Pieter-Jan Belder
16 products
Dandrieu: 3 Books of Pièces de Clavecin / Belder
While Dandrieu’s early harpsichord pieces were written in the shadow of 17th-century composers, the three books published between 1724 and 1735 demonstrate a radically new direction for the composer. Such a shift can be attributed to changing tastes: harpsichord music as early as the last decade of the previous century shows a gradual distancing from many techniques that were primarily associated with the lute. Dandrieu, like most musicians, probably spent much of his earlier life as a teacher and would have been well aware of the abilities and tastes of those for whom the suites were written. They retain a naïve simplicity that is often lacking elsewhere. Nothing is too complicated: ornamentation is straightforward, textures tend towards two-part writing, and figuration always falls comfortably under the hand.
The Premier livre finishes with what Dandrieu refers to as ‘a suite in its own right’ of ten tableaux: Les Charactères de la Guerre. It demonstrates Dandrieu’s propensity to revise earlier and possibly popular works to suit new media. The tableaux follow a tradition among composers for depicting battle scenes. The tradition continued in France until late into the 18th century with Claude-Bénigne Balbastre’s 1792 appeal to the revolutionaries in Marche des Marseillois.
C.P.E. Bach: Sonaten fur Kenner und Liebhaber / Pieter-Jan Belder
Emanuel composed in almost every genre except opera, but keyboard music is without doubt the most consistent thread running throughout his career, with more than 300 works written for this medium alone. Spread over five CDs, this release is dedicated to the six groups of pieces together described as 'für Kenner und Liebhaber' ('for connoisseur and amateur'), his most ambitious publishing venture ever. The collections show a marked difference in style compared to many of his other compositions for keyboard that were strictly leveled at the popular, amateur-intended market: in addition to examples of the rondo, a form then in vogue, we encounter audacious sequences of modulations, an ever-increasing amount of motivic treatment and such styles as the free fantasy -- where Emanuel is at his most modern, the music here often containing no bar lines and demonstrating capriciousness of character through its constant switches between extremely fast passagework, uncertainty of direction and calmness.
Written for clavichord and harpsichord, these adventurous, highly engaging works are here performed with aplomb by Dutch keyboardist and period performance expert Pieter-Jan Belder. Belder has made many recordings for Brilliant Classics over the years; regarding his recent study of Domenico Scarlatti's Sonatas (93546), Fanfare magazine commented, '...his playing is never less than alive, fresh sounding, and thoroughly engaged in the music's acrobatics and gymnastics...very strongly recommended.'
Other information:
- New recording (2012--2013) played on fortepiano and clavichord.
- Contains notes on the music and an artist biography.
- Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the most famous son of the great Johann Sebastian, created his own individual style, in which freedom of expression was the keyword. This substantial collection of keyboard works, "Für Kenner und Liebhaber"(for connoisseur and amateur) contains some of his most audacious compositions, in which frequent and abrupt mood changes, improvisatory and declamatory passages without bar lines and wildly digressing modulations are the stylistic landmarks.
- Pieter Jan Belder is one of the most respected and esteemed keyboard players of today. His immense discography for Brilliant Classics bears witness of a highly skilled and communicative musician, with a deep and innate understanding of the style and performance practice of the Baroque and Classical Period.
- A perfect preparation of the C.P.E. Bach year 2014!
Bach: Preussische Und Württembergische Sonaten
Scarlatti: Complete Sonatas, Vol. 9 / Belder
Dandrieu: Complete Violin and Trio Sonatas, Les Trois Livres
Scarlatti: Complete Sonatas, Vol. 11 / Belder
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Vol. 5
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Vol. 7 / Belder
Now into its seventh volume, Pieter-Jan Belder’s series continues to uncover more works from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. In this volume he turns his attention to the works of father and son Giles and Richard Farnaby, William Byrd, and selected anonymous works. The book and its manuscripts provide us with an insight into Elizabethan and early Jacobean socio-cultural life. After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 by Henry VIII followed by Mary Tudor’s blood-soaked crackdown, it was clear that being a Protestant in Tudor England was risky business. Once Queen Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, she established a moderate form of Protestantism and halted the campaign of religious persecution. But the damage was already done, and many composers decided to steer clear of religion altogether and focus their efforts on secular music. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is a vital record of such works. Compiled in the late 1700s, the book today resides in a dedicated museum in Cambridge. The first section of this release surveys Giles Farnaby’s musical output. Bony Sweet Robin is a setting of a popular Renaissance tune and Sir Walter Raleigh once in a letter to Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester wrote that Dudley was in the Queen’s favor, describing him as ‘her Sweet Robin’. This graceful arrangement is Continental in its nature and similar to the Italian madrigal, with a conjunct and cantabile melody line and through-composed structure. As for Richard Farnaby, the four pieces recorded here are all that survives of his output. Nobodyes jig is his best-known work; a playful dance which requires a skilled performer to successfully execute the fast-paced polyphonic music. The final part features works by Byrd as well as anonymous works including almans, pavans, and keyboard arrangements of lute pieces and popular ballads.
Soler: Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 4
Byrd: My Ladye Nevells Booke / Pieter-Jan Belder
The only complete available recording of a landmark in Elizabethan keyboard music. With a huge catalogue of Brilliant Classics recordings to his credit, Pieter-Jan Belder has won particular praise for his ambitious project to record the complete Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), a treasury of English keyboard music from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean era. Now he focuses his attention on the greatest English composer of that age, with a volume dedicated to William Byrd, and to his largest single collection of music for the keyboard.
