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American Classics - Coates: String Quartet No. 9, Sonata For Violin Solo; Lyric Suite
Naxos · Sep 2010CD$19.99 -
Bach: 6 Suites For Cello Solo; 3 Sonatas For Cello & Harpsichord; Boccherini: Cello Concerto
Doremi · Apr 2012CD$53.99 -
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SaleSerenata - Braga, Gomes, Miguez & Nepomuceno / Thomson, English Chamber Orchestra
Naxos · Sep 2022CD$19.99$13.99 -
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Spanish Classics - Manuel Blasco De Nebra: Complete Keyboard Sonatas Vol 1 / Pedro Casals
Naxos · Aug 2009CD$19.99 -
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Pasquini: Sonatas For Two Organs / Luca Scandali, Hadrien Jourdan
Brilliant Classics · Jun 2013CD$13.99 -
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Bach, Corea, Purcell, Rameau et al.: Night Passages / Fröst, Dubé, Pöntinen
Sony Masterworks · Apr 2022CD$11.98 -
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SaleJollage: Premier livre de Pieces de Clavecin / De Luca
Brilliant Classics · Jun 2023CD$13.99$10.99 -
American Classics - Coates: String Quartet No. 9, Sonata For Violin Solo; Lyric Suite
COATES String Quartet No. 9. 1 Sonata for Solo Violin. 2 Lyric Suite for Piano Trio, “Split the Lark, and You’ll find the Music 2,3” • 1 Kreutzer Str Qrt; 2, 3 Peter Sheppard Skaerved (vn); 3 Neil Hyde, (vc); 3 Roderick Chadwick (pn) • NAXOS 8.559666 (58: 51)
I get the feeling that Gloria Coates does not spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not other people enjoy her music. That is a compliment, not a complaint. Whether or not you like what she does, she does it with a very personal style and with great conviction. The present CD, the fifth of Coates’s music to be released under Naxos’s American Classics imprint, ranks very low on the list of CDs one would play as light background music during a convivial dinner with friends. Coates’s music, this CD included, forces one to consider why we listen to music at all, and to examine what we mean by “entertainment.” To my thinking, entertainment, in the usual sense of the word, is overrated. We need to devote equal time and effort to moving ourselves into new emotional and intellectual territories, even at the risk of causing ourselves a little pain.
Coates is an American who now lives in Germany. In an interview, she describes the German culture as “very serious and formal,” and comments, “One is left alone much of the time unless he plans ahead.” Is there anyone in the United States who is writing music quite like Coates’s? Not that I am aware of. Her music says difficult things—things Americans seem unwilling to say at this point.
This is the world premiere recording of her recent (2007) String Quartet No. 9. The work is in two movements, both of them slow, and both of them making an almost obsessively detailed exploration of texture and sound. The first is a canon and nearly a palindrome, although the materials thus treated are not only melodic but also textural. The long, siren-like glissando, a trademark of Coates’s music from the start of her career, appears six minutes in and produces an unsettling effect. The listener also is thrown off kilter by pitch, because the first violin and the viola are tuned down one quarter-tone. Glissandos occur in the second movement, albeit within a narrower range; imagine listening to the slow movement of a late Beethoven quartet on a turntable whose motor is giving out and from an LP that has been pressed off-center. As Kyle Gann writes in his booklet notes, “The atmosphere is unworldly, creepily dissonant and yet serene, a kind of music of the spheres.”
The Sonata for Violin Solo (2000) allows aspects of Coates’s compositional style to stand out in stark relief. The movement titles—Prelude, Fantasia, Berceuse, and Hornpipe—suggest Handel or Bach, or at any rate more “traditional” composers, but once again, Coates goes her own fascinating way.
One might think that Emily Dickinson would elicit a brighter response from any composer. All of the Lyric Suite’s (1996) seven movements are headed by a fragment from Dickinson’s poetry. The Belle of Amherst was a mystic and a visionary, though, and Coates’s music underscores the notion that much of Dickinson’s work was actually quite strange, considering the time and place in which she lived. Once again, unusual playing techniques, including strings tuned a quarter-tone flat, create a sound world that is eerily beautiful and queasy.
For Coates newbies, any of the discs featuring her orchestral works might be a slightly easier introduction. Nevertheless, I feel that the present CD is an honest representation of who she is and what she does.
The Kreutzer Quartet has participated in earlier Coates recordings, and the quartet’s first violinist, Peter Sheppard Skærved, has championed Coates for her music for two decades. (Neil Heyde is the quartet’s cellist.) It is hard to know what to say about the performances, except that there would be little point in performing and recording this music if one didn’t believe in it. Separately and together, the quartet’s members, plus pianist Chadwick, are committed to the task, and carry it out with deep concentration.
As usual, the cover art is a painting by Gloria Coates, whose visual art looks much like her music sounds. As the saying goes, when God gave out talent, she stood in line twice.
FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle
MOZART 1 2 3 4 - SOLO DUO TRIO QUARTET
SOUVENIRS
Schubert: Klaviersonaten, D. 850 & D. 958 / Margolina
Serenata - Braga, Gomes, Miguez & Nepomuceno / Thomson, English Chamber Orchestra
You can’t go wrong with 68 minutes of gentle, relaxing, and intelligent music.
Brazilian composers in the 19th century often sought state scholarships to enable them to study in Europe where they were to become influenced by the German, Italian and French compositional schools. They also became involved in the vogue for writing suites based on ancient dances, such as Nepomuceno’s delightful Ancient Suite, premiered at Grieg’s home, or Braga’s Madrigal-Pavana which evokes the belle époque ballrooms of Rio de Janeiro. Miguéz’s Suite in the Old Style is polyphonic and lively, while Gomes’ Sonata for Strings is his finest non-operatic work.
REVIEWS:
Though these Brazilian composers—all born from 1836 to 1868—aren’t household names, they’re well worth your attention. Carlos Gomes's perky, witty Sonata for Strings reminds me a lot of Rossini; the melodies are reserved almost solely for the violins, and they sound like they should be arias instead of a sonata. Alberto Nepomuceno studied in Italy and Germany, but his Suite Antique is a cousin to the Holberg Suite by his friend Grieg. Brass, winds, and timpani join strings in Leopoldo Miguez’s Suite a Antiga, and the oboe solo in the “Aria e Double” is spare yet beautiful. His tunes are fetching, and his countermelodies are inventive and attractively detailed. He gets more chromatically adventurous than the others, too. You can’t go wrong with 68 minutes of gentle, relaxing, and intelligent music. The sound is reverberant though not plush.
-- The Absolute Sound
The English Chamber Orchestra give suitably refined performances, its elegant sound being ideal for this repertoire.
-- Gramophone
The delightful Sonata for Strings by Carlos Gomes (1836–96) that opens the disc may remind some of, say, Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence. The good humor continues thereafter in this enjoyable snapshot of the 19th-century Brazilian chamber orchestra music, all seemingly played with relish by the ECO.
-- BBC Music Magazine
La Barre: Suites Et Sonates / Ensemble Tic-Toc-Choc
“In this way, La Barre, your enchanting flute inspires tender feeling, Your triumphant sounds ignite the passions; They even make Love more tender, And, wanting only to hear you, Love allows you to wound hearts.” An extract from an Ode by the poet Antoine Houdar de La Motte (1672-1731) these lines sing the praises of one of the first and most famous French flautists. This moving tribute is also evidence of the friendly relations that existed between the poet and the musician who set two of his libretti to music, first in 1700 (Le Triomphe des arts) and then in 1705(La Vénitienne). Michel de La Barre wrote numerous “serious” and drinking songs, published mostly in the main anthologies of the period between 1694 and 1732, but he is above all the originator of a specific and idiomatic repertoire for his instrument. He is the composer of three collections of the first pieces for transverse flute and basso continuo (1702, 1710 and 1722), of seventeen suites for two flutes without bass, a genre of which he was also the originator, and lastly three important books of pieces for trio (“for violins, flutes and oboes”), published in 1694, 1700 and 1707 which are also amongst the first of the genre. Thanks to his art and the compositions closely linked to his instrument, Michel de La Barre is considered the founder of the French school of flute.
Buxtehude: Trio Sonatas, Op. 1 & 2
Soler: Sonatas For Harpsichord Vol 13 / Gilbert Rowland
This disc is announced as the final instalment of Gilbert Rowland’s Naxos cycle of the complete Sonatas for Harpsichord by Padre Antonio Soler. I haven’t heard all of the earlier volumes, so I won’t attempt any kind of comprehensive statement about the project as a whole, but my impression, for what it’s worth, is that the series has got better and better as it has gone on. I agree with Patrick Waller (see his review of Volume 12) that the recorded sound has improved in later volumes; it was rather clattery and echoing on some of the early discs, but there are certainly no problems with the sound on this final volume. My sense is also that Gilbert Rowland has come to sound more and more at home with the music, his playing increasingly relaxed, his phrasing more flexible and his range of tonal colours more various. Whether or not these (remembered) impressions are correct, what I can say with some confidence is that this final disc is full of exciting and exhilarating music, played with considerable panache.
Spanish musical traditions are, of course, a central element in Soler’s harpsichord music; traditional Spanish dance rhythms are very clearly audible in the almost seven minutes of the central allegro (marked ‘assai spiritoso’) of Sonata 66, played here with sympathetic (and technically assured) flair; Spanish idioms are also very much to the fore in the opening Cantabile of Sonata 60. At times (as in Sonata 76) the influence of Domenico Scarlatti, Soler’s erstwhile teacher is evident. But Soler clearly listened rather more widely - at times the music prompts one to think of C.P.E. Bach.
Elsewhere, Soler’s fugues would satisfy all but the most pedantically rigorous of Germanic theorists. The fugal third movement of Sonata 66 is a delight, though some of its modulations might perhaps upset that hypothetical pedantic theorist; surely even he (or she?) would find little to complain about in the ‘intento a 4’ which closes Sonata 68, beautifully worked out and technically very accomplished.
But if Soler could be ‘correct’, he could also be somewhat shocking. The allegro in 6/8 of Sonata 60 is full of unexpected leaps and begins with some unconventional harmonies (“almost Bartókian” says Rowland in his characteristically useful booklet notes) that even now retain some of their power to startle.
Rowland responds to the range of this music and, on this disc at any rate, plays it with real innerness. At times here, as on some of the earlier volumes, I wondered whether one or two of the pieces might not work better still on the organ, but that is a quibble which shouldn’t detract from our gratitude to Rowland and to Naxos for the completion of this substantial project. I believe that the only sonatas by Soler which were ever published during the Eighteenth Century were those which appeared as XXVII Sonatas para clave, published around 1796 by Richard Birchall of London. So there is an aptness in the choice of a British (Rowland was born in Glasgow) harpsichordist as the protagonist for this series. In this final disc he plays a two manual instrument by Andrew Wooderson, made in 2005 and modelled on 1750 instrument from the Goermans workshop in Paris – and with its bright (but not excessively so) sound and clear articulation it enables Rowland to do something like full justice to this engaging music.
-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International
Spanish Classics - Manuel Blasco De Nebra: Complete Keyboard Sonatas Vol 1 / Pedro Casals
BLASCO DE NEBRA Keyboard Sonatas: Nos. 1– 5; 107–112; in d; in G • Pedro Casals (pn) • NAXOS 8.572068 (76:16)
This is the first of a projected set of three CDs devoted to the extant piano sonatas of Manuel Blasco de Nebra (1750–1784) by pianist and musicologist Pedro Casals. During his short life, Blasco de Nebra is said to have composed some 170 works, though we don’t know in what form nor for what media he wrote. According to Casals’s interesting and informative notes, only 26 keyboard sonatas and six pastorellas are known to survive. Six of the sonatas were apparently published as op. 1, a copy of which is in the Library of Congress. The remainder are known from manuscripts from the Monastery of Montserrat (Catalonia), Encarnación Monastery of Osuna (near Seville), and the Santa Clara Convent (Seville.) Blasco de Nebra was born and died in Seville and, except for two years in Madrid, where his uncle, the zarzuela composer José de Nebra had connections at court, his entire life was spent in the Andalusian city. It may be straddling the fence to call these pieces “keyboard sonatas”: the prominence of Alberti bass figuration alone would seem to argue in favor of the piano. It’s worth noting that one of the more prominent Iberian piano makers, Francisco Pérez Mirabal, flourished in Seville contemporaneously with Blasco de Nebra. Two of Mirabal’s pianos survive. He, like other Iberian makers, had the advantage of basing their instruments on the imported Florentine pianos of Cristofori and Ferrini, unlike Silbermann in Germany, who was forced to experiment on the basis of simplistic published diagrams of the Cristofori action. In any case, it’s obvious from the persuasive performances by Casals (albeit on the modern piano) that Blasco de Nebra’s sonatas are well crafted, often quite beautiful, and never less than effective.
Without being derivative, these pieces bring to mind the Catalan composer, Antonio Soler. Certainly the sonatas of Soler’s master, Domenico Scarlatti, seem a constant point of reference. This recording presents Blasco de Nebra’s sonatas chronologically. The earliest (Nos. 107–112, deriving from the Osuna Encarnación and Santa Clara manuscripts) are cast in single-movement, binary form, like Scarlatti’s. The latest recorded here (Nos. 1–5, from the Montserrat Abbey manuscript) preface each Allegro movement with an extended Adagio. Most of the sonatas unfold in two-part textures; their inventive motivic structure is often triadic and highly ornamented. Blasco de Nebra was active among several organists who played at the cathedral in Seville. It’s not surprising that, in the couple of sonatas that seem to effectively employ tone-painting, church bells are evoked: festal peals in Sonata No. 111, for instance, and in the Adagio of Sonata No 2, somber chimes. Casals brings a rhythmic vitality and crisp touch to his performances, appropriately achieving his varied affects with scarcely any pedal. Given his decision to present the sonatas in the order written, it will be interesting to observe Blasco de Nebra’s stylistic evolution in future releases.
