Hille Perl / Lee Santana / Steve Player LOS OTROS

 

LOS OTROS

Andreas Arend / Hille Perl / Veronica Skuplik / Clare Wilkinson BALLADS WITHIN A DREAM

BALLADS WITHIN A DREAM

Dorothee Oberlinger / Ensemble 1700 G.F. HANDEL Sonatas for the Recorder

For its authentic instrumental timbres, exquisite period interpretations, superbly engineered sound, and, above all, the sheer genius of the music, this album of Handel's recorder trios and sonatas is guaranteed to please connoisseurs of Baroque chamber music, and should catapult Dorothee Oberlinger and her handpicked Ensemble 1700 into international celebrity. A debut release for these exceptional musicians, this remarkable CD reveals both their scrupulous scholarship and enthusiastic participation, and the combination is winning. Oberlinger plays the recorder with a lucid but modest tone, never upstaging the other players but creating an impression of domestic intimacy that surely attended amateur performances in the eighteenth century. Yet these are not fragile or rarefied renditions, for Oberlinger and her companions are quite vigorous in the Allegro movements; the long, lyrical lines in the Larghettos and Adagios are always solidly supported through the soloist's unerring ornamentation; and the accompaniment is fully realized and strongly characterized, distributed throughout the works to a variety of basso continuo instruments. The illustrated booklet includes an informative essay on the recorder's history and Handel's music by Gerhard Braun, and the recording is absolutely clear in details and natural in reproduction. This disc is highly recommended. (Blair Sanderson)

Hille Perl / Freiburger Barockochester CONCERTI

The last decades of my life I had the privilege to travel the world playing concerts and recording CDs due to the loyalty of the audience, who has granted us the honour of coming to our concerts, of buying our CDs and thus made it possible for us to keep playing our music.  I feel deeply grateful to each one of you out there for participating in this incredible trip. I feel responsibility towards the past and the future to keep this kind of music alive and participate in my way in the cultural wealth that history has provided for us. It is important to have contents that are totally void of monetary relevance, such as music, which is as fleeting as smoke and as eternal as the skies. (Hille Perl)

Hille Perl is one of today's most brilliant and versatile gambists. She delivers excellent performances of Abel's solo pieces and is an engaging soloist in the concertos. Her cadenzas are technically impressive but especially stylish. The collaboration with the Freiburger Barockorchester is immaculate, and the result is a compelling disc of some of the best music for her instrument from the mid-18th century. I liked her performance of the Graun concerto more than that of Vittorio Ghielmi of another of his concertos. There is no lack of drama here, but there is also elegance and refinement, something I sorely missed in Ghielmi's recording. 

If your are a gamba aficionado, don't miss this disc. (Johan van Veen)

John Potter JOSQUIN / VICTORIA Secret History

Josquin Desprez (c. 1450/1455-1521) and Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611) lived and worked, for the most part, in different countries and perhaps shared little in terms of abstract compositional style. Yet throughout Europe, generations of musicians came to recognize them as kindred spirits, and tablature versions of their masses and motets circulated amongst lutenists. For John Potter, this is “the secret life of the music – in historical terms its real life.” In this characteristically creative project, Potter explores “what happens to music after it is composed.”

As John Potter explains in the liner notes: “We don’t usually think of Josquin being a major influence on Victoria, and for most modern listeners and performers, one is ‘early renaissance’ and the other is ‘late’. But the musicians of four hundred years ago made no such distinction: for them a new choral work by a great master was another source of inspirational material to add to the stream of music from many previous generations which they constantly re-invented. The music of their past was also the music of their present. The original manuscripts, commissioned for purely vocal performance in church, were quickly transformed by lute players into instrumental and vocal pieces that then took on a life of their own, constantly re-worked over many generations. (…) Time and geography meant very little to singers or players who could make the music their own in the moment.”

The project developed out of an idea by Potter and Ariel Abramovich to perform pared-down duet versions of Josquin’s motets, “in keeping with our belief that the pristine ‘early music’ a cappella performance of Franco-Flemish polyphony has misrepresented the way the music was mostly performed. This then evolved into a plan to use two vihuelas and two voices, so we asked Anna Maria Friman and Lee Santana.” Viola da gamba player Hille Perl attended the Josquin sessions in St Gerold, contributing to two pieces. For a session devoted to the music of Victoria, Jacob Heringman, another outstanding lutenist, was drafted in. Heringman also contributes five improvised preludes to the programme. (ECM Records)

Hille Perl / Dorothee Mields HÄNDEL

Hille Perl is the most successful viola da gamba player of our time. Now she has found a fabulous combination of musician friends for her new Handel album: Dorothee Mields, one of the best baroque sopranos, along with lutenist Lee Santana and the redoubtable La Folia Barockorchester. The repertoire chosen includes Handel’s Cantata “Tra le fiamme,” while the rarely recorded “cantata spagnuola” and the cantata “La bianca rosa” are combined with two chaconnes, the famous hornpipe and other smaller pieces. An impressive recording full of musical colour, dynamism, virtuosity and compositional diversity. (Presto Classical)

Hille Perl / Christine Schornsheim / Lee Santana BACH Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord BWV 525 - 530

Hille Perl is widely regarded as one of the leading viola da gambists in the world. Because of the prominence of her instrument in the Baroque era, her repertory is rich in works from that period, with the names, J.S. Bach, Telemann, Marin Marais, Sainte-Colombe, and other 17th and 18th century composers headlining her concert programs and recordings. Perl also plays the treble viol, the seven-string bass viol, Baroque guitar, Lirone, and Xarana. She often performs with her husband, lutenist Lee Santana, in duo repertory, and together the pair have formed two other ensembles: Los Otros, with guitarist Steve Player, and the Age of Passions, with violinist/conductor Petra Mullejans and flutist Karl Kaiser. Perl has also appeared with some of the leading Baroque ensembles in Europe, like the Freiburger Barockorchester and the Harp Consort. She has made numerous recordings, many of them available from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.

Hille Perl / Marthe Perl ELEMENTS

Greek philosophers in the pre-Christian era considered the four elements to be the basic components of life on earth; there was only the occasional argument if water or air should be considered to be the primordeal matter. The alchemists of the late middle ages and the early modern era placed the tenet of the four elements to be of crucial importance; physicians used it to characterize types of patients and astronomers discovered that celestial bodies are in corresponding constellations to the elements on this planet. Finally the Christian dogma also picked up on the elements and used them as characteristics of the four archangels.

Popular belief had a vast abundance of spirits who animated the world, there weresubterranean gnomes who populated the woodlands, fickle sylphs who whispered in the shrubbery, every well was inhabited by alluring undines, and salamanders could brave even the fiercest and hottest fires.

Is the mythological knowledge of these existential components of any significance to 21st century cosmopolitans?
Our answer to this question would be a very decidedly positive: why, of course!

Precisely at this moment, as the world seems to become unhinged on all levels,  we need more than ever the universal knowledge of the real and spiritual dimensions of the four elements, of their creative powers and their destructive energy, their interdependency and their sacred nucleus.
With this album we intended to contribute to this global challenge - and we are using music, being our language, our means of communication to enunciate the all-embracing love and kindness we have for the world- hoping to be received kindly and lovingly.

FIRE : Fire is a symbol of all-consuming love, it stands for burning passion and the comforting warmth of friendship.
And whether it be a devastating blaze or the consoling warmth of a burning wood-stove on a frosty winter’s morning….Fire is nourishing and protecting us, but it can also be a merciless destroyer - hence we are challenged to practice humility, caution and mindfulness.
A little thematic prelude by Marthe Perl initiates the contemplation of this element. We took the liberty to pick from the rich treasure of traditional Irish melodies to depict several aspects of real flames: a flag of fire to indicate the direction of movement, a fire in the mountain, maybe it is threatening the forest or a village, and an old woman who sits by the fire, sipping her tea. Then Soler’s Fandango fell into our hands: famous as a piece for harpsichord we found it quite suitable to carve out different aspects of persistent fervor and the burning passion for a theme on two bass viols.

