BACH The Art of Fugue • Sergio Vartolo (hpd); Maddalena Vartolo (hpd) • NAXOS 8.570577 (2 CDs: 102: 13)


Some recordings deserve high praise, some deserve faint praise, and some earn their fair share of ridicule. Then there is the category of those that earn your respect over time, if you have the stamina to hang in. Bach’s The Art of Fugue , BWV 1080, usually considered an intellectually “dry” work, as played on the harpsichord by Sergio Vartolo (with Maddalena Vartolo on the final two pieces for two harpsichords), won me over after a struggle. The first time through, I experienced a rash of negative judgments: the tempo was too slow, the beat was too regular, the dynamic range was too narrow (only from p to f , while the piano could cover from ppp to fff ), the soloist is an academic (and you know how they are), and there was no exhilaration by acceleration. Everything was too risk free, too free of passion. I was under the spell of the modern piano readings of Bach’s music. But after putting these discs aside for about a week, I asked myself: “If the disc is all that, why did Naxos offer it?” I concluded that I must not have been listening with both frontal lobes of my brain operating. Or, maybe the first time through I’d put too much Kirsch in the fondue for lunch, and it affected my judgment. In any event, I didn’t “get it.”


So I listened to all 102:13 of it, again. This time I realized what I’d forgotten in my prejudice. Of course, the harpsichord had a limited dynamic range with each string being plucked by a leather plectrum under uniform pressure each time its keyboard note was struck (no matter how heartily or delicately). That is one of the limiting factors of its design, which became an incentive in the development of the forte piano. As for the tempo and the rhythm, I realized these were likely a secondary concern to Bach, a champion of well-tempered tuning, in these contrapuntal but equally harmonic exercises. The metronome had not yet been developed, so there couldn’t have been exact instructions from the composer as would become the later practice. There were likely “conventions,” probably issued verbally on the signature score, as to the approximate tempo the composer recommended for each section.


In my bifurcated Oblomovian mind, I decided to concede the tempo to the performer, especially as Vartolo is a highly prolific recording artist, a regular medal winner, as well as a professor at the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna, where, in 1770, a new member—W. A. Mozart—was installed. I reasoned if there were existing instructions from Bach, or conventions that were observed concerning tempo, rubato, syncopation, etc., Vartolo (as scholar) would know them. And this time I enjoyed my listening much more. But I still wasn’t sold.


During my third trip through the Art of Fugue with Vartolo, I got so into the music I could forget about dynamic range and tempo and appreciate the gorgeous sound of the harpsichord, the skill of the Naxos recording engineers, as well as the spellbinding quality of Vartolo’s playing. I’ve taken to putting it in my CD player first thing in the morning, and (setting it on automatic repeat) letting it play all day while I am at my computer. The presentation of the music is so inevitable, the playing and recording so clean, that I’ve come to hear the clarity of the argument for original instruments, something I had thought too doctrinaire. Certainly, this music—when played on a modern piano, even by soloists who loved Bach (like Glenn Gould)—takes on a quite different mode of presentation. But I can hear the case for equally expert playing on the harpsichord.


In conclusion, I’m not too proud to climb down off my high horse and recommend this two-CD set. It has won me over by overcoming my knee-jerk reactions. If you are interested in Bach, or the fugue, or the harpsichord, or the body of work known as The Art of Fugue , I recommend this recording with high praise. Both the playing and the recording are damn fine. The lesson I’ve learned here, and hope to share with you is that in judging music, it seems best to admit your prejudices to yourself. If you can keep aware of your own preferences, education, music you exclude on specious grounds, you might discover the value of music that is new to you. As I have. Music loving ought to be inclusive. It depends on how you do it. I recommend that you Zen yourself out with Vartolo’s The Art of Fugue during a rainy weekend. You could be pleasantly surprised! And for you harpsichord players out there, you already knew all this. But isn’t it cool to see it in print?


