F. COUPERIN: LA SULTANNE JAY

How winning these chamber works are when played so stylishly and when the authentic textures are so transparent.

I will start this month with some instrumental music by C. P. E. Bach, expertly presented by members of Les Adieux and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi's Baroque Esprit label. First comes a set of 12 Little Pieces for two flutes, two violins and continuo, H600, and how winning they are when played so stylishly and when the authentic textures (varying in instrumentation from piece to piece) are so transparent. The following Hamburg Sonata for flute and continuo in G, H564, needs to be approached separately, for there is an awkward pitch change as it opens. A charming three-movement Duo for flute and violin (1-1598) follows, then there are two somewhat more substantial Trio Sonatas, H567 and H571 - the highlight of the programme. Both have touchingly melancholic Adagios to offset their sprightly Allegro outer movements. The collection ends most appropriately with the miniature cantata Phyllis and Thirsis (Rosmarie Hofmann and the excellent Nigel Rogers, respectively), as this features obbligatos for a pair of flutes. This division of the two vocal roles here is more convincing than in Bach's original scheme, where the soprano was expected to take both parts, more particularly as Nigel Rogers is here at his freshest and most appealing. A most rewarding programme, immaculately recorded.

-- Ivan March, Gramophone [8/1996]

MOZART: SERENADE K 203 MAIER,

Though regulated by no Grand Plan, the recording of Vivaldi's with-wind chamber works on Compact Disc progresses apace so let us take stock. Twenty-two works (RV87–108) are listed by Ryom as ''concertos for several different instruments with basso continuo'', one (RV93), with no wind instrument, is unsuited to the above ensembles. Seventeen of the remaining 21 are contained within the recordings by Petri/Holliger et al (PH) on Philips, and the London Harpsichord Ensemble (LHE) on Unicorn-Kanchana, with a few overlaps easily identified by consulting the earlier reviews. Ryom also lists five ''sonatas for two different instruments'' (RV82–86), two of which (RV84 and 86) are apt to all three groups and PH include the latter in their two-disc set.

Every item in the programme of Cologne Camerata (CC) is covered by the other recordings, both of high quality, but it is not simply a matter of 'counting noses'; PH and the LHE use modern instruments but CC use period ones, sounding about one semitone lower and giving a softer sound, emphasized by the more backward placing of the harpsichord and its replacement by a chamber organ (which the others do not use) in RV87. The three groups resolve the recurring question as to what flauto means (traverse flute or recorder?) in different ways; PH use only the latter (Michala Petri), the LHE only the former (Graham Mayger), and CC alternate the two for variety (Karl Kaiser and Michael Schneider respectively).

This is wholly friendly music, laced with occasional humour and for the most part constructed from the simplest of materials, leaving the door open to a little enhancement; the invitation is accepted by players in all three bands perhaps most frequently and effectively by those of CC—all these trimmings are probably prepared in advance, but Michala Petri's sound the most rehearsed and least 'spontaneous'. Cologne Camerata, playing with irrepressible spirit and laudable precision, have been excellently recorded in what is described as ''Vol. 1'', the booklet refers to ''Vol. 2'' whetting the appetite for further diverting deiights. Those who still baulk at the thought of 'authentic' performances will not be disappointed by the 'comparative' versions.

-- John Duarte, Gramophone [2/1990]

MONTEVERDI: VESPRO DELLA BEATA

VENETIAN MUSIC AT THE HABSBURG

FROBERGER: WORKS FOR HARPSICHO

This recording, explain the liner notes, attempts to give the listener an authentic version of what the 13th-century listener heard in a church when this anonymous play was performed, and it succeeds with panache. The combination of Gregorian chant, declamations, and vocal solos, accompanied by lute and instrumental solos, is performed by the Mittelalter-Ensemble der Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with great fervor.
What is especially unexpected and exciting to the listener is that the songs are punctuated by exclamations, cries, and laughter. For example, "Lazarus, amicus noster dormit" starts out with a solo melody on a shawm (or a similar wind instrument), which is then picked up vocally in a repetitive, almost magical fashion, with an echo-laden crescendo. The overlay of sound is mysterious and very evocative. After a soft baritone solo, the melody is recapitulated. Then there is a sudden shriek--it is quite dramatic--and the number finishes. At this point it would have been wonderful to have a libretto of sorts to be able to follow the words closely.
This artistic reconstruction of the Carmina Burana makes more serious chant music available to the listener.

HILDEGARD, PEROTIN, WOLKENSTEI

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

These are witty and deft performances, with a feeling of freedom and effortlessness, the dialogue between instruments having a natural, conversational air.

Mozart's great Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, written in Salzburg in 1779 under the impact of his recent travels in Mannheim and Paris, is one of those works that hardly ever fails in performance. This new version, the first I have heard with period instruments, characteristically sets rather quick tempos as compared with traditional ones, and initially I wondered whether it wasn't a shade light-weight, emotionally speaking: in the Andante particularly, where those wonderful crescendos of expression between the passionately duetting violin and viola seemed a shade lower-key than usual, and the climaxes at their dissolution—in increasingly tortuous music as the movement proceeds—less obviously justified.

