Johann Jakob Froberger

Started by Mandryka, July 17, 2016, 11:47:11 PM

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Mandryka

#100
Quote from: Mr. Minnow on June 28, 2018, 04:09:46 PM
I meant to ask if Asperen's set really is a complete one as Aeolus say it is. His series consists of 11 discs whereas Stella's box has 16, and five discs is clearly quite a difference. Is it like complete sets of Bach's organ music, where the degree of completeness and number of discs depends on which works are considered authentic and which are excluded on the grounds of doubtful attribution? I'll still get Asperen's series when I have the cash for it whether it's complete or not, I was just wondering about the apparent discrepancy with Stella's set.

Stella recorded work "from secondary sources" which Asperen omitted, I'm not sure what "secondary sources" means or  whether it implies that their authorship is disputable. Maybe someone else can say whether the booklet casts light on this, though this review doesn't fill me with hope (from amazon in the uk)

QuoteBooklet notes totally inadequate, particularly information about music from secondary sources. His organ playing is good but somewhat stiff. He is certainly not a harpsichordist as he treats it like an organ and has no concept of making sound on the instrument - the suites (Partitas) are stiff and colourless. The biggest sin is transposiing the f-sharp minor Ricercar into e minor - utterly criminal...guess he couldn't take the exreme nature of this piece. As someone who was really excited to hear this music interpreted by another obvious Froberger fan I was massively underwhelmed. There are too many keyboard players out there now seeming to speed through and record the complete works of someone without true thought and passion. Beautiful organs on in this set though.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#101
QuoteBooklet notes totally inadequate, particularly information about music from secondary sources. His organ playing is good but somewhat stiff. He is certainly not a harpsichordist as he treats it like an organ and has no concept of making sound on the instrument - the suites (Partitas) are stiff and colourless. The biggest sin is transposiing the f-sharp minor Ricercar into e minor - utterly criminal...guess he couldn't take the exreme nature of this piece. As someone who was really excited to hear this music interpreted by another obvious Froberger fan I was massively underwhelmed. There are too many keyboard players out there now seeming to speed through and record the complete works of someone without true thought and passion. Beautiful organs on in this set though.

The F sharp minor ricercar  mentioned in this review is FbWV 412. There are recordings by Boccaccio, Asperen, Coudurier, Stella, Rampe, Tilney and Egarr. Just thinking of organ performances, Egarr seems the most "extreme" harmonically  (St Martin's Cuijk, 1/5 comma meantone, I'm not sure whether he's transposed it) Asperen thinks that the ricercar is evidence that Froberger had moved away from meantone tuning, but he doesn't elaborate and his organ is just described as unequally tuned (now I'm looking at the details, I'm starting to think that maybe the notes aren't as good as I thought in Asperen's set.) On organ, Asperen and Egarr seem to me to be very soulful in it. Coudurier is exciting, thrilling, and tough and extrovert.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#102


I think a superb organ recital here, Paolo Crivellaro playing an 1822 organ in Baceno near Turin. Anachronistic obviously,  but very well handled by Crivellaro IMO, and he's musical, he makes it into music. The recital has maybe half a dozen pieces by Froberger, the rest made up of Muffat and Kerll.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka



The single Froberger suite here is, I think, a fabulous performance, expressive and moving and natural. Perkins has a gift for sincerity, there's a complete absence of pose. He is wonderfully distinguished and subtle,  he never forces his voice. The French suites on the same CD are equally successful IMO, possibly the best set of French Suites I know, given my understanding of the music.   
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on November 14, 2018, 11:23:24 AM


The single Froberger suite here is, I think, a fabulous performance, expressive and moving and natural. Perkins has a gift for sincerity, there's a complete absence of pose. He is wonderfully distinguished and subtle,  he never forces his voice. The French suites on the same CD are equally successful IMO, possibly the best set of French Suites I know, given my understanding of the music.
Listening to his French, I feel a bit frustrated that I cannot hear what you are hearing.  :(

Mandryka

#105
Quote from: milk on November 14, 2018, 08:58:40 PM
Listening to his French, I feel a bit frustrated that I cannot hear what you are hearing.  :(

One reason I like it is that it's very small scale, both in terms of sound and in terms of conception - I mean there's a simplicity and modesty and lightness about what he does. That seems to me to work better in this music than something which makes them sound grand. In this respect at least, I think the French Suites are really very different from the partitas and probably the English Suites too.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

milk

Quote from: Mandryka on November 14, 2018, 10:05:24 PM
One reason I like it is that it's very small scale, both in terms of sound and in terms of conception - I mean there's a simplicity and modesty and lightness about what he does. That seems to me to work better in this music than something which makes them sound grand. In this respect at least, I think the French Suites are really very different from the partitas and probably the English Suites too.
I do agree with this sentiment. I haven't listened to Van Asperen in a while but I feel that is an intimate performance (and instrument). And the Videla, which I think you recommended, has this quality. 

milk


Who is she? I don't know but the playing is convincing. The broken chord thing? Nice sense of the idiom, rubato, some ornaments but not out of place...

