Reviews and occasional notes on classical music "Music, both vocall and instrumental, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so super excellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all those strangers that never heard the like." - Thomas Coryat, after hearing 3 hours of music at the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, 1608.
In their follow-up to 2014's well-received Vivaldi Premieres CD, Lina Tur Bonet and Musica Alchemica bring us another well-chosen, scrupulously researched and divinely performed program of theatrical music by the great Venetian ginger, Antonio Vivaldi. Once again we have the distinguished Vivaldi scholar Olivier Fourés leading the charge on the musicological front. He provides new musical editions of many of these works, and has dug up earlier and more authentic versions of works already in circulation. The bulk of this music receives premiere recordings here. But as important as this is to the scholarly world, none of it would mean much for us listening at home without someone with the same musical skill and charisma as the prete rosso himself, in these set-pieces of theatrical as well as musical magic. Lina Tur Bonet really delivers: the gorgeous, full sound of her Amati violin from c.1740 grips us in the concertos, and she dials things down a bit for the more intimate sonatas, with still lovely but more subdued sound from an anonymous 17th century violin. In every case she has sensitive, responsive support from the musicians of Musica Alchemica. Forget the canard about all of Vivaldi's huge corpus of music sounding alike; just feel lucky that we have musicians like these to provide us with these supremely characterized musical happenings.
Note that the "Graz" Sonatas included here (numbers 1, 2 & 5) are from the same 2013 recording as the two included on the Vivaldi Premiere disc (numbers 3 & 4). The concertos are from a 2018 recording, which incidentally sounds great.
What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher is a perfect story for a one-act opera. The 'particulars of the scene', the 'details of the picture' chosen by a good librettist can stand out from the 'shadowy fancies' of a fine composer. Claude Debussy was his own librettist for Usher, based on Baudelaire's translations of Poe, with mainly positive results. This is a spare but theatrically satisfying scenario. As for the music, Poe's gloomy atmospheres are perfectly communicated by Debussy's shimmering strings, his mysterious woodwinds and muted brass, and the dramatic shaping and shading of the vocal parts. This music is reminiscent of Pelleas et Melisande, and perhaps more so of The Martyrdom of St. Sebastien. Though it was never completed (and sadly never saw a planned Metropolitan Opera premiere), the opera as completed by Robert Orledge contains a significant amount of original music by Debussy. The burlesque counter-piece to Usher, The Devil in the Belfry, however, has much more Orledge, who provides a clever pastiche of Debussy's earlier music and plausibly Debussy-sounding filler to go with the composer's original libretto and an outline of some musical ideas for the project. This is a clever and sprightly entertainment that provides a strong contrast to its gloomier mate. Orledge's fine work has brought us one final masterpiece back from the grave, and a ghost of another as an encore. Both works receive strong performances, recorded live at two performances in December 2013, from Christoph-Mathias Mueller, conducting the Gottinger Symphonie Orchester and an excellent cast of singers headed by the excellent William Dazeley as Roderick Usher, with a vivid cameo from Lin Lin Fan as Lady Madeleine.
Debussy's surgery and radiation treatments for his final illness made the composition of the Poe operas a painful ordeal, and obviously affected the music he was able to finish for both projects:
I have let myself stray and have almost only been working on Roderick Usher and the devil in the belfry. [...] I fall asleep with them and find on waking the gloomy melancholy of the one or the derisive laughter of the other.
In the end it was as if Debussy had become a character in a Poe story.
I was on the verge – or almost – of completing La Chute de la Maison Usher. The disease has extinguished my hope [...] I find myself having difficulty coping with this turn of fate and I suffer like a damned soul.
This only makes this final music more authentic.
Here is a short promotional film promoting the original performances in Gottingen:
Here's a really interesting composer from early 18th century Vienna, someone who's one step away from being completely anonymous: Camilla de Rossi. We have no birth or death dates for de Rossi, but know that she was originally from Rome, and that she worked in Vienna in the early 18th century. There are five extant works for voices and orchestra, lively works with interesting vocal and instrumental parts (including the early use of the chalumeau, the predecessor of the clarinet). The music has an excellent and most amiable model: Arcangelo Corelli, and one can see why these works found favour at the Court of the Austrian Emperor.
This CD, due for release on June 24, 2016, is a nicely packaged re-issue of the Pan Classics disc originally released in 2002. Daniela Dolci conducts the excellent singers and instrumentalists of her Basel-based Musica Fiorita; the recording was made in April 2001 in the Reformierte Kirche Meiringen. I was interested to see that Johannes Strobl also plays harpsichord and organ in the ensemble; he is now the very successful director of the Cappella Murensis and Les Cornets Noirs.
I found the original Pan recording up on YouTube. I think you'll agree this is very listenable music.
The violinist Gunar Letzbor and Ars Antiqua Austria have come to the end of their 3-disc project to record all the music in Manuscript XIV 726 of the Minoritenkonvent in Vienna, and there's plenty of high quality violin sonatas left to make an entertaining, if low-key programme for the last CD, to be released May 27, 2016. Biber is the big name in this bunch, and his sonatas included here are the most substantial and serious works. The Forte Presto second movement of his F major sonata, no. 3, has a hair-raising beginning. Something is going on here: a battle scene, perhaps, or a storm. Maybe this is the Sturm before the Sturm und Drang. Biber is never conventional.
Though the violin part calls for an excellent musician, even a virtuoso at times (and Letzbor delivers on both scores), this music is about much more than the solo line. The continuo, provided by Ars Antiqua Austria's Eric Traxler (harpsichord or organ), Hubert Hoffmann (lute), Daniel Oman (colascione*), and Jan Krigovsky (violone), provide a varied sound that I suspect comes as much from the musical sensibilities of the group as it does from the scores from the monastery. This variety is welcome, though not as important once one comes to Biber's fireworks in the last part of the disc.
The first two discs in this excellent series, both highly recommended, are: Scordato, from 2015:
