Topic: "New" Music Log

[Todd]

From the DHM long box, a collection of mostly traditional and anonymous works from the 13th and 14th Centuries mixing Ottoman, Spanish, Italian, Arab works.  The works are obviously influenced by or rely solely on non-western traditions, and the sung texts are in different languages, including Arabic, and the instrumentation is almost exclusively Eastern.  I have no other recordings that use the zarb, for instance.  The music doesn't conform to western music norms, which of course makes sense.  The music sounds like the type of thing that one hears in travelogue shows or movies, unless, perhaps, one travels to regions of the world where this type of music or its current variants might still be played.  Some of the music is very vibrant, festive, and has irregular dance rhythms, while some other music is slower and more contemplative, in a playing to the crowd kind of way.  This is the type of disc that I would never buy on its own, but it's captivating in its rare (for me) sound, and the playing is obviously expert level and in SOTA sound.  I'll never listen to this frequently, but I will definitely listen again for something outside the (western) ordinary, and I may just explore other recordings by the ensemble.

[Todd]

The next Savall box disc is the first dedicated to a single composer, here Antonio de Cabezón.  The disc is billed as yet more music from the time of Chucky Number Five.  I've got some exposure to Cabezón from this set, some other collections, and a five disc Brilliant Classics set, though this particular compilation has some fresh material.  While not necessarily presented in an especially coherent thematic way, the music is stylistically similar throughout, is played stylishly and expertly, and partly through tunes and partly through intriguing instrumental combinations, entertains from first note to last.  The playing may not be to everyone's taste in that it is often of the laid back to the point of sounding languid.  Cabezón can be played with more pep.  I dig Savall's approach.  That the disc is in top shelf early 80s sound that doesn't really cede much to today's recording helps matters.  Superb.

[Todd]

From the DHM long box, another compilation I almost certainly would never have purchased on its own.  Los Otros, a HIP trio consisting of Hille Perl, Lee Santana, and Steve Player, combined various string instruments - viola de gamba, theorbo, baroque guitars, etc - to play multiple works from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries by six composers.  I've not heard anything from any of them to the best of my recollection, and the only name I recall seeing is Girolamo Kapsberger.  The music mostly has a folksy feel to it and sort of blends Renaissance and early baroque styles quite deftly.  There's a definite Spanish flavor to much of the music, with its somewhat distinctive rhythm.  The aforementioned Kapsberger is represented by eleven short pieces, ending with one named Villa di Spagna, which sounds as though it served as inspiration for Tejano music.  The three instrumentalists all play splendidly, and sound is essentially SOTA.  The venue used is not soundproof as one can hear birds in the distance on multiple occasions.  Most enjoyable.

[Todd]

The next grab-bag disc from the Savall box, this time of music from the time of Cervantes, and collected into four groups.  This disc succeeds more than a couple earlier discs by just jelling better.  There's some pep to a lot of the pieces, though some are more languid.  Ultimately, all sound just right.  Montserrat Figueras does her thing again, and superb sound again makes the whole thing a real joy to listen to.  A true Savall release. 

[Todd]

Another all-Spanish disc.  Albert Attenelle was the main draw here.  I discovered his pianism via streaming, decided I had to listen to his playing in proper sixteen bit, and so snapped up all but one of his recordings.  (That's his Granados; I will be getting that at some point.)  Here, he is joined by Spanish violist Agustín León Ara in a recording of works by Spanish musicians better known as performers: there are world premiere recordings of the Violin Sonatas by cellists Pablo Casals and his student Gaspar Cassadó, and Sis Sonnets by conductor Eduard Toldrà.  León Ara not only performs on these first recordings, he resurrected the works in the 1970s, including partaking in the first performance of the Casals. 

The Casals starts the disc.  It's a lengthy work at just over 33' - and it doesn't include a finale.  Casals stopped with the Lento third movement.  While listening to the opening Allegro, French Violin Sonatas of the Franck or Faure variety, updated with a 1920s Paris vibe (though it was written in 1945) came immediately to mind.  The opening movement lasts for over seventeen minutes, and it's multi-sectional, with the end of each section sort of offering a false ending.  The music is nice, but it does seem a bit long.  The Scherzo is more robust, infused with some fast and slow quasi-dance like elements, and the Lento, save for a quick and robust coda, is lyrical and almost liturgical much of the time, with some stormy outbursts.  Overall, it's a nice work.