EARTH: earth is our soil, the humus which grows our food, the life-giving furrow. We are made of earth, as all living things, and when all is said and done we return to earth, to become dust again and tobecome the origin of new life. The element earth symbolizes the circular flow of the years and the representation of growth, decay and resurrection embedded within.
Marthe’s Earth-Prelude opens this chapter, then another Irish tune about a boggy ground. Another Ground music are the Folia-related variations by Mr. Farinell, ere we turn to a funeral music for two viols : the ‚Tombeau pour M. de Meliton‘ who was a friend and patron of the great Marin Marais. 

WATER: the water-theme. Sister-element of the earth, allegorically depicting that our life is in flow, everchanging and in constant motion, like a river that in the end shall be released into the ocean, whose infinitude makes us small human beings feel humble and lost. Water is the emotional element: we shed tears of joy and sorrow. And - just like fire - water has a huge potential for destruction: it can wash away anything that thwarts its path.
The aspect of sorrow, of lamenting and of teares is our predominant theme in this set. ‚Hume’s Lamentation‘ follows Marthe’s initial Prelude and then the Lachrimaeby Sumarte for one viol is supplemented by Marthe’s arrangement of the famous Dowland-piece. 

AIR- air is respiration! God breathes life into us, when we first appear on earth, and finally we will take our dying breath and be gone. Air is a symbol for movement, for wind and whirl, for effortlessness and creativity.  But also for the damaging power of tempests and hurricanes. Marais’ ‚Bourrasque‘ isthe presentation of a storm, then we consider together with Thomas Ford how the air has changed - or the melody. Bagpipes are very windy instruments, and in the wild goose-chase we hastily cut through the air with our bows. Finally we describe a game of badminton which apparently the noble people of Versailles already knew and played.

A pensive Andante by Francis Poulenc from his Sonata for two clarinets is our farewell music on this CD. We believe, Poulenc could have meant it to be played with two viols, if only he had known the instrument.

Fire, Earth, Water and Air: four Elements - four different physical conditions of our planet - and of our selves. We believe it to be worthwhile togive special consideration to these ingredients of life, in these times of a growing  elemental imbalance in the world.

This concertis an invitation to give way to a musical contemplation of the complexities of the world, the ingredients of life,  and to encourage a general mindfulness. (Hille Perl, Winkelsett  2014)

Sirius Viols CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON The Four Seasons

Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is one of the most popular works in the classical repertoire worldwide but Vivaldi wasn’t the only composer to be inspired by the change of seasons. Christopher Simpson (1605–1669) was one of the best viola da gamba players of the early English Baroque. His Four Seasons is one of those fascinating works that take us on a musical journey through the recurring parts of the year. Now Hille Perl and her ensemble, Sirius Viols, have recorded this colourful piece. Hille Perl is a German virtuoso performer of the viola da gamba and lirone. She is considered to be one of the world's finest viola da gamba players. The Sirius Viols was founded by Hille Perl, consisting of Perl alongside Marthe Perl and Frauke Hess.

Maurice Steger & Ensemble VENEZIA 1625

Swiss recorder virtuoso Maurice Steger is one of the most exciting specialists on his instrument to come along since the late and lamented David Munrow, and he was already becoming an established touring artist in Europe while still a student. Having previously delivered two fine discs of Telemann and Giuseppe Sammartini chamber works, Harmonia Mundi's Venezia 1625 finds Steger as leader and coordinator of a large group of instrumentalists, though not all play at the same time; larger configurations of the ensemble dominate the first half of the program. What ties it all together is the concept, which centers on the early Baroque chamber sonata (or sinfonia) as practiced in Venice around 1625, a time and place that nearly signify the declaration of independence for Western instrumental music. Publications of that era tend to be so vague in terms of instrumentation that nearly any combination is conceivable to realize a given piece, and Steger takes full advantage of this in making his ensemble choices and taking them apart again, not to mention the observing convention that anything written for violin then could also pass for the recorder. The backdrop supporting Steger is different literally from track to track, and this helps provide variety, though the latter half of the disc is geared more toward pieces of modest of dimensions. 