FANFARE: Ilya Oblomov

This album explores the cello’s origins and the creative process of new music fascinate Elinor Frey. Her excellent new album, Guided by Voices, consists of six commissions for baroque cello, including three for the five-string cello. Composed by Scott Godin, Linda Catlin Smith, Ken Ueno, Isaiah Ceccarelli, Maxime McKinley and Lisa Streich, these new works played on instruments built in recent years reveal the incredible versatility and remarkable colors of the instruments which have inspired these outstanding composers. Elinor Frey plays both period and modern instruments. Her recent release on the Belgian label Passacaille, Berlin Sonatas with Lorenzo Ghielmi on fortepiano, was nominated for a Juno award for Best Classical Album, Solo & Chamber Music and won the 2015 Québec Opus Prize for Early Music album of the year. Her first Baroque album, La voce del violoncello, was praised for its “careful scholarship and brilliant layering of moods and tempos” (Toronto Star) and for the “honest, reflective beauty of her music making” (Strings). Her performance of this program was the winner of the public prize at the 2013 Utrecht Early Music Festival Fringe.

DANZAS - from Taboo to Triumph: Initially frowned upon and forbidden, then socially accepted and the height of fashion. Despite being at times banned by the authorities, their popularity was not reduced. In this "crossover" project by La Ninfea, the genres and dances meet and mix. Historical dances suddenly turn into tangos, while a tango shows itself in baroque dress -  a musical bridge spanning centuries and social conventions.

The late 17th and early 18th centuries were the Golden Age of the Recorder. Played by amateurs and professionals and admire by musical connoisseurs, the recorder was everywhere. From Italy to England, the greatest composers of the day were writing hundreds of masterworks to meet the public's demand! Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, a scrappy group of colonists were carving a new nation out of the wilderness... But where were the recorders? It is one of the great ironies of the recorder's long history, that despite being ubiquitous in nearly every American public music school program, few American composers ever explored writing for it. In order to set this egregious state of affairs to right, Michala Petri, the first Lady of the Recorder, invited four American composers to make their own discovery of just what an Old World Recorder can do! For the newest installment of her ground-breaking Concerto Project, four works have been specially commissioned to showcase the sound of the modern recorder, including the late Steven Stucky's thoroughly contemporary Etudes, Roberto Sierra's Latin-tinged Prelude, Habanera and Perpetual Motion, Harpsichord virtuoso Antony Newman's Neo-Baroque Concerto for recorder, harpsichord & strings, and Sean Hickey's boldly-wrought A Pacifying Weapon.

"Soler's distinctive personality is stamped all over [these quintets]. Schrader has recorded two volumes of [Soler's] sonatas for Cedille Records, and he brings the same digital skill and musical discrimination to these quintets. He leads a quartet that uses mid--to late--eighteenth century original instruments, in performances that are lively, tasteful, and finely balanced. The ensemble is ideally recorded." (Fanfare)

"The pleasures of discovering this unfamiliar music are greatly enhanced by the performances." (Chicago Tribune)

Captivating and quirky, the quintets for keyboard and strings of Spanish composer Padre Antonio Soler were rare, even in the heyday of LP recordings. Now they are available for the first time on compact disc.

The term used to describe the epoch in which the works brought together on this album were composed is a matter of dispute. Did it come before the period of Viennese classicism, which means that it represents "pre-Classicism?" Or is it part of this period, that is, "Early Classicism?" The Austrian musicologist Rudolf Flotzinger came up with a pithy formulation for this phase of music history, terming it "the epoch between the epochs," which means that it is no longer Baroque and not yet Classicism. During this period, in the middle of the eighteenth century and in the age of Empress Maria Theresa, the genres of instrumental ensemble music continuing even today to dominate the concert repertoire were developed - including the "clavier concerto," which was performed in equal measure on the organ, on the harpsichord, and later on the pianoforte. The designation "clavier" current at that time merely generally referred to an instrument with claves (keys). A collection of clavier concertos extant in the Studies Library in Ptuj (Pettau), Slovenia, preserves the compositions recorded here in manuscript form. The harpsichordist Michael Hell, along with the Neue Hofkapelle Graz, led by him and Lucia Froihofer, performs these exciting works. Two highly outstanding instruments were available to Michael Hell for this recording: the harpsichord built by Johann Leydecker in Vienna in 1755, now freshly restored, and it's copy built by Martin Pühringer in 2017. These instruments enable listeners to become acquainted with two instruments forming a perfect match for this repertoire: on an extremely well-preserved original instrument and on a copy that in it's way is tonally just as suitable - after all, even during the time of it's composition the music was performed on new instruments. The Ptuj collection shows how fragile and incomplete our knowledge of the musical practice from "the epoch between the epochs" really is. The transmitted manuscripts, above all the extant concertos by Wagenseil, document the variety of performance options, broad compositional palette, and widespread dissemination of music for keyboard instruments.

