《走遍中国》 20160822 90后电商新农人

During the 1990s, Collegium Musicum 90 and Simon Standage released several volumes of Albinoni concertos, which proved popular with critics and public alike. The concertos were released as discs of single oboe concertos, double oboe concertos, and string concertos. In this re-issue on the Chaconne label, the concertos are presented in opus number order, showing the contrasting colours and tonalities of the concertos as they originally appeared.

The concerto, such a familiar feature of the modern concert landscape, seems a simple thing in its opposition of individual and group. But its early history is not so simple; composers had to find structures that would support contrasts between one or more soloists and an orchestra. The "classic" Baroque concertