The American critic Robert Reilly described the music on Volume One of this cycle of the complete string quartets of David Matthews (b. 1943) as ‘some of the most concentrated, penetrating writing for this medium in the past 30 years or more. It is musical thinking of the highest order and quartet writing in the great tradition of Beethoven, Bartok, Britten, and Tippett’. Matthews’ three most recent quartets call in a wide range of references. Birdsong – heard in Nos. 13 and 14 – is a standard Matthews topos; and the fugal No. 15 seems to find a middle ground between late Beethoven and folk-music. No. 13 presents the biggest surprise: it introduces four solo voices, siting the work somewhere between Berg’s Lyric Suite and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. Some touching arrangements and two canons for two Michaels – Tippett and Berkeley – complete the program.

REVIEWS:

Perhaps the most important series of quartets written in the last two decades.

The disc is topped off with various miniatures, mainly beautifully idiomatic arrangements for string quartet of pieces which Matthews finds particularly interesting, as he explains in his booklet essay, or written for friends or for special occasions...if you have been collecting David Matthews quartets on this wonderfully enterprising label, then you will wish to snap up this one...One cannot find fault with the four singers or with the Kreutzer Quartet who clearly understand the composer’s requirements and communicate them lucidly and intelligently.

There is little or no difference in the acoustic and atmosphere of the recordings made at varying venues. The sound is consistent and always transparent.

Gary Higginson

The first thing to get straight is which Worgan we are listening to on this excellent new CD. There are seven Worgans listed in New Grove, all of whom are related. There are some date variances across the various Worgan family histories.

John Worgan’s parents were not particularly musical: John père was a surveyor of Welsh descent; his mother was Mary (née Lambert). The musical legacy of the Worgans began with the eldest son, James (1713-53) who became organist at Vauxhall Gardens and was then elected organist at St Botolph without Aldgate and at St Dunstan-in-the-East. James and John Worgan’s sister (?), Mary, (probably) succeeded her brother as organist at St Dunstan’s on his death.

Our composer was born in 1724 in London and would outstrip his brother’s achievement. He studied with James and also with Thomas Roseingrave. In 1748 he graduated B.Mus. from Cambridge, followed by his appointment as organist at St Katharine Cree (1743) and St. Andrew Undershaft with St Mary Axe (1749). A few years later he succeeded his brother to the post of organist at Vauxhall Gardens and subsequently, in 1753 at St. Botolph without Aldgate. Finally, he held the position of organist at St. John’s Chapel, Bedford Row. Worgan was composer ‘in residence’ at the Vauxhall Gardens: 1753-1761 and from 1770 until his retirement in 1774. Other qualifications included a D.Mus. gained in 1775.

John married three times and fathered many offspring; he taught his children to play the harpsichord and organ. These included Richard (1759-1812), James (c.1762-after 1801) and Thomas Danvers Worgan (c.1773-1832). John died at his home in Gower Street on 24 August 1790.

Dr. John Worgan is now best ‘recalled’ as having composed the hymn tune for ‘Christ the Lord is Risen Today’. However, I understand that this melody actually appeared in Lyra Davidica (1708) some 16 years before John was born. Better attested is the fact that he taught Charles Wesley to play keyboard and was friends with George Frideric Handel and Charles Burney. There is a line quoted from a popular song of the day, ‘Let Handel or Worgan go thrash at the organ’: clearly he was held in high regard by contemporary concert-goers.

Some other extant/published works by John Worgan may merit exploration, if the quality and enjoyable substance of the pieces on this present disc are anything to go by. There is a concerto, six sonatas and teaching pieces for the harpsichord, the Vauxhall songs, a number of hymns and the oratorio Hannah to words by the poet Christopher Smart (1722-71).

I suggest that the listener explore this CD slowly. I worked through the program in track order, but taking only three pieces at a time. The first-rate notes on the music give a detailed synopsis of each piece and reward reading before hearing. The insert includes a satisfying essay-length discussion of the composer and his work in general. These notes are by Timothy Roberts.

