ROBERT HUGILL REVIEWER’S LOG - January
2008
This is by way of a
catch-up session as family matters have
meant that my reviewer’s log has fallen
behind.
Over the years, styles
of performance in baroque music have
changed. Sometimes older performances
- period performances in the other sense
- are well worth while listening to.
After all, I would not want to be without
Joan Sutherland’s performances in Handel
operas even though the performance practice
can sound a little dated. Unfortunately
the excerpts from Handel’s
Serse, sung by Polish forces
do not fall into that category. This
is partly because they commit the solecism
of allocating the title role to a tenor
- curious how mezzo-soprano roles when
transposed down become tenors. This
is something that Handel did, but only
in extreme desperation. Whatever the
role, the resulting octave transposition
of the vocal line has a profound effect
on the character of the piece with the
running passages always sounding more
effortful. But the disc also makes the
mistake of choosing just two characters
from the opera, rather than a whole
cross section of the opera.
Maria Bayo is an opera
singer from a younger generation and
her Handel
recital is a complete delight. But
it has a special place in my heart because
she sing’s Handel’s cantata No se
emendara jamas, his only Spanish
language setting and his only use of
guitar as continuo instrument. Despite
its Spanish links, the work was written
in Rome in 1707, probably to flatter
a Spanish visitor to his patron, Prince
Ruspoli. Bayo is not a baroque specialist
but like many younger singers she has
successfully flitted between period
and modern performance styles.
Emma Kirkby, on the
other hand, has remained securely in
the period performance camp - with one
or two notable exceptions. Kirkby’s
voice has often reminded me of Isobel
Baillie’s; both have a narrow focus,
secure sense of line and a clear bright
sound. Baillie successfully recorded
the love duet from Madam Butterfly,
turning in a performance which makes
Butterfly sound a convincing 16 year
old even though Baillie’s tone is not
very Italianate. I have always wondered
what Kirkby would have sounded like
in such repertoire, but it is probably
too late now. However, Hyperion has
reissued - on their Helios
label - her disc of arias from Vivaldi
operas. This is a real box of delights.
I still find Vivaldi’s operatic output
easier to cope with in small bites,
so this disc is ideal. Kirkby might
not be as Italianate in tone as others,
but her musicality is excellent.
Vivaldi’s operatic
output is large and insufficiently exposed
on disc, but his instrumental works
are so numerous as to be entirely bewildering.
The guitar duo, the Katona
Twins, have gathered together a
group of works involving guitars or
guitar-like instruments. The result
is a charming and imaginative mixture,
one that helps capture the imagination
and help focus on a small but worthwhile
part of Vivaldi’s output. It helps that
they include some trio sonatas with
the continuo played on the second guitar,
a lovely touch.
On a more traditional
CD set, Ottavio
Dantone’s Accademia Bizantina give us
Vivaldi’s complete L’Estro Armonico.
These are not concertos to give a single
soloists, the set involves up to four
soloists. So a group like this, with
soloists being drawn from the ranks
of the ensemble, is ideal for the works.
Dantone’s group is
relatively small, a common occurrence
in period performance. On Burkhard
Glaetzner’s disc of Bach oboe concertos
he demonstrates the advantage of a small
group of performers when using modern
performance practice. These are period-aware
performances and the works are not overwhelmed
by the string tone as they can be with
bigger modern groups. A little creative
reconstruction work is needed as few
of Bach’s solo oboe works survive in
their original form, still it does mean
that oboists can be free to exercise
a little creative imagination in the
works.
Bach’s motets are rather
better documented; we have a reasonably
clear idea of how he performed them.
I prefer these works done one to a part,
but am not dogmatic. Robert
Fountain on his disc of the motets,
taken from live recordings, uses them
as teaching pieces for his University
choir. The results are illuminating
in terms of choral technique, but hardly
everyday listening.
Ton Koopman, meanwhile,
continues to soldier his way through
the work’s of Bach’s great predecessor,
Buxtehude. With Buxtehude it is amazing
how much of his work has not survived.
So Koopman’s
2 CD set of Cantatas gives us a
glimpse into the delights of the missing
oratorios. The advantage of the CD format
is that nowadays the most exotic repertoire
can find its way into the library. CD
is the ideal medium for exploring the
complete works of such composers like
Buxtehude.
