Volume 21 Issue 9 - Summer 2016

of the opera bear heavily on her, stifling full
creative freedom. She still delivers a score
full of beautiful moments and mesmerizing
violin writing, managing to endow each character
with a musical signature of their own.
While listening to this recording, one can only
imagine how much greater the music could
have been if only it were burdened with a
lesser-known libretto.
I have no doubt that Cold Mountain was
more successful on stage. In fact, the visuals
would have helped greatly and perhaps this
release should have been a DVD film. For
listeners familiar with the book and the
movie, it will be a fine reminder of their
experience. For the rest of the audience, it
may remain a mystery – an opera hesitant to
assert itself beyond the libretto. The cast is
uniformly good, and we must add a shoutout
to Toronto’s own Robert Pomakov, whose
agile bass is a pleasure to hear.
Robert Tomas
EARLY MUSIC AND PERIOD PERFORMANCE
Pardessus de Viole
Mélisande Corriveau; Eric Milnes
ATMA ACD2 2729
!!
The elegant music
featured on this
recording was written
for a now largely
abandoned instrument
– pardessus de viole.
This smallest member
of the viola da gamba
family originated in
France at the end of the 17th century and
had a brief life span of just over 100 years.
While pardessus de viole exemplified French
aesthetics and their sophisticated musical
tastes and values, it was forsaken with the
arrival of the Revolution, which did not stand
for the same ideals. Featured composers –
Barrière, Caix D’ Hervelois, Boismortier and
Dollé – are among many prominent French
composers who wrote for this instrument
at the height of its popularity. However the
selection of pieces on this recording is mostly
unpublished and carefully chosen from the
microfilm collections of the Bibliothéque
nationale de France.
What grabbed me immediately was the
sound of the “woman’s violin” (as it was
nicknamed once upon a time) – pure, light
yet robust at times, textured as a crossover
between the flute and the violin. Mélisande
Corriveau elicits an array of emotions out of
her instrument. The virtuosic passages in Jean
Barrière’s Sonata in G Major suit her very
well but she is equally colourful in depicting
the feelings of sorrow in Dollé’s Les Regrets.
Eric Milnes is a resourceful and imaginative
harpsichord player; together they offer a
charming array of ornamentations, making
this music a gesture of nobility from the past.
Ivana Popovic
Composed to the soul: Abel; Hasse –
Concerti; Quartetti; Arie
Dorothee Mields; Hamburger Ratsmusik;
Simone Eckert
CPO 777 911-2
!!
This beautifully
programmed
recording offers two
quartets, a concerto
and an aria by the
esteemed 18th-century
gambist Carl Friedrich
Abel, and an aria by
his contemporary
Johann Adolf Hasse. Not household names,
perhaps, but well worth a listen. The quartets,
contemporary transcriptions of two standard
string quartets from 1768, make for most
pleasant listening. The shift in sonic balance
created by giving the first violin part to the
bass viol gives a welcome depth and richness
to the ensemble sound. The group’s playing
is expressive and focused, and it’s also nice
to hear tempos that are more laid-back than
today’s breakneck norm: the humour and
variety of musical gesture in the Allegro con
spirito of the Quartet in B Flat, for example,
isn’t trumped by the technical mastery
required to play it. Michael Fürst plays the
solo part of Abel’s two-movement harpsichord
concerto with wit and thoughtful brilliance,
and his colleagues of the Hamburger
Ratsmusik are stylishly eloquent throughout.
Soprano Dorothee Mields joins the group for
two substantial arias, Abel’s sole surviving
vocal piece, Frena le belle lagrime from Sifari
(1767), and an aria from Hasse’s La Didone
abbandonata (1742). As always, Mields sings
with extraordinary musical grace and suppleness.
The latter aria is also a contemporary
transcription, giving the original obbligato
flute part to the viol, which Eckert plays
beautifully. Composed to the soul, indeed.
I’ll be listening to this one again, and I hope
you do too.
Alison Melville
1753 – Livre de Montréal
Yves-G. Préfontaine
ATMA ACD2 2717
!!
The brand-new
organ in this recording
is a replica of an
instrument (no longer
extant) built in 1753 in
Paris for the Cathedral
in Quebec City. It
contains ten stops,
all but two of which
are divided, offering different timbres to the
upper and lower halves of the keyboard.
The repertoire features works likely known
to 18th-century Quebec players, including a
six-movement Magnificat from the so-called
Montreal Organ Book, the manuscript transported
to New France in 1724 and discovered
in the 1980s. The composers of the nearly
400 pieces in this collection are not named,
but a couple of dozen are definitively attributed
to Nicolas Lebègue. Appropriately, a
further group by Lebègue (not from the MOB)
follows, alongside representative compositions
from his period by Guillaume-Gabriel
Nivers, Louis Marchand and Jean Henry
D’Anglebert.
There are 34 tracks; each piece lasts on
average just over two minutes. Generally in
classical French keyboard music one anticipates
descriptive titles but there is only one,
Lebègue’s “Les Cloches,” with its descending
four-note scale suggesting bells. The rest are
either liturgical pieces or fugues and other
abstract types. The divided stops show to
advantage in several pieces with prominent
bass solos or based on dialogue between
registers. Préfontaine demonstrates remarkable
variety of approach and a good deal of
freedom within the French baroque style,
recalling the comment of a great figure in
this music, François Couperin: “We write
differently from what we play.” The performances
are intelligently lifted off the page. The
disc is well produced and a pleasure to hear.
Listeners curious about how the Chapelle
instrument looks as well as how it sounds
may be disappointed however: front and back
cover photos show portions of it, but the only
artist photo shows Préfontaine at a much
larger console, unidentified.
John Beckwith
CLASSICAL AND BEYOND
The Last Concert: Mendelssohn –
Incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s
Dream; Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique
Berliner Philharmoniker; Claudio Abbado
Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings BPHR
160081
!!
Claudio Abbado
was conductor of the
Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra from 1990
to 2002, succeeding
the iconic Herbert von
Karajan who had died in 1989. On an evening
in May 2013 Abbado returned to conduct his
last concert with the orchestra and as such it
was a rather special event. What to program
on such an occasion? There is no absolute
answer but after hearing and seeing the
concert one must agree that the choice was a
right one. This wasn’t an audition for anyone
but a final get-together of equals to make
some music. This isn’t wishful thinking but
there was a oneness between conductor and
the orchestra here that produced a solidly
romantic view of the shenanigans in the
Mendelssohn and solidified the passing phantasmal
delusions in the Berlioz. This really
was a splendid event.
To commemorate the second anniversary
of Abbado’s death, his last concert with them
has been issued by the Berlin Philharmonic
thewholenote.com June 1, 2016 - September 7, 2016 | 81