The Cassadó work comes in at under sixteen minutes, and it starts off with ample energy and sounds unabashedly romantic, belying its 1926 composition date.  The opening Fantaisie is very free flowing and at times passionate, and sounds sort of French with hints of generic Spanish and/or Italian influences.  The Pastorale is sheer delight, all fun or tender beauty.  (Cassadó dedicated the work to his brother, who died in 1914, so perhaps it transmutes memories to music.  Or not.)  The Finale is vibrant and fantastical, like the opener.  This compact work is really quite good and, though not groundbreaking, deserves a wider audience and more recordings.  It's the best thing on the disc.

Toldrà's Sis Sonnets has received other recordings, and it is easy enough to hear why.  Like Cassadó's piece, it was penned in the 20s (1922, to be exact), and it is quite romantic and conservative.  While big portions of the music are vibrant and extroverted and of the playing to the gallery sort, good portions are more intimate.  It's quite good.  Some fun Spanish music trivia: Toldrà himself debuted the piece playing violin, along with Federico Mompou's teacher Ferdinand Motte-Lacroix.

Sound for the 2002 recording falls just shy of SOTA, but it's fully modern and superb and offers a realistic representation of two musicians playing in what sounds like a modest sized venue.

[Todd]

Next from the Savall box, the second single composer disc.  Three quarters of an hour of Savall front and center, sometimes solo, but mostly with a keyboard accompanist in twenty-seven tracks of Renaissance chamber music.  Savall plays his instrument superbly, sometimes as lyrically as one could hope for, which is not at all surprising.  His fellow musicians - Genoveva Galvez on harpsichord and positive organ, and Sergi Cassademunt on tenor viola de gamba - likewise play splendidly.  While every piece sounds superb, I particularly like the combination of viola de gamba and positive organ, with its at times piquant upper registers and generally small scale and light sound.  It's something either new or very rare in my collection and listening experience.  Ortiz's music lacks the same pop as Cabezon's, but it's nonetheless enticing.  Sound is excellent for its time (1969), but is not as good as the in the later recordings in the set.  This is another one of those discs one expects from Savall. 

[Todd]

Prior to buying the DHM big box, I'd heard only one disc of music by Heinrich Schütz, Paul McCreesh's recording of the Christmas Vespers.  I liked it and figured I should try some more Schütz, but I failed to do so until now.  Fortunately, the DHM set has three Schütz recordings, and I opted to sample Anthony Rooley and The Consort of Musicke's recording of the madrigals first.  The disc offers fifty-three minutes of irresistible counterpoint.  The music doesn't exhibit the same beauty as Renaissance polyphony, and while the music is often quite attractive, that's not the most striking or appealing part.  No, the most appealing part of the music is the astonishing clarity of the vocal parts.  Mostly limited to five voices, or fewer, it doesn't matter how many parts there are: each part is always perfectly clear and superbly sung.  Listening offers more of an intellectual exercise than an aesthetic or emotional one.  I literally perked up to listen, sat up straighter, and focused on a point in between the speakers much of the time.  The headphone experience is less satisfactory here since the spatial presentation of the voices offers part of the appeal.  Superb sound adds to an immensely appealing disc.  It's something.

[Todd]

The box closer from the Savall box, El Barroco Español.  Another mid-70s kick-ass disc from Savall and crew.  Fourteen tracks by seven composers, all new to me, mostly anchored by Montserrat Figueras belting out tunes, and including superb work from Ton Koopman and Christophe Coin, this is another of those discs that one expects from Savall.  Nary a bum track is to be heard. 

The set overall is a humdinger, especially at its price.  Even the weakest discs are excellent and worth repeated listens.  Some are just plain stupendous. 

[Todd]

From the DHM long box, more Purcell and more Hengelbrock.  Turns out this is a nice pairing.  This disc includes suites drawn from The Fairy Queen, Dido and Aeneas, King Arthur, and Abdelazer.  Some of the pieces are vocal pieces stripped of vocal parts, which may not be to everyone's taste.  What's left is music where a young Hengelbrock most effectively deploys his rhythmically incisive, super-precise conducting to often very exciting effect.  Even the slow music, while very lovely, maintains a just right degree of musical and dramatic tension.  All of the movements and all four works are just splendid.  Here's some Purcell that I can enjoy without reservation.  The disc reinforces what I already knew: Thomas Hengelbrock is one of the great living conductors.

[Todd]

After getting the delightful free disc The Wandering Lutenist last year, I kind of figured I didn't need a new lute disc for a while.  Well, the DHM long box has a few, including this one of music new to me by composer new to me (to the best of my knowledge) Esaias Reusner.  This is a really rather nice disc, with generally relaxed sounding music that is nonetheless painstakingly crafted.  The instrument used sounds quite beautiful and DHM provides lute sound bested only by BIS in my limited experience.  Konrad Junghänel plucks with the best of them.  A delightful treat of a disc.

