There is only a limited number of works for two or more solo instruments with orchestra. One reason may be that the concerto genre in the 19th century became the stomping ground of the great virtuosi of the day, and the works themselves vehicles for the great and unique talent of one, special performer - not two, or three. Mozart, however, was evidently attracted by the sinfonia concertante genre and created some of the finest examples of it, such as the works recorded on this disc. Manfred Huss, artistic director of the eminent Haydn Sinfonietta Wien, make their first appearance on BIS. They are joined by alexei Lubimov and Ronald Brautigam, two of today's finest performers on the fortepiano.

Classical Music

Better known as Gran Partita, Mozart’s Serenade in B-flat major, K 361 is the crowning glory of the Harmoniemusik of the Classical era. Austrian and German nobles in particular often employed small wind ensembles called Harmonien which provided entertainment during banquets and outdoor festivities. In order to satisfy the growing demand for suitable music, countless arrangements of operas and ballet music were made, while original works were supplied by a wide range of composers – Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and many lesser masters wrote Harmoniemusik. Among their works, Mozart’s Serenade stands out for several reasons. It is on a larger scale than most: with seven movements and a duration of some 50 minutes, it is scored for thirteen instruments rather than the usual eight or nine. But conceived with a cyclical layout and with a highly economic use of motivic material, it also displays a compositional sophistication unusual for the genre. The Gran Partita is here performed by wind players from one of the world’s finest orchestras, the Amsterdam Concertgebouworkest, under the direction of oboist Alexei Ogrintchouk. Ogrintchouk has also chosen the coupling, a set of variations by Beethoven on Mozart’s famous aria from Don Giovanni scored for two oboes and English horn.

REVIEW:

As in all the best performances, the wind players of the Concertgebouw (the brand speaks for itself) combine refinement of blend and ensemble with a sense of spontaneous enjoyment. When they choose, the Concertgebouw players are as mellifluous as you could wish. But they’re not afraid of a touch of abrasiveness. This superlatively played new recording immediately joins the shortlist for this most sumptuous of serenades.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, January 2021)

Following on the 2015 release of Mozart’s Requiem, Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan has gone on to record the composers Mass in C minor, K427 – the ‘Great Mass’. As the nickname indicates it is a work of unusual proportions for a mass of the Classical period – or would have been so, had Mozart completed it. It is not known for what occasion Mozart intended the work, but a letter to his father Leopold dated 4 January 1783 indicate that he may have committed himself to writing it in connection with his marriage to Constanze and a planned visit to Salzburg. A performance of parts of the Mass did take place in Salzburg in October 1783, with Constanze performing the prominent soprano part. Two years later Mozart reused the music from the Kyrie and Gloria sections in the sacred cantata Davidde penitente, K?469, but the Mass itself was left incomplete. The present performance includes the sections completed by Mozart himself, as well as those sections for which extensive sketches by Mozart provided a basis for completion (by Franz Beyer in 1989). Three of Suzuki’s soloists also took part in the recording of the Requiem, while the Dutch mezzo-soprano Olivia Vermeulen makes her first appearance on BIS, shining in the aria Laudamus te. The disc closes with the celebrated cantata Exsultate, jubilate in which the soprano Carolyn Sampson glitters in the virtuosic solo part. As an appendix to the programme she and the Bach Collegium Japan orchestra also repeats the initial aria, in a less well-known later version with a slightly different text and with flutes replacing the oboes of the original.

Besides an acclaimed series of recordings with Ronald Brautigam of the complete piano concertos by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens are undertaking a survey of Mozart’s serenades and other incidental works. Their first album in this series included the Posthorn Serenade and demonstrated, according to the reviewer on MusicWeb-International, that the ensemble is ‘amongst the best groups in the world of period performance.’ Since then the team has recorded works associated with the Freemasons, and here takes on one of the most famous of the serenades, the ‘Haffner’, named after Sigmund Haffner, who commissioned it for the festivities surrounding his sister’s wedding in 1776. A notable feature of Mozart’s serenades – and the large-scale Haffner is no exception – is the incorporation of virtuosic solo parts, here performed by the violinist Alexander Janiczek. On the amply-filled disc (almost 86 minutes!), the at times quite imposing Haffner is followed by Mozart’s ‘Musical Joke’ – Ein musikalischer Spaß, K. 522. A work in four movements, this is a delightful and very skillfully crafted parody of musical incompetence. It is written for strings and a pair of horns, and its frequent caricatures of the second-rate – whether in composition or performance – are brilliantly observed, by Mozart as well as the present performers.

