The Baroque vogue for representing the pastoral and birdsong
through the recorder and flute was a particularly adhesive one.
Indeed it has never died, and if composers of more recent times
incline to the violin for larks, then composers of the late
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were avid for sweet charmers
of the ear to be heard on the Blockflöte and its cousins.
That is the premise of this wide-ranging disc, paragraphally
divided into individual countries - Germany, France, Italy,
and England - and performed by the original instrument ensemble
Collegium ‘Flauto e voce’. We hear a variety of
recorders, and flutes including transverse flute, with a varying
accompaniment of viola da gamba theorbo, and harpsichord - sometimes
one, sometimes two and sometimes all three.
We also have a number of first recordings of these avian, songful
pieces. Nine of the 19 are making premiere appearances on disc
and that includes all three songs by Reinhard Keiser, the songs
by Montéclair, von Wilderer, Hart, Fedeli, Guzinger and
Kusser. This is a good haul, and the resulting performances
will, I am sure, be welcomed by those interested in the (light)
repertory of which it forms a part - and will provide opportunities
to develop recitals of voice and flute/recorder sparklers.
The Guzinger song is attributed to him, though not definitively
by him. It’s notable for the way in which the two alto
blockflöte finish the mezzo’s vocal line. For Keiser’s
operatic aria Kleine Vöglein, eure Scherze soprano
Susan Eitrich is surrounded by no fewer than four blockflöte.
It’s a delicious piece, and the lack of a continuo focuses
attention that much more fully on the essential matter in hand.
Maybe the fact that it’s marooned in his opera Arsinoe
has held it back - most of the songs in the selection are operatically
derived - but its extraction here is well worth the price of
admission.
His aria Du angenehme Nachtigal, which gives its name
to the disc title, is a fluent piece of writing, full of incident
but which has a reconstructed basso part. It’s not all
avian felicity in the selection. There is melancholy too, as
evidenced by Lully’s prelude and air from his opera Le
triomphe de l’Amour or his compatriot Montéclair,
whose own aria contrasts high recorders and melancholy viola
da gamba writing very effectively. In his second aria, this
time from the opera Jepthé, he goes one better
by using five recorders in different registers. The Italian
composer Pietro Torri uses a sopranino recorder to imitate a
nightingale, and the results are both utterly delightful and
also rather Handelian.
The operatic context of these arias also means that such devices
as witty ‘falling asleep’ elements can be infiltrated;
something that von Wilderer does in his mezzo aria from the
opera Giocasta. Of the three English composers it’s
perhaps predictable that two should contribute music from an
ode and a masque and the Italian third should take the operatic
bull by the horns. Philip Hart’s aria from his Ode
to Harmony (1703) utilises the very Purcellian device of
a ground bass over which flute and voice-here mezzo Ute Kreidler-
twist and coil, whilst the Purcell is one of his fast duets.
The ‘English’ Giuseppe Fedelli’s aria is a
warbling one, full of fun and wit. There is one purely instrumental
piece, a sonata by Jacques Loeillet for recorders, viola da
gamba and harpsichord.
This, then, is an ingenious selection, cleverly compiled, fluently
and engagingly performed and finely recorded.
Jonathan Woolf
Track listing
Johann Peter GUZINGER (1689-1773)
Süsse Lippen, holde Wangen [4:29]
Reinhard KEISER (1674-1739)
Kleine Vöglein, eure Scherze - from the opera Arsinoe (1710)
[2:31]
Du angenehme Nachtigal - from the opera Ulysses (1722) [5:29]
Ihr fliegenden Sänger - from the opera Orpheus (1709) [2:23]
Jean-Baptiste LULLY (1632-1687)
Tout ce que j’attaque se rend - from the opera Le Triomphe
de l’Amour (1681) [3:51]
Michel Pignolet de MONTÉCLAIR (1667-1737)
Mais, tout parle d’amour - from the opera-ballet Les Festes
de l’été (1716) [4:14]
Ruisseaux, qui serpentez - from the opera Jepthé (1732)
[7:27]
Pietro TORRI (c.1650-1737)
Son rosignolo - from the opera Ismene (1715) [3:21]
Johann Hugo von WILDERER (1670-1724)
Dormi, Giocasta - from the opera Giocasta (1696) [2:01]
Antonio VIVALDI (1678-1741)
Cara sorte - from the opera La verità in Cimento (1720)
[5:06]
Jacques LOEILLET (1685-1748)
Sonata in B minor [9:30]
Philip HART (c.1674-1749)
Proceed, sweet charmer of the ear - from the Ode to Harmony
(1703) [2:52]
Giuseppe FEDELI (c.1680-1733)
Warbling the birds enjoying - from the opera the Temple of Love
(1706) [4:36]
Henry PURCELL (1659-1695)
Hark! how the songsters - from the Masque The History of Timon
of Athens (1695) [1:51]
Georg Philipp TELEMANN (1681-1767)
Mich tröstet die Hoffnung - from the opera Der geduldige
Sokrates (1721) [6:37]
Johann Sigismund KUSSER (1660-1727)
Wo bleibst du, mein Leben - from the opera Erindo oder Die unsträfliche
Liebe (1694) [2:38]
Collegium ‘Flauto e voce’ 