Mandryka

#108
https://www.youtube.com/v/PL8k-2WpZhg

Adrien Pièce released a wonderful claviorganum Bull CD this year. Prior to that he seems to have been involved in a Froberger project for Fra Bernardo, which hasn't reaped fruition. There are some things on youtube including this Méditation sur ma mort future on a Louis Denis.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka



Booklet here.

https://static.qobuz.com/goodies/09/000133690.pdf

He sent round an email in March  saying that he thought playing these piece on clavichord was a personal revelation. It's too soon for me to say much more than this: it is nice to have all the canzonas and fantasias  presented together like this, and the instrument is attractive. 
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

miller.ti.ja@gmail.com

On Disc 15 of the Froberger Stella set, track 15-9 is titled "Toccata 2di Tonj (g-Moll) FbWV". I have never seen that nomenclature used for any other of Froberger's works. Does anyone know the meaning of the "2di Tonj" part?

Mandryka

Quote from: miller.ti.ja@gmail.com on March 22, 2021, 03:03:17 AM
On Disc 15 of the Froberger Stella set, track 15-9 is titled "Toccata 2di Tonj (g-Moll) FbWV". I have never seen that nomenclature used for any other of Froberger's works. Does anyone know the meaning of the "2di Tonj" part?

2nd Church Tone, have a look here for example

https://www.jstor.org/stable/829898?seq=1
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka



Edward Parmentier was Elizabeth Farr's teacher. Elizabeth Farr was a pioneer of madrigalesque counterpoint - did she get the idea from him? I'm listening to Parmentier play Froberger now and yes, she could well have. Something worth exploring I'd say.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

calyptorhynchus

Just reading back through the thread, people were querying why complete sets of Froberger were different sizes: Egarr 8 discs, Asperen 11, Stella 16.

The reason is that new works have been discovered in the interim, so that Stella in 2016 was able to play twice as much music as Egarr in 1994.

I've been listening to Egarr's renditions on Youtube recently. I don't find that Stella is disastrous as some people think he is, all the different versions have their merits. Myself, I prefer mystical interpretations to dramatic ones. I listen half volume to pieces played on the harpsichord and keep thinking "lute!"
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

Mandryka

#115
Quote from: calyptorhynchus on August 21, 2022, 09:53:02 PM
Just reading back through the thread, people were querying why complete sets of Froberger were different sizes: Egarr 8 discs, Asperen 11, Stella 16.

The reason is that new works have been discovered in the interim, so that Stella in 2016 was able to play twice as much music as Egarr in 1994.

I've been listening to Egarr's renditions on Youtube recently. I don't find that Stella is disastrous as some people think he is, all the different versions have their merits. Myself, I prefer mystical interpretations to dramatic ones. I listen half volume to pieces played on the harpsichord and keep thinking "lute!"

If you want music in the style of Froberger's suites played on lute, then try Essias Reusner's Delitiae Testudinis - Paul Beier brings out this Frobergian side to the music very well IMO, Suite IV in Vol 1 of his complete Reusner for example.

Maybe, just maybe, there's a similarity between Froberger's music and the French lute music - I mean more than both the lute composers and Froberger using unmeasured fantasy movements, preludes. The problem is that the lute players aren't very good at counterpoint on the whole, at least that the conclusion I'm coming to. However something which may be Froberger like, or that's the thought which went through my head listening to it, is Suite XII by Denis Gaultier, as interpreted by Hopkinson Smith.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

calyptorhynchus

Quote from: Mandryka on August 21, 2022, 11:39:35 PM
If you want music in the style of Froberger's suites played on lute, then try Essias Reusner's Delitiae Testudinis - Paul Beier brings out this Frobergian side to the music very well IMO, Suite IV in Vol 1 of his complete Reusner for example.

Maybe, just maybe, there's a similarity between Froberger's music and the French lute music - I mean more than both the lute composers and Froberger using unmeasured fantasy movements, preludes. The problem is that the lute players aren't very good at counterpoint on the whole, at least that the conclusion I'm coming to. However something which may be Froberger like, or that's the thought which went through my head listening to it, is Suite XII by Denis Gaultier, as interpreted by Hopkinson Smith.

Thanks I do have a Reusner disc, but could always do with an excuse to get more. I think the problem is that on the lute you only have five fingers to do counterpoint, as opposed to ten on the keyboard!
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

calyptorhynchus

I was just looking at the Beier discs and the title of the collection, Delitiæ Testudinis, lol, 'the delights of the tortoise'. I guess this refers to making a Greek lyre body from a tortoise shell, poor tortoise... like those S American guitars made out of armadillo armour  :(
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

rappy

#118
I just recorded the Sarabande of the c minor Suite (no. 19) on a Cimbalo cromatico. Probably the first performance having both Gb and F# in tune (the piece requires both, but obviously in the meantone temperament which was standard in the middle of 17th century they are different pitches).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ff3oMbzbhg

Hope you enjoy it.

(If you want to compare the piece in different temperaments: Verlet plays meantone with G# instead of Ab (to me very questionable, the G# sounds totally out of place), Rampe meantone with Ab tuned, but Gb as F# (possible, I think), Rousset well tempered (the tuning is a bit flat in comparison).

Mandryka

Quote from: rappy on December 06, 2022, 12:45:11 AMI just recorded the Sarabande of the c minor Suite (no. 19) on a Cimbalo cromatico.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbf34iOrQdI


Sounds really interesting - however the link doesn't take me to a Sarabande by Froberger!
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