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REVIEW:

The Haffner performance provides great rewards, with Willens and his players amply demonstrating their immersion in Mozart’s idiom.

– Gramophone

After Alec Frank-Gemmill's critically acclaimed recordings of nineteenth-century works for horn and piano (BIS-2228), chamber music by Brahms (BIS-2478) and pre-Mozart horn concertos (BIS-2315), a version of Mozart's famous horn concertos from him has been eagerly awaited. As on his disc of concertante works, he is accompanied here by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra conducted by an expert in 18th-century style, Nicholas McGegan. Mozart's relationship with the Viennese horn player Joseph Leutgeb was both a friendly and a musical one, and most of the works here were written especially for him. Spanning some ten years, from 1781 to the composer's death, the four standard concertos and other fragments follow Mozart's stylistic development, and are thus contemporary with the operatic trilogy with libretti by Da Ponte, the final symphonies and the last piano concertos. Elegant, refined and suave, the horn concertos take advantage of the unique colours of this instrument and do not shy away from the it's traditional associations with the postal service and hunting. In addition to Mozart's four 'official' concertos, this recording also includes movements left in draft form, completed and restored by the composer and horn-player Stephen Roberts, giving us a further work here named 'Concerto No. 0'.

Classical Music

MOZART OGRINTCHOUK; BROVTSYN; RYSANOV; BLAUMANE; LITHUANIAN C.O. MUSIC FOR OBOE

From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, the overture became an orchestral piece intended to precede a large-scale dramatic work. This recording brings together twelve overtures from Mozart’s operas. They foreshadow the action, sometimes stylistically, sometimes by quoting themes that will appear later, to create a dramatic impression before we even see anything on stage – think of the memorable overtures to Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte.

The twelve overtures brought together here cover 21 years of Mozart’s career: from Mithridate, composed when he was just 14, which testifies to the young composer’s familiarity with the galant style then in vogue, to La Clemenza di Tito (1791), the high point of his work in the opera seria genre that was to disappear with him, not forgetting masterpieces such as Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte.

The Kölner Akademie, playing on period instruments, and its conductor Michael Alexander Willens demonstrate Mozart’s unrivalled ability to capture the audience’s attention with these brilliant overtures, some of which are among his most famous works, both on stage and in concert.

REVIEW:

The interpretations are very fresh, the playing virtuosic. The historical instruments provide a clear, crisp, and transparent sound, which is reproduced by the sound engineers with good spatiality and balance, with a clean and beautifully present bass.

-- Pizzicato

In just two years, between 1784 and 1786, Mozart composed no less than twelve piano concertos – a staggering number. Often described as one of the most light-hearted and buoyant among these is the Concerto in F major K 459, sometimes called ‘the second Coronation Concerto’. The nickname comes from the fact that Mozart would later choose to perform it, along with the ‘Coronation Concerto’ in D major, during the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1790. Its companion work on this fourth disc in Ronald Brautigam’s survey hails from the same period: begun in 1784, the Concerto in A major K 488 was completed in March 1786, at the same time as Mozart was putting the finishing touches to his opera Le nozze di Figaro. It is one of only three piano concertos in which Mozart uses clarinets in the orchestra, resulting in a very particular sound world, especially in the magical slow movement. Mozart clearly held the work in high regard, and described it as one of his most select compositions ‘which I keep just for myself and an élite circle of music lovers’, and later audiences have agreed with him. Ronald Brautigam has been described as ‘an absolutely instinctive Mozartian… with melodic playing of consummate beauty’ (International Record Review), and he is once again supported by the period orchestra Die Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens in a partnership which more than one reviewer has termed ‘ideal’.

Among the most widely performed of Mozart’s piano concertos for a good half century after its composition in 1785, the Concerto No.20 in D minor still assumes a commanding place in the concert hall. Among its early devotees was Beethoven, who performed the work at a benefit concert for Mozart’s widow in March 1795 and who may well have found much to admire in the work’s brooding opening, characterized by syncopations and later punctuated by more aggressive outbursts; in his informative liner notes, the Mozart scholar John Irving goes so far as to call it ‘Mozart’s grittiest concerto’. Six years after the D minor concerto, in January 1791, the composer completed the Piano Concerto No.27 in B flat major, K595, giving the first performance of it two months later. This was to be his last public appearance as a soloist, and the concerto has sometimes been considered as a work in which the typical sparkle of Mozart’s virtuosity is tempered by resignation, as if the composer were already aware of his imminent demise. Such an interpretation is contradicted by a close study of the autograph manuscript, however: the concerto appears to have been begun two full years before it was completed. Its language is nevertheless more introverted than most of Mozart’s works in the genre: he seems to be aiming for a sublime delicacy of expression rarely attempted elsewhere in his concerto output. These two exceptional works are here performed by Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie, on their fifth disc of Mozart’s concertos – an ongoing series which has been described as ‘a lucky break and a true delight’ in the German magazine Piano News.

MOZART WILLENS (COND.); BRAUTIGAM (FORTEPIANO); DIE KOLNER AKADEMIE PIANO CONCERTOS- PIANO CONCERTO NO. 24 IN C MINOR, K 491; PIANO CONCERTO NO. 25 IN C MAJOR, K 503

On this ninth installment in Ronald Brautigam’s series of the complete piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the program consists of three works composed in 1776 and 1782-83. As on previous discs, Brautigam – whose ‘muscular yet sensitively nuanced command of Mozartian discourse’ has been described by BBC Music Magazine as central to the series – is supported by Die Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens, in a partnership that for each new recording becomes ever more intuitive and close-knit.

Review:

Ronald Brautigam and the Cologne Academy under Michael Alexander Willens offer stylish and enjoyable performances.

– BBC Music Magazine

In this final volume of Mozart's complete piano concertos, Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie, listeners are treated to Mozart's very earliest attempts in the genre. In these works, young Mozart expands his existing sonata movements into proper concertos, many believe this was a task given to him by his father, Leopold. After a few years, Mozart adopted a more mature approach to the concertos but still used arrangements of sonatas as inspiration. "An ideal mixture of clarity and stylish effervescene" - International Record Review

Classical Music

On 9th February 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart entered the Piano Concerto No.14 in E flat major in his personal catalogue of works, and exactly 13 months later he completed his 21st concerto, in C major. In little over a year he had composed seven piano concertos – all of them highly individual works exploring the relationship between solo instrument and orchestra in different ways, as the two concertos recorded here demonstrate. The E flat major concerto is written for piano and strings, with ad libitum parts for oboes and horns, and can according to Mozart's own instructions be performed with just a string quartet accompaniment. As might be expected there is a chamber music quality to the work, with the piano closely integrated into the ensemble. In complete contrast, Piano Concerto No.21 is written for a much larger orchestra, with flute and pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns, trumpets and timpani as well as strings. It is one of Mozart's most popular, but also most technically challenging concertos – when commenting on the score, his father Leopold noted that it was 'astonishingly difficult'. Largely because of its slow movement theme (famously used in the film Elvira Madigan), the C major Concerto has become perhaps Mozart’s most widely known. Separating the two concertos on this disc is the concert aria Ch'io mi scordi di te? (‘That I forget you?’) for soprano and orchestra with an obbligato piano part. Mozart composed the work in 1786 for the English soprano Nancy Storace and himself, possibly as a farewell gift to Storace, who was returning to London after a stay in Vienna during which she had sung the role of Susanna in the first production of The Marriage of Figaro. Another internationally acclaimed English soprano, Carolyn Sampson, joins Ronald Brautigam and the Kölner Akademie on this the seventh instalment of a series which goes from strength to strength: its predecessor (BIS-2044) was recently made an Editor's Choice in Gramophone, as well as an 'IRR Outstanding' in International Record Guide.

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

In May 1784, shortly after completing the two piano concertos recorded here, Mozart described them in a letter to his father as 'concertos which are bound to make the player sweat.’ In his correspondence he also pointed out the particular importance of the wind instruments in the two works. This is obvious already in the first movement of the Concerto in D major, K 451, which opens the disc: for long stretches Mozart revels in the soloistic capabilities of the winds and elsewhere he builds up chordal textures in which the winds’ distinctive colours dominate. In a similar manner, the winds take the lead from the very beginning of the B flat major concerto, K 450, with the strings answering. Throughout the movement, the woodwinds are absolutely vital to the narrative and Mozart playfully exploits the diverse colours of the winds, frequently featuring pairs of them playing in octaves: oboe/bassoon, oboe/horn or horn/bassoon. In the Andante the wind instruments are silent from start, but once they enter they again dominate in terms of colours. The delicacy of the piano writing throughout this movement adds to the very special quality of the concerto, in which Mozart seems to point the way towards Beethoven.

