Heidi Maria Taubert / Instrumenta Musica / Ercole Nisini PASSACAGLIE D'AMORE

 

PASSACAGLIE D'AMORE

Mathieu Salama / La Réjouissance / Stefano Intrieri FURIOSO BAROCCO

 

FURIOSO BAROCCO

Benjamin Alard JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH The Complete Works for Keyboard 1

The first instalment of Benjamin Alard’s projected complete keyboard works of JS Bach is entirely auspicious. Subtitled ‘The Young Heir’, this three-disc set includes works performed on the harpsichord and organ, dating from (roughly) 1699-1705, the young composer’s childhood and apprentice years. The first CD includes works of musicians with whom Bach would have been familiar, among them members of his own extended musical family, including the greatest of his forebears, his great uncle Johann Christoph Bach, and his father-in-law, Johann Michael Bach. Also included are works by Frescobaldi, Froberger, Pachelbel, Marchand and de Grigny, along with Georg Böhm, whose work was particularly influential on the young Bach.

Alard is equally accomplished on both the organ and the harpsichord and moves from one to the other with facility. The organ is used not just for the early chorales but also, on the third disc, for the Capriccio on the departure of his brother, BWV992, an effective choice. The three discs are organised both chronologically and geographically, documenting the early peregrinations of the composer as he emerged from the musical milieu of his brother’s town of Ohrdruf to his time in Lüneberg, where Böhm was a central figure, and his first professional posting in Arnstadt. Not surprisingly, the first two discs feel a bit scattered and unfocused, while the third reveals the composer coming into his own and contains the most substantial of the early works.

Alard’s playing is a delight, clean and sensible, with striking agogic expressive power. On the early discs, his performances of works by Froberger and Kuhnau (a spare and melancholy little sonata) are even more striking than the sometimes more workmanlike chorales and early fugues. But the third disc is full of evidence that the rest of this cycle will be a collection to be reckoned with, including fine renditions of the Suite in A major, BWV832, and the early, delightfully naive Aria variata alla maniera italiana, BWV989. Both the organ (from the Sainte-Aurélie church in Strasbourg, originally built in 1718) and the harpsichord (by Émile Jobin, based on a 1612 Ruckers and a 1747 Joannes Dulken instrument) are colourful and well suited to the repertoire. This is a project to watch with anticipation. (Philip Kennicott / Gramophone)

Christophe Rousset FRESCOBALDI Toccate e partite d'intavolatura di cimbalo, libro primo

Frescobaldi brilliantly combines improvisation and architecture. These qualities resonate with the discography of harpsichordist Christophe Rousset, whose choice of repertoire and interpretation are adventurous and serious at the same time.

Frescobaldi’s counterpoint goes along with the finest art of singing, inherited from the Italian madrigal and the flexibility of his language highlights the virtuosity of his compositions.

Christophe Rousset recorded toccate and partite on a beautiful and original harpsichord of the late 16th Century. Its sound faithfully testifies for the significant place of this First Book of harpsichord pieces in the nascent modernity of Frescobaldi. If the modal harmonies are still old-fashioned, the free beat and subtle melodies make it an indisputable baroque master, admired from Italy to France and Germany: Bach is said to have had a copy of his Fiori musicali.

This new disc by Christophe Rousset reveals the first treasures composed specifically for the harpsichord. Its repertoire was served from the beginning by musicians whose expressive boldness recalls in a musical way Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro.

Luc Beauséjour MOMENTS BAROQUES AU PIANO

 The repertoire on this recording was written for harpsichord during the Baroque period, generally considered to span the years 1600 to 1750. While many pianists have played Bach, Scarlatti, Handel, Rameau, and even Couperin and Froberger, few harpsichordists have come to the defence of the harpsichord repertoire on the modern piano.

The idea was born during a meeting with Analekta president, François Mario Labbé. I was submitting some recording proposals for harpsichord and clavichord, and he asked me, “Why not make a CD of piano music?” Somewhat taken aback, I asked for a few days to think about it.

