Philippe Jaroussky / Artaserse LA VANITÀ DEL MONDO

 

LA VANITÀ DEL MONDO

 

Sabrina Frey & Ensemble ACCADEMIA DELL'ARCADIA - ROMA 1710

ACCADEMIA DELL'ARCADIA - ROMA 1710

Magdalena Kožená / Collegium 1704 / Václav Luks IL GIARDINO DEI SOSPIRI

For me, coming back to baroque repertoire is like opening the door to my grandparents’ loft – full of familiar smells, handmade toys and old fairy-tale books. The sort of place where I can stretch myself out on top of a haystack, forget about the outside world for a little while and allow myself to be carried away to the unexplored wilderness of the past. With this recording I would like to take you with me on a particularly exciting journey, not only because we uncovered some pieces which haven’t been performed since they were rst composed, but also because I could hardly imagine more passionate, savage, uninhibited yet loving and caressing companions for these desperate heroines than Václav Luks and the musicians of Collegium 1704. I hope you enjoy listening to this music as much as I loved singing it. (Magdalena Kožená)

Juliette Pochin VENEZIA

Having heard Juliette Pochin in concert I know that she can sing more than averagely well. Without such prior experience anyone reading her booklet biography might assume much the same given that it lists collaborations with many well known orchestras and conductors.  Why mention this? Surely her singing on this disc would confirm the fact? Yes and no. She can hold a tune and produce tone with evenness, it’s true. But going by this disc alone one does not learn too much about either her vocal range or her ability to exploit dynamic extremes. Two factors are responsible for this: the recording and the arrangements of the music that are used. 

The recording itself, also produced by Pochin, largely results from several separate sessions that have been mixed together to achieve the end result. Even moderately close listening reveals performances recorded in different acoustics that do not sit too comfortably with each other. Pochin for her part is closely microphoned, thus negating the need for much vocal projection or body behind the tone she produces. The West Kazakhstan Philharmonic play competently but without much individuality. The same could be said for the solo instrumentalists who ‘feature’ on this disc; but the generality of Lloyd-Webber’s might have been avoided somewhat with a recording that conveys nuances more readily. Piece after piece is played at a consistent mezzo-forte that after a few minutes becomes all but unbearable. Has nobody connected with this disc heard of dynamic gradation? What is so wrong with playing pianissimo occasionally, or fortissimo or anything else in between for that matter? Then there’s the tempi – so middle-of-the-road as to be frankly rather dull and quickly very boring. 

Morgan Pochin, the husband and wife team of James Morgan and Juliette Pochin, are responsible for the musical arrangements. One can tell from them that the pair have had a hand in producing film soundtracks and whilst there is nothing wrong with this per se the stock-in-trade predictable syrupy flavour so often found there is out of place in the purely classical context. However this is not a pure classical context, this is crossover: Vivaldi, Bach, Albinoni, Handel, Marcello and Cimarosa are all present but take second place to Morgan Pochin reworkings of their music. Handel, for example, contributes a mere four bars from his cantata Lucrezia which becomes a complete aria following the Morgan Pochin treatment. And not only is the material by these composers negligible at times, but the relationship of some composers to Venice, the theme around which the disc is based, can be tenuous to say the least. Bach is included because he arranged Vivaldi’s works on occasion and Handel finds a place because his opera Agrippina was first performed in Venice. As far as I know he never ventured there personally. 

The major novelty here is the Four Seasons suite. In the Morgan Pochin arrangement of Vivaldi’s evergreen quartet of concertos the sonnets attributed to Vivaldi that accompany each season are sung in the place of the violin line. Given that the sonnets are of varying lengths incomplete versions of each season are performed. It might be vocally challenging to do this but it adds little if anything to the music. Good excuse for a gimmick, however the result should not detain you long. 

It’s an instantly forgettable disc. One thing is for sure though, since this is the first of five discs to come from Juliette Pochin in fulfilment of her £1 million contract we have not heard the last of her. It can only be hoped that future releases might pay more than occasional lip service to serious music and music-making, but I fear this hope may be a forlorn one. (Evan Dickerson)

Roberta Invernizzi / Sonia Prina / Ensemble Claudiana / Luca Pianca AMORE E MORTE DELL'AMORE