Previous discs in this series have earned distinctions such as Editor’s Choice (Gramophone), IRR Outstanding (International Record Review), ‘10’ (klassik-heute.de) and Disco excepcional (Scherzo). On their eighth instalment, Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie have chosen to close the programme with a Rondo in D major, originally intended as a replacement finale for the Piano Concerto No.5, K 175. Offering a range of different moods and introducing a variety of quasi-operatic characters, the Rondo became greatly popular in Vienna and beyond, and was in fact sometimes published as a stand-alone work.

Mozart's string quintets, and particularly the last four (K 515, K 516, K 593 and K 614) are often cited as being among the finest examples of his chamber music. The musicologist Charles Rosen has drawn attention to the fact that the quintets always appeared shortly after the completion of a series of quartets, as if the medium represented a more ideal and final realisation of the composer’s musical thoughts. It is not, however, a question of quartets with a fifth, ‘extra’ part. Even the early K174 possesses a striking complexity, and as a group the quintets employ a great variety of textures: dialogues between two instruments with three-part accompaniment from the others, the alternation of two string trios (two violins and viola or two violas and cello), or violin duets, alongside viola duets, accompanied by the cello. The performances of these intricate masterworks by the Orlando Quartet and Nobuko Imai, have been highly regarded ever since their original releases and were for instance described as 'magisterial and gripping' on AllMusic.com. They now appear in this box set, accompanied by a fourth disc which brings together three further Mozart quintets for varying constellations: the charming Horn Quintet from 1782, the extraordinary Clarinet Quintet from seven years later and the Quintet for piano and winds which Mozart in a letter to his father in 1784 described as 'the best thing I have written so far'. Performing these works here are eminent musicians including Radovan Vlatkovic, Martin Fröst and Stephen Hough.

Up to and including Mozart, one important task for every composer not employed by the Church was to entertain. Much of Mozart’s best-loved music consists of occasional works intended for receptions and parties, balls and banquets, ceremonies and celebrations. These pieces are known to us under a number of different names: serenades, divertimenti, Nachtmusik and notturni are just some examples. In so far as these are genres, the distinctions between them are often blurred and many of them seem to have been used more or less interchangeably. But when the music is so fresh and immediate, labelling it becomes less important. In 1778, Leopold Mozart – who never missed an opportunity to impart his wisdom – wrote to his son describing what characterizes a successful piece: ‘Short, easy and popular… written in a natural, flowing and easy style – and at the same time bearing the marks of sound composition.’ That this recipe was something Wolfgang had already mastered six years earlier becomes obvious when one listens to any of the three Divertimentos recorded here, and it’s equally clear that he hadn’t forgotten it when he composed Eine kleine Nachtmusik ten years later. What Leopold doesn’t mention is playfulness, another quality that Mozart had in spades, and which Terje Tønnesen and his Camerata Nordica explore in their performances, allowing a plaintive Swedish nyckelharpa (‘keyed fiddle’) to be heard in the trio section in Eine kleine Nachtmusik and giving the timpanist an opportunity to rock the party in the closing rondo of Serenata notturna.

Although Mozart composed them in his early twenties, the three symphonies presented here can in no way be regarded as early works. Written around the time of his departure from Salzburg for Vienna, these symphonies show that Mozart could deliver attractive, varied, orchestrally colourful and characterful music to suit a variety of public tastes. They also show a young and ambitious composer seeking to forge an impregnable reputation in Europe’s musical capital city. These symphonies truly opened a new chapter in Mozart’s symphonic output, as he demonstrated his absolute mastery of orchestral writing. In addition to the three symphonies as we know them, this recording also includes a minuet that may have been intended to form part of Symphony No. 34.

These three symphonies are performed here by the Philharmonia Orchestra, an ensemble that has performed them with the greatest conductors throughout its almost 80-year history. Here the conductor is the eminent Mozartian Michael Collins, whose recordings, notably that devoted to the Austrian composer’s clarinet concerto and quintet, have earned him the highest praise.

REVIEWS:

As a poetic exponent of Mozart’s music for clarinet, Michael Collins, unsurprisingly, shapes all three slow movements with a natural feeling for Mozartian line. His flowing tempos sound spot on.

— Gramophone

There is always room in the Mozart discography for new recordings of this stature.