[Todd]

More from the DHM super-long box, two discs' worth of wind sonatas for recorder, flute, or oboe.  I went on a Handel mini-bender a few years ago, but that was focused on keyboard works and cantatas, so I still have a lot of Handel to explore.  This makes for a nice next step.  Typically, baroque wind sonatas aren't really my thing, and this twofer doesn't make them my thing, but the music is frequently charming, always entertaining, and well played and recorded.  I will say, that of the combos on offer here, the oboe sonatas offer the most.  The aural contrast between the woodwind and the often harpsichord dominated accompaniment makes for something quite ear-catching.  And does Handel rip off Bach in a few places?  Can't say that I blame him. 

[Todd]

From the DHM long box.  An hour of mostly moderately entertaining and occasionally boring harpsichord music.  The instrument sounds comparatively warm (or dark), and Bradford Tracy plays very nicely, but I can't say that the music really does a whole lot for me.  A few passages here or there are a bit vivacious, and Tracy generates some appealing sounds in some places, I guess, but this recording will soon slip from memory. 

[Todd]

Coming after the austere, almost severe de Rore St John Passion, this DHM long box disc of Spanish baroque works offers something of a musical antidote.  The music is rhythmically buoyant, often upbeat, and both colorful and attractive.  The disc includes cantatas and chunks of cantatas by five composers (de Literes, Galán, de Torres, Valls, and di Iribarren), as well as a couple works by Anonymous again.  Marta Almajano does the lion's share of the singing, and she does well, though some of her singing sounds quite operatic, and some people may not be as predisposed to liking it as me.  The few other singers do good work, and the small number of singers and instrumentalists keep things transparent.  I really enjoyed my prior exposure to Cristóbal Galán, and the two additional short pieces here reinforce that positive impression, and make me think I should probably sample more of his music.  The other pieces, the longest of which is José de Torres' thirteen minute, thirty-two second cantata "Más no puede ser" which gives the disc its title, certainly sounds like a baroque cantata, but it is far removed from the sound of the cantatas from that 800 pound gorilla of the form.  There's nonetheless much to enjoy.  That rhythm is again the main draw.  It's sorta groovy.  Maybe I need to expand my cantata horizons some more.  Everything on the disc is quite enjoyable, and the long box also includes the third volume out of eight that were recorded.  All eight were boxed up, but that's OOP and goofy expensive, but I likely will find a way to explore more of this music.

[Todd]

Up until buying the DHM long box, the oldest music I owned in physical form was composed by Hildegard von Bingen.  That's pretty dang old.  I've streamed music by Kassia, pushing back into the 9th Century.  That's older yet.  This disc of ancient Greek music setting works by poetess Sappho and various other poets and artists from before the founding of the Roman Republic pushes the date of the earliest compositions back another thirteen hundred years or so.  Now that's old.  Based on the academic work of Conrad Steinmann, who also happens to direct the forces here and play some of the instruments, and using modern reconstructions of instruments made by Paul J. Reichlin, this disc purports to present accurate reconstructions of music of the ancient world.  I'll just go ahead and assume all the diligent work offers an accurate glimpse into the long gone past.  The instruments include some wind instruments, some stringed instruments of a harp-like nature, one wind instrument that sounds like a kazoo-accordion hybrid, and some percussion instruments.  Drums and cymbals aside, which sound like drums and cymbals made last week, the other instruments often sound like cruder versions of what modern ears are used to hearing.  That's not to say that instruments don't sound good, because they do, and they do their jobs admirably.  And that job is to create music that sounds not unlike similar attempts at creating ancient music for various television shows and movies set way back when.  The music on offer is a bit starker and smaller in scale - it never transitions to saccharine massed strings, for instance - and it is fairly simple when compared to even something like Machaut, let alone Renaissance and later music, with often basic melodies and simple if insistent rhythm.  That most ancient of all instruments, the human voice, gets a good workout, too.  Soprano Arianna Savall, of those Savalls, does superb work singing her parts, and tenor Giovanni Cantarini does good work.  I wouldn't be surprised if they sing rather better than people over two thousand years ago did.  The music and disc is certainly intriguing, and I enjoy it, but it is highly unlikely I listen to it more than three or four more times in my life.

Superb, basically SOTA sound.

[Todd]

From the DHM long box, The Age of Passions, my first exposure to the works of Philippo Martino, and also, I think, my first exposure to Lute Trios.  The disc includes six brief trios constituting the entire published output of the composer.  A Notturno is also included, but it is by a different, later Philippo Martino.  Though the music is for trio, four instrumentalists play.  Husband and wife Lee Santana and Hille Perl, also of Los Otros, play lute and viola de gamba, respectively - though the back cover says Santana plays flute - and they are joined by violinist Petra Muellejans and flutist Karl Kaiser, who split duties.  All of the works are in four movements, with designations changing for each work, and the style is late baroque and almost improvisational sounding.  Much of the music is somewhat relaxed, but some pieces are more energetic, and every once in a while one stands out.  The Arietta Allegretto from the first suite is very "rustic" and sounds like it was lifted from some county fair and embellished so as to make it more artistic.  The Allemande that opens the sixth trio sounds vaguely familiar, like someone after Martino may have borrowed some ideas.  It's really quite good.  There's a lightness, freshness, and informality to all the music that make it appeal more as the disc progresses.  Like with pretty much all lute music, I likely will never listen to this disc a lot, but it's something a bit different.  Sound and playing are superb.

[Todd]

One nice feature of the DHM long box is that it includes five discs of music from Heinrich Schütz.  This twofer contains sixteen pieces from the composer, and all are just dandy.  They are so dandy that the use of countertenors for the alto parts, including a young Andreas Scholl, causes no grief whatever; indeed, they sing quite splendidly.  Too, the boy's choir is more than acceptable.  These two outcomes are due to expert use of the small instrumental forces involved and properly deployed choirs.  The antiphonal placement of voices in some pieces also aids matter, offering nice contrasts and opportunities for blending vocal sonorities.  The almost two hours of music can be a lot to take in at once, but listening to the pieces a handful at a time is most enjoyable.  Lovely and serious, and wonderfully crafted, the music falls just shy of JS Bach in terms of quality.  Maybe.  Fine performances from all involved and superb sound. 

[Todd]

The DHM long box is chock full of discoveries and gems.  The Heinrich Schütz recordings all fall squarely in the second category.  I've never heard Symphoniæ Sacræ III, Op 12 before, but on the evidence of this recording, I've been missing some good stuff.  The two disc set contains twenty-one sacred pieces with varying vocal forces, always small, and varying instrumental support, always just right.  The music is serious but always at least reasonably vibrant, and often more than that.  The textures are always light, and as recorded, superbly clear.  The singers are pretty much all excellent, and Frieder Bernius and his forces pull off something unusual in my experience, and dependent on my taste: a boy soprano delivers the goods as Jesus in fourth track.  Whoda thunk it?  The top flight for its age (late 80s) sound makes this a corker of a disc.  I'm thinking I need to explore more of Schütz's stuff.  I'm thinking the complete works project led by Hans-Christoph Rademann on Carus may end up coming in handy.

[Todd]

Earlier this year, I listened to Cipriano de Rore's setting of the St John Passion and was struck by its austere approach.  In some ways, Heinrich Schütz's setting is even more austere, at least as recorded here.  Relying on five voices only, the music is sparse and severe.  This is a nothing but the text, scaled down to replicate a church setting.  The thirty-three minute, single track main work is well done enough, and obviously earnest, but it lacks the crackerjack performance quality of the Huelgas Ensemble in the de Rore, blunting effectiveness a bit.  The accompanying eight Passionmotetten include an organ, adding a bit more color, but the works remain austere and severe, and intimate.  In some ways they work better, in some ways not, and one can't help but want to hear what a better established ensemble might be able to do with the pieces.  I may have to find out.

[Ken B]

The DHM long box is chock full of discoveries and gems.  The Heinrich Schütz recordings all fall squarely in the second category.  I've never heard Symphoniæ Sacræ III, Op 12 before, but on the evidence of this recording, I've been missing some good stuff.  The two disc set contains twenty-one sacred pieces with varying vocal forces, always small, and varying instrumental support, always just right.  The music is serious but always at least reasonably vibrant, and often more than that.  The textures are always light, and as recorded, superbly clear.  The singers are pretty much all excellent, and Frieder Bernius and his forces pull off something unusual in my experience, and dependent on my taste: a boy soprano delivers the goods as Jesus in fourth track.  Whoda thunk it?  The top flight for its age (late 80s) sound makes this a corker of a disc.  I'm thinking I need to explore more of Schütz's stuff.  I'm thinking the complete works project led by Hans-Christoph Rademann on Carus may end up coming in handy.

Schütz is a long term favorite of mine. There aren’t as many good recordings as one would hope. I wish I could be more positive about the Brilliant set. It's very mixed, due to weak voices in a few places. The Passions are very good in it. The stuff by Cordes on CPO is good as is the stuff on Harmonia Mundi, and as above, DHM.
There are some recordings from the 60s by Big English Choirs that you should avoid.

[Todd]

There are some recordings from the 60s by Big English Choirs that you should avoid.

Noted.  That is helpful advice that applies to other repertoire, too.