The piano sound (in this case an instrument that could have used a touch-up during the recording) leaves something to be desired, possibly due to overly close microphone placement and a less than resonant space. But the playing is so good and the music so interesting that one quickly forgets the less-than-optimal technical aspects of the recording. Casals’s performances, authoritative and imbued with a love of the music, will no doubt attract greater attention to this little-known but obviously gifted composer. Recommended.
FANFARE: Patrick Rucker
Pasquini: Sonatas For Two Organs / Luca Scandali, Hadrien Jourdan
Keyboard music in Italy in the 1600s was to undergo a radical change, with an introduction to Rationalism and simplicity; Pasquini himself is known to have been particularly enamoured with the works of Palestrina and Frescobaldi. Aside from his skills as a performer and composer, Pasquini was also an immensely gifted teacher. Each of the sonatas for two basso continuo instruments bears the hallmarks of the partimento teaching technique, which involves a kind of dialogue between teacher and student. The sonatas include the fashionable styles of keyboard music of the time, such as the Allegro da concerto, Adagio, Fugue, Corrente and Gavotte.
The recording boasts two multi-award-winning organists. The first, Luca Scandali, was educated at the Conservatory 'G. Rossini' of Pesaro in his native Italy and has performed in festivals all over Europe. He is currently Professor of Organ and Composition for Organ at the Conservatory 'F. Morlacchi' of Perugia. The second, Swiss organist, Hadrien Jourdan, studied at the Conservatory of Geneva and regularly participates in festivals and recordings throughout Europe.
Other information:
- Recorded in 2012.
- Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) was an Italian composer of opera and church music. A renowned virtuoso keyboard player in his day, he was one of the most important Italian composers for harpsichord and organ between Frescobaldi and Scarlatti.
- Pasquini's sonatas for two organs offer delightful dialogues between the two instruments (sometimes acting as teacher and pupil) in fashionable forms such as Allegro da Concerto and various dance forms.
- Two excellent organists enjoy their interplay on two historical organs from the 18th century.
- Organs: Pietro Nacchini, 1757; Gaetano Callido, 1785.
- Harpsichord: copy after Ignazio Mucciardi, 1789, by Giulio Fratini & Pierpaolo Pallotti, 2012.
- Contains liner notes on the works and biographies of the artists.
Explorer Set - Spanish Edition
Bach, Corea, Purcell, Rameau et al.: Night Passages / Fröst, Dubé, Pöntinen
Gramophone Award-nominated artist Martin Fröst uses every recording as an opportunity to look at repertoire and performance through fresh eyes. His latest album for Sony Classical brings the extraordinary alchemy of a specially formed ensemble to the public with highly original arrangements for the first time on record.
With acclaimed pianist Roland Pöntinen and legendary bassist Sébastien Dubé, Fröst’s new album Night Passages charts a nocturnal journey through the mystical and the melancholic, the playful and the profound.
Reimagining favorites from the Baroque, while touching on jazz and folk music the album’s atmosphere carries with it the vibe of late-night improvisation and deep conversation between friends. From Rameau to Richard Rodgers, it invites listeners to eavesdrop on a musical union.
All nineteen tracks on the album were arranged by Fröst and his fellow trio members for their own instrumental lineup of clarinet, piano and bass. Scintillating Scarlatti keyboard mingling with touching Handel, virile Purcell, aerated Bach and works by Rameau that sound with new exotic allure.
Despite the quiet intimacy in works such as Richard Rodgers It Never Entered my Mind and Bach’s Jesu, meine Freunde, there is virtuosity, stamina and athleticism on display too, not least in a strident arrangement of Vallflickans Dans by the Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén – a piece close to the heart of any Swede.
The album further includes the trio’s light-footed take on Chick Corea’s Armando’s Rhumba and Fröst’s own cadenza-like Prelude to the traditional Swedish polka Dorotea, which is full of his trademark improvisatory fluidity. The same qualities appear to stop time in a heart-rending take on Purcell’s Music for a While. The result is a unique fusion of music past and present, and a snapshot of a three-way musical friendship like none other.