This organ music, which was published around 1795, is enjoyable, and leans towards the style of Handel more than any other composer; it shares ‘the (same) brilliance, drama and grandeur’.

The organ at St. Botolph without Aldgate is one of England’s oldest surviving instruments. Although, there are older pipes and cases in use around the country, this is the ‘oldest collection of pipes on their original positions on their original wind chests.’ The text states that the organ dates from around the turn of the eighteenth century and was originally built by Renatus Harris. In 1744 it was stored whilst George Dance’s (the Elder) new church was built on the site. The instrument was restored successively by John Byfield the Elder, Hill in 1866, Bishop in 1898 and latterly by Mander in 1966, where many of the accretions of the Victorian organ builders were removed. In 2006 the organ was commissioned after restoration to as near its original specification as possible by Goetze and Gwynn, but clearly allowing for contemporary liturgical use.

The CD insert includes the specification of the three manuals and details the original pipe work on the ‘Great’ and ‘Choir’ organs. The Pedal section, which is modern, was not used on this recording.

Timothy Roberts specialises in playing the harpsichord, clavichord, fortepiano and historic organs. He gives solo recitals as well as playing continuo. On the scholarly side, Roberts is a researcher and editor, particularly of English music of the 17th to 19th centuries. Recently he has acted as recording producer and sound editor.

I loved the ambience of this recording. St Botolph without Aldgate is a church that I know quite well: I used to visit quite often when I was working in London. The CD is true to the outstanding sound of this historic instrument.

It is of considerable importance to have this CD of the complete organ works of John Worgan played on this particular instrument. As noted above, Worgan was organist here for many years. So, it is a supremely important historical production. I hope that this disc may be the first of a number exploring the music of this important composer.

– MusicWeb International (John France)

The music of London-born William Wordsworth (1908–88) – a great-great-grandson of the poet’s brother Christopher – lies downstream from that of Vaughan Williams and Sibelius; like that of his contemporary Edmund Rubbra, Wordsworth’s music unfolds spontaneously, as a natural process, with a sense of grandeur perhaps enhanced by his move to the Scottish Highlands in 1961. Three of the four works recorded here display the sober dignity of the instinctive symphonist; the Variations on a Scottish Theme reveal a sly sense of humor behind the serious countenance. John Gibbons has conducted most of the major British orchestras. He has been Principal Conductor of Worthing Symphony Orchestra- the professional orchestra of West Sussex- with which he has given many world premieres of neglected works. He studied music at Queens’ College, Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, winning numerous awards as conductor, pianist and accompanist. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, vice chairman of the British Music Society, and choral director at Clifton Cathedral. His own music has been performed in various abbeys and cathedrals as well as on the South Bank, London.

The case of the composer Hans Winterberg (1901–91) is a strange one. A survivor of the Terezín concentration camp, where he had been interned as a Czech Jew, after the War he settled in Munich as a German citizen, and his music enjoyed a number of broadcasts – but after his death, his estate disappeared into the vaults of the Sudeten German Music Institute, where it was placed under embargo, emerging only in 2015. This first album of his music reveals an unusual and individual voice, an idiosyncratic blend of Stravinsky, Janácek and Hindemith, with touches of Poulenc, often expressed with brittle humor and rhythmic verve. The Arizona Wind Quintet is the faculty ensemble-in-residence at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music in Tucson. Formed in 1977, the AWQ has cultivated a tradition of excellence in both performance and teaching. The other instrumentalists on this recording are distinguished musicians active in the Tucson area, several of them teaching at the Fred Fox School of Music, although they appear in concert and at festivals all over North America.