Vienna in the second half of the 17th century, under the rule of Emperor Leopold I, was a significant center of musical life-a place where various styles and influences intersected, distinguished by it's own traditions and performance practices. The same was true for harpsichord music: composers working under the auspices of the imperial court supported and inspired each other, which resulted in a large number of surviving works preserved in libraries such as those in Leipzig, Berlin, and New York. The album includes both single-movement and multi-movement compositions that share a virtuosic character, highlighting the exceptional talent of the renowned harpsichordists of the era. Special attention should be given to the artist's own transcription of an unpublished and previously unrecorded suite by Biber, which is the result of Agata Meissner's own research work. The artist is affiliated with the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and divides her attention between performing early music and caring for historical instruments. Three of these instruments were used on this album, specifically chosen to emphasize the characteristics unique to the works of each composer. The album transports listeners to an era of fervent rhetoric and emotions, contained within the bounds of courtly elegance.

Maurice Greene (1696-1755), organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; Composer and Organist to the Chapel Royal; Master of the King’s Musick. Maurice Greene, described contemporarily (and he was a near-exact contemporary of Handel) as the leading English-born musician of his generation. And yet, today’s audiences have little experience listening to his music, especially his instrumental works. The truth is, his music is not better than Handel, it’s not as good as Handel, but it sounds like Handel at his most ingratiatingly English. If it’s not as melodically entrancing, it definitely captures the appeal of bright “happy” harmony and ear-catching melody, along with the character of both the gentle, verdant countryside and the stately court ceremony. In short, if you like the orchestral Handel, or the concerto grosso Handel, you’ll definitely enjoy the overtures presented here, in vibrant, clearly detailed sound, stylishly performed by Garry Clarke’s Chicago-based period-instrument ensemble Baroque Band.

This group can play notes with the best baroque bands, but throughout the six Overtures in Seven Parts (strings, plus harpsichord, flute, and oboe) and the two additional overtures (from the opera Phoebe and from Greene’s Ode to St. Cecilia’s Day) these musicians and their director show particular and welcome concern for expressive nuance and articulation that gives the performances a dynamic presence that’s far more satisfying to listeners than renditions that may be “proper” but fall far short of demanding a repeat.

The program’s producers opted to supplement/complement the recital with three selections from Greene’s Lessons for the Harpsichord, performed with his usual panache and absolute stylistic authority by David Schrader. My only suggestion would have been to intersperse the solo harpsichord works among the overtures rather than group them in one block–but having these pieces on the same disc as the orchestral works makes for nice variety as well as giving listeners exposure to another area of Greene’s rarely-heard music. I looked everywhere for information about Schrader’s harpsichord–an instrument whose disposition makes an impressive sound, but also has a certain character that organists and early-music keyboardists know can add a dimension to the music and the performance that goes beyond the mere designation “harpsichord” or “organ”. Whatever its provenance, Schrader’s instrument has a very pleasing, intimate quality, timbrally on the bright side and evenly voiced across registers.

And whatever may have prompted the producers and players on this recording to make a program of Maurice Greene’s instrumental music–the vast majority of the existing CD catalog contains choral works–we baroque music lovers can do no less than celebrate and enjoy the chance to hear–and hear again–these undeservedly obscure solo and orchestral pieces, most of them entirely new to the catalog. Strongly recommended.

– David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Like his contemporary Louis Couperin, Johann Jacob Froberger preferred to let his music speak for itself. He left no known treatises to clue the interpreter one way or the other as to interpretation, save for the usual dance markings in the suites themselves. Once in a rare while he'll title a movement programmatically, alluding to an extramusical subject (such as in the Allemande of Suite III here subtitled "Wasserfall" or waterfall); but otherwise, the performer is left to freely interpret within the stylistic keyboard parameters of the time. For the less imaginative performer this can be stultifying. For the adventurous one however, the rich variety of Froberger's ideas can bring great joy.

On this new two-CD set from CPO, harpsichordist Ludger Rèmy is thankfully up to the task. He offers the debut recording of Froberger's complete autograph Strasbourg Manuscript, an amazing collection of 14 keyboard suites brimming with fine ideas which was discovered in 1675, eight years after its composer's death. How youthful and exuberant these works are! And how pensive and introspective they can become. The scope and variety of Froberger's imagination places him on par with Rameau, the Couperins, Frescobaldi, and d'Anglebert in their prime. In Germany certainly, he had no peer before J.S. Bach. Listen to the marvelous Gigue in Suite XII, for instance. Rèmy's pointed contrapuntal voice-leading may make the piece impossible to dance to--it is, after all, a stylization--yet it's musically fascinating, a real treat for the ear. In the Allemande of Suite IV, Rèmy treats each run as if it were a new beginning; a fresh start in a series of fresh starts that ends up completeing the piece. The simple minute-long Courante in Suite X is a model of dignity undermined, with it's cocky twists and flourishes humorously interupting the march. This set is loaded with similarly brilliant inventive moments.

CPO's sound is excellent; Rèmy's harpsichord has sufficient weight, yet sparkles gracefully. His fascinating, personal notes are appropriately suited to the diverse interpretive nature of the program. Since this is the only recording of these pieces, there is no comparison. However, for those inclined to further their enjoyment of Froberger, I heartily recommend last year's "Ou L'intranquillité" by longstanding Froberger champion Blandine Verlet (Astree Naive), as well as a much older, transcendental program performed by Enrico Baiano (Symphonia). Like these, this recording could not be recommended more highly!
--John Greene, ClassicsToday.com

A beautiful set of the great William Byrd's harpsichord music, well-played on four excellent instruments.

My Lady Nevells Booke is a collection of 42 pieces for keyboard by William Byrd. It seems that it was compiled for, Elizabeth Bacon, the third wife of Sir Henry Nevell but there is some uncertainty surrounding this attribution. This luxurious book, bound in leather and decorated with gold, contains one of the largest groups of keyboard works by Byrd. It includes some pieces that are found only in this book and which appear to have been composed especially for this collection.

While many recordings of Byrd’s keyboard music exist, there seems to be no other complete set of the works in this book. There is one exception, of course, in the shape of Davitt Moroney’s extraordinary Complete Keyboard Music on Hyperion. In addition to this being a full recording of the collection, the set benefits from the use of four outstanding instruments by Keith Hill. They are a lautenwerk (or lute-harpsichord), which is used on the first piece of the set, as well as a dozen others; an Italian single manual harpsichord; and two Flemish double-manual Ruckers copies.

It has become somewhat trendy to record English keyboard music on multiple instruments. Moroney’s set includes several harpsichords, muselar virginal, clavichord, chamber organ, and organ. This gives a more varied range of colours than a single instrument is capable of delivering, and, in most cases, better represents the variety of instruments used at the time. We can contrast this with Bach’s music, where the harpsichord was the norm - though Bach probably played a clavichord at home, and much of his music sounds excellent on that instrument. English music of the kind found in My Lady Nevells Booke was played on a variety of instruments. Recordings like this therefore have the advantage not only of presenting excellent music, but also of providing a more “authentic” experience. This is how listeners might well have heard the music. Of course, they would never have heard all three-and-three-quarter hours of this music in one sitting.

As for the music itself, William Byrd’s keyboard music is both idiomatic of his time, and unique. The very first work in this set, My Ladye Nevels Grownde, played on lautenwerk, is a French-like work with broken chords and attractive melodies. Farr plays this with subtlety and detachment, letting the music come through. The lautenwerk fits this piece very well, as it does most of the others where it is used. Another very attractive ground, Hughe Ashtons Grownde, sounds almost like Couperin with its ornamentation and style brisé. The Italian harpsichord used gives it a beautiful, almost other-worldly sound. This piece is slow and introspective, and, again, the combination of music, performer and instrument is nearly perfect.

Many of Byrd’s keyboard pieces are combinations of galliards and pavans. These two-part works feature a first movement, the pavan, which is slow and melodic, much like a saraband. The second part is much more lively and rhythmic. Thematically related, the pavans are generally longer than the galliards, and one can imagine how people would dance to these types of music, though harpsichord pieces were more for simply playing than for accompanying dancers. Each pavan/galliard set is played here on a single instrument, with the instruments changing from one set to the next. Listening to just the pavans and galliards gives an excellent introduction to Byrd’s music, and highlights the varied colours and tones available from the four instruments used here.

