Adagio, WKO 189 [1:57]
Vivace, WKO 190 [4:46]
[Allegro] WKO 192 [4:27]
Tempo minuetto, WKO 154 [2:59]
Adagio, WKO 209 [3:36]
[Arpeggio], WKO 205 [2:48]
[Tempo di menuet con variazioni] WKO
203 & WKO 204 [3:40]
[Moderato] WKO 208 [5:47]
[Adagio] WKO 187 [4:18]
Fuga, WKO 196 [2:28]
Sonata in G major [7:48]
Allegro, WKO 198 [3:59]
Tempo di menuet, WKO 202 [3:29]
Andante, WKO 191 [4:20]
[Arpeggio], WKO 194 [2:32]
Allegro, WKO 207 [3:52]
Tempo di menuet, WKO 188 [1:31]
[Andante], WKO 199 [2:26]
[Allegro], WKO 195 [3:00]
Allegretto, WKO 211 [6:20]
Allegro, WKO 212 [1:32]
Abel was one of the
most interesting members of that large
body of expatriate musicians who played
so large a part in the musical life
of eighteenth-century London. Born in
Cöthen, the young Abel very probably
studied with J. S. Bach at the Thomasschule
in Leipzig. He went on to work with
Hasse’s opera orchestra in Dresden.
In the late 1750s he moved to London
(possible after a disagreement with
Hasse) and worked there for the remainder
of his life (save for a spell back in
Germany between 1782 and 1784).
By the mid-1760s he
and Johann Christian Bach – who had
made his way to London in 1762 – were
lodgers at Carlisle House, the house
leased by the extraordinary Teresa Cornelys.
Variously known also as Teresa Imer,
Madame Trenti, Mademoiselle Pompeati
and Mrs Smith, Cornelys sang roles in
the operas of Gluck in Italy and London,
was one of Casanova’s lovers, the mistress
of the Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth
and several others. She leased Carlisle
House – at the corner of Soho Square
and Sutton Street, now long demolished
– in 1760 and established semi-private
concerts there (with some additional
attractions such as gambling). After
scandal and financial collapse she ended
life as ‘Mrs Smith’, keeping a herd
of asses in Knightsbridge and dying
in the Fleet prison for debtors in 1797.
Abel and Bach organised a series a concerts
at Carlisle House between 1763 and 1767.
This was only one aspect of Abel’s musical
life; he was extensively active as performer,
composer, teacher and concert impresario.
As a composer his output included more
than forty symphonies and eighteen string
quartets. Burney described him as "an
infallible oracle" and "the
umpire in all musical controversy".
A sociable and gregarious man, fond
of his food and drink, his circle of
friends included artists and writers
such as Thomas Gainsborough and Lawrence
Sterne, Thomas Sheridan and John Horn
Tooke. Sterne was a particular admirer,
and is said to have been inspired to
study the viola da gamba by the example
of Abel’s playing. In one of Sterne’s
letters, in praise of sensibility ("one
of the first blessings of life"),
he invokes the beauty of Abel’s playing
in a striking comparison:
I was almost going
to write – and wherefore should I not
– that there is an amiable kind of gullibility,
which is as superior to the slow precaution
of worldly wisdom, as the sound of Abel’s
Viol di Gamba to the braying of an ass
on the other side of my paling.
Contemporaries recognised
Sterne and Abel as artists whose work
was characterised above all by its sensibility,
which might be defined, in this context,
as a kind of heightened capacity for
refined emotion, an almost exaggerated
readiness to be emotionally moved by
the melancholy or pathetic in works
of art. From contemporary accounts of
Abel’s recitals on the viola da gamba
it is clear that his playing was very
much received in this spirit, both in
his public performances and in private
recitals. Peter Holman’s excellent booklet
note for the present CD quotes Burney
praising his "discretion, taste,
and pathetic manner of expressing, I
had almost said of breathing,
a few notes".
Apart from some relevantly
simple sonatas - there are more than
fifty of them - for viola da gamba and
bass, Abel’s surviving music for his
favourite instrument is best represented
by thirty unaccompanied pieces which
survive in two autograph manuscripts,
one in the British Library and the other
in New York Public Library. It is material
from these two manuscripts which is
heard on this valuable issue from Hyperion.
Susan Heinrich negotiates
with aplomb the often considerable technical
demands that some of this music makes
upon the performer; more important than
that she responds – without ever going
over the top – to the expressive sensibility
which is at the heart of the music.
This is not perhaps a disc that one
will regularly listen to straight through.
For all the skill and tonal variety
of Heinrich’s playing there is no escaping
the fact that almost all the music here
is in D major or D minor and that the
range of Abel’s effects is not so great
as to preclude a certain repetitiveness.
The listener who comes to this CD expecting
something on a par with the Bach unaccompanied
suites for cello will surely be disappointed;
Abel is not a genius of J. S. Bach’s
magnitude – but then, of course, very
few composers are. He is an interesting,
thoroughly competent figure whose work
here ploughs a relatively narrow furrow,
but does so with genuine inventiveness
and personality, and with a certain
emotional power - intellectual or formal
powers are less obviously in evidence.
This is, I suppose,
a disc which will largely appeal to
those with a special interest in the
instrument or the period, but others
might be pleasantly surprised by the
pleasure to be had from it. Certainly
it is hard to imagine this music ever
having a more persuasive advocate than
Susan Heinrich. Her splendidly sympathetic
performances benefit from a clear but
warm recorded acoustic. This CD allows
us to hear 24 of the 30 pieces to be
found in British Library Add MS. 31697
and the Drexel MS 5871 in the New York
Public Library. I, at least, am sad
to be without the other six!
Glyn Pursglove
Susan Heinrich (viola da gamba) 