WEINBERG Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes (arr. Weinberg). Violin Sonatas Nos. 2 and 5. Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin • Yuri Kalnits (vn); Michael Csányi-Wills (pn) • TOCCATA 0026 (70:58)

Mieczys?aw Weinberg’s output continues to emerge on CD. One of the more interesting features of the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes is that the music has a certain Hassidic quality, meaning the use of minor keys and descending melodic passages with flatted 7ths and 6ths. Of course, much Eastern European ethnic music falls into this category, including Rumanian and Polish music, but these themes (the notes explain) were consciously chosen because Weinberg’s mother came from Kishinyov (now Chisnâu), where “Bessarabian musical folklore was strongly influenced by the huge Jewish population.” The exuberant and exciting way Weinberg manages his musical materials makes the piece more than just a trifle. The composer made this violin-piano arrangement from his original orchestral version (of which there is a fine recording by Vladimir Lande and the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra on Naxos 8.572779) with fingerings for the solo part provided in the published score by David Oistrakh.

The Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, composed in 1944, was not premiered until 18 years later, by Oistrakh and pianist Frieda Bauer. Its opening theme sounds very much like the Rhapsody, but its development is much more along the lines of Shostakovich’s music. Happily, Weinberg avoids—consciously or unconsciously—the crudeness of much of Shostakovich’s music and the streaks of self-pity. It is serious music, yet imbued by palpable energy in the first movement and wonderful lyricism in the second. The catchy but offbeat rhythm of the last movement rides the Sonata off into an almost ferocious Finale.

This is the first recording of Weinberg’s Second Sonata for Solo Violin. Composed in 1967, annotator David Fanning explains that its overall tone is “less confrontational in character and more of a suite in overall conception.” Indeed, the music is very quirky, its seven movements given titles descriptive of musical terms ( Monody, Rests, Intervals, etc.), and so diverse that one can very well imagine the individual movements being played alone in concerts. It is, however, well written and employs a great amount of contrast within each movement, short though they are (the timings range from 1:27 to 3:38, with most of them averaging around two minutes). In places, almost aggressively abrasive dissonances give way to fascinating in brief development sections.

Weinberg’s Fifth Violin Sonata dates from 1953, shortly after he was released following a harrowing 11 weeks at the Lubyanka prison on the charge of “Jewish bourgeois nationalism.” Like in his Second Sonata, and more so in the Rhapsody, Weinberg here “absorbs folk-like intonations” into his style, but the synthesis is now more complete, showing his marked maturity as a composer. There is a wonderfully plaintive quality in the first movement, for instance, where Weinberg simplifies his style harmonically and produces a simply gorgeous spun-out melodic structure. And here, particularly, Kalnits displays an almost otherworldly sense of pathos and lyricism, which then turns into lyricism combined with forward momentum in the rapid second movement. The third movement ( Allegro moderato ) is wistful and almost nostalgic in character despite its energetic tempo, as is the Finale (note, particularly, the diminuendo on the last high note). What excellent music this is!

Kalnits is a good violinist with strong emotion and wonderful empathy for this material, though his tone tends towards wiriness and a bit of whining in the upper range. Csányi-Wills is a fine, sensitive accompanist. Together they make a strong case for most of this music becoming part of the standard repertoire.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

While I was thoroughly enjoying myself listening to this disc an analogy sprang to mind regarding 19 ^th Century war-horse piano transcriptions. It struck me that – from a 'modern' perspective – they are rather like a great steam locomotive, totally redundant and outmoded but actually rather inspiring and a triumph of engineering!
 
I have written before that I have an enduring pleasure in hearing a good transcription of something utterly preposterous ... and what could be more preposterous than transcribing Wagner’s Ring for solo piano? The key to raising both the transcription and indeed the performance of it hangs on several far less absurd considerations. These are as follows. How well does the transcriber retain the essence of the work in question? How successfully does the transcriber satisfy the twin musical imperatives of writing a work pleasing as both a virtuoso piano piece and as ‘simple’ music? Lastly, how well is the performer able to surmount the vast technical hurdles implied by the genre whilst producing a performance of real musical value? The reason for my pleasure in this disc is that on every count I would have to say: very well indeed.
 
