Time Zones
Lautten Compagney/Wolfgang Katschner
rec. 10-13 August 2020, Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Dahlem, Berlin, Germany.
DEUTSCHE HARMONIA MUNDI 19439807952 [70:32]
Lautten Compagney has established a reputation for crossover programmes, and this is the latest in a line of interesting looking albums for the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label. It is certainly a sizeable band with 20 musicians listed for this recording, and the opening Canzon a 5 by Samuel Scheidt sounds magnificent, promising an excellent listening experience from this CD. Time Zones
takes its starting point from the outsider status of both Scheidt and Erik Satie. Satie was famously eccentric, an image he was happy to enhance in his various statements and deliberate nonconformity both in life and music. The claim for Samuel Scheidt’s ‘uncompromising outsider’ status is held in his position on pure counterpoint, writing towards the end of his life that, “there is now so much foolish music that I am bound to be surprised at it. Everything about it is wrong; all that the dear ancients wrote about composition is ignored. I myself am sticking to the pure old type of composition with its strict rules. I hope that the new counterfeit coin will disappear and that a new coin will be minted from the old tried and tested materials.”
While I am all for innovation, Scheidt sounds like a man after my own heart, and which composer wouldn’t want to have as distinctive a voice as Satie. Scheidt may have been a stickler for established technique, but his music still sounds glorious, and the performances here have a sonority and refinement that reminds us that we ignore its qualities at our loss. Early music ensembles have had a go at arranging later music before, and the meeting of harmonic and melodic ideas from the 20th century with antique instruments functions well with works or composers whose work is based on ‘pure’ music rather than working with particular colour or the qualities of specific instruments. Combining Scheidt met Satie is an intriguing idea, but the result here is more contrast than surprising similarity - which is no bad thing, but don’t expect to find too much modernity in Scheidt nor too much new antiquity in Satie, who was in any case intrigued by the ancient world, was involved in Rosicrucianism and enrolled in Vincent d'Indy's Schola Cantorum de Paris to study classical counterpoint in 1905. Bernhard Schrammek’s booklet notes sum this up nicely: “From a musical point of view, these two outsiders from Paris and Halle complement each other surprisingly well, perhaps because both composers favoured lucid structures.”
If I have any criticism here it is the lack of compromise in terms of instrumentation. All of the arrangements are excellent and everything sounds wonderful, but Satie’s music is lifted further from the ‘early music’ sound of the whole through the introduction of marimba and marimbaphone in Avant Dernières Pensées and a witty version of Descriptions automatiques, inviting a mild Steve Reich sort of feel in the former, while a saxophone adds to the inter-war Berlin café atmosphere evoked by this version of the Pièces Froides. The marimba and saxophone in Scheidt’s IX. Symphonie aus dem A just sound odd. Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means a purist in this way. I love these imaginative arrangements and will play them loud and often, but I would have been equally intrigued to hear how these pieces by Satie would have sounded without adding modern instruments. The Sarabande No. 3 with only plucked strings for instance sounds excellent, and I love the Andalusian effect of the percussion in the Gnossienne No. 4 and elsewhere.
The additions from Paul Dessau and Erwin Schulhoff are both entirely appropriate, the former adding a bit of 20th century harmonic spice to the whole, the latter giving the dulcian a solo workout. This recording is beautifully spacious and hugely entertaining in every way, and it is certainly well deserving of your attention. I’m sure once you have sampled a few tracks you will be putting it on your wishlist, and as far as I’m concerned it will be kept handy for cheering myself through grey weekends and dark, damp evenings.
Dominy Clements
Contents
Samuel SCHEIDT (1587-1654)
Canzon a 5 voc. ad imitationem Bergamas Angl. (Cantus XXVI) [4:32]
Erik SATIE (1866-1925)
D'une manière très particulière (No. 1 from Pièces froides: Airs à faire fuir) [4:10]
Pièces Froides: I. Airs à faire fuir, No. 2, Modestement (arr. for baroque ensemble) [1:54]
Samuel SCHEIDT
Cantiones sacrae: No. 1: Herr, wie lang wiltu mein sogar vergessen, SSWV 1 [2:37]
Erik SATIE
Pièces Froides: I. Airs à faire fuir, No. 3, S'inviter (arr. for baroque ensemble) [3:46]
Samuel SCHEIDT
Ludi musici I, No. 23: Courant, SSWV 61 [0:50]
Scheidt: Ludi musici I, No. 24: Gaillard, SSWV 62 [1:04]
Ludi musici I, No. 9: Courant Dolorosa, SSWV 47 [3:10]
Ludi musici I, No. 11: Courant, SSWV 49 [1:15]
Erik SATIE
Gymnopédie No. 3 [2:45]
Samuel SCHEIDT
Ludi musici I, No. 17: Courant, SSWV 55 [1:24]
Erik SATIE
Avant Dernières Pensées (Idylle, Aubade, Méditation) [8:05]
Samuel SCHEIDT
Symphonie aus dem C, No. 9, SSWV 379 [4:51]
Geistliche Konzerte II: No. 6, Miserere mei Deus, SSWV 223 [3:30]
Erik SATIE
Descriptions automatiques [5:14]
Samuel SCHEIDT
Ludi musici I, No. 22: Intrada, SSWV 60 [1:14]
Erik SATIE
Sarabande No. 3 [1:31]
Gnossienne No. 4 [1:38]
Samuel SCHEIDT
Symphonie aus dem A, No. 9, SSWV 439 [1:40]
Paul DESSAU (1894-1979)
Suite for Saxophone and Piano: II. Air (arr. for baroque ensemble) [1:34]
Erwin SCHULHOFF (1894-1942)
Bassnachtigall, Op. 38: III. Fuga [0:51]
Erik SATIE
Trois mélodies sans paroles: No. 2, Les oiseaux [1:14]
Samuel SCHEIDT
Symphonie aus dem G-moll, No. 7, SSWV 417 [2:06]
Symphonie aus dem G-moll, No. 6, SSWV 416 [1:00]
Erik SATIE
Sonatine Bureaucratique [4:36]
Samuel SCHEIDT
Scheidt: Laudate Dominum in sanctis, No. 4, SSWV 72 [1:03]
Laudate Dominum in sanctis, No. 5, SSWV 72 [1:13]
Laudate Dominum in sanctis, No. 8, SSWV 72 [1:31]
