L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar HIMMELMUSIK

Himmelsmusik (‘heavenly music’), a programme of sacred songs and cantatas by German composers of the 17th century, presents a striking contrast with the previous Erato album from Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata: Händel Goes Wild. 

Himmelsmusik sees Pluhar taking a more sober and traditionally scholarly approach. She and L’Arpeggiata are joined by star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the distinguished Belgian soprano Céline Scheen in a programme that includes the celebrated lamento ‘Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte’ by Johann Christoph Bach (born over 40 years before his relative Johann Sebastian), Heinrich Schütz’s ‘Erbarm Dich mein, o Herre Gott’ and prompts discovery of works by such lesser-known figures as Johann Theile, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Christian Ritter and Franz Tunder. An instrumental piece by the Verona-born Antonio Bertali highlights the influence of Italian music on German composers of the time.

In an interview with the Bremen-based newspaper Weser-Kurier, Christina Pluhar provided some insights into the balance she strikes in her music-making with L’Arpeggiata. 

“A way of escaping any categorisation as a specialist in improvisation is to undertake projects in which I play pure Baroque music. I always try to reinvent myself, to create something from my innermost being … I can be quite satisfied with music as it was originally written, and we will play this music without making excursions into other fields … But it is also always exciting to look at this music through the eyes of musicians who come from a different musical genre, since it opens up new perspectives and gives rise to a kind of new music. That can only work when you are well acquainted with the original music and its style, and have great respect for it … There are pieces that lend themselves to being developed into something new, and there are others that must simply be presented in all their purity and beauty – works which must be left as they are. Sensitivity is everything.”

L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar LUIGI ROSSI La Lyra d’Orfeo - Arpa Davidica

The latest album from Christina Pluhar and her instrumental ensemble L’Arpeggiata sheds new light on the chamber cantatas of 17th century Italian composer, Luigi Rossi. He wrote more than 300 of these works and Christina Pluhar’s new double album includes an impressive number of 21 world premiere recordings, which are the fruit of Christina Pluhar’s research among music manuscripts held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Vatican Library.

“These cantatas are works of rare beauty,” says Pluhar, who describes Luigi Rossi as “one of the shining lights of 17th-century Italian vocal music. Supremely inventive and extremely versatile, he juxtaposed styles within a single work, often shifting from intense recitative to mellifluous song, while also venturing into daring harmonic regions.”

She has assembled a dazzling line-up of singers to perform the cantatas: sopranos Véronique Gens and Céline Scheen, mezzo-soprano Giuseppina Bridelli, and countertenors Philippe Jaroussky, Jakub Józef Orliński and Valer Sabadus.

Luigi Rossi, born in Puglia in 1597, was highly successful in his time, serving three of the most illustrious Italian dynasties – the Borghese and Barberini families in Rome and the Medici in Florence – and subsequently France’s King Louis XIV. His L'Orfeo, which received its premiere in Paris in 1647, was among the first operas to be staged in France. Rossi is also associated with the first Parisian appearances by castrato singers – their voice-type was not integral to France’s musical traditions.

Rossi had gone to Paris in 1646, where he joined the Barberinis, exiled from Rome the previous year following controversy over their handling of Papal funds. Some of their other musicians, including several castratos, also went to France with them. In Rome they had been noted for marking important occasions with commissions for masses, oratorios and operas, among them Rossi’s Palazzo incantato (Enchanted Palace), inspired by Orlando Furioso, which enjoyed a great success in 1642.

At the time, the man who wielded the most power in France was not the King – just four years old when he came to the throne in 1643 – but his godfather and Chief Minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Mazarin, an Italian by birth, enjoyed close links with the Barberini family, which had played an important role in furthering his diplomatic career in the 1630s. He was also a great advocate of Italian style in the arts and it was thanks to him that L’Orfeo, a sumptuously scored work, was lavishly staged at the Palais-Royal before Louis XIV and his mother, Queen Anne of Austria. Rossi returned to Italy in 1650 and in due course another Italian-born composer of opera, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-87), became the musical supremo at the court of the Sun King.

L’Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar HIMMELSMUSIK

Himmelsmusik (‘heavenly music’), a programme of sacred songs and cantatas by German composers of the 17th century, presents a striking contrast with the previous Erato album from Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata: Händel Goes Wild. 

Himmelsmusik sees Pluhar taking a more sober and traditionally scholarly approach. She and L’Arpeggiata are joined by star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the distinguished Belgian soprano Céline Scheen in a programme that includes the celebrated lamento ‘Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte’ by Johann Christoph Bach (born over 40 years before his relative Johann Sebastian), Heinrich Schütz’s ‘Erbarm Dich mein, o Herre Gott’ and prompts discovery of works by such lesser-known figures as Johann Theile, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Christian Ritter and Franz Tunder. An instrumental piece by the Verona-born Antonio Bertali highlights the influence of Italian music on German composers of the time.