To start with the composer/transcriber; August Stradal was yet another of those acolytes of Liszt who seem to have spent a good part of their creative careers trying to out-arrange their master. One can imagine an unspoken conflict between Liszt’s many disciples each trying desperately to produce piano music of ever greater complexity and virtuosity. Along the way Stradal had Bruckner as a teacher and in later life provided important biographical information on both those masters. He also transcribed Bruckner’s Symphonies 1-2 and 5-8 for piano … now there’s a project for Toccata to consider! For those interested the Bruckner transcriptions as well as the 2 Liszt Symphonies, Brandenburg No.3 and other works too can be viewed and downloaded from the IMSLP website – unfortunately none of the works recorded here can be so viewed.
 
I quite enjoy playing a little game when listening to transcriptions such as this – it’s called “count the imaginary fingers”. The closer you get to twenty the better. Pianist Juan Guillermo Vizcarra makes a staggeringly powerful case for these transcriptions and he is no mean interpreter of Wagner either. The six excerpts from the Ring are grouped sensibly together in chronological order. Hence the disc opens with three selections from Die Walküre. The first two are rather dwarfed by an extended transcription of its closing pages. Siegmund’s Love-song comes first and shows Stradal’s skill at retaining the original voicing of the opera with the hero ‘singing’ in the middle register of the keyboard and the ‘orchestra’ fully represented above and below. Vizcarra is especially skilled at layering the dynamics within these complex textures ensuring that the ear is guided to primary and secondary material. He is a very dynamic player – his performance had me thinking back to the days of LPs and Michael Ponti’s trail-blazing discs on Vox-Turnabout of various Opera paraphrases. Occasionally I did wonder if Vizcarra was overly-muscular which, allied to a quite close and dynamic recording, does risk ‘virtuosity-awareness-fatigue-syndrome’. Conversely, this is music that should overwhelm one in whatever format it is performed. Vizcarra goes on to prove that he is by no means ‘just’ a virtuoso. Indeed I found his pacing of the seventeen minute selection from the end of Die Walküre very impressive. Likewise the single excerpt from Siegfried – Forest Murmurs – is beautifully paced. I say this even if just occasionally the leading melodic line feels a fraction heavy in comparison to the accompanying material but I do feel rather mean-spirited mentioning this.
 
Malcolm MacDonald in his predictably fascinating and insightful liner cites the two Götterdämmerung excerpts as representing the apogee of Stradal’s art with regard to Wagner. Certainly the sheer complexity of textures that he is able to retain from the original version of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey is astonishing. Again I find Vizcarra’s pacing of the closing pages which then lead with seamless skill into Siegfried’s Funeral March wholly convincing. Given that so much of the orchestral texture in this extraordinarily valedictory passage is built on long-held chords building crescendi this is the one time a piano struggles to maintain the illusion of the original. This is for the simple and obvious fact that a piano cannot play a crescendo without repeating a note or chord. That aside Vizcarra is a very impressive interpreter and Stradal’s transcription builds to a remarkably powerful climax replete with little sky-bursts of keyboard flurries and virtuoso gestures.
 
Sensibly, the final third of the disc is devoted to a far less rhetorical and grandly dramatic transcription of the five Wesendonck Lieder. These do already exist in the original version for piano and voice. MacDonald explains that Stradal stays essentially faithful to Wagner’s original except in two respects; he changes the order of the songs and moves the vocal line into the middle register again whilst at the same time moving Wagner’s right-hand piano part up the octave. This has the twin effect of making that element of the accompaniment sound immediately more ‘brilliant’ whilst keeping the now inner vocal line clear of conflicting part-writing. Vizcarra is beautifully poetic throughout the cycle although again I occasionally wondered if he strove too hard to give the inner/vocal line prominence. Especially since the placing of this line in a tenor/baritone register changes the feel quite significantly from their mezzo-soprano original. Again this seems like minor carping when one has been given the opportunity to hear such startlingly effective transcriptions in such convincing performances.
 