An album of Baroque love duets seems to tumble off the presses every other month. Not that I’m complaining when the results are as good as this. The programme is unclichéd, ranging from Monteverdi’s Seventh and Eighth Books of Madrigals, via little-known pieces by Benedetto Marcello, Lotti and Durante, to two chamber cantatas composed by the young Handel immediately after his triumphant Italian sojourn. And in Roberta Invernizzi and Sonia Prina, Naïve have netted the two most exciting Italian Baroque specialists of their generation.
Native speakers have a head start, of course, in Monteverdi’s humanist-inspired declamatory recitative. With their pure, almost instrumental timbres, musical intelligence and acute yet unexaggerated feeling for verbal sound and sense, Invernizzi and Prina make well-nigh ideal partners. Their precision and blend are uncanny. In the languidly melancholic ‘Interrotte speranze’ they point the harmonic clashes and shape the cadences with exquisite taste, using vibrato discreetly and tellingly. ‘Mentre vaga angioletta’, a hymn to the spirit of music, provokes riots of giddy yet perfectly controlled coloratura. Their voices then entwine in hushed ecstasy in the final duet from L’incoronazione di Poppea, long known not to be by Monteverdi – though there’s no whisper of this in the inadequate booklet-note, the one serious blot on the whole production.
Moving forward a century, soprano and contralto are no less intense in the masochistic adoration of Lotti’s Giuramento amoroso and Durante’s darkly brooding Son io barbara donna. They spar gleefully with each other in the two Handel cantatas. Throughout the disc the continuo battery of Ensemble Claudiana provides colourful support, while violinist Riccardo Minasi relishes both the inwardness and percussive boldness of a rare sonata by Domenico Scarlatti. But the disc belongs to Invernizzi and Prina, who aptly cap a feast of glorious Baroque singing with volleys of delighted Handelian virtuosity. (Richard Wigmore / Gramophone)

Albrecht Mayer VOCALISE

Vocalise is a compilation of favourite pieces from Albrecht Mayer's recent releases in which the oboe more than lives up to its reputation as a wind instrument remarkable for its singing tone

The artist personally selected this collection ranging widely from Baroque arias of great virtuosity to the charm of the French chanson

Even as a boy soprano with the Bamberg Cathedral Choir, Albrecht Mayer was already fascinated by the human voice, and although he later decided against pursuing a career as a singer and chose instead to become an oboist, he is unquestionably a magician who as soon as he breathes life into his instrument casts his spell on his listeners’ hearts and minds with the beauty of his playing, transforming the oboe into an irresistible Vox Humana.

Roberta Invernizzi / Sonia Prina / Ensemble Claudiana / Luca Pianca AMORE E MORTE DELL'AMORE

The duet madrigal, chamber cantata, or aria was a prime form of the early Baroque, ready-made for a noble family that wished to display its house singers and even draw from them a little bit of competition. There are a number of albums in the genre on the market, but Amore e morte dell'amore (Love and the Death of Love), from reigning Baroque soprano queen Roberta Invernizzi and newer contralto talent Sonia Prina, stands out from the crowd. First there are the rich voices of the singers themselves, who could sing a random web search page and make it sound good, and their razor-sharp coordination. Second is the program, which traverses the entire 17th century and moves into the 18th, holding everything together thematically and largely avoiding well-known numbers (other than the finale duet from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea), touching on some unusual mid-century finds by Antonio Lotti and Francesco Durante, with a well-placed ensemble treatment of a Domenico Scarlatti sonata as an interlude. That piece shows off the talents of the Ensemble Claudiana, new faces on the historical-performance scene. Above all these individual factors is their coherence into an overall package. Invernizzi and Prina get the intimate chamber quality of most of this music, its natural habitat of a music room with a group of connoisseurs who were ready to listen closely. They are virtuosic, lithe, and playful, even when they approach a serious text. Naïve supports them beautifully with studio sound. Highly recommended. (James Manheim)

Dorothee Oberlinger / Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca FLAUTO VENEZIANO

Dorothee Oberlinger trained to become a music teacher and also attended a course in German studies before studying the recorder in Cologne, Amsterdam and Milan. Having won the first prize in the Moeck/ SRP Solo Recorder Competition in London, she made her professional début in the capital’s Wigmore Hall in 1997, subsequently winning many other prizes, including an Echo Klassik Award.

Since 2004 Dorothee Oberlinger is teaching at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, where she runs the Institute for Early Music.

In the concert hall she has appeared as a soloist with such distinguished Baroque ensembles and orchestras as I Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, Musica Antiqua Köln, the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin, the Academy of Ancient Music and Zefiro.

In 2002 she formed Ensemble 1700, a specialist group that performs chamber music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Within the context of numerous concert projects and CD recordings, Ensemble 1700 has worked with many leading figures from the world of early music.