Volume 26 Issue 7 - May and June 2021

2014. Elegy was written in 1980 and revised for Kanellakis in 2006
when Kontogiorgos was writing the commissioned guitar suite that
gives the CD its title, the four-movement Kaleidoscope consisting of
multi-coloured fragments that shift and dance as if viewed through a
kaleidoscope.
The darker Emotions from 2018 completes a recital of performances
that can be considered definitive, Kanellakis having worked closely
with the composer.
Mirror Images, the latest album from violinist, violist and vocalist
Violeta Vicci, features world-premiere recordings of solo works by
Ragnar Söderlind, Imogen Holst and Jean-Louis Florentz, plus related
works by Bach and Ysaÿe and six interspersed
improvisations (two of them vocal)
by Vicci (Gramola GRAM98010 naxosdirect.
com/search/gram98010).
Bach’s Partita No.3 in E Major (with
hardly any repeats, lasting just 14 minutes
for all seven movements) and Ysaÿe’s Sonata
in A Minor are given competent if somewhat
mundane performances; the Söderlind is
the brief Elegia II and the Florentz an equally-brief Vocalise. By far the
most interesting work, though, is the 1930 Holst Suite for Solo Viola,
which also draws the best playing from Vicci.
VOCAL
John Eccles – Semele
Academy of Ancient Music; Cambridge
Handel Opera
AAM Records AAM012 (aam.co.uk)
! What looks like
Handel, sounds
like Purcell and is
a world premiere
recording? If you
guessed the answer
to be the latest
release from the
Academy of Ancient Music, you win! Any
mention of the words “opera” and “Semele”
together immediately turns minds to Handel’s
frequently performed 1744 masterwork, but
there is another older, lesser-known Semele
living in the operatic world, written in 1707
by the English composer John Eccles.
Eccles’ Semele provides fascinating insight
into how opera in England might have
developed after Henry Purcell’s death had
Handel not moved to London in 1712, for
this Semele’s musical vocabulary is indeed
a slightly more advanced and refined adaptation
of Purcell’s own lexicon; if one were
to select a pinnacle of the English Baroque,
they would be hard-pressed to find a more
representative example than this. Despite his
indebtedness to Purcell, Eccles achieves even
greater depths of expression and extremes
of emotion than his predecessor, utilizing
similar forms and expanding their structure,
so that Semele ends up being more than
double the length of Dido and Aeneas, for
example, but without once feeling overspun.
What is most remarkable about Semele is
the way in which music and text receive equal
attention. The delivery of William Congreve’s
libretto and forward motion of the drama is
never interrupted, suspended or usurped by
over-composition. Director Julian Perkins and
the Academy of Ancient Music in turn keep
the opera moving forward, selecting tempi
that lend the necessary affect to these dancebased
arias and overtures while keeping the
text constantly intelligible.
With world premiere recordings being
issued with ever-greater frequency, it can
be challenging to find those works that
contribute something worthwhile to the
canon, much less provide an eye-opening
exploration of something revelatory, but
Semele does just that. The saying “just
because you can, doesn’t mean you should”
is correct more often than not, but in this
case, we are grateful that those behind this
recording could, and did.
Matthew Whitfield
L’homme armé – La Cour de Bourgogne et
la musique
Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal;
Andrew McAnerney
ATMA ACD2 2807 (atmaclassique.com/en)
! The Court of
Burgundy’s powers
extended well
beyond the borders
of the modern
French region.
Its musical brilliance
obviously
affected the
Studio de musique
ancienne de Montréal: with eight composers
on one CD, it is difficult to think of a major
Burgundian composer not included here.
At the heart of the CD is the Missa
L’homme armé, itself set 40 times from
roughly 1460 to 1560. Track one is the
Anonymous/Morton interpretation, featuring
not only the original words to L’homme
armé but also a contemporary twist willing
on a crushing defeat (in three passionate and
imploring voices) for those fearsome Ottoman
Turks on their way to destroy Christendom.
Not everything, though, is so belligerent.
Listen to the ethereal Kyrie Eleison from
Antoine Busnois’ own Missa L’homme armé,
uplifted by the sackbut playing of the Studio.
Then be inspired by the delicate performance
of Gilles Binchois’ Motet Asperges me. It may
have been Binchois who taught and inspired
Johannes Ockeghem, who in turn did teach
Josquin des Prés. This comes out in this CD: in
addition to the pieces by Binchois, the Studio
performs Ockeghem’s Sanctus, a full-blooded
performance combining sometimes stark
singing with the Studio’s sackbuts.
As for Josquin, he is remembered by two
compositions. First, Agnus Dei is performed
admirably, notably in its soprano part. Then
there are the five parts of Ave verum corpus.
Josquin relished the more complex structure:
the Studio rises to the challenge with its
appropriately celestial singing.
Josquin was a contemporary of the revolution
in music printing. His sheer musical
genius and the printing press ensured his
influence on composers for at least a century.
Michael Schwartz
And the sun darkened
New York Polyphony
Bis BIS-2277 (bis.se)
! For as long as
music has been
written down, the
Catholic Church
has played an
essential role in
the development
of the art form.
Whether directly, as
in early monodic plainchant and Palestrina’s
polyphony, or tangentially, for example in
post-Reformation works by Tallis in England
and Bach in Germany, the influence of the
Catholic Church has provided inspiration to
composers for centuries.
New York Polyphony’s And the sun darkened
surveys a range of Catholic-centric
works, ranging from the 15th century to
the 20th. With such an enormous body of
material to work with and choose from,
this release focuses its attention on music
for Passiontide, the last two weeks of the
Lenten season, using this specific and narrow
segment of the liturgical year as its theme.
The focal point of this disc is the world
premiere recording of Loyset Compère’s
Officium de Cruce, a multi-movement motet
cycle based upon a set of devotional texts
focused on the Cross. A contemporary of
Josquin who followed a similar career path,
Compère was a Franco-Flemish composer
who worked in Italy for the Duke of Milan
(where Josquin would arrive a decade later).
Officium de Cruce is expressive in its simplicity,
exploring the text’s facets through
spacious and effective settings, and New York
Polyphony’s poised performance is a fine
32 | May and June 2021 thewholenote.com