— BBC Music Magazine

Previously available on six single CDs, BIS offers Ronald Brautigam's Mozart Sonata cycle in one package. While the music easily could have fit on five discs, you still get six for the price of three. It's wonderfully worth it. To be sure, Brautigam's Paul McNulty fortepiano (modeled after an Anton-Gabriel Walter instrument circa 1795) doesn't match the timbral differentiation between registers we often encounter from other fortepianos. It has the advantage, however, of a clear, resonant sound and, praise be, it holds its tuning. Brautigam's imaginative interpretations capture Mozart's many moods, from the gallant style of the six earliest sonatas to the tensile drama and operatic leanings of the A minor (K. 310) and C minor Fantasia and Sonata (K. 457 and 475). Sometimes Brautigam's tapered diminuendos seem a bit arch and unnatural. At least his occasional mannerisms don't emerge as interpretive tics. If you're looking for a reasonably priced Mozart Sonata cycle played on a period instrument, look no further. Excellent sound and annotations, too. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

After their exciting interpretations of Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert, the Chiaroscuro Quartet now turns to Mozart’s Prussian Quartets, his last compositions for this formation. These quartets were written for Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and amateur cellist, and offer that instrument an unusually prominent role. The first of the three was composed fairly quickly, in June 1789, but the next two were not completed until the following year, and in the end Mozart’s plan for a set of six came to nothing. The writing of quartets was never an easy matter for Mozart. However, one would hardly guess that the Prussian quartets were the product of ‘exhausting labor’ (his own words), such is their beguiling ease of workmanship. No. 21 in D major stands out as one of the most melodious chamber compositions of Mozart’s mature period, emanating something of the sensual Mediterranean warmth of the opera Così fan tutte composed shortly afterwards. No. 22 in B flat major also emphasizes the importance of melody and gives the ‘royal’ cello some beautiful solos. As for No. 23 in F major, while it is tempting to hear a melancholy, autumnal quality in Mozart’s later works, there is, however, no sense of farewell in this his final string quartet: the spirit of Haydn is everywhere, especially in the finale with its effects borrowed from Hungarian folklore.

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

This is the first ever album devoted to the chamber music of Helena Munktell, one of the earliest female composers in Sweden. The daughter of an industrialist, Munktell received private lessons in piano and song from an early age, but soon also training in music theory and composition. In 1877 she visited Paris, where two of her sisters lived, and during the next thirty-odd years the city would be a second home to her. Here she studied with composers such as Benjamin Godard and Vincent d’Indy, and became a member of Société Nationale de Musique (SNM), an organization promoting French music and providing opportunities for young composers to have their works performed. A selection of Munktell’s songs had been performed, in Swedish, at a Society concert in 1892 and in 1900 they were heard again, but now in the French versions released the same year by the reputed musical publisher Alphonse Leduc. The Dix Mélodies are finely crafted musical scenes displaying a wide expressive range and variety of moods. Five years later another SNM concert saw the first performance of Munktell’s Violin Sonata in E flat major, by none other than the renowned Romanian violinist George Enescu. Franck’s famous A major Sonata, which Munktell knew well, served as an important source of inspiration in regards to the cyclic form and harmonic writing. The sonata soon appeared in print, now from E. Demets, another French music publisher. The third work on this album is a small-scale piano trio, probably an early work and possibly composed for performance at one of the musical salons at the Munktell family home in Stockholm.

How to express emotion through music from which words are absent? This album attempts to give an answer to this question. Through works by Italian composers from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the two members of Seicento Stravagante, David Brutti and Nicola Lamon, demonstrate the extravagant styles of early baroque music. During the decades surrounding 1600, the dominance of the human voice and of texts came to be replaced by the unfettered imagination of the composer/instrumentalists that allowed instruments to ‘speak’ on their own, and not only support a sung text. At first the polyphony of the original vocal piece was simply supplemented with ornaments to compensate for the lack of text, but later, as the borders between vocal and instrumental music became quite fluid, the vocal lines would be transformed into virtuoso instrumental solos. By the third decade of the seventeenth century, composers and performers were developing a new and independent instrumental style, which allowed them to freely mix intricate polyphony, dance-like passages and emotionally charged musical phrases. Brutti perform this selection of works, published between 1584 and 1650, on three different types of cornetto, while Lamon alternates between a copy of a harpsichord from 1681 and no less than two historic organs, from 1578 and 1660 respectively.

Classical Music

With this programme of music for cello and piano, Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih transport us to the world immortalized in Marcel Proust’s a la recherche du temps perdu – the Parisian high society and its glittering salons. For the composers of the time these provided a perfect platform for the introduction of new works, performed by the finest musicians in France for a sympathetic, educated and rich (!) audience. And for the music-loving Proust they offered countless opportunities to meet the composers that he so admired (and others that he may have admired a bit less…) The first of these to make his appearance in the programme is no one less than Proust’s one-time lover and lifelong friend, Reynaldo Hahn, with a brief set of Variations chantantes on a theme from a baroque opera. He is followed by Gabriel Faure, whose music Proust gushed about in a letter to the composer: ‘I could write a book more than 300 pages long about it.’

Proust was less expansive about Saint-Saëns’ music even if he admired him as a pianist, but the composer’s First Cello Sonata is nevertheless the centrepiece of the programme, before Henri Duparc and Augusta Holmes make their appearance. These were both students of Cesar Franck, whose iconic Violin Sonata in A major (here in the version for cello) closes this programme of ‘salon music’ – in the best possible sense of the term.

REVIEW:

The writings of Marcel Proust are suffused with music. Proust depicted the world of the Parisian salons of the late 19th century, where both music and literature flourished. This release by cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih does not depict a specific event, but it does plunge the listener into Proust's world. Isserlis brings the necessary heat to the Franck sonata, an arrangement of the composer's cello sonata that the composer himself sanctioned. Another draw is Shih's accompaniment work, distinctive and appropriately intense. For lovers of French music, this is a standout release.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Classical Music

A thoroughly enjoyable conspectus of lute songs and lute solos from Renaissance Europe, mixing familiar and unfamiliar and played by two modern masters of these forms. There’s music here from England, Italy, Germany, France and Poland. Of course the composers concerned were, in many respects, more ‘international’ than ‘national’. Their persons – and their music – crossed many boundaries and many musical exchanges were effected in this period.

Dowland, for example, spent some four years in Paris as a young man, visited and performed (and listened to others perform) at such important musical courts as those of Heinrich Julius, Duke of Brunswick, at Wolfenbüttel, and Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse, at Kassel. He travelled in Italy, with spells in Venice (where he met Giovanni Croce), Padua, Genoa, Ferrara, and Florence. From 1598 to 1606 he was lutenist at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. Or, to take two more examples, Giovanni Kapsberger was born Johann(es) Hieronymus Kapsberger, supposedly born in Venice, son of a German gentleman; the Polish lutenist and composer, Wojchiech (Albertus) D?ugoraj had his music published in France by Jean-Baptiste Brossard and lived most of his mature life outside his native Poland. So, though it makes some sense to talk of national styles in this period, it also makes sense to create an anthology such as this which stresses the internationalism of the prevailing musical idioms.

On this CD, Lindberg plays a restored lute of c.1590, identified as the work of Sixtus Rauwolf, a lute-maker of Augsburg, claimed, quite plausibly, to be the oldest surviving lute in playable condition, still retaining its original soundboard. The instrument’s lovely sound is quite beautifully captured in this recording, both in solo pieces – not least the quite ravishing Fantasia by Gregory Huwet (who was born in Antwerp, worked at Wolfenbüttel and was held in high regard by Dowland) – and as accompaniment to the voice of Emma Kirkby.

Most readers of MusicWeb have presumably long since made up their mind about Kirkby. If, like me, you find her voice, and the intelligence with which she uses it, one of the great joys to be had in hearing this repertoire, then this, you will want to know, is another excellent CD, on which the voice seems yet to have lost very little and the intelligence (or musical experience) is even greater than on her youthful recordings. If you never fell under Kirkby’s musical spell than this is not, I imagine, a recital likely to effect any kind of sudden conversion.

The subtlety of interpretation on offer here is remarkable, but entirely unostentatious. Listen, for example, to Kirkby’s phrasing in Heinrich Schütz’s ‘Eile mich, Gott, zu erreten’ – few singers, in whatever style, can so wonderfully give equal weight to the demands of text and music; or listen to the marvellous interplay between singer and accompanist in Sigismondo d’India’s beautiful ‘Quella vermiglia rosa’; or to Lindberg’s exquisite presentation of three short pieces for lute by Michelangelo Galilei (another ‘international’ figure, born in Italy, who worked in Poland and Bavaria). These are jewels indeed.

The recorded sound is perfect; intimate but not over-close. Full texts and translations are provided.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

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