Steger certainly knows how to pick players; some of these folks are the crême de la crême of the early music movement in Europe; the quality of their playing and inherent ensemble blend would have caused Venetian jaws in 1625 to drop. Hille Perl, whose gamba can be heard on most of the tracks, makes a big difference in the Tarquinio Merula Ciaccona, rolling continuo lines around on her viol in passagework worthy of what's in the solo parts. When Christian Beuse's dulcian comes in on Fontana's Sonata IV, you take notice, for it's a new instrument and picks up ones ears in the wake of the lively Merula Ciaccona. The first half of the disc is great; its balance of pacing and material makes for a terrific spring-summery mix that keeps on moving forward. After about midpoint, however, Venezia 1625 begins to drag, owing to a concentration of slow pieces and small forces; it's rather like the wind got knocked out of it. 

Nevertheless, Steger is a dazzling player, in every way able to match the violin as to flexibility and speed, and for passages requiring double stops he has a couple of additional recorder players to pitch in a little assistance. Venezia 1625 will be a wonderful disc for the car, and for the kids, who respond well to the sweet piping sound of the recorder; if you are looking to take a summer outing and want something other than the Beach Boys to listen to, then at least the first half of Harmonia Mundi's Venezia 1625 will be perfect for that; perhaps the second half is for the drive home. (Uncle Dave Lewis)

Gundula Anders / Sigrun Richter / Hille Perl SIGISMONDO D'INDIA Arie, Madrigali & Lamenti

Sigismondo D'India was an Italian composer. Probably born in Palermo—he described himself as "nobile palermitano" in the prefaces to his works—he spent his adolescence in Naples, where there are recoirds of a Don Carlo D'India, a relative or possibly his father. Following a musical education in that city, he would have done so as part of a musical scene that included Jean de Macque who lived in Naples from 1587 and who counted amongts his pupils Gesualdo, Maione and Trabaci.

During the first decade of the Seventeenth Century, D'India traveled around some of the most important courts of northern and central Italy: Mantua, Florence and Rome. He published his first printed work in 1606: Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci. In the preface to his Musiche of 1609, he recounts that in Florence he sang alogside two of the most celebrated figures in music, Giulio Caccini and the acclaimed virtuoso singer Vittoria Archilei.

In 1611 he settled in Turin as director of chamber music at the ducal court of Savoy, in the service of Carlo Emanuele I, devoting himself to composing the music for the sumptuous festivities at court, testimony of which has come down to posterity by way of his Musiche e balli a quattro voci (Venice, 1621). In the spring of 1623, however, he hurriedly left the Savoy court to avoid the exposure by malicious court gossips of a scandal. He found refuge at the court of Alfonso II d'Este, Prince of Modena, who was the son-in-law of the Duke of Savoy, and was thereafter called to Rome to take up service with Cardinal Maurizio of Savoy, the son of Carlo Emanuele I, staying there for two years. In the winter of 1626, he was summoned back to Modena by Alfonso d'Este; however, on the death of Isabella, the wife of Alfonso, he returned to Rome. He thereafter left the service of the Cardinal for good, and returned to Modena, where he spent his last years. His death there in 1629 prevented him from taking up a post offered him by the Prince-Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian I.

There exist no portraits of D'India. A Roman correspondent of Alfonso d'Este describes him as "ugly of body and shabbily dressed," though the Duke himslef noted that he was replete with "good qualities and good manners."