While Byrd did not write suites, as the French or Germans did, he did produce some pieces that are relatively long in comparison. Several pieces go over the eight- or nine-minute mark, including the excellent Have With Yow to Walsingame, a set of twenty-two variations. The performance here is understated, and exploits every possible effect of the Colmar Ruckers copy on which it is played.

So we have here an exemplary recording of great music; Byrd was arguably England's greatest composer of music for the keyboard. Beautiful instruments are deployed and the sounds of all four are luscious. The sessions took place in a fine acoustics with a hint too much reverb, but otherwise the instruments can be heard in all their splendour. The picture is completed by sensitive and distinctive playing. Elizabeth Farr is an excellent performer and seems perfectly suited to this music. I regret to say that I was unfamiliar with her before hearing this set.

If you do not know William Byrd’s keyboard music, you have no excuse now. This is undoubtedly the best collection available for its price - thank you, Naxos. If you are familiar with this music, you’ll certainly want this 3 CD box. Not only is it well-played and on beautiful instruments, but it contains all the works from Lady Nevells Booke, the only such set available right now. Trust me; you simply can’t go wrong with this.

-- Kirk McElhearn, MusicWeb International

The initial installment of the Clavier-ubung, Bach's first published opus. The most complete recording of the Bach Partitas, on 3 CDs, with all the repeats played. Recorded on a state-of-the-art replica of a German-style harpsichord from 1709. Latest release in Musica Omnia's complete recording of Bach's solo music for harpsichord performed by one of the leading specialists in this core repertoire. Booklet essay by Peter Watchorn, providing detailed background and musical analysis.

There are many reasons to consider Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787) one of history's most unique musicians. He was a gambist, a player of an instrument long associated with an aristocracy that was then at the height of it's decadence. But today he would be labelled "avantgarde" as one who embraced the newest musical styles and indeed genres, playing a key role in the development of the symphony. This album opens with the Symphony in C from his Opus 10 set of six symphonies. Featuring an instrumentation of two oboes, two horns, two violins, viola and basso, the score has all the hallmarks of the era's symphonic music. Abel's only vocal work of note is the aria "Frena le belle" which he contributed to the pastiche opera Sifare. So inspiring is the music, it is regrettable that Abel did not find greater repute in the vocal repertoire. Abel's updated catalogue (AbelWV, publ. Gunter von Zadow, 2023) includes 420 works, of which 29 are concertos for solo instruments. These follow the typical pattern, with three movements (first and third played fast in the home key, the second more slowly in a separate albeit related key) starting and ending in orchestral ritornellos, which are also interposed between each solo. That notwithstanding, the Flute Concerto in E minor has a very particular structure consisting of three movements all in minor keys. The viola section was reconstructed by Wolfgang Kostujak. The Harpsichord Concerto in D Guntersberg, 2022) derives from a manuscript produced by two unidentified copyists. This score, bearing an Italian title without reference to the pianoforte, suggests it was composed while Abel was still in Germany. Of the numerous concertos Abel himself performed as solo gambist during his life in London, tragically, none remain. The two on this album (Guntersberg) therefore merit some explanation. The Concerto in A comes to us from an unfinished manuscript by an unknown copyist, with no mention of the work's composer, but a comprehensive analysis of the music has led Thomas Fritzsch to attribute it to Abel. Kostujak has reconstructed the parts for first and second violins, viola, and a few passages for basso. The Concerto in G is none other than the Cello Concerto in B flat, in turn the same as the Flute Concerto in C. Such repurposing of works is not exceptional in Abel's catalogue, and a detailed analysis provides ample evidence that this was intended for viola da gamba in the original version. Other information: - Booklet in English contains liner notes by the director, Alejandro Marias, and profiles of the soloists and the ensemble - The Spanish liner notes are available for download at www. Brilliantclassics. com

D’ANGLEBERT Harpsichord Suites: No. 1 in G; No. 2 in g; No. 3 in d; No. 4 in D • Elizabeth Farr (hpd) (period instruments) • NAXOS 8.570472 (2 CDs: 134:26)