Similarly Jean
Christoph Frisch and his musicians
transport us to 18th century
Peking and the music of the Jesuits.
Their services mixed rather straightforward
18th century vocal music
with some extremely exotic Chinese music,
which survives in manuscripts sent back
to France. Interestingly, it seems to
have been standard in Jesuit missions
to include some sections in the vernacular
in a way which would have been unthinkable
in Western Europe.
Still in the East,
Japanese lutenist Ryosuke
Sakamoto chose to play a wide range
of material on a Renaissance lute. As
he plays music ranging through Bach
to the 19th century, the
result is rather puzzling. It seems
slightly perverse to play so much later
music on a renaissance instrument, but
at least it should give the CD personality.
Unfortunately it doesn’t quite, so we
must look forward to Sakamoto doing
a more conventional disc.
But on their new disc,
Love
Letters, Il vero modo
take a different, rather imaginative
attitude to programme composition, mixing
a series of lettre amorose into
striking groupings. A disc that definitely
has personality, of the right sort.
Constructing programmes from disparate
smaller pieces requires personality
and imagination and not everyone succeeds.
The
Brabant Ensemble have a new disc
out with a series of fine performances
of motets by Nicolas Gombert. Here both
the motets and the performances are
superb, so we can overlook the fact
that the programming is not overly imaginative
as the musical material and the musicianship
more than compensate.
A rather longer term
sense of imagination is what characterises
the Laudantes Consort’s Requiem project.
This is a group of discs which will
chart the Requiem across the centuries.
Their
first disc, with Requiems from Ockeghem
and de Lassus makes a fine start. Subsequent
discs will march steadily forward in
time until the final disc with a new
commissioned Requiem setting.
Gerard
de Lesne’s Purcell programme is
also beautifully and imaginatively constructed
and sung with superb musicianship. It
is almost ideal, there is just one essential
ingredient at fault – Lesne’s English
is poor.
Finally in the Baroque
and Renaissance pile is a part of discs
which illuminate some standard repertoire.
Jeremy Summerly and the Oxford Camerata
give Tallis’s Spem in Alium with
fine intelligence and a good performance
of Salve Intemerata. Then I
Sei Voci attempt to illuminate Allegri’s
Miserere. They do provide us
with a fascinating reconstruction of
the motet as it might have been performed
in the Baroque era. But they make the
mistake of including the traditional
20th century confection as
well. This is a case where you find
multiple layers of tradition, a nightmare
for performers constructing a programme.
With contemporary CD’s
I am discovering the other side to record
reviewing as my own new CD, "The
Testament of Dr. Cranmer" is
currently being reviewed. Suddenly the
reviewer’s job looks very different!
Stephen Hartke’s opera,
The Greater Good, was performed
at Glimmerglass and is released by Naxos.
I wish I could be more enthusiastic
about the work itself, especially as
other reviewers seem to have liked the
piece. I am currently writing an opera
and have had endless discussions with
my librettist about how a libretto should
be constructed. Hartke seems to have
assembled his own based on an existing
play. The result is, for my taste, a
little too wordy. It would surely have
been improved if Hartke had had someone
to mull things over with and suggest
cuts.
Stefan Wolpe had a
rather more eclectic taste in words,
he even set excerpts from an address
by Einstein. In fact he didn’t write
much vocal music and this shows, the
pieces on this
disc from Bridge Records are either
folk song arrangements or rather insistent
serious pieces, despite the best intentions
of composer and performers. But of course,
such explorations are what makes CDs
so versatile.
An even further corner
of the repertoire is reached in another
disc, entitled Gustav
Holst: Composer as Arranger. Here
we have a selection of dances and folk
song arrangements by Holst along with
his version of some of Purcell’s suites.
The result must be a disc which received
my vote as appealing to the most specialised
of tastes – Holst completists only.
Paderewski is in some
ways well known, but we know such a
small selection of his music. A
new disc from Poland gives us his
three major song cycles. Stretching
from his parlour ballad style to far
more sophisticated settings of Catulle
Mendes, here we are discovering more
hidden corners but this time it is repertoire
and performances that I would certainly
wish to return to.
Finally we have a forgotten
instrument, the Ophicleide. Nick
Byrne gives us a fascinating disc of
music for Ophicleide and piano,
including some recently written pieces.
Musical archaeology of the highest order.
Robert Hugill