Toccata Classics is one of my favourite labels with the questing and quirky nature of the repertoire they offer very much a reflection on the tastes and passions their founder and executive producer Martin Anderson. This disc is another excellent example of his sure-fire sense of rare and unknown music well worth restoring and exploring. More Wagner please but a set of the Bruckner transcriptions really would be something.
 
-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

The Czech-born pianist and writer August Stradal (1860–1930) – a Bruckner student and Liszt disciple– was one of the more prolific transcribers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He produced a vast quantity of phenomenally difficult piano music, including Liszt’s orchestral works, most of Bruckner’s symphonies, a good deal of the Baroque (a huge amount of Bach) and much more. This is the second in a series presenting his Wagner transcriptions, again featuring pianist Juan Guillermo Vizcarra. “Vizcarra makes a staggeringly powerful case for these transcriptions…” (Music Web Int’l)

KOSENKO 11 Etudes in the Form of Old Dances, op. 19 • Natalya Shkoda (pn) • TOCCATA 36 (69:01)


Viktor Stempanovich Kosenko (1896–1938) trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied composition and theory with Mikhail Sokolov, a Rimsky-Korsakov pupil, and piano with Irina Miklashevskaya. His early years were hard, much as they certainly were for most other artists of his generation in a young Soviet Union. It wasn’t until 1929 that his employment prospects began to improve with a teaching position at Kiev’s Lysenko Institute of Music and Drama. In 1934, he accepted a post at the Kiev Conservatory, and in 1938, he received the Order of the Red Banner. With many concerts, a great deal of teaching, and a small number of published works to his credit, Kosenko died in his early forties of kidney cancer.


As for the Eleven Etudes , they fit into a genre of “olden style” pieces that reflected late 19th/early 20th-century nostalgia for a sentimentalized or nationalized 17th- or 18th-century past. A variety of composers tried their hand at this, including Grieg, Parry, Elgar, Giordano, Massenet, Reger, and Saint-Saëns, among others. Their works were never intended to be mistaken for period music, but were amiable stylizations that embedded thematic, harmonic, or contrapuntal devices in a generalized Romantic language, then poured the results into small-scaled Baroque or Classical dance forms.


Kosenko’s collection of gavottes, minuets, courantes, rigaudons, etc, fits perfectly into this group. It’s conventionally Romantic, with nothing evident of the olden style save in titles and a very occasional turn of phrase. Brahms, instead, is the main influence on Kosenko. Rhetorical devices and harmonic progressions occasionally point directly to specific pieces by the older master (the Sarabande in A Minor glances at Brahms’s Piano Concerto in D Minor), but the overall sense is of a composer finding his own creativity in the language of another, rather than simply as a Brahmsian manqué. The quality of the works varies, but at their best, they demonstrate some imagination, an idiomatic use of the instrument, and a good deal of charm.


Yet even if the music had no significant quality of its own, it would still be interesting because it had been composed at the end of the 1920s in the Soviet Union. This was a period unfriendly to traditional nationalists like Glière, much less composers who “whored after foreign gods.” (Fears of ideological contamination from abroad have a lengthy history in Russia, and the government there has always played this card successfully—much as governments have done elsewhere, but seldom with such ceaseless success.) Although the radicals of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians who briefly controlled the Soviet musical apparatus in the late 1920s were never as doctrinally unified as some musicologists believe, their repeated friendliness to Kosenko is surprising. Beginning in 1927, they invited the composer to give a concert of his music in Kharkov each year, for three consecutive years. Kosenko was also allowed to publish some of his music at that time, and his teaching position at the Lysenko Institute has already been mentioned. None of this would have been possible without RAPM intervention; yet these were the same people who urged the desertion of traditional classical structures for “revolutionary” ones, and the abandonment of the classical repertoire as bourgeois and formalistic. Perhaps RAPM’s Ukrainian branch was more ideologically flexible than its Russian one? The whole matter remains curious, and in need of greater elucidation through modern scholarship.


