"A lovely CD, this, with a selection of Couperin, Chambonnieres, Du
Mont and the elusive 'Hardel' together with a Toccata and Suite by Froberger.
"Byron Schenkman¹s playing is outstandingly musical - fluent and
sonorous, with a beautifully judged sense of pace and line. His Tombeau
de Mr de Blancrocher, for example, is the best I have heard - contemplative,
unpretentious and ultimately very moving.
"The harpsichord is a copy of the V & A Vaudry - a very good copy
by the sound of it - and the recording quality is superb.
"Overall one of the the best harpsichord CDs I have come across."
"These are excellent performances, ...buy this disc for its forceful and intelligent performances of these great suites. Parmentier's interpretive decisions are almost invariably sound. His tempos always seem right, and he is rhythmically subtle. His playing is never heavy-handed; it has energy and bounce, especially when anything aggressive or dotted is going on. Parmentier makes Bach's counterpoint especially clear, and he articulates meaningfully. He renders indicated ornaments with taste and variety, and he applies his own lavish but appropriate ornamentation in the repeats of some strains (Sarabande and Menuet II of the B-flat Major; Courante of the C Minor. Most often, Parmentier observes both repeats in the dance movements, and makes them welcome; I can't think of a movement, even a long one, that wears out its welcome. (In a few of the very long movements— the Allemande of the D Major; the Gigue of the G Major— he does omit the repeat of the second strain.)
Parmentier demonstrates admirable powers of characterization, both of individual dance types and of whole suites. He adapts the former where necessary to suit the latter: I at first thought his version of the C-Minor Courante coarse, but later found it consistent with his bold interpretation of the the suite as a whole...
Parmentier brings out all the beauty and mystery of the lush D-Major and A-Minor Allemandes, and the passion of the E-Minor Sarabande; he offers a convincing rhythmic interpretation of the ambiguous E-Minor Tempo di Gavotta. His performance of the G-Major Partita is especially strongly characterized: the scampering fast movements, the light Sarabande, the Tempo di Minuetta on the lute stop, the jaunty Gigue— all contribute to an atmosphere of good humor. In the Gigue of the E-Minor, Parmentier accepts the written duple time signature; he does not (as many pianists and harpsichordists do) convert the notation to inane triplets, but preserves the movement's tense, angular countenance.
The instrument used in this recording is a large two-manual harpsichord made by Keith Hill, modeled on an early-eighteenth-century instrument by Christian Zell, a type known to Bach. It has a strong attack and a big but warm sound, and is well miked. John Butt's liner notes are notably thoughtful and generous.
In short, this is a distinguished production. I don't know Parmentier's other half-dozen recordings for Wildboar; if they maintain the present standard they must be very fine.
Recommended.
---Kevin Bazzana
The Forqueray clavecin suites were the result of an unusual father-son collaboration (if that is the right word). In 1747, Jean-Baptiste Forqueray ("le fils") published five suites of viol pieces by his father, Antoine Forqueray ("le pére"), adding bass parts and continuo figures to them (in his own more modern harmonic style), and including three new pieces of his own. At the same time, Jean-Baptiste published virtuosic solo harpsichord transcriptions of the suites, two of which appear on this disc. (The transcriptions are better known today thant the originals' the Cinquième Suite is the one most often performed.) It's wonderful music, written in the flashy, mannered style that French clavecin composers after Couperin came to love. incidentally, if the tessitura of these suites sounds low to you, you're right: Jean-Baptiste perserved the original pitch level of his father's viol pieces, which makes them sit low on the harpsichord. The effect is unusual but also impressive, often strikingly so. The pieces by Duphly and rameau that round out the program are both tributes to the younger Forqueray. Rameau's "La Forqueray" was originally an ensemble piece; Arthur Haas has made his own transcription of it for this recording.
Haas's performances are outstanding; he brings these evocative pieces (many of which are programmatic portraits) brilliantly to life. He is completely in command of the considerable technical and expressive demands the music makes; there is a sense of authority in these performances. Haas's playing here is exuberant and frequently exciting, yet always superbly polished and controlled— a great achievement.