In an interview with the Bremen-based newspaper Weser-Kurier, Christina Pluhar provided some insights into the balance she strikes in her music-making with L’Arpeggiata. 

“A way of escaping any categorisation as a specialist in improvisation is to undertake projects in which I play pure Baroque music. I always try to reinvent myself, to create something from my innermost being … I can be quite satisfied with music as it was originally written, and we will play this music without making excursions into other fields … But it is also always exciting to look at this music through the eyes of musicians who come from a different musical genre, since it opens up new perspectives and gives rise to a kind of new music. That can only work when you are well acquainted with the original music and its style, and have great respect for it … There are pieces that lend themselves to being developed into something new, and there are others that must simply be presented in all their purity and beauty – works which must be left as they are. Sensitivity is everything.”

L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar VÊPRES SOUS CHARLES VI À VIENNE

None of these works have been previously recorded, and most of them come from manuscripts that were discovered by Pierre Cao in the libraries of Kromeriz (Czech republic) and Vienna.

Christina Pluhar / L'Arpeggiata HÄNDEL GOES WILD

With Händel Goes Wild Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata once again embark on some musical time travel, this time in the company of soprano Nuria Rial, countertenor Valer Sabadus and jazz clarinettist Gianluigi Trovesi. The album features sumptuously reimagined versions of some of Handel’s most celebrated operatic arias. “All baroque composers used strict forms,” explains Christina Pluhar, “but those forms would also allow the singers and musicians to improvise and add ornament freely.” Highlighting the composer’s dynamism and temperament, she says: “Händel must have been pretty wild himself.” 

George Friderich Händel now joins Purcell, Monteverdi and Cavalli on the list of composers who have inspired an album by Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata. The title of this new album refers first and foremost to the imaginative treatment his music receives from L’Arpeggiata, but Christina Pluhar reminds us that “Händel must have been pretty wild himself,” quoting this famous anecdote: “At a rehearsal for his opera Ottone, when the celebrated soprano Francesca Cuzzoni refused to sing the aria ‘Falsa immagine’, he became so furious that he grabbed her round the waist and threatened to throw her out of the window.”

Fortunately, the ‘wildness’ on this album is purely pleasurable. Händel Goes Wild is in the beguiling vein of Music For A While – Improvisations on Henry Purcell, released by L’Arpeggiata on Erato in 2014. Praising that album, BBC Music Magazine wrote: “Long experienced in fusing Baroque with jazz-inspired performance styles, L'Arpeggiata's approach breathes new life into the Restoration composer, whose ground basses are akin to riffs, his melodies folk-like in their raw simplicity... Baroque instruments and a jazz-style combo mix to intriguing effect.” (Warner Classics)

L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar ORFEO CHAMÁN

The ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has had rich resonances in the modern world, ranging from balladry to the play by Vinícius de Moraes and its spectacular film adaptation. The latest entry into this tradition is Orfeo Chamán, composed and led in performance by theorbist Christina Pluhar. Like Moraes, Pluhar sets her Orpheus story in Latin America and draws on non-European belief systems: in Moraes' case Afro-Brazilian, in Pluhar's pre-Columbian. The work's title means Orpheus Shaman, and instead of going to the underworld to search for his Eurydice, he enters a world populated by the souls of inanimate objects. Although it's been called an opera and has been staged as one, Orfeo Chamán only occasionally reflects the action of the text, by Colombian poet Hugo Chaparro Valderrama. Instead, the work consists of a series of set pieces with little climaxes of strong emotion; "cantata" would be a better word for it. There are four solo parts, for Orpheus, Eurydice, Orpheus' half-brother Aristaeus, and a nahual, a figure in South American beliefs who can accompany a human visiting the spirit world. Most interesting is the mix of genres in Pluhar's music, which somewhat resembles the combination of Baroque and popular materials in some of Jordi Savall's recordings, but consists entirely of original material except for a few traditional dance tunes. This is an accomplishment in itself; you might easily think you were listening to material hundreds of years old, and the range of music Pluhar has mastered is impressive. The accompaniments, from ensemble ground bass pieces to simple folk harmonies, are likewise strikingly varied yet coherent. The end result is a work that catches the ear and then stays in the brain as you begin to appreciate just how difficult it was to pull off. (James manheim)

L'Arpeggiata / Christina Pluhar FRANCESCO CAVALLI L'Amore Innamorato

With L’Amore innamorato – ‘Love in love’ – Christina Pluhar and L’Arpeggiata return to their own first great love, Italian music of the 17th century, and specifically to composer Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676).