Over the course of twenty years he published three volumes of motets, eight of madrigals and two of villanelle alla napolitana, but he was most notable as a follower of the Florentine monodists, issuing five books of Musiche for one or two voices and continuo, and introducing into the solo madrigal some radical experiments in chromatic writing new to that medium (though well-tried, of course, in polyphonic composition). His O dolcezze amarissime is one of several powerful and distinctive songs, and his longer laments rival Monteverdi in their expressive inventiveness.

Hille Perl DOULCE MEMOIRE Glosas, Passeggiati & Diminutions around 1600

The art of improvisation was for much of musical history one of the most formidable weapons in the arsenal of performers. But in the 19th century it became largely lost (virtuoso pianists like Liszt and organists being notable exceptions) as the concept of the “sacrosanct score” gradually took root. In “art music”—to use a poor term to distinguish it from jazz—it is only with the revival of early music during the latter half of the last century that a reawakening of interest in improvisation has emerged, with performers as diverse as Robert Levin and Andrew Lawrence-King reviving long lost techniques and pushing back the boundaries of timidity.

No period lends itself more readily to such extemporary music-making than the late Renaissance or the early Baroque, a period during which countless treatises dedicated to providing examples for both vocal and instrumental embellishment appeared. For instrumental players, such improvisatory techniques specifically involved one of two kinds of process: either the use of one of the many bass patterns or ostinatos over which the player improvised a set of variations (or glosas), or the embellishment of a tune (frequently vocal in origin) by means of filling it with passage work or diminutions, as they were known. A couple of years back, I reviewed a Jordi Savall disc which took its point of departure from a collection of written-out variations (glosas) on ostinato basses, but also included some formidable examples of Savall’s own improvisatory prowess (Fanfare 25:4).
A key figure in Savall’s collection was the great Spanish composer and gambist Diego Ortiz (1525–c. 1570), whose hugely influential treatise Tratado de glosas appeared in 1553. Ortiz also looms large on this new disc with Hille Perl and what is largely Lawrence-King’s Harp Consort, but here the emphasis is different, the collection concentrating to near exclusivity on a variety of instrumental realizations of madrigals and chansons. One measure of the popularity of such vocal pieces was the number of times they appeared in transcription, or were accorded glosa treatment. It is therefore not surprising to find three different and widely varied versions of one of the most famous and beautiful of all chansons, Pierre Sandrin’s Doulce memoire. In one, Ortiz has ingeniously added a fifth part, while his glosa of it is extraordinarily sensitive, beautifully dovetailing the variants to maintain the dignified mien of the original. No such reserve is found in the version by Girolomo Dalla Casa, a cornettist at St. Mark’s, Venice from 1568, whose flamboyantly virtuosic jazzing up of the chanson elicits some appropriately dazzling playing from Perl. Equally fascinating is the comparison between the straight transcription for viols of Cipriano de Rore’s four-part madrigal Ben qui si mostra (1561) and the version with subtle vocal diminutions by the singer Angelo Notari. The establishment of basso continuo provided yet a further way of treating vocal pieces, as the arrangement of Willaert’s expressive chanson Jouissance vous donneray by Vincenzo Bonnizzi readily demonstrates. The only true improvisation is Lawrence-King’s rich extravaganza on Trabachi’s madrigal Ancidetemi pur (1603).
In sum, this beautifully performed disc provides a fascinating insight into the way instrumentalists established a repertoire of their own from vocal models. Judging from the cover illustration (an arty black and white photo of Perl posed in a cornfield) and the gambist’s new-age comments on the music (“This piece makes you want to leave just so you can return”), I suspect that some kind of crossover market is being aimed at. And why not? It’s all a darn sight more enjoyable than those abominable discs of opera stars singing Broadway songs. (Brian Robins)

Hille Perl / Lee Santana / Marthe Perl BORN TO BE MILD

Hille Perl is widely regarded as one of the leading viola da gambists in the world. Because of the prominence of her instrument in the Baroque era, her repertory is rich in works from that period, with the names, J.S. Bach, Telemann, Marin Marais, Sainte-Colombe, and other 17th and 18th century composers headlining her concert programs and recordings. Perl also plays the treble viol, the seven-string bass viol, Baroque guitar, Lirone, and Xarana. She often performs with her husband, lutenist Lee Santana, in duo repertory, and together the pair have formed two other ensembles: Los Otros, with guitarist Steve Player, and the Age of Passions, with violinist/conductor Petra Müllejans and flutist Karl Kaiser. Perl has also appeared with some of the leading Baroque ensembles in Europe, like the Freiburger Barockorchester and the Harp Consort. She has made numerous recordings, many of them available from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (DHM).