Includes:
Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata in D Minor, K. 32
Chick Corea: Children’s Song: No. 15
Johann Sebastian Bach: Jesus bleibet meine Freude BWV 147
Henry Purcell: "Music for a While" Z. 583 (from Oedipus)
Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart: "It Never Entered My Mind"
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Air pour les Sauvages
Antonio Cesti: "Intorno all'idol mio"
Johann Sebastian Bach: Sinfonia No. 5 in E-Flat Major, BWV 791
Chick Corea: Armando's Rhumba
Henry Purcell: Hornpipe in E Minor, Z. 685
George Frideric Handel: Suite in B-Flat Major, HWV 434: IV. Menuet
Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata in D minor Kk.1
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Musette tendre en rondeau
Hugo Alfvén: Vallflickans Dans
Johann Sebastian Bach: Sinfonia No. 15 in B Minor, BWV 801
Martin Fröst: Prelude to Dorotea
Traditional: Polska from Dorotea
Jean-Philippe Rameau: Tambourin en rondeau
Gordon Jenkins: "Goodbye"
Martin Fröst, clarinet
Sébastien Dubé, bass
Roland Pöntinen, piano
Sol & Pat: Gabetta & Kopatchinskaja Play Music from Leclair to Ligeti
This album celebrates a musical rapport that has lasted for twenty years and, above all, a true friendship: ‘We’re like two sisters, on stage and in life’, as Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta like to say. In parallel with their dazzling solo careers, they have frequently got together for concerts in trio or double concerto formation (like the one written for them by Francisco Coll, recently released on ALPHA580). But they have conceived their new recording for a rather rare combination, the violin- cello duo – with the aim of choosing pieces they found interesting either stylistically or for the way they use the instruments. The programme includes the Duo written by Zoltán Kodály in 1914, which was not premiered until 1924, two years after Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello, along with a few forays into the Baroque period (Leclair, Scarlatti, Bach) and, of course, works by twenty-first- century composers to whom the two soloists are very close: Jörg Widmann, Francisco Coll and Julien-François Zbinden are on the itinerary of this introspective journey into the generous world of two total artists.
Lift: Chamber Music of Elena Ruehr
Award-winning composer Elena Ruehr’s Avie Records debut, Averno, introduced three of her big and bold works for choir and orchestra. For her follow up, Ruehr scales down to intimate solo and chamber works for strings and piano, all with references to older music in some way. Baroque elements infuse Klein Suite for solo violin, Prelude Variations for viola and piano, and The Scarlatti Effect for piano trio. The three movements of the jazz-tinged Second Violin Sonata, are dedicated to people who have influenced Ruehr’s work: her composition teacher William Bolcom, jazz teacher Eddie Russ, and Oscar Peterson whom Ruehr met on New Year’s Eve 1980. Adrienne and Amy was written in honour of the pioneering American composer Amy Beach and her biographer Adrienne Fried Block. The virtuosic and lyrical title track for solo cello was inspired by Nobel Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani school pupil and education activist. Boston-based Ruehr, whose wide-ranging works are performed from coast to coast, teaches at MIT. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
REVIEWS:
A gorgeous-sounding collection of Elena Ruehr’s lyrical and modern chamber music.
This collection of recent (1997 to 2012) chamber music by Elena Ruehr is a glorious-sounding and exquisitely performed disc. The reproduction is a perfect combination of detail and reverberation that is mesmerizing. As I mentioned in a previous review of an orchestral disc of music by this Guggenheim fellow, the music here is full of resplendent melodies that she describes as “the most complex and human of musical experiences.” Her background as a dancer provides her music with a rhythmic pulse, yet there’s depth here. “The idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complex,” she explains.
A common element in these works is the composer’s reference to older music and musicians who have taught and inspired these chamber works. The album title, Lift (2013)was inspired by Nobel Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, the student activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman for promoting education and equal rights for women. She survived and has become an international spokeswoman for her cause. Its dedicatee, cellist Jennifer Kloetzel (of the Cypress String Quartet), is the soulful performer of this work that combines lyricism with sincerity that reflects Malala’s cause. The Second Violin Sonata’s (2012) three movements are tributes to the composer’s musical mentors: her teacher William Balcom; jazz pianist and composer Eddie Russ who taught her as a teenager and Oscar Peterson, who Ruehr met in 1980. It’s a jazz-inflected work that expresses a variety of emotions: contemplation; plaintive musings and funky utterances.
This is a collection of chamber music that reflects the current age of tonality with enough modern techniques to make it interesting.
-- Audiophile Edition
Avison: Sonatas Op 1 & Op 8 / Avison Ensemble
The Avison Ensemble continue to do proud the composer whose name they bear. Having recorded his Opp. 3 and 4 (Naxos 8.557905-6 – see review) and Op.6 Concertos (Naxos 8.557553-4 – see Jonathan Woolf’s review and Johan van Veen’s review), Concerti after Geminiani (Divine Art DDA21210 – see review), the Op.9 and Op.10 Concerti Grossi (DDA21211) and his Concerti Grossi after D Scarlatti (DDA21213), they now turn their attention to the Op.1 Trio Sonatas and the Op.8 Keyboard Sonatas with accompaniments. I’m on record as offering high praise to DDA21211 – see review – and DDA21213 – see review – and Jonathan Woolf was also lavish in his praise for DDA21213 – see review.
The works on the new set may not reach quite the heights of the Concertos after Geminiani and Scarlatti – go for those two sets first – but they are by no means negligible: unfailingly tuneful and well-constructed. The Op.1 pieces may well have had their origin as exercises when Avison was being tutored by Geminiani; if so, they are the work of a very competent and inspired pupil, by no means a slavish imitator of his mentor. Even when he adapted the keyboard works of Geminiani and Scarlatti, Avison did much more than merely orchestrate their music, just as Geminiani had done in orchestrating the music of his own mentor, Corelli.