My Ladye Nevells Booke embraces the most popular genres of its day. Its contents are typical fare for English Renaissance composers: dances, variation sets, marches, contrapuntal fantasies and programmatic pieces, and the repertory comes from a period beginning in the mid 1560s. Byrd makes each of these genres his own with consummate ingenuity; the variety and the beauty of the collection as a whole rewards players and listeners alike. The CD booklet contains an extensive essay on My Ladye Nevells Booke by Jon Baxendale, who is co-editor of the latest edition of the score.
J.S. Bach: Harpsichord Concertos / Musica Amphion, Yamagata, Belder, Gómez
J.S. Bach: Pieces for Harpsichord / Belder
Over a career spanning more than 30 years, the Dutch harpsichordist and conductor Pieter-Jan Belder has become renowned as a Bach interpreter with his surveys in concert and on record of the keyboard and orchestral masterpieces such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos and no fewer than three recordings of the Goldberg Variations. On this new album, recorded in 2020 and 2021 on a modern Titus Crijnen copy of a Ruckers model, Pieter-Jan Belder turns to the overlooked corners of Bach’s early writing for the harpsichord. These include standalone fugues, fantasias and suites based on themes by contemporary composers such as Reincken and Albinoni. Nevertheless, there is no sense of routine or technical exercise about them. The pieces here are almost all extrovert, playing to the strengths of the young Bach as a performer as well as composer, and already demonstrating that confidence which would go on to mark his mature compositions.
An appreciation of French flair is discernible in the F minor Suite BWV823 and elsewhere, but the dominant influence is the keyboard writing of Girolamo Frescobaldi, whose toccatas and canzonas were studied by Bach from an early age. The better-known pieces here include the sober and songful Aria variata BWV989 with its courtly French theme, and the E flat Prelude, Fugue and Allegro originally written for lute, but which also finds a happy home on the harpsichord. The most famous but also most uncharacteristic piece is the mysterious Capriccio ‘on the departure of a beloved brother’ which appears to be a work of Bach’s late teenage years, though no definite corroborative proof of its commission or purpose has yet come to light. Rather, it seems unique in Bach’s output as a humorous parody of styles and emotions.
Dandrieu: Premier livre de Pieces d'Orgue / Belder
Dandrieu’s Premier Livre de Pièces d’Orgue was printed a year after the composer died in 1738. It contains six suites of pieces in differing church tones; each followed by six versets suitable for performance under the canticle Magnificat. While the Magnificat verses have a logical sequence; the other movements in the suites are somewhat haphazardly planned. Even setting aside the Pascal hymn in the Premier Suite; the remaining pieces have no apparent order; perhaps reflecting a desire to make the publication as generally useful as possible. The first suite’s two fugues are the only cantus firmus pieces in the collection and are based on the hymn Ave Maris Stella and the Pascal proclamation Exultet coelum laudibus (CD 1: 3 and 4). Like the remaining fugues; which are independent; the style is serious: each is marked Majestueusement [sic] and follows the prescriptions of several composers’ prefaces from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. While no fugues from this epoch are as carefully crafted as those of the Rouennais organist Jehan Titelouze (Paris; 1623 and 1626); their placing within organised organ masses and hymns; often as the second verset of a Kyrie; Gloria or hymn; demonstrates an underlying association between genre and rhetoric. We see similar associations with the opening movements of each Magnificat set; but they work on two levels. They are austere and reserved solely for a plein jeu combination of stops: foundation stops from 16 feet to both mixtures but without reeds. According to André Raison they are to be played solemnly with absolute finger legato. A second rhetorical association is the link between registration and text. It has been mentioned that fugues were often used as the second verse of hymns and in mass sections; and a similar association between a plein jeu and the first Kyrie; Gloria or Sanctus; or the first verse of a psalm or canticle exists in nearly every organ composer’s publication until late into the 18th century. This is not by accident since associating sounds and text would help guide congregants – many of whom were neither literate nor conversant with Latin – through the complexities of the ceremony. Indeed; such an association is well within the ceremonials’ inclusive philosophies. Several commentators associate plein jeu pieces with Titelouze; and while the registration provides a link with the north European school of organ playing; particularly of such composers from Flanders and the Spanish Netherlands as Jan Pieterzoon Sweelinck; other genres are decidedly more French. Thus; we have bourrées (e.g.; Duo; Magnificat V; CD2: 15); menuets (e.g.; Basse de Cromorne; Magnificat III; CD1: 33); gavottes (e.g.; Trio; Magnificat V; CD2: 16); gigues (Magnificat IV; CD2: 5); Italianate gigas (Duo; Magnificat III; CD1: 26) and; as mentioned previously; rustic dances in the guise of musettes. It is not only dance forms that permeate French organ music; since we also see the influence of the air de cour in the tender récits (e.g.; Magnificat III; CD1: 33); concerted viol music in the two Tierce en Taille pieces (Suites IV and V) and even Lullyan ouvertures; which form the basis of the offertoires. These are exclusively reserved for grands jeux combinations that juxtapose concertante and ripieno sections using combinations of reeds; cornets and foundation stops that mimic the grand orchestral writing popular with Parisian apparatchiks of the opera.
Byrd: Organ Works / Belder
Buxtehude Collection