The instrument Haas uses is an 18th-century French original, and a rare one: a large two-manual harpsichord by Jacques Germain, dated 1785 (it is one of the latest surviving French harpsichords). It sounds gorgeous here— rich, deep, and powerful, with great beauty and variety of tone; it has also been very flatteringly recorded. This is, incidentally, the second recording Haas has made for Wildboar at the Shrine to Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota, one of the newest and largest musical-instrument museums in the U.S.; the first was a 1990 disc featuring pieces by Jean-Henry D'Anglebert [WLBR 8802]
I highly recommend the new Forqueray disc on all counts, and eagerly await future recordings by Haas.
Arthur Haas reminds us that, for all its Italian references, Forqueray's music was resolutely French. Pieces like La Boisson (Suite 5) have all the gusto of my previous favorite, Mitzi Meyerson on Virgin Classics without the aggressive edge that Meyerson brings to it. Haas's La Leclair (Suite 2)completely supersedes Ton Koopman's (Erato), which is willfully distorted and violent. In the careful attention to French performance practice— for instance, the sonority and articulation in La Sylva and the glorious dis-simultaneity between hands in the third and fourth couplets of La Buisson (Suite 2)— Haas has no equal....
"...Ms Hargis demonstrates why she is a national musical treasure; she sings with utter refinement and great feeling for the words. Above all, it is the sound of the voice, with its slight, shimmering vibrato and beautifully-produced upper register, that captivates....
"Producer/engineer Peter Nothnagel has put together an absolutely stunning disc of Handel, one bearing the usual Wildboar hallmarks of committed, vibrant music-making and ultra-realistic recorded sound. If you love Handel, you can't afford to be without this CD." –C.B.
"Any disc from Wildboar that features these performers gets my automatic recommendation." Continuo
"...[Parmentier] is a player of solid technique who, with subtly controlled flexibility, succeeds in conveying the exuberantly rhetorical nature of much of Bach's writing— there is splendidly cheerful élan at the start of the D Major work, and his springiness and implusive drive in the two fugues in D minor are exhilarating; his E minor fugue brilliantly evokes the image of the energetic youthful Bach."
Reviewed in Goldberg, Summer 1998, by Lionel Salter.
Goldberg is a gorgeous new early music magazine originating
in Pamplona. There is an English/Spanish edition, and a new German/French
edition. The former is available for purchase at The Musical Offering.
Andrea Falconieri is hardly a household name, but on the evidence of
this disc he deserves to be much better known than he is. His style is
a very personal mixture of the influences of his native city of Naples;
Scott Metcalfe's informative note quotes the description by Dinko Fabris
(author of the standard work on Falconieri) of the composer's Primo
Libro di Canzone, sinfonie, etc. of 1650 as "Janus-like"' and as "looking
to the past in its old-fashioned musical structures and dances, to the
future in its harmonic language." It is a potent mixture. Falconieri's
dances are instantly memorable for their melodic quality as well as their
rhythmic drive (try La Carilla Corrente or Buelta dicha la Emperatriz,
for example, or the dramatic Gallarda), and the two harpsichord
works by Rossi and Storace (a Passacalle and a Ciacona respectively)
are magnificent, complementing Falconieri's style very well. They are also
stylishly played by Byron Schenkman, and indeed the playing of La Luna,
a group new to me, is of the highest order throughout the recording, at
once sensitive and dramatic. Since, in addition, the Primo Libro contains
59 pieces, there is more than enough material for the second disc...
