a four-movement work for a choir of 48 cellos. This is stunning, beautiful, sometimes monolithic, sometimes intimate music that is in a state of constant, subtle motion.

“La grotto di Trofonio” is an opera buffa by Giovanni Paisiello, staged to celebrate the bicentenary of his death. First performed in 1785, this opera enjoyed a resounding and long-lasting success. The cavern of the philosopher-sorcerer Trofonio was well-known in ancient Greece; those who were granted to question the oracle were given two types of water to drink: one made one forget all one’s worries, the other made one remember what he had seen in the cavern. In the libretto of this opera, those who enter the cavern are transformed in their character; this artifice throws the lives of two young sisters into confusion, when their lovers accidentally enter the cavern and come out radically changed. The version here proposed is interpreted by a cast of specialists of this repertoire, which includes Domenico Colaianni, Daniela Mazzucato and Giorgio Caoduro.

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DUOS FOR CELLO AND VIOLIN • Alexander Hülshoff (vc); Friedemann Eichhorn (vn) • NAXOS 8.572188 (68:20)


GHYS AND SERVAIS Variations brillantes et concertants sur l’air “God Save the King.” LÉONARD AND SERVAIS Grand Duo de Concert No. 4 sur des motifs de l’opéra “L’Africaine.” Grand Duo de Concert No. 3. Grand Duo de Concert No. 2 sur des thèmes de Beethoven. Grand Duo de Concert No. 1 sur des airs nationaux anglais. VIEUXTEMPS AND SERVAIS Grand Duo sur des motifs de l’opéra “Les Huguenots de Meyerbeer”


The first duo in Alexander Hülshoff and Friedemann Eichhorn’s collection of fantasies written in collaboration by Adrien François Servais and violinists Joseph Ghys, Hubert Léonard, and Henri Vieuxtemps seems, in comparison to the others, almost like a warhorse; it’s been recorded twice before, by Gidon Kremer on Nonesuch 79657, Fanfare 26:5, and by Rudens Turku and Wen-Sinn Yang on Avie 2124, 31:6. After a brilliant and rather long introduction, the familiar theme appears in stately double-stops. Bruce R. Scheuneman’s booklet notes make a great deal of the equal partnership of the violin and cello, not only melodically and thematically but in virtuosity as well. In Ghys’s and Servais’s variations, in fact, both instruments engage in Paganini-like hypervirtuosic exchanges. If it’s a competition, it’s not clear who wins. Perhaps that’s because it’s not clear whether Hülshoff or Eichhorn makes the stronger impression: Just when one has done something that seemingly can’t be topped, the other tops it. Both possess electrifying staccatos, crackling with bracing energy; and both revel in the passages assigned to them. Both play with the kind of panache that undoubtedly put it across at the time of its composition. I remember the impression Ruggiero Ricci made in Bottesini’s Gran Duo Concertante, and as brilliant as that might have been, it couldn’t compare to the effect of these performances—in fact, Ricci and Francesco Petracchi (reissued on CD as CBS 72995) seemed to be punching the clock in comparison to Hülshoff and Eichhorn in this kind of repertoire. And if Rudens Turku and Wen-Sinn Yang don’t quite match the boldness of Hülshoff’s and Eichhorn’s virtuosic gestures, Kremer does, in perhaps richer recorded sound. But the collection’s the thing, and those seeking Servais’s duos get them in full force in Naxos’s collection.


The Grand Duo de Concert on L’Africaine , composed in cooperation with Léonard, sounds, if anything, even more amazing. When Eichhorn’s violin sings, it’s clear that he’s not just a shallow virtuoso, in the mold of early quasi-charlatans like Lolli and Woldemar. And the music, despite sounding like a revolving door of effects on steroids, doesn’t actually sound so circus-like as the descriptions above might suggest. Léonard’s and Servais’s Grand Duo No. 3, including two variations on what must have been an original theme, still breathes the atmosphere of the operatic fantasy.


Vieuxtemps’s and Servais’s Grand Duo opens with a surreal version of A Mighty Fortress before taking off into the main theme (from Meyerbeer). Anyone who might expect from Vieuxtemps’s contribution the same noble restraint so evident in his concertos will find that here, but whipped to a frenzied pitch of virtuoso excitement (remember that Servais took a hand in all these pieces). Still, some of Vieuxtemps’s chromatic mannerisms can be discerned through the tracery.


