Dunedin Consort / John Butt HANDEL Samson

SAMSON

Dunedin Consort & Players / John Butt GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL Messiah

For an infinitely more rewarding fresh look at Handel's most familiar music, look no further than the Dunedin Consort's performance of Handel's first version, premiered at Dublin in 1742. Bizarrely under-represented in concert and on disc, the Dublin score contains some fascinating music that Handel never reused, such as the substantial chorus 'Break forth into joy'. The exuberant direction by harpsichordist John Butt is meticulously stylish and utterly devoid of crassly pretentious egotism. The playing is unerringly spontaneous and dramatically integrated with singers who illustrate profound appreciation of text. Clare Wilkinson's 'He was despised' is most moving, Susan Hamilton effortlessly skips through a delicious 'Rejoice greatly', and bass Matthew Brook sings as if his life depends on it.

Butt bravely resolves to use the same forces Handel had at his disposal in Dublin, which means that the entire oratorio is sung by a dozen singers (with all soloists required to participate in the choruses, as Handel would have expected). Where this approach might risk worthy dull solos churned out by stalwart choir members, the Dunedin Consort's exemplary singers produce virtuoso choruses that are theatrically charged, splendidly poised and exquisitely blended. Old warhorses 'For unto us a child is born' and 'Surely he hath borne our griefs' are delightfully inspiring. Butt and the Dunedin Consort marry astute scholarship to sincere artistic expression and the result is comfortably the freshest, most natural, revelatory and transparently joyful Messiah I have heard for a very long time. (Gramophone)

Dunedin Consort & Players / John Butt GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL Acis & Galatea

The Dunedin Consort, led by John Butt, has moved into the niche of recording original or obscure versions of Baroque choral masterworks using forces as close as possible to those of the original performances. Its 2006 performance of the Dublin version of Messiah is one of the liveliest and refreshingly intimate recordings of the work, and won a Gramophone Award for Best Baroque Vocal Album of the year. Here the group turns its attention to a much earlier Handel work, the 1718 pastoral oratorio Acis & Galatea. Through ingenious musical detective work, Butt has reconstructed the most likely constitution of the ensemble that originally performed the piece while the composer was employed at Cannons House in Middlesex. Acis & Galatea is a work stronger on charm than substance, but its charms are considerable, from its lively and lyrical solos and ensembles to its inventive and clever orchestration. While Handel is not known for comedy, and this piece is in fact a tragedy (a rejected suitor kills his rival, but the heroine transforms her slain lover into a fountain, so things don't turn out too badly), the librettists and composer treat the subject lightly and with genuine wit. The villain is portrayed as a buffoon, and Butt and his singers play up the work's humor. Baritone Matthew Brook is vocally virtuosic and comically convincing as Polyphemus; his arias "O ruddier than the cherry" and "Cease to beauty to be suing" are among the highlights of the recording. As Galatea, soprano Susan Hamilton sings with purity and unmannered grace. Tenor Nicholas Mulroy as Acis has a somewhat covered sound that keeps him from being truly heroic. Thomas Hobbs, in the secondary role of role of Damon, has a light but bright and clarion tenor. The orchestra plays with exquisite finesse and expressiveness. Butt and his exemplary forces make a strong case for this odd little piece and give it a depth and coherence that make their performance stand out among the recorded versions. (Stephen Eddins )

Dunedin Consort & Players / John Butt JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Mass in B Minor

Linn Records' recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor is the first to utilize the revised Joshua Rifkin edition published by Breitkopf and Härtel in 2006. This is a refinement of the 1980s version in which Rifkin pared the instrumentation of the mass down to its barest essentials and rendered the chorus as a one-to-a-part vocal ensemble, and while the texture is a tad fuller here than on the radically skimpy recording made for Nonesuch at that time, it's still pretty minimal, especially in comparison to versions utilizing more traditional forces. This SACD recording by the Dunedin Consort and Players, led by John Butt -- who have enjoyed considerable critical acclaim for their 2007 recording of the Dublin version of Handel's Messiah -- utilizes just 10 singers and a band barely the size of a chamber orchestra. This approach definitely benefits the voices, and these are good singers, though there are no standout performances. Indeed, this recording is at its best in the ensembles, such as "Et resurrexit," "Et expecto," and "Laudamus te," where the flexibility of the small group raises the rhythmic profile of the music to a pitch of excitement and intensity that can be quite engaging. On the other hand, the heft and power that a traditional ensemble can bring to the Mass in B minor is noticeably lacking here and this set will not satisfy listeners for whom a large orchestral/choral rendering is the only viable option for Bach's last great choral work. However, Linn's SACD recording is spectacularly clear and solid and the orchestral playing is terrific; were that the solo singers were more distinctive and memorable in their star turns, then this would be just about perfect for a small potatoes Mass in B minor. (Uncle Dave Lewis)