Jean-Henry D’Anglebert (1629–1691) published only one book of his works, all of it for keyboard instruments, in 1689. It quickly became popular, appearing in a second, probably unauthorized edition, engraved in Amsterdam. Aside from the four suites that Farr has recorded here, it contained 15 dance transcriptions from Lully’s operas, four other transcriptions of anonymous origin, five fugues for organ on the same curiously angular subject, a Quatuor sur le Kyrie for organ, and a treatise on basso continuo. Though the composer wrote in his preface that he hoped to furnish at some future date existing works in other keys, they never found their way into print. More music written by D’Anglebert, however, has turned up in an autograph manuscript entitled Rés 89ter . It is believed to have been written largely in the composer’s hand, and includes 76 pieces, 54 of which are his transcriptions of lute music. Nine are earlier versions of his published works; four in C Major, were possibly meant for a second book; while the rest are pieces by Chambonnieres, Louis Couperin, Marin and Richard Marais.


So what Naxos and Farr have provided here is all of D’Anglebert’s original, extant, and known music for harpsichord, minus the four pieces in C Major. It is almost uniformly of substantial quality, favoring polyphonic mastery and fanciful invention in a lute style brisé over the richer vertical textures and descriptive pieces of other, later French Baroque musicians. It also possesses an expressively melancholy intimacy that brings to mind at times François Couperin.


There are other links to Couperin le Grand, as well. The most important for our purposes was their mutual insistence upon notational faithfulness in performance, without changes to tempo, rhythm, or further ornamentation. Couperin wrote as much in the Preface to his first volume: “I have already added all the necessary ornaments, and I have observed the correct vertical alignment of the notes.” James R. Anthony, in turn, remarked about D’Anglebert’s music in his French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau that “the music is extremely travaillée ,” or worked up in a very detailed fashion. Just how worked up it is can be judged by D’Anglebert’s preface that provided an ornament table with 29 symbols, including some he invented, and many that he employed frequently throughout these pieces. (A copy of this table in Bach’s handwriting survives, indicating that he probably knew D’Anglebert’s work.)


Music as elaborate as this, with its rhetorical flourishes and pauses, could easily become mired in particulars. However, that’s not the case on this recording. Farr is very careful not to lose the forward pulse of the music while phrasing appropriately, as the Allemande in the G-Minor Suite illustrates. Nor does this force her into hectic tempos or rhythmic stiffness. The Courante II in G Minor, for example, shows how she can sustain an almost majestically gliding sense of movement in a piece played on the slow side of adagio (66 bps). Conversely, the Gigue I from the G Major Suite is a fast moderato (116 bps) treated with exceptional metrical flexibility, yet never loses its core dance-like element. It is this knife’s edge balance between rigidity and freeness, clarity of ornamentation and momentum, as much as it is a pursuit of clarity and loving sculpted phrasing that defines Farr’s performance on this release. She does a marvelous job, aided and abetted by a pair of fine instruments crafted by Keith Hill: a fine double manual harpsichord after François Blanchet, and a delicate lute harpsichord created using the description found in Adlung’s posthumously published Musica Mechanica Organoedi (1768).


Though each of these suites has been recorded by one or more harpsichordists other than Farr, I can find no instances of all four available in a single, current release. Byron Schenkman is both vital and distinguished on Centaur 2435, offering the Second Suite and excerpts from both other suites and the lute transcriptions. Céline Frisch is stylish if slightly less relaxed than Farr in the First Suite (minus the Gavotte and Minuet) and the Second on Alpha 74. She has the advantage of offering all five of the fugues, played on the organ, as well as several of the Lully transcriptions and the originals, performed by Café Zimmerman, of which Frisch is a founding member. Neither the Third nor the Fourth Suite is included, however. Barbara Maria Willi offers the First, Third, and Fourth Suites on Musicaphon 56827 (which I have not heard), but foregoes the Second. This makes the current set recommendable even if it weren’t such a delight to hear—which, fortunately, it is.


It only remains to note that the sound on this recording is bright but close, with none of the mechanism noise or over-reverberant hall sounds that sometimes bedevil harpsichord albums. Farr supplies excellent and lengthy notes focusing on the music, while Hill offers some background on both D’Anglebert’s own harpsichord, the instruments we hear, and the practice of ravalement , adding wood to extend either the treble and/or bass of an older instrument.