Natalya Shkoda’s thesis project for her Ph.D. earlier this year in piano performance at Arizona State University was a combination of this CD and a research paper on Kosenko’s op. 19. I hope the research paper went well, because the CD is an attractive testament to her current level of skill. She displays a solid technique and a convincing ability to modulate between the intimacy of such works as the Gavotte in B Minor (a lovely little thing, Brahms in an autumnal mood) and the ambitious, flashy Passacaglia. Her rhythmic sense is elastic, and her affection and knowledge of this music is obvious at every turn.


Sound quality is good and close, with fine presence along the full range of the instrument. Shkoda herself supplies the better than average notes. As this is marked volume 1, I assume more is on the way, and I sincerely look forward to hearing it, too.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

From a prodigiously talented musical family - her father was the great Spanish tenor Manuel García, her brother was a famous vocal teacher in London where Jenny Lind was his pupil, and her sister was mezzo-soprano superstar Maria Malibran (‘La Malibran’) – Pauline Viardot studied piano with Liszt, theory with Reicha, and made her debut as a mezzo at 16. She also inspired a raft of composers from Berlioz to Wagner, Chopin to Schumann and, unsatisfied with all this, had the talent and time to add composition to her raft of accomplishments.

Her character must have been bewitching to have made and retained so many distinguished musical friendships. Indeed, it was her friendship with George Sand that led directly to her association with Chopin of whose piano music – according to none other than Saint-Saëns – she was the best interpreter of the time. It’s curious to think that Viardot, only a few years older than the French composer, lived long enough to have recorded. How intriguing to think what a Viardot-plays-Chopin sequence of 78s would have sounded like.

Viardot arranged twelve of Chopin’s mazurkas in two sets. She commissioned texts from the poet Louis Pomey, serviceable lyrics without much literary distinction. It’s known she sang them to Chopin’s own accompaniment on two occasions, and without him on a number of others, but she only published the works after his death. She vested quite an amount of virtuosity in the vocal settings. Sometimes there’s flaring drama, at other times a coquettish and coloratura brio – try the second of the first sequence, published in 1864 (track 17) for examples of the latter. Quasi-cadential passages intrude which take the music close to operatic declamation. That in La Fête, the first of the 1865 series (track 22) is certainly pugnacious, though La Danse (No.11 in the total of 12, track 26) sounds a little tricky to negotiate. She ends both sets with an invitation to a second singer to join – the soprano-mezzo combination working well without muddying matters unduly.

If these mazurkas are more a memento of her professional relationship and personal friendship with Chopin, her Russian songs offer a more assured index of her compositional status. As a singer she had achieved huge success in Russia in the 1843-44 season, which is where she met Turgenev with whom she had a 40-year relationship that remains somewhat shrouded in uncertainty. She set his lyrics as well as those of many leading Russians – she spoke the language well – including Pushkin, Lermontov and Fet. The sets were composed between 1864 and 1882 and individual songs have been extracted for performance or more rarely several, such as the four songs from the ten-song 1865 cycle. One gets a feel for the sense of involvement and drama here, whether in the often surprisingly agitated piano accompaniments or in those moments of really explosive fireworks – her Pushkin setting (track 7) is truly vehement in places. She mines Russian melancholia and folklore sympathetically though when she employs the cello – for Fet’s song Stars – it’s with rather salonesque results. Here too, not surprisingly given her background, she unleashes operatic declamation – and it’s Pushkin rather than Turgenev, on the evidence of the songs selected for this disc, that draw from her the most extreme responses.