The Op.1 Sonatas are advertised on their title page (reproduced in the well-documented Divine Art booklet) as ‘for two violins and a bass’. This makes them, in effect, Trio Sonatas in the manner of Corelli – indeed, they all follow the four-movement pattern of Corelli’s Sonate da chiesa, slow-fast-slow-fast, though it is unlikely that they were intended for church performance. The ‘bass’ is performed here on the cello and chest organ, making for a very full sound. I’m on record as preferring the cleaner sound of violin and harpsichord, without cello, in Corelli’s Op.5 Sonatas (Naxos 8.557799 – see review) but the fuller sound works well in Avison’s Op.1, making the music sound much closer to the Concerti Grossi on the Ensemble’s other recordings.
The Op.1 Sonatas are in a form transmitted from Corelli via Geminiani. By the date of the Op.8 Sonatas, however, the music of Rameau was becoming influential in England and Avison specifically mentions ‘Scarlatti, Rameau and Carlo-Bach’ (i.e. CPE Bach) alongside Geminiani in his ‘Advertisement’ for the set. The notes in the booklet very reasonably speculate that Avison knew Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concerts: he certainly praises the French composer for his ‘spirited Science’. Once again, however, whatever the degree of Rameau’s influence, Avison is no slavish imitator. I hear the influence of Scarlatti and, perhaps, even a foretaste of Boccherini in Sonata No.3 (trs.6-7).
The title page of Op.8 (again, reproduced in the booklet) described the works as ‘for the harpsichord with accompanyments for two violins and a violoncello’ and he specified that the string parts ‘being intended for Assistants only ... ought no where to overpower the Harpsichord.’ This brings me to my one reservation concerning the new recording. Whatever Avison’s intentions – reinforced by the fact that the harpsichord part is capable of being performed alone – the ‘Assistant’ strings do sometimes prove intrusive on the recording. This may well be an inherent problem in the music itself rather than one to be laid at the door of the performers or the engineers. Without suggesting that multi-miking or other trickery should have been employed, I should have thought it possible for the harpsichord part to be brought out more fully on a recording.
It’s a minor criticism and it didn’t spoil my enjoyment unduly. Otherwise I have nothing but praise for everything on these CDs. Music, performance and recording – preferably with a slight volume reduction from your normal setting – all contribute to a most enjoyable experience and the booklet is a model of its kind. As on the earlier recordings, there are no rough edges to the sound of the period instruments employed; this is early music without tears. I look forward now to the appearance of the Op.5 and Op.7 sonatas.
-- Brian Wilson, ClassicsToday.com
Geminiani: Violin Sonatas, Op. 1 / Ruhadze, Nepomnyashchaya
Igor Ruhadze’s Brilliant Classics recording of sonatas by Locatelli (94736) won warm praise from Gramophone. ‘The playing is elegantly supple, the string tone warm, and the architecture of individual movements thoughtfully worked out. All this makes for a pleasant mood and enjoyable listening. The more exuberant pieces are brilliantly and at times breathtakingly performed.’ With his latest Brilliant Classics album, the Russian Baroque-specialist violinist and director turns to another pivotal figure in Baroque-era violin culture, Francesco Geminiani.
Taught first by his violinist father and then by both Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti in Rome, Geminiani was already a leading figure in north Italian courts in his 20s, before he undertook the move to London that made his name and fortune. Geminiani dedicated the Op.1 Sonatas (1716) to Baron Johann Adolf Kielmansegge, his first London patron. According to Hawkins, Kielmansegge favored the composer by arranging a performance before the king in which Geminiani was accompanied on the harpsichord by Handel. With these sonatas, which clearly stem from Corelli, Geminiani presented himself to the public as Corelli's pupil. Many imitation editions followed the first printing, but the commentator Charles Burney maintained that only the composer himself could do them full justice. Apparently designed as a calling card for Geminiani’s talents as a violinist-composer, the Op.1 Sonatas still make strenuous technical but also expressive demands on any interpreter. Their genteel surface and polished dialogue between parts conceals an array of sophisticated contrasts between moods and demonstration of a violinist’s credentials as an artist as well as a technician.
For this new recording, Igor Ruhadze is joined not by his colleagues in the Violini Capricciosi ensemble but the Russian-born harpsichordist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya. Having pursued graduate studies with early-music luminaries such as Richard Egarr and Menno van Delft, she too evinces intense sympathy with Geminiani’s idiom.