Léonard’s and Servais’s Second Grand Duo, this time on themes by Beethoven, returns to an excitement undampened by any obstructive view of the composer of the music being varied (or parodied). In this case, I won’t spoil the plot by mentioning some of the themes that flit by in an intoxicating phantasmagoria, but it’s as much fun as listening to a quodlibet must have been for listeners in the know centuries ago. Let’s just say that when the variations come, Léonard and Servais try, with tongues in cheeks, I’d suspect, to outdo Beethoven in a set he’d previously attempted—and there’s a hint for you. Violinists might find that these few minutes alone make the CD worth acquiring—and there’s another.


The program concludes with Léonard’s and Servais’s First Grand Duo, this time featuring variations on God Save the King (again) and Yankee Doodle (with some other familiar things thrown in for good measure). Paganini wrote a set of variations on the first and Vieuxtemps on the second. But again, here the power of two creates more than double the fun.


So consider the effect of a set of Paganini’s variations and raise that to the second or third or even fourth power (anyway, think of more than a simple addition of two parts), and you have the magnitude of the payload these pieces deliver. The engineers have … but with playing like this, who really cares, so long as you can hear the soloists reasonably well? (Actually, you can hear them very well in Naxos’s clear recorded sound, but that’s almost beside the point; would you mind sitting in the highest loge to hear Paganini?) Urgently recommended as a great deal of fun for listeners not too tightly buttoned down to enjoy it on its own terms. I don’t think there’s anything else quite like it.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

BLASCO DE NEBRA Keyboard Sonatas: Nos. 1– 5; 107–112; in d; in G • Pedro Casals (pn) • NAXOS 8.572068 (76:16)


This is the first of a projected set of three CDs devoted to the extant piano sonatas of Manuel Blasco de Nebra (1750–1784) by pianist and musicologist Pedro Casals. During his short life, Blasco de Nebra is said to have composed some 170 works, though we don’t know in what form nor for what media he wrote. According to Casals’s interesting and informative notes, only 26 keyboard sonatas and six pastorellas are known to survive. Six of the sonatas were apparently published as op. 1, a copy of which is in the Library of Congress. The remainder are known from manuscripts from the Monastery of Montserrat (Catalonia), Encarnación Monastery of Osuna (near Seville), and the Santa Clara Convent (Seville.) Blasco de Nebra was born and died in Seville and, except for two years in Madrid, where his uncle, the zarzuela composer José de Nebra had connections at court, his entire life was spent in the Andalusian city. It may be straddling the fence to call these pieces “keyboard sonatas”: the prominence of Alberti bass figuration alone would seem to argue in favor of the piano. It’s worth noting that one of the more prominent Iberian piano makers, Francisco Pérez Mirabal, flourished in Seville contemporaneously with Blasco de Nebra. Two of Mirabal’s pianos survive. He, like other Iberian makers, had the advantage of basing their instruments on the imported Florentine pianos of Cristofori and Ferrini, unlike Silbermann in Germany, who was forced to experiment on the basis of simplistic published diagrams of the Cristofori action. In any case, it’s obvious from the persuasive performances by Casals (albeit on the modern piano) that Blasco de Nebra’s sonatas are well crafted, often quite beautiful, and never less than effective.


Without being derivative, these pieces bring to mind the Catalan composer, Antonio Soler. Certainly the sonatas of Soler’s master, Domenico Scarlatti, seem a constant point of reference. This recording presents Blasco de Nebra’s sonatas chronologically. The earliest (Nos. 107–112, deriving from the Osuna Encarnación and Santa Clara manuscripts) are cast in single-movement, binary form, like Scarlatti’s. The latest recorded here (Nos. 1–5, from the Montserrat Abbey manuscript) preface each Allegro movement with an extended Adagio. Most of the sonatas unfold in two-part textures; their inventive motivic structure is often triadic and highly ornamented. Blasco de Nebra was active among several organists who played at the cathedral in Seville. It’s not surprising that, in the couple of sonatas that seem to effectively employ tone-painting, church bells are evoked: festal peals in Sonata No. 111, for instance, and in the Adagio of Sonata No 2, somber chimes. Casals brings a rhythmic vitality and crisp touch to his performances, appropriately achieving his varied affects with scarcely any pedal. Given his decision to present the sonatas in the order written, it will be interesting to observe Blasco de Nebra’s stylistic evolution in future releases.


The piano sound (in this case an instrument that could have used a touch-up during the recording) leaves something to be desired, possibly due to overly close microphone placement and a less than resonant space. But the playing is so good and the music so interesting that one quickly forgets the less-than-optimal technical aspects of the recording. Casals’s performances, authoritative and imbued with a love of the music, will no doubt attract greater attention to this little-known but obviously gifted composer. Recommended.


FANFARE: Patrick Rucker