This Bulgarian recording is committed and vital. Sometimes Ina Kancheva’s flaring vocal instincts can seem a little misplaced in the Chopin songs, but not in the Russian ones. Pianist Ludmil Angelov bears a particular weight of responsibility as the piano writing is often compelling and he is notably successful. Together the artists make a good case for the Russian songs in particular.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

The piano music of the Portuguese virtuoso and composer Jose Vianna da Motta (1868-1948) absorbs Romantic influences from Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Brahms. To this mix Vianna da Motta added elements from Portuguese folk music to constitute a major step in the development of a national style for Portuguese classical music. His last piano piece, a Meditation recorded here for the first time, reveals da Motta in the visionary soundworld of late Liszt and Skryabin. This release marks the 150th anniversary of Vianna da Motta’s birth and the 70th anniversary of his death. Luis Pipa is professor of piano and chamber music at the University of Minho, near Porto, and the president of the Portuguese branch of the European Piano Teachers’ Association. He studied in the Conservatoires of Braga and Porto and the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts of Vienna, later obtaining the degrees of Master of Music in Performance Studies and PhD in Performance from the Universities of Reading and Leeds in the UK. He has also himself composed some pieces for piano and chamber music, as well as a number of songs.

The German-Bohemian composer Wenzel Heinrich Veit is one of music’s most unjustly forgotten figures. As these first recordings of his four string quartets reveal, he is not only the link between the Bohemian composers of the end of the Classical period and the wave of Czech Romanticism that began with Smetana- he is also an outstanding composer in his own right. His four quartets trace the stylistic evolution of his time: they emerge from a debt to Haydn and Beethoven and embrace Mendelssohn and Schumann on their way to pre-echoes of Dvorak. This recording of the first two Quartets will be followed by Nos. 3 and 4 in a later release. The Kertesz Quartet was formed in 2010 by four leading period-instrument specialists following a desire to explore chamber music of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and, using historical instruments, bring it to audiences. The Quartet combines traditions of the central European and historic, period-performance practices. Using gut strings and historic bows, the original sound-world, liveliness and intensity of the music is revived in fresh performances that are relevant today. The members of the Quartet are all leading performers on the British early-music scene.

The German-Bohemian composer Wenzel Heinrich Veit (1806-64)- Vaclav Jindrich Veit, as he later became known in Czech- is one of music's most unjustly forgotten figures. As these first recordings of his four string quartets reveal, he is not only the link between the Bohemian composers of the end of the Classical period and the wave of Czech Romanticism that began with Smetana- he is also an outstanding composer in his own right. His four quartets trace the stylistic evolution of his time: they emerge from a debt to Haydn, Beethoven and Spohr and embrace Mendelssohn and Schumann on their way to pre-echoes of Smetana and Dvorak. A review of Volume One in this series stated: "This period-instrument quartet has a wonderfully rich, warm ensemble sound. I am very much looking forward to volume two." At last, here it is. The Kertesz Quartet was formed in 2010 by four leading period instrument specialists following a desire to explore chamber music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and, using historical instruments, bring it to audiences. The Quartet combines traditions of the central European and historic, period performance practices. Using gut strings and historic bows, the original sound world, liveliness and intensity of the music is revived in fresh performances that are relevant today. The members of the Quartet are all leading performers on the British early music scene.

The English violinist Colin Twigg (b. 1960) first came to attention as a finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 1978 and since made his living as a chamber and orchestral musician. But composition has always been important to him, and his music reflects the richness of his performing career: its roots are in the great composers of the past, synthesized into an articulate voice that is accessible in style and satisfying in its craftsmanship. Colin Twigg was born in Skipton, North Yorkshire. He took up the violin at the age of seven when his father brought home a half-sized violin which ‘at the time was a welcome alternative to piano practice.’ He went on to study at the Menuhim School with Margaret Norris, then at Yale with Oscar Shumsky and at Julliard with Tossy Spivakovsky. He is currently Sub-Principal First Violin with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He also takes part in performances, recordings, and chamber music coaching courses as leader of the Bridge String Quartet in London.