Cecilia Bernardini / Dunedin Consort / John Butt BACH Violin Concertos

There is certainly no shortage of recordings of these popular Bach violin works, but this one by the Dunedin Consort with violinist Cecilia Bernardini has many aspects to recommend it. At the top of the list must be the soloist's flair of Bernardini herself, playing a bright-eyed 1743 Camillus Camilli violin. In her playing you get the virtuoso energy of the contemporary Italian school without the hard edge, and there is a sense of play in her music-making that one senses Bach would have loved. Sample one of the finales, perhaps the "Allegro assai" from the Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042, for a taste. Bernardini also interacts marvelously with her collaborators, Huw Daniel in the two-violin concerto and her father, Alfredo Bernardini, producing a bewitching Baroque oboe sound in the hypothetical but convincing Concerto for violin and oboe in C minor, BWV 1060R. Another of those collaborators is John Butt, who leads a perfectly sized Dunedin Consort (there is a ripieno string group, but a small one) that follows Bernardini with agility around the high-speed corners. The Greyfriars Kirk sound is clear but a little chilly for what is really a very warm performance that finds a lot of fun in Bach's music. Highly recommended. (James Manheim)

Dunedin Consort / John Butt WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Requiem

Purely on grounds of performance alone, this is one of the finest Mozart Requiems of recent years. John Butt brings to Mozart the microscopic care and musicological acumen that have made his Bach and Handel recordings so thought-provoking and satisfying. As with all of Butt’s recordings, however, this Mozart Requiem is something of an event. The occasion is the publication of a new edition – by David Black, a senior research fellow at Homerton College, Cambridge – of the ‘traditional’ completion of this tantalisingly unfinished work,of which this is the first recording. Süssmayr’s much-maligned filling-in of the Requiem torso has lately enjoyed a resurgence in its acceptance by the scholarly community – not that it has ever been supplanted in the hearts and repertoires of choral societies and music lovers around the world. The vogue for stripped-back and reimagined modern completions is on the wane and Süssmayr’s attempt, for all its perceived inconsistencies and inaccuracies, is once again in favourin the crucible of musicological criticism.
After all, as Black points out in the preface to his score, ‘Whatever the shortcomings of Süssmayr’s completion, it is the only document that may transmit otherwise lost directions or written material
from Mozart’.
Black has returned to the earliest sources of the work: Mozart’s incomplete ‘working’ score, Süssmayr’s ‘delivery’ score and the first printed edition of 1800, which even so soon after the work’s genesis was already manifesting accretions and errors that place us at a further remove from Mozart’s
intentions. For all the textual emendations this engenders, the actual difference as far as the general listener is concerned is likely to be minimal; while we Requiemophiles quiver with delight at
each clarified marking, to all intents and purposes what is presented here is the Mozart Requiem as it has been known and loved for more than two centuries.
It is Butt’s minute attention to these details, though, that makes this such a thrilling performance. He fields a choir and band of dimensions similar to the forces at the fi rst performance of the complete work on January 2, 1793, little over a year after Mozart’s death, and the effect is, not unexpectedly, to wipe away the impression of a ‘thick, grey crust’ that was felt so palpably by earlier commentators on the work. Listen, for example, to Mozart’s miraculous counterpoint at ‘Te decet hymnus’ in the Introit or Süssmayr’s rather more clumsy imitation in the ‘Recordare’, and hear how refreshingly the air circulates around these potentially stifl ing textures.
Butt’s outlook on the work is apparent from the very beginning: the gait of the string quavers is more deliberate than limping in the fi rst bar, and this purposefulness returns in movements such as the ‘Recordare’ and ‘Hostias’.
The extremes of monumentality and meditativeness in the Requiem are represented perhaps by Bernstein and Herreweghe respectively; Butt steers a course equidistant between the two without compromising the work in its many moments of austerity or repose.
Paradoxically, Butt’s fidelity to the minutiae of the score allows him the freedom to shape a performance of remarkable cumulative intensity, so that the drama initiated in the driving ‘Dies irae’ reaches a climax and catharsis in the ‘Lacrimosa’ and is recalled in the turbulent Agnus Dei.
The choir is of only 16 voices, from which the four soloists step out as required. Blend and tuning are of an accuracy all too rarely heard, even in this golden age of British choral singing. Soprano Joanne Lunn’s tone is well nourished, with vibrato deployed judiciously to colour selected notes or phrases; of the other soloists, Matthew Brook’s bass responds sonorously to the sounding of the last trumpet (in German ‘die letzte Posaune’ – the last trombone) in the ‘Tuba mirum’. Instrumental sonority, too, is meticulously judged: hear especially the voicing of the brass-and-wind chords during bridge passages in the ‘Benedictus’ or the shifting orchestral perspectives of the ‘Confutatis’.
The couplings are also carefully considered. The first is Misericordias Domini, an offertory composed in 1775 of which Mozart had a set of parts copied in 1791.
Sharing with the Requiem its key and a gleeful exploitation of contrapuntal techniques, it piquantly demonstrates the advance in Mozart’s church style during the last 16 years of his life.
The disc closes with what purports to be a re-enactment of an even earlier ‘first performance’ of the Requiem. While the 1793 Vienna concert is well documented, recent research has suggested that the
Requiem (or at least some of it) was performed in a memorial to Mozart on December 10, 1791 – only five days after his death. Given the partial state of the work (only the Introit was complete in Mozart’s hand), it is supposed that this performance consisted of the Introit and the ensuing Kyrie fugue, for which an amanuensis filled in the doubling woodwind parts.
That performance is hypothesised here with slimmed-down vocal and string parts, and with trumpets and drums missing from the Kyrie (on the presumption that the parts hadn’t been provided by that time). Starker still than the larger performance, this telling appendix offers a tantalising glimpse of the music that might have been played by Mozart’s friends and students as they struggled to come to terms with their loss. (Recording of the Month /Gramophone, May 2014)