Not long after, I suggested a program that would not only include harpsichord repertoire already covered by pianists–Bach, Scarlatti, and Handel– but would also feature some lesser-known works. In compiling this program, I played for several friends on various occasions to get their opinions. After reading through quite a number of works, I selected those that appealed to me most and that I felt worked best on the piano.

Some pieces borrowed from the harpsichord repertoire sound very good on the piano, but I quickly realized that not all Baroque repertoire lends itself to the modern instrument with equal satisfaction.  (Luc Beauséjour)

Rolf Lislevand / Concerto Stella Matutina NUOVE INVENZIONI

Rolf Lislevand and Concerto Stella Matutina first worked on a project in 2011, which would result in a prosperous collaboration in concert series and now, the release of their first CD together. The album is a mix of baroque and jazz as well as improvised passages with music arranged for the 12 people orchestra by Andrea Falconieri, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and Vincenzo Albrici. Bringing the elements of baroque and jazz together and developing a new kind of music by optimizing the instruments of Early Music and giving each instrument section its moment on the recording was the goal of this release. With this intimate and well mixed recording, the musicians did not aim to create crossover music or fit into any other genre but rather generate a sound that is a symbiosis of different musical elements.

 

Virtuoso of the lute and Baroque guitar Rolf Lislevand is one of the most charismatic figures in today’s early music scene. Lislevand, whose solo recordings have won numerous awards, has been professor of lute and historical performance at Trossingen Musikhochschule since 1993.

 

Since the establishment of the Baroque orchestra 2005 the number of engagements at home and abroad has been growing. Concerto Stella Matutina has its own concert series in Vorarlberg and has gained an ever growing core audience in a very short time. The musicians, next to the interpretation of familiar masterpieces, also pay special attention to forgotten works of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Le Banquet Céleste / Damien Guillon GIROLAMO FRESCOBALDI Affetti Amorosi

With Affetti amorosi Damien Guillon directs a dazzling selection of vocal works from Girolamo Frescobaldi, drawn from the Ferrara composer’s two books of Arie musicali. These arias date from 1615-1630, by which time Frescobaldi, now resident in Rome, had become a “cult” composer, and permitted great expressive freedom in the performance of his music.

Purposefully offering a recording full of contrasts and singing of human and divine love, countertenor Guillon is admirably matched by the other vocal talents in Le Banquet Céleste: soprano Céline Scheen, tenor Thomas Hobbs and bass Benoît Arnould. This new Glossa recording includes two of Frescobaldi’s enduring and moving spiritual sonnets, Maddalena alla croce and Ohimè che fur as well as one of the nascent Baroque’s favoured vocal forms, the lettera amorosa, in Vanne, o carta amorosa.

The singers are joined by lute, harp, cello and harpsichord from Guillon’s ensemble. In his wideranging and thought-provoking essay Pierre-Élie Mamou points out vivid characteristics of this early Baroque music – including “the play of opposites that greatly moves our souls” – notably the polarities between anxiety and pleasure, and time which passes and time which remains. (GLOSSA)

Romina Basso / Latinitas Nostra LAMENTO

Romina Basso's new album examines the 17th-century Italian lamento, a chamber cantata on an ostensibly tragic subject that is capable of embracing wider territory than a formal outpouring of grief. The prototype was Monteverdi's psychological work Lamento d'Arianna, drawn from a now lost opera of 1608. For his successors, however, the form had political potential. Carìssimi's Lamento in Morte di Maria Stuarda makes Counter-Reformation hagiography out of Mary, Queen of Scots, while Rossi's Lamento della Regina di Svezia mourns the death of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, killed in battle in 1632. The genre wasn't necessarily serious, either. Francesco Provenzale's Squarciato Appena Avea, for example, takes the Gustavus Adolphus story as point of departure for a scabrous study of his widow's sexuality. Among the greatest of all baroque interpreters, Basso is breathtakingly expressive and persuasive. The Greek period ensemble Latinitas Nostra is directed from the harpsichord by founder Markellos Chryssicos. Exceptional. (The Guardian.com)