Well, the less intense style here does in the event justify itself in a reading of the work that is clear, spirited and very natural in its handling of expression. The long musical paragraphs of the Andante are in fact beautifully judged, with much delicacy in the detail; and the first movement's lively rhythms and pointed accents, with vigorous and well-balanced tuttis, have an unusual freshness that I find very appealing. The soloists are duly athletic. Sometimes the violin playing seems a shade matter-of-fact, but there are poetic touches too even if many more from the viola player. She follows Mozart's directions, unlike many violists today (though Lionel Tertis used to), in tuning her viola up a semitone and thereby brightening its tone, so that it competes on more nearly equal terms with the violin; this also makes the music a good deal easier to play. The dialogue between instruments is in fact happily carried off, with a natural, conversational air, and the cadenzas have an appropriately improvisatory quality. Just occasionally there is an instant where the intonation seems marginal; and there are some readings in conflict with the New Mozart Edition score—the oboes down an octave in bars 242-3 of the first movement, a D natural from the solo violin instead of D flat in bar 99 of the second. The finale is deftly and wittily done, with a pleasant feeling of freedom and effortlessness.

The Concertone (the word simply means 'large concerto'—whether it refers here to the time-scale or the number of soloists I am not certain) is a much earlier piece, in a relaxed style very much akin to that of J. C. Bach's works of the sinfonia concertante type, especially in its way of drawing in other soloists (oboe, cello, a couple of violas) from time to time. I have heard performances more affectionate, and more graceful in the slow movement, but find this one as satisfying as any, all round, for its sure grasp of the style and especially its good feeling for the leisurely character of the work. Once or twice the violin playing seems a little choppy, but the oboe playing especially is of very high quality.

Altogether then, a record I would commend to anyone who likes Mozart on period instruments, particularly as the recording offers clear and wellbalanced textures. It is odd that a record so well prepared should be issued with a booklet that says virtually nothing about the Sinfonia Concertante except that the viola should be tuned up (the note is wisely anonymous, even if the translations are attributed), and which altogether omits to mention that Marilyn McDonald plays the viola.

-- Stanley Sadie, Gramophone [11/1988]
reviewing the original release, DHM 49006

NACHTMUSIQUE WITH VIOLA D'AMOR

Music with a well-refined intelligence from a forgotten Baroque master.

Now here is a name that will almost certainly be new to every collector of baroque music on CD. Lorenzo Zavateri was a Bolognese composer and one-time pupil of Giuseppe Torelli. Zavateri became elected a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica in 1717 and joined the almost equally esteemed orchestra of San Petronio in Bologna during the mid 1720s. Little of his music was published, but among that which was is his set of 12 Concerti da chiesa e da camera, Op. 1. The set was issued in 1735 and was praised by the celebrated Padre Martini for “a well-refined intelligence”.

There is less differentiation here between ‘church’ and ‘chamber’ styles than occurs in Corelli’s Op. 6, for instance, though several of Zavateri’s concertos contain illustrative or quasi-illustrative titles. Concertos Nos. 7 and 9, for example, are termed “Teatrale” – his almost exact contemporary, Locatelli, published six Introduttioni Teatrali in the same year, which are, like Zavateri’s pieces, concerti grossi in the three-movement form of the Italian opera sinfonia – while the tenth Concerto is “a Pastorale” and the twelfth “a Tempesta di mare”; the first work is perhaps rather unnecessarily subtitled “Introducione”, though via the heading Zavateri declares a cohesive purpose.

Dedicated to his pupil and patron, Count Cornelio Pepoli Musotti, the 12 concertos contain enough individual gestures and a sufficient diversity of ideas to hold our attention without difficulty. But perhaps it is those readers with a taste for stylistic pluralism, whose ears savour that Janus-like stance characteristic of vocabulary which draws upon the obsolescent and the new, who will derive the most constant pleasure from the music. There is little in the way of set formulae.

Four of the works are ripieno concertos while two others, as I have mentioned, are opera sinfonias in character and layout. The remaining six occupy a middle ground between concerto grosso and solo violin concerto – one of them, No. 10, is for two violins – and it is these which, on balance, make a deeper impression. There is frequently a contrapuntal interest in Zavateri’s concertos, sometimes an element of dazzling, if short-winded virtuosity, and at other times an affecting expressive intimacy. Like so many Italian composers of his generation and earlier, Zavateri embraces a tradition of including a 12/8 “Pastorale” movement within the set. Perhaps the tradition began with his teacher Torelli who included such a movement among the concertos of his Op. 8 (1709). Yet though not at that time published, it may have been Corelli’s well-known Christmas Concerto (Op. 6 No. 8) which set the trend. Zavateri’s “Pastorale” is an altogether more galant affair than those of his fellow Italians, airier in character, with trio episodes for two solo violins and continuo, and containing some striking key shifts. Of a completely different character is the splendidly vibrant Tempesta di mare which concludes the set. There are some telling contrasts here with rhythmically undulating passages juxtaposed with thrashing waves depicted chordally. Following a lyrical binary Adagio – the boat in calm waters – the tempest is unleashed with only modest ferocity.

Almost all is played with imagination and finesse by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under their leader and solo violinist Gottfried von der Goltz. A fascinating release and one to which I am eager to return.

-- Nicholas Anderson, Gramophone [8/1996]

BACH: VIOLONCELLO PICCOLO ANN

THE VIOLONCELLO IN THE 17TH CE