Birth Of The String Quartet / Casal Quartet
In listening to music, as in many other occupations, context is crucial. What might sound unremarkable in one context stands out in another. When recitals are given of Haydn Quartets it is too easy to think that the incredible sophistication of the later works means that the earlier examples can be regarded essentially as steps on the path towards that achievement. On this disc on the other hand the (relatively) early Haydn quartet stands out for its astonishing freedom, imagination and ingenuity in the use of the instruments and for the composer’s ability to extract all he can from his musical ideas. It is not that the other works are in any way poor or uninteresting but that the Haydn is the one that most clearly demonstrates the way in which writing for the medium would go.
To start at the beginning, however, the Sonata a Quattro by Alessandro Scarlatti is a pleasant piece, looking back to Corelli as well as forward to the Classical style embraced much more thoroughly by Sammartini. Wisely the booklet does not suggest that either of these works represents in itself “the birth of the string quartet”, but rather that this was a gradual process in which these are milestones, possibly even key milestones. Certainly the remaining quartets on the disc, by Mozart, Boccherini and Haydn are all early examples of the quartet in the form that has continued to the present. Perhaps form is not the best word to use, as it is not so much the structure of the music as the approach to the potential of a medium which can provide four individual voices or which can combine and contrast them in an apparently infinite number of ways.
The booklet notes suggest that Boccherini’s Op. 2 are the first real examples of the genre. On the basis of the work included here I would not argue with this. It is a very individual piece in only three movements, making the most of the minor tonality, very appealing melodically and full of imaginative ideas and textures. Although the Mozart is his earliest example of the medium it too is full of ideas and of variety and is seen to its best advantage in this company. As I have already indicated however, of all the works on the disc it is the Haydn that most clearly shows the way in which the medium would develop, as well as being of great beauty and effectiveness in itself.
All of this is made strikingly apparent by the superb performances by the Casal Quartet, who thoroughly understand the idiom of these works. Much is made in the booklet of their use of four instruments all by the seventeenth century maker Jacob Stainer. Certainly the reedy sound they produce suits the music and their playing style, probably best described as historically informed. The sheer beauty of sound of the Quartet as recorded here is in itself a major reason to purchase this disc.
The booklet’s notes – in German and English – nowhere explain whether the words “Volume 1” on the cover mean that there are to be more discs of quartets of this period from the Casal or merely more discs in general from them. Whilst I would welcome either, the former would be especially desirable as they clearly have a real sympathy with and understanding of this music. This is a disc that deserves to be popular well beyond those already addicted to string quartets or to music of this period.
- John Sheppard, MusicWeb International
Cilea-Longo: Chamber Music
Italian Harpsichordists on Guitar
Stolzel: Quadri di Dresda e Bruxelles / Epoca Barocca
STÖLZEL Quadri di Dresda e Bruxelles • Epoca Barocca • CPO 777 764-2 (51: 09)
Back in 24:1 and 24:5, Brian Robins passionately took up the cudgels of advocacy for Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749) in interviews with conductor Ludger Rémy, undertaken in conjunction with releases of two CDs comprising the composer’s Weihnachtsoratorium . Apart from that, there is still only one entry for the composer in the Fanfare Archive, for a single quartet from a baroque anthology disc. Finding listings of CDs of his works available domestically presents a serious challenge, as the search function on the normally reliable ArkivMusic website has something seriously askew in his case, alternately producing either only one entry, or else a list of 100 entries that are mostly for J. S. Bach instead, with the handful of genuine Stölzel items randomly intermixed. (For a proper list, visit my favorite European website, jpc.de). Apart from the five releases that Rémy has produced for CPO, the only other Stölzel CDs I can find in print are another version of the Weihnachtsoratorium on the MDG label, a disc of chamber music on the Ambitus label, and now this new CPO release of the composer’s Quadro Sonatas.
The continued obscurity of Stölzel is, at first sight, difficult to understand, given the considerable reputation he enjoyed in his own lifetime. Born in the small town of Grünstädtel, southeast of Zwickau and near the northwestern border of the modern Czech Republic, he came from humble circumstances; his father, the son of a miner, was the local schoolteacher and church organist. Although his parents gave him some musical training, they did not want him to pursue a career in that field, and upon graduation from secondary school in Gera he obediently enrolled as a student in theology at the University of Leipzig. However, once there he was soon entirely absorbed into the city’s thriving musical scene, becoming a copyist for Melchior Hofmann, a pupil of Emanuel Kegel, and a devoted friend of Johann Friedrich Fasch. By the time he moved to Breslau in 1710 he was composing his first opera in addition to some instrumental music. Shortly afterward he moved on to Halle and then, after rejecting offers of employment from the courts at Gera and Zeitz, went to Italy to further his musical education, where he met among others Antonio Vivaldi, Alessandro Marcello, Johann David Heinichen, and Domenico Scarlatti. Late in 1714 he went back north to Prague, and—after a brief stay in Bayreuth in 1717, plus rejection of a lucrative offer of employment at the electoral court in Dresden, probably because his strong Protestant convictions made a post at a Catholic establishment uncongenial—returned to Gera to become the court music director. In November 1719 he assumed what would prove to be a lifelong position as Kapellmeister for the ducal court in Gotha. Highly esteemed by his contemporaries, he was, for example, admitted to membership in the Correspondierende Societät der musicalischen Wissenschaften (Corresponding School of Musical Science) of the renowned Leipzig scholar Lorenz Christoph Mizler (1711–1778) several years before the application of J. S. Bach was accepted. Mizler also composed a funerary ode to Stölzel upon the latter’s death. For his part, Bach paid a minor tribute to Stölzel by including a Partita in G Minor by him (with the addition of a trio of Bach’s own devising) in his Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
While Stölzel was a prolific composer of stage works, oratorios, masses, cantatas, and various instrumental works, little of his output has survived; for example, only 12 of his 85 known secular cantatas, and fragments from only 10 of his 442 sacred cantatas, are extant. At least 18 orchestral suites and over 90 vocal serenatas are completely lost. Part of this is due to the fact that his music quickly became unfashionable after his death; his successor at Gotha, Georg Benda, explicitly stated that he thought only select works of Stölzel’s compositional corpus were worth preserving, ones that he weeded out from what he termed “useless junk.” The rest was consigned to leaky attics, where depredations of weather and hungry rodents soon took their toll. In the case of the nine quadros presented on this CD, eight are taken from the musical archives in Dresden (assembled primarily by Georg Pisendel) and the ninth is preserved in an archive in Brussels. They are unusual not only for their inclusion of the horn, but also for using it as an equal partner at a time when, outside of music for hunting and martial occasions, it was usually assigned to a strictly subordinate role of reinforcing instrumental climaxes. The limitations of the valveless horn of that period necessitated that F Major be the predominant key of all of these quadros.
This is my first exposure to Stölzel’s music. Not having heard either the Weihnachtsoratorium or the Brockes-Passion that so roused the enthusiasm of my colleague Brian Robins, I have neither a basis nor desire to gainsay his highly positive judgment of those. However, I can say that, based on these works, I do not share his enthusiasm. Imagine, if you will, nine knock-offs of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 by a modestly talented pupil who lacks his master’s genius and artistry, and you will have the results presented here. They are pleasant and genial, and make for moderately enjoyable listening, but their commonplace thematic material prevents them from being anything more than that. I find no fault in either the sterling performances by Epoca Barocca, which presents these pieces in their best possible light, nor in CPO’s typically excellent recorded sound and lavish booklet notes. Based on this slender acquaintance, I am not about to make any general pronouncement on Stölzel’s merits as a whole; I will say that this disc is a purely discretionary rather than obligatory acquisition for the devotee of baroque instrumental music. If you choose to buy it, this disc will provide you with pleasure, but don’t expect it to bowl you over.
FANFARE: James A. Altena
Jollage: Premier livre de Pieces de Clavecin / De Luca
A world-premiere recording of elegant, courtly French harpsichord suites by a forgotten name of the early 18th century. The early life and formation of Charles-Alexandre Jollage is shrouded in obscurity. By the time he enters the historical record in the 1720s, he had become organist for the King of Poland, Stanislas Leszcznski, at that time exiled to France and settled at the castle of Chambord in the Loire region of France. In 1733 Stanislas left Chambord for Warsaw where he claimed the throne of Poland; meanwhile Jollage seems to have settled in Paris, where his only known set of work was published in 1738, and dedicated to the Marquise of Clermont d’Amboise. After that point, it has been established with greater certainty that he remained in Paris as an organist, and died there in 1761. This ‘First Book’ of Jollage’s harpsichord works was never followed by a second, but the two suites therein have rewarded the investigation of Fernando De Luca, who has already revived the little-known harpsichord music of Christoph Graupner (96131) and Christophe Moyreau (96285) for Brilliant Classics. Jollage’s refined and elegant idiom reflects the predominant taste in France during the first half of the 18th century, enlivened throughout with touches of originality. Take, for example, the penultimate piece of the First Suite: L’italienne, which is written in an entirely contemporary style perhaps emulating Domenico Scarlatti and even resembling the sonatas of Haydn. In his booklet essay, Fernando De Luca makes a pertinent comparison between Jollage and the contemporary master Watteau. ‘By combining dance, music and painting, while suspending time and movement, Watteau captures a snapshot of human life… He combines lightness and tragedy to capture a fleeting moment. Jollage draws his creative lifeblood from the same source, while retaining all the characteristics of harpsichord music of his period.’ ‘A monumental enterprise… Listeners will want to dip in and out, perhaps taking one partita at a time, admiring both Graupner’s and De Luca’s facility and being rewarded with some attractive music confidently delivered.’ Early Music Review February 2022 (Graupner)
