CAPPELLA COLONIENSIS (1954-2004)

Recorded in: The Warehouse, London 11-13 March 1996 (Sonatas Nos 1-4 & 6), 28 March 2000 (Sonatas Nos 5 & 7) Producer(s) Nicholas Anderson Sound Engineer(s) Ben Connellan

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This present collection admirably shows the ingenious simplicity of Arne's writing, very much in the mid-eighteenth-century English pastoral school. At the beginning of 1751, when Thomas Arne published his 'Eight Overtures in 8 Parts', he had become the leading exponent of English dramatic music and the only Englishman who could offer Handel serious competition in the theatre. Arne's 'Eight Overtures' belongs to a tradition of making the instrumental introductions of vocal works available for concert use and divide into two types. Nos 1, 2,4,6,7 and 9 are examples of the older French type that was invented by Lully, was used in England from the 1680s onwards and is found in the majority of Handel's operas and oratorios. These overtures begin with dignified movements, often marked 'Largo' that have dotted rhythms, sharp dissonances to push the music along, and ornamental 'tirades' to create a sense of excitement. By contrast, overtures Nos 3 and 6 are really Italian sinfonias. This type of overture was developed in the early eighteenth century by Alessandro Scarlatti and his contemporaries, and usually consists of three movements: a bustling fast movement, a soulful slow movement and a minuet. As Arne's examples show, the Italian sinfonia was markedly more modern in musical style than the French overture. The final two overtures; 'Alfred' and 'Thomas and Sally', rarely recorded works, are also examples of the more modern Italian type.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The 37 songs in this recital, written by 27 composers – male, female, English, French, Swiss, German, Romantic, modern and contemporary – bear witness to the richness of Shakespeare’s works to which this recital is dedicated. Organised in the form of a play in five acts, including prologue and epilogue, the songs, which include several duets, are in turn cheerful and sad, light and profound, classical and jazzy – thus allowing, in Carolyn Sampson’s words, ‘a breadth of responses to these great texts’. Alongside well-known melodies, such as those by Schubert, there are musical adaptations by different composers of the same texts, as well as a contemporary reflection for the two voices by Hannah Kendall exploring the question of gender fluidity and identity through the elusive character of Rosalind from As You Like It.

After many acclaimed releases on BIS, including Album für die Frau, a collection of songs by Clara and Robert Schumann, A Soprano’s Schubertiade and Elysium, two Schubert recitals, as well as a number of themed recitals, some of which were named ‘Recording of the Month’ by MusicWeb International and ‘CD-Tipp’ by BR Klassik, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton are joined here by renowned British baritone Roderick Williams.

REVIEW:

Soprano Carolyn Sampson and baritone Roderick Williams are prolific singers who can handle almost any kind of repertory but have a strong connection to the English tradition from the Baroque to the 20th century. It would be hard to imagine better singers for this collection of Shakespeare songs, for on one hand, Shakespeare settings are about as traditional as one can get, while on the other, this is an exceptionally diverse collection. Listeners unaware that Haydn set Shakespeare should make it their business to hear Sampson in She never told her love, as soon as possible. There are settings of German Shakespeare translations by Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf, a French one by Arthur Honegger, and an entrancing English-language Fancy by Poulenc. This album represents, in short, an embarrassment of riches, and it is one of the finest Shakespeare song releases to come along in quite some time.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

CONTENTS:

• Ireland: Full fathom five
• Vaughan Williams: Dirge for Fidele
• Moeran: The Lover and his Lass
• Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Arise, "Sea Murmurs"
• Smith, J C: You spotted snakes
• Tippett: Songs for Ariel
• Arne: Under the Greenwood Tree
• Gurney: Under the greenwood tree
• Parry: Sonnet LXXXVII
• Ireland: When daffodils begin to peer
• Haydn: She Never Told Her Love, Hob. XXVIa:34
• Schubert: An Silvia, D 106
• Schubert: Ständchen 'Horch! Horch! die Lerch!', D889
• Schubert: Trinklied D888
• Schumann: Schlusslied des Narren, Op.127 No. 5
• Wolf, H: Lied des transferierten Zettel
• Cornelius: Komm herbei, Tod, Op.16 No. 3
• Frances-Hoad: Rosalind
• Poulenc: Fancy
• Britten: Fancie
• Honegger: Deux Chants d'Ariel
• Bridge: Blow, blow, thou winter wind
• Dring: Take, O Take Those Lips Away
• Dankworth: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
• Horder: Under the greenwood tree
• Coleridge-Taylor: The Willow Song
• Beach, A: Fairy Lullaby
• Williams, Roderick: Sigh no More, Ladies
• Sullivan, A: Orpheus with his Lute

“At just 9 years of age Luca had already toured the world with Libera Boys Choir. A featured soloist on Aled Jones' track Vespera and Kurt Bestors' Ave Maria he has also been invited to perform at many charity events. In 2022 Luca was Runner Up in BBC Young Chorister of The Year. He has a large following on social media and high praise from industry professionals including Katherine Jenkins, who claimed he "has a God-given voice". This debut album directed by Robert Lewis with The Hennessey Brown Music Collective includes many fresh arrangements of Luca’s favourite music.”