Full praise to Farr and Naxos for the good they’ve wrought here. Get this if you enjoy French Baroque harpsichord music.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Bach's French Suites are pieces that underwent many revisions. Unlike Bach's Partitas, which were published and therefore frozen in their state at the time of publication, the French Suites were didactic pieces, with many variants. Some early versions appear in the 1722 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, which contains two full suites (BWV 815 and 816) together with parts of the first two suites. Peter Watchorn discusses how Bach used these suites for teaching in his interesting liner-notes. These take the form of an imaginary interview with Johann Sebastian Bach.

The first thing that strikes the listener is the clear, rich sound of the harpsichord, a Zuckerman copy of a Christian Vater instrument from 1738. Not only does this harpsichord offer an extremely balanced sound from the low end to the treble, but the recording itself enhances the musicality of the instrument. It sounds warm and full, without the sometimes harsh high end that can be tiring to listen to. Also, it is worth noting that Watchorn uses Bradley Lehman's tuning scheme, described here.

Watchorn's performances here are delightful. His playing ranges from dainty to powerful according to the needs of each specific movement. He takes full advantage of the wide spectrum of sounds his harpsichord can voice, offering tasteful ornamentation and subtle accents when desirable.

One thing that Watchorn does here that sets this recording apart from others involves interpolating preludes into those suites that lack a prelude. He has restored the prelude to the 4th suite, and plays other preludes before the suites that do not contain any. His reasoning, laid out in the liner-notes, is in part due to the fact that Bach and his sons would "improvise" preludes when playing these suites. To this end, he uses preludes from a variety of sources: The Well-Tempered Clavier, other uncollected preludes, and even BWV 999, a prelude that Bach wrote for the lute, and which is well-known.

I am very familiar with the French Suites, having long appreciated these beautiful works. Adding preludes to them is interesting, but when one has listened to them without these preludes for so long, it can be jarring to hear them with what seem like "intruders", especially those preludes that are familiar from The Well-Tempered Clavier, or the prelude for lute. I admire the research that has gone into this choice, but I will choose to listen to the French Suites without these additional movements. It is like Bach's Art of Fugue. For a long time, it was thought that the unfinished fugue was the final part of the work; it certainly sounds like a summation of the rest of the fugues, and its ending in suspension is a fitting ending for the entire work. But musicologists have shown us that its position in the work was much earlier. Nevertheless, I simply cannot listen to it in its proper position.

This set also contains the twenty "Little Preludes", other didactic works from the Clavierbüchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. Among these works, Watchorn "completed" the prelude BWV 932, which existed as a fragment. I find the Little Preludes interesting, but they certainly don't stand up to the French Suites. These are not works I return to often, though Watchorn's recordings are up to the same standards as the French Suites.

To sum up, this is a fine recording of the French Suites, with the odd aspect of the additional preludes. It is up to the listener to decide whether or not he or she wishes to hear the suites in this manner. Given the quality of the performances and especially the excellent recording, this set is among the best harpsichord recordings of these works.

-- Kirk McElhearn, MusicWeb International

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



It's rare to experience the level of artistic rapport heard on this recording from [Petri and Esfahani]… In Petri's capable hands, the recorder becomes a medium through which she conveys a more vocal interpretation of thematic material than ever a violin could… Esfahani crafts the most imaginative and engaging accompaniments and repartee I have ever heard.

– Gramophone Magazine

Petri and Esfahani's is an invigorating ensemble effort, with each sparking off the other.

– BBC Music Magazine

Arcangelo Corelli was "world famous" even in the world of his day. Copies of Corelli's works appeared in St. Petersburg as well as in Constantinople, Stockholm and even in America, where Thomas Jefferson spoke of being charmed completely by Corelli's music.

Despite its popularity only a handful of his original manuscripts exist today and the Violin Sonatas Op. 5 have a place of honor. The pieces on this album were drawn from the second half of Op. 5 and in the original edition of 1700, published as "Parte seconda: Preludii, Allemande, Correnti, Sarabande, Gavotte, e Follia." Baroque sonatas having been inspired by dances, and playable on violin and harpsichord or ona variety of instruments, in this case, recorder and harpsichord.

The easy-held nature of the sonatas allows great freedom for ornamentation and improvisation, which Michala Petri and Mahan Esfahani savor with pleasure.