Everyone has heard of “bonnie Prince Charlie’, but almost no one knows his younger brother, Henry Benedict Stuart (1725-1807), grandson of King James II of England and VII of Scotland and the last in the direct line of Jacobite succession, was a major figure in the hierarchy of the Vatican, and an important patron of the arts. This album presents the hitherto forgotten repertoire composed by the many musicians associated with and employed by Henry Benedict. Sitting on the cusp of the Baroque and the Classical, these pieces likewise tread a delicate path between innocence and grandeur, between charm and formality, and suggest that the Cardinal, for all his power, may have been a rather gentle man. Little of the music of these five composers has been recorded- this is yet another areawhere the partnership between musicologist-musicians and Toccata Classics is throwing light on unknown corners of the repertoire. Ensemble Cappella Fede comprises some of the finest specialist early-music performers in Britain. Formed by Peter Leech in 2008 in response to an invitation to perform at St. Francis Xavier’s Church, Liverpool, for the ‘Held in Trust’ exhibition, the group specializes in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music. This is the choir’s first recording.

This is an issue of considerable potential significance, the opening installment in what is planned as a complete recording of Telemann’s 1725/26 Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, the first integral cycle of church cantatas for the liturgical year ever published. Ever the astute self-publicist, Telemann had first announced in the Hamburg press plans to publish a cycle of cantatas as early as 1723, but the late delivery of the texts by the poet, Pastor Michael Brandenburg, forced Telemann to turn to a new cycle, Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst. For this, he sought the help of various poets, but in the end employed texts that were mostly the work of a young Hamburg writer, Arnold Wilckens, who based them largely on the Epistle for the day.

Planned more with domestic than church use in mind, the 72 cantatas are chamber works scored for a single voice, an obbligato instrument (specified with characteristic pragmatism by the composer as “a violin, or oboe, or flute, or recorder”), and continuo. The earliest cantatas of the cycle, sold by subscription, were ready by the end of 1725, in time for the issue of the first in the cycle, the cantata for New Year’s Day. Numerous reprints and the number of published copies still extant testify to the success of the venture, a success that was doubtless responsible for Telemann issuing a second collection in 1731–32.

The first six cantatas to be issued in Toccata’s new series are all for high voice, and cover a wide range of the liturgical year. The claim that four cantatas (TWV 1:941, TWV 1:730, TWV 1:1502, and TWV 1:96) are first recordings is untrue, the first three being available in current recordings. Toccata has also got in a mess with their TWV numbering, giving Hemmet den Eifer the number of In gering (wrongly listed as TWV1:549) instead of its correct number, TWV1:730. Hemmet den Eifer is also erroneously listed on the cover as being for the First Sunday after Epiphany rather than the Fourth, although the booklet gets it right. Not an auspicious start for an ambitious series.

The form of each cantata is the same: opening and closing da capo arias framing a lengthy plain (or secco) recitative. The use of rhetorical gesture is a feature of the cantatas, either in obvious mimetic ways such as the graphic shakes on the word “regen” (“trembling”) in the opening aria of TWV1:1040, or with greater musical subtlety when the music of TWV 1: 1502’s first aria becomes disjointed to illustrate the impotence of mortal wisdom “to gain complete perfection.” Hemmet den Eifer starts in strikingly bold fashion with an aria demanding “Stifle your eagerness/banish revenge,” but the most dramatic music here is to be found in “Du bist verflucht” (“You are accursed”), the opening aria of TWV1:213 for the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Here a turbulent accompaniment underpins a colorfully declamatory text, the “voice of terror” inspiring a headlong chromatic descent in the voice, fearfully dogged by the recorder.

Mona Julsrud’s account of these six cantatas is generally very satisfying. She is a bright, agile soprano with a good technique that gets her around ornaments with ease, phrases musically, and sings with clarity and good diction. But on the debit side, the voice lacks distinctive color, and there’s a tendency for upper notes to sound “hooty.” She is well supported by the members of Bergen Barokk, although it might have provided greater interest had at least one of Telemann’s alternative obbligato instruments been employed rather than using a recorder throughout. Other than the solecisms noted above, the presentation is good, with a slipcase that includes the disc, and an informative 60-page booklet that deserves full credit for printing the relevant biblical text before each cantata. Good sound. Overall, this is a promising, if not perfect start to a project one wishes every success.

FANFARE: Brian Robins