Arne True; Megyesi; Savaria Thomas A Arne: Overtures and Cantatas

A composer inextricably linked with London’s Covent Garden, Thomas Arne’s greatest opera, Artaxerxes, was premièred at the Theatre Royal, the predecessor of the Royal Opera House, on 2 February 1762, and remained in the Covent Garden repertory until the late 1830s – where it received a documented 111 performances before 1790. The young Mozart almost certainly attended a performance when he came to London in the mid-1760s, and Haydn was also acquainted with the work, enthusiastically exclaiming that he “had no idea we had such an opera in the English language.” The Mozartists, under the dynamic leadership of conductor and artistic director Ian Page, are leading exponents of the music of Mozart and his contemporaries. Originally called Classical Opera, the company was founded in 1997, and has received widespread international acclaim for its stylish and virtuosic period-instrument orchestra, its imaginative and innovative programming, and its ability to nurture and develop world-class young artists. Renowned for their fresh and insightful interpretations of well-known masterpieces as well as for their ability to bring rare and neglected works to light, they have mounted staged productions of many of Mozart’s operas. In 2015 the company launched MOZART 250, a ground-breaking 27-year project exploring the chronological trajectory of Mozart’s life, works and influences. Described by The Observer as “among the most audacious classical music scheduling ever”, this flagship project presents 250th anniversary performances of most of Mozart’s important works, placing them in context alongside other significant works by Mozart’s contemporaries.

‘Rule, Britannia’ is known to everybody, but almost nobody knows its original context. It was composed as a ‘Grand Ode’ to serve as finale to Thomas Arne’s Alfred. This masque – sometimes described as a serenata, an opera or (absurdly) an oratorio – was designed as a theatre entertainment but was first performed for the Prince of Wales at Cliveden in 1740. It had a long and varied history: it was revived several times in the London theatres, not always exclusively with Arne’s music (one revival was mainly to music by Charles Burney, more talented as historian than composer). The revivals took many different forms and Arne may have written something like 70 numbers for it, but only the 22 recorded here and another eight survive (they are all printed in the 1981 Musica Britannica volume). It is a patriotic tale, thinly based on history: King Alfred (of culinary notoriety) turns up in the countryside, apparently after defeat by the Danes, is reunited with his family, and plans and executes victory over the enemy. The original spoken dialogue, not included here, is by James Thomson and David Mallett.

` This recording offers the overture – a spirited three-movement piece with a slow section in Arne’s typical plaintive vein – and 18 songs, plus a couple of ensembles. Arne was a gifted theatre composer and many of the songs happily catch the mood and situation, the sad ones in particular – there is Queen Eltruda’s mournful little opening air, with its pathetic flute echoes; Prince Edward’s touching ‘Why beats my heart’, with its graceful lines and hints of the minor key, when he is reunited with his father; there is Edith’s lament for her ‘youth adorn’d with ev’ry art’, with its switch from E major to E minor as she relates her beloved’s death’ and later there are extraordinary airs for the Spirits, both in D minor – one a solemn prayer, the other using oboes to imitate weeping. Some of the quicker numbers are more ordinary, but most are inventive as well as ingeniously and often evocatively written.

Nicholas McGegan is adept at capturing the character of these pieces; his tempos are well chosen and he brings out the distinctive orchestration in those items that use wind instruments (chiefly oboes and horns, but of course trumpets on occasion). David Daniels sings Edward’s music – originally for a castrato, the famous Guadagni – in his pleasantly even and fluid countertenor, and Jamie MacDougall, an admirable stylist, phrases gracefully and projects the words clearly as Alfred – and his pianissimo singing is finely controlled in Alfred’s big central number, ‘From the dawn’. Of the two sopranos, Christine Brandes is bright and direct in manner in the music for the shepherdess Emma and in the first of the Spirit airs; Jennifer Smith’s Eltruda is done with finesse and warmth. Oh, I nearly forgot to mention ‘Rule Britannia’: it is shared between MacDougall and Smith, as King Alfred and Queen Eltruda, with trumpets and horns, and you may find the tune, as Arne wrote it – not to say the harmony and the orchestration – slightly different from what you are used to. And better, actually. Altogether a disc I very much enjoyed.'

-- Stanley Sadie, Gramophone [9/1999]