 Hille Perl was born in Bremen, Germany, in 1965. Her father Helmuth was a harpsichordist, organist, and musicologist. Hille began playing the viola da gamba at five. She had studies with Niklas Trüstedt (Berlin) and with Pere Ros and Ingrid Stampa (Hamburg). Perl earned a degree in 1990 at Bremen's Academy for Early Music, where she studied with Sarah Cunningham and Jaap ter Linden.

Perl steadily built her career, and soon began appearing on recordings. Among the earliest was a 1997 Deutsche Harmonia Mundi CD, Spanish Gypsies, with Santana, Player, Andrew Lawrence-King, and other notables. Perl and Santana formed Los Otros (The Others) in 2001 and their first recording, Tinto, a collection of works by Kapsberger, Corbetta, and others, appeared on RCA Special Imports in 2003. From 2002, Perl has taught viola da gamba at the University of the Arts in Bremen, while remaining busy both in the concert hall and recording studio. (Robert Cummings)

Dorothee Mields / Hille Perl / Lee Santana LOVES ALCHYMÏE

Hille Perl is widely regarded as one of the leading viola da gambists in the world. Because of the prominence of her instrument in the Baroque era, her repertory is rich in works from that period, with the names, J.S. Bach, Telemann, Marin Marais, Sainte-Colombe, and other 17th and 18th century composers headlining her concert programs and recordings. Perl also plays the treble viol, the seven-string bass viol, Baroque guitar, Lirone, and Xarana. She often performs with her husband, lutenist Lee Santana, in duo repertory, and together the pair have formed two other ensembles: Los Otros, with guitarist Steve Player, and the Age of Passions, with violinist/conductor Petra Müllejans and flutist Karl Kaiser. Perl has also appeared with some of the leading Baroque ensembles in Europe, like the Freiburger Barockorchester and the Harp Consort. She has made numerous recordings, many of them available from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (DHM). 

Hille Perl was born in Bremen, Germany, in 1965. Her father Helmuth was a harpsichordist, organist, and musicologist. Hille began playing the viola da gamba at five. She had studies with Niklas Trüstedt (Berlin) and with Pere Ros and Ingrid Stampa (Hamburg). Perl earned a degree in 1990 at Bremen's Academy for Early Music, where she studied with Sarah Cunningham and Jaap ter Linden. Perl steadily built her career, and soon began appearing on recordings. Among the earliest was a 1997 Deutsche Harmonia Mundi CD, Spanish Gypsies, with Santana, Player, Andrew Lawrence-King, and other notables. Perl and Santana formed Los Otros (The Others) in 2001 and their first recording, Tinto, a collection of works by Kapsberger, Corbetta, and others, appeared on RCA Special Imports in 2003. From 2002, Perl has taught viola da gamba at the University of the Arts in Bremen, while remaining busy both in the concert hall and recording studio. 

In 2004 Perl appeared on one of her most acclaimed recordings, Marais' Pour La Violle, with Santana, on DHM. Perl and Santana's daughter, Marthe Perl, is also an acclaimed viola da gambist. She joined her parents on a highly praised 2010 DHM CD entitled Loves Alchymie.

Perl's busy concert schedule includes appearances at many of the major Baroque festivals. She performed with Santana and harpsichordist Patrick Ayrton to great acclaim at the May 2011 Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, held at St. John's Smith Square in London. Their performances in an all-J.S. Bach program were later broadcast over BBC Radio 3. (Robert Cummings)