A luminary of the glamorous and innovative world of Venetian opera, Cavalli was a protégé of Claudio Monteverdi – the composer around whom L’Arpeggiata built Il teatro d’amore, the ensemble’s first Warner Classics album, which was released in early 2009. “Cavalli’s music excites my passions”, says Christina Pluhar. He composed some 40 operas, some of which have achieved new currency since the 1960s, such as La Calisto, Il Giasone, L’Egisto and L’Ormindo and La Didone. Arias and instrumental numbers from six of his operas feature in L’Amore innamorato. The instrumentalists of L’Arpeggiata are joined for the album – which also includes pieces by two of Cavalli’s contemporaries, Girolamo Kapsperger and Andrea Falconieri – by two sopranos, the Catalan Núria Rial and the Czech Hana Blažíková.

While L’Arpeggiata’s recent Warner Classics CDs – Music for a While, Mediterraneo, Los Pájaros perdidos and Via Crucis – have explored fusions of cultures and musical styles, L’Amore innamorato adheres to the conventions of historically informed performance of Baroque music. The members of the ensemble use stringed, keyboard, wind and percussion instruments to flesh out Cavalli’s score, which comprises only a vocal line, basso continuo and indications for the ritornello (a recurring instrumental section). As Christina Pluhar points out, the line-up of instruments is unusually lavish: she herself performs on theorbo and harp and is joined by the other players who create a sumptuous soundworld, accompanying arias for goddesses and nymphs with a fascinating array of instruments: cornetto, violin, archlute, guitar, harp, psaltery, viola da gamba, lirone, cello, violone, double bass, organ, harpsichord and percussion.

In April 2015, after L’Arpeggiata performed L’Amore innamorato at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times wrote:

“In some ways, L’Arpeggiata represents the state of the art in early-music practice … The most compelling performers today have come to realize how much was left unsaid by composers in scores prepared on the run for use by performing colleagues who were, if not immediately at hand, at least immersed in the style of the period and locale. These performers see conjecture not as a worrisome chore but as an opportunity; improvisation as a matter of course; invention as a necessity.

L’Arpeggiata showed those traits in abundance in a delightful program on Tuesday, L’Amore innamorato: Arias by Francesco Cavalli … Núria Rial, a splendid Spanish soprano, sang numbers from operas including Calisto, Didone and Ormindo beautifully, and the ensemble filled out the 75-minute program with instrumental ditties by Cavalli and others.

The selections tended toward works with variations above repeating bass figures, which come as catnip to these players, inviting, as they do, the extemporization of new variations. Such forms are widespread in the Italian Baroque literature.

Cavalli’s operas have been gaining fitful exposure in recent years … Still, his music is not well known, and it was good to hear these delicious samples in something like their original form. Christina Pluhar, L’Arpeggiata’s artistic director, played theorbo throughout, giving a wonderful, firm basis to the sound.” (Presto Classical)

Christina Pluhar / L'Arpeggiata MEDITERRANEO

This release by the early music group L'Arpeggiata and its leader, lutenist Christina Pluhar, seems to encompass two separate goals, only partly laid out in the handsomely illustrated booklet notes. First is an illustration of the idea that, as the notes put it, "the sea does not separate cultures, it connects them." Jordi Savall and others have released albums that cut across a wide swath of Mediterranean lands from Turkey to Spain (and around to Portugal), finding in them a traditional music that responds well to improvisatory practice, shows the continuing influence of musical practices from the Arab and Ottoman worlds, and reflects a lyric impulse and a tendency toward accompanied vocal song. Pluhar adds different singers and musicians onto her core group according to the national origin of the music, a noteworthy and innovative practice that gets the listener to hear commonalities and differences in a fresh way. The second goal is more unusual: Pluhar and company explore the common roots of these practices in Greek music, demonstrated by the persistence of the Greek language and a large repertory of orally transmitted song in southern Italy, on the Salento peninsula on the east coast of southern Italy, and also in Calabria. These songs are sung in a language called Griko, essentially an Italian dialect of Greek. This music, and even the language itself, is sufficiently obscure to attract attention to the album by themselves, and "Greco-Salentino" songs, with everything transliterated and translated in the booklet, are lovely. The album's perhaps of a bit more interest to speculative world music fans than to serious devotees of old Mediterranean song: Pluhar's female vocalists don't have quite the power needed to take command of the material. But the instrumental group L'Arpeggiata is a remarkably flexible, breathing instrument, and the entire project gets major points for sheer originality. (James Manheim)