Georg Böhm (1661-1733)

[Mandryka]

A interesting take on the elusive variations on Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flüchtig here, played by Hans Davidsson, Morlanda/Orust, 1604 modified 1715 and restored, 1/4 comma meantone. What starts off as a restrained and slightly rustic sequence of variations on the chorale theme finishes up by being an exuberant flamboyant outpouring of inspiration! The temperament matters a lot of course.

But these rather positive remarks should be counterbalanced by a caveat. Davidsson's approach is serious. It is not whimsical or  light.  This suits me well enough, but I can imagine that it will ruffle the feathers of people who perceive Bohm as a spontaneously lyrical composer, a composer who sings, dances and prays all at the same time. I suspect this dichotomy will figure quite a lot in this thread.

This seems to be pure music, as it were. I mean that there's no sense of capturing any idea in the text. No sense of expressing nichtig and  flüchtig.

[Mandryka]

One of the pieces of music which makes me glad to be alive is the partita on Jesu, du bist allzu schön, and the performance which has elevated it to this role in my life is  Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra's . Ruiter Feenstra is improvisatory and supple and fresh.  But it's above all her distinctive and inspired approach to voicing which gives this partita its life.

[Que]

For me this set means a total revindication of Georg Böhm, who was Bach's senior by 24 years and is know for his development of the chorale partita. After my first acquaintance with Georg Böhm's music through Jeffrey Thomas' recording my response to the composer was lukewarm. The saving grace of that recording is that it is played on a lute-harpsichord.
But this is something else. Böhm is showcased as a versatile composer who appears in various guises: sometimes a French influence is prevalent, but one can also clearly hear the influence of Froberger, the more formal style of Buxtehude on other instances, and some fair measures of the Stylus Phantasticus to top things of. In the opening piece this latter style is prominent, the Prelude, Fugue & Postlude with a single repeating bass note under changing harmony. Böhm's music has a dreamy and elusive character with an eccentric quality about it - very, very interesting and enjoyable!
Mitzi Meyerson has a direct but very eloquent hands-on approach - swift and quite rhythmically orientated, ornamented style. I'm curious what her lineage in terms of teachers is, her playing reminds me of her Canadian colleague Geneviève Soly. She plays and appropriately bright and well defined and deep sounding harpsichord by Keith Hill, after Taskin. Strongly recommend to all the resident harpsichord lovers!

Review at Classical Net

[asin]B0000C8WY4[/asin]

Q

[Mandryka]

A really fine rendition of the partita Wer Nur Den Lieben Gott Lasst Walten here from Andrew Arthur. This guy can  really play harpsichord, great voicing, a sense of élan and prayerfulness and playfulness,  he's someone to watch, at least when he plays on a good instrument.

http://www.andrewarthur.com/biography.html

[Mandryka]

A really magical performance of Gelobet sexist du, Jesu Christ by Gustav Leonhardt here on the Hamburg Schnitger. Dark and deep, prayerful and joyful without being jubilant, as befits the meaning of the text.

[prémont]

A really fine rendition of the partita Wer Nur Den Lieben Gott Lasst Walten here from Andrew Arthur. This guy can  really play harpsichord, great voicing, a sense of élan and prayerfulness and playfulness,  he's someone to watch, at least when he plays on a good instrument.

http://www.andrewarthur.com/biography.html

Thanks, ordered.

I own this very cheap set:

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Priory/PRCD1006

Perhaps Arthur's technical ability surpass his musical maturity, but never-the-less a playful and enjoyable recording.
BTW the organ is tuned equally.

[Mandryka]

Friedhelm Flamme's Freu Dich Sehr, O Meine Seele is rich in colours and varied in affects - I haven't followed with the chorale text but I bet there's a good mapping from the 12 parts to the 12 verses. Noble, radiant, inspired - you can tell he's in the zone.

This partita does well on record because there are at least two outstanding ones - this and Wim van Beek's.

Tuinstra notes that it suitable for manuals only apart from the end, but as far as I know none of it has ever been recorded without an organ. 

[Mandryka]

I was wrong to suggest yesterday that Flamme is sensitive to ideas in the chorale text of Freu Dich Sehr, O Meine Seele. The text turns out to be a plea to God the saviour to save, and is full of ideas about human weakness. 

Listening to Vogel play the partita  while following the text has helped me to see that there are rhetorical ideas in the music which really come from the hymn. Flamme skates over them completely, no doubt due to his speed. The result is something which is attractive because of its energy and simplicity, but is probably superficial, and doesn't do justice to the complexity of the musical ideas.  The problem is exacerbated by the poor recording, which doesn't help Flamme make the counterpoint lucid.

To take one idea, verse 11 talks of God making Satan "be hurled back, and ignominiously fall down to hell" an idea which Vogel seems to bring out in an inner voice and is just hardly noticeable in Flamme. I could find more.

[Mandryka]

For me this set means a total revindication of Georg Böhm, who was Bach's senior by 24 years and is know for his development of the chorale partita. After my first acquaintance with Georg Böhm's music through Jeffrey Thomas' recording my response to the composer was lukewarm. The saving grace of that recording is that it is played on a lute-harpsichord.
But this is something else. Böhm is showcased as a versatile composer who appears in various guises: sometimes a French influence is prevalent, but one can also clearly hear the influence of Froberger, the more formal style of Buxtehude on other instances, and some fair measures of the Stylus Phantasticus to top things of. In the opening piece this latter style is prominent, the Prelude, Fugue & Postlude with a single repeating bass note under changing harmony. Böhm's music has a dreamy and elusive character with an eccentric quality about it - very, very interesting and enjoyable!
Mitzi Meyerson has a direct but very eloquent hands-on approach - swift and quite rhythmically orientated, ornamented style. I'm curious what her lineage in terms of teachers is, her playing reminds me of her Canadian colleague Geneviève Soly. She plays and appropriately bright and well defined and deep sounding harpsichord by Keith Hill, after Taskin. Strongly recommend to all the resident harpsichord lovers!

Review at Classical Net

http://www.youtube.com/v/ovTuFhZdwP4 http://www.youtube.com/v/uzzFwqMI7g0

Q

I had a very different reaction to Jeff Thomas.  I like the dreamy style, the instrument is OK.

Interesting  to see  "dreamy" and "elusive" used for what Meyerson does, I can't remember that, i have the opposite impression from memory in fact, I wonder which bits he means. Maybe the sort of dream where you wake with heart pounding and adrenalin flowing.

Oh, I see now that he says the music's dreamy, not necessarily Meyerson's style.

[Mandryka]

A bit of comparative listening to the sarabande from the F minor (8th suite) reveals how bold Mitzy Meiersen can be. She plays all the repeats and she uses stop-start style which is almost as pronounced as Vartolo's Frescobaldi. (Geoffrey Thomas has a similar approach, I prefer what he does.)

[Mandryka]

The organ at Hommert is anachronistic for Böhm - it's thought to be 19th century (apparently documentary evidence doesn't exist) and it was very much restored in the 1980s. It sounds excellent to me, much to my surprise, as do the expressive performances by François Menissier - who seems very open to the variety of feeling in Bohm's music. Not too reverential and not to irreverential, Menissier is good at the strange combination of prayer, dance and song which seems to be at the heart of this elusive music (sorry for the cliché!) This is one of the most satisfying Bohm organ CDs I've heard.

[prémont]

The organ at Hommert is anachronistic for Böhm - it's thought to be 19th century (apparently documentary evidence doesn't exist) and it was very much restored in the 1980s. It sounds excellent to me, much to my surprise, as do the expressive performances by François Menissier - who seems very open to the variety of feeling in Bohm's music. Not too reverential and not to irreverential, Menissier is good at the strange combination of prayer, dance and song which seems to be at the heart of this elusive music (sorry for the cliché!) This is one of the most satisfying Bohm organ CDs I've heard.

Listened to some clips at Amazon. I agree about the interpretation, I really like Menissier's sense of pace and his basically detached but still well differentiated expressive articulation. But I have problems with the organ, which is sounding obviously romantic - at least in the way he uses it.

[Mandryka]

But I have problems with the organ, which is sounding obviously romantic - at least in the way he uses it.

Yes I know what you mean. Still, I'm glad to have heard the performances. .

[Mandryka]

An absolutely astonishing performance of the second, D Major, suite from Rubsam, a complete vindication of his independent voices, non chordal, "take your time" approach in Bohm. Tuinstra, Stella and Meyerson don't come close in this particular suite. If half the other suites are as successful, this is a major contribution.

[Mandryka]

Suite 5, E major, is another corker. When it first sounded to play, the Allemande sounded so much like a Tombeau by Louis Couperin that I thought I'd made a mistake. There are two other recordings, Meyerson and Stella,  Because of the cantabile style, the well judged tempos, and the sense of dramatic living voicing, and the beauty of the instrument, neither can hold a candle to Rubsam. He just manages to tell a better story with the music.

[bioluminescentsquid]

Suite 5, E major, is another corker. When it first sounded to play, the Allemande sounded so much like a Tombeau by Louis Couperin that I thought I'd made a mistake. There are two other recordings, Meyerson and Stella,  Because of the cantabile style, the well judged tempos, and the sense of dramatic living voicing, and the beauty of the instrument, neither can hold a candle to Rubsam. He just manages to tell a better story with the music.

Didn't notice the release of this disc, but I'm liking it. Rubsam has an uncanny way of making his Lautenwerk sound like an actual lute, even if that means a lot of rubato.

I wonder what the Partitas would sound like on the Lautenwerk. I liked Wim Winter's Clavichord versions - how will the Lautenwerk, a similarly "plucky" instrument, fare?

I'm also very impressed by the speed by which Rubsam is churning out new discs. He's like Stella, except I like his releases much more than those of Stella.

[Mandryka]

What I want to hear on lute harpsichord is some style brisé, maybe D'Anglebert transcriptions of lute music that Paola Erdas recorded.  Or some of the music "From manuscript sources" by Chambonnières that Karen Flint released last year.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Any opinion on the Teeuwsen recording??

[bioluminescentsquid]

I was wrong to suggest yesterday that Flamme is sensitive to ideas in the chorale text of Freu Dich Sehr, O Meine Seele. The text turns out to be a plea to God the saviour to save, and is full of ideas about human weakness. 

Listening to Vogel play the partita  while following the text has helped me to see that there are rhetorical ideas in the music which really come from the hymn. Flamme skates over them completely, no doubt due to his speed. The result is something which is attractive because of its energy and simplicity, but is probably superficial, and doesn't do justice to the complexity of the musical ideas.  The problem is exacerbated by the poor recording, which doesn't help Flamme make the counterpoint lucid.

To take one idea, verse 11 talks of God making Satan "be hurled back, and ignominiously fall down to hell" an idea which Vogel seems to bring out in an inner voice and is just hardly noticeable in Flamme. I could find more.

From quite a while ago, but how do you think of this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkCGst_Nt_M

[Mandryka]

From quite a while ago, but how do you think of this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkCGst_Nt_M

One thing I think is that Bohm has done much better on harpsichord than on organ. I'll listen to the Alessandrini later.