To retrace the birth of an idiomatic repertoire for the violin at the start of the 17th century— such is the intention of these two young musicians, whose career at the moment is developing essentially in the USA. Through the choice of pieces is shown, with evidence, the intinerary of a language largely deriving from that of song and progressively freeing itself from the repertoire of the dance and of accompaniment to which it had fallen, so as to lay claim to a primary role. The first sonatas are in a single movement but composed of short sections (sometimes extremely brief, as in the rare Isabella Leonarda) with very differentiated dynamics. From simple transcription of a song, (like on this disc, Caccini's celebrated Amarilli mia bella or Biagio Marini's variations on La Romanesca), the writing diverges by an often modest virtuosity to passage-work or diminutions, and as in Marini already ventures on double-stops, dynamic accelerations and echo effects (Dario Castello). The short contemporary keyboard toccatas that punctuate the recital reverberate like the echo of this intoxication by the strings with the discovery of liberty.
Ingrid Matthews and Byron Schenkman give a perfectly controlled reading
of this repertoire, with precision, dynamism and fine round sonority.
reviewed in Early Music America, vol 5 no. 1, Spring 1999
by Igor Kipnis
along with Schubert: Trout Quintet and other chamber works
L'Archibudelli:
Vera Beths, violin
Jurgen Küssmaul, viola
Anner Bylsma, 'cello
Marji Danilow, double bass
Jos van Immerseel, fortepiano.
Sony SK 63361. DDD 69'59"
With so many recorded versions of this repertoire available (the less frequently heard 1816 Adagio and Rondo is an exception), one finds it difficult to select a first choice. It would be hard, however, to top the splendid Wildboar offering, not only because of the period instruments used, including Penelope Crawford's marvelously full-sounding and colorful 1836 Viennese Graf piano, but because of the sensitivity of these marvelous players to all aspects of the scores.
A case in point is the Notturno, a ravishing work from Schubert's
last years. Its atmospheric moods demand a full range of dynamics, ranging
from magical introversion to full grandeur. A competing version on
Sony with fortepianist Jos van Immerseel (using a far less colorful Johann
Nepomuk Trönlin instrument made in Leipzig), violinist Vera Beths,
and cellist Anner Bylsma fails to bewitch in the same way. However, Bylsma
in the Arpeggione Sonata, in which he performs on a five-string violoncello
piccolo, plays most beautifully on a piece that often sounds awkward on
the normal cello- van Immerseel supports him admirably. The most disappointing
performance, though, is the Trout, which has far too much aggression in
its faster movements and too little feeling for Gemuetlichkeit in general.
The playing is brilliant, the recording extremely clear (if not quite
with the exceptional transparency of the Wildboar disc), but I find
the style, with some disregard for the subtleties of Schubert's dynamics,
a bit heartless.
---Igor Kipnis
"Period instrument" baroque music brings to mind the spindly sound and variable pitch associated with conductors such as Norrington, Harnoncourt, Hogwood, and other darlings of the "authentic" performance movement; it also summons the despair of those who love rich sonics. In this exciting recording keyboard artist Robert Edward Smith brings us glorious large scale period instrument performances of familiar Bach repertory including the Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue, the Toccata in D major, a Concerto in D after Vivaldi, and others in a generous 60-minute program. If your taste for baroque performance was formed after mid-Century, you may think of instruments that replicate 17th and 18th-century sound. So it will be a surprise to hear big, juicy Bach pieces played on this CD in huge sound, with quick register changes and precise pitch, in headlong, passionate performances by the fleet-fingered Smith.
Smith's 1969 harpsichord was built by Eric Hertz of Boston, and is clearly insprired by Wanda Landowska's instruments that owe much of their mechanics, if not their sound, to modern piano and organ technology. Pedals, for instance, permit instant registration changes with no need to move hands from the keyboard; its sixteen-foot choirs append organ and orchestral sonorities to an instrument that miraculously permits the recreation of a performance tradition from our very own century.
What's the net result of all this equipment? The result is Wow!
I played the CD again, and then again. Let me warn readers: this thing
is habit-forming. The harpsichord sound encountered here is singular in
my experience, live or recorded. It does have organ-like sonorities and
a vast array of color and quickness not associated with plucked-string
instruments. I immediately thought of a huge floral bouquet, a sparkling,
vivid array of color and musical fragrance. Yes, I am overboard, I admit.
Be careful, you may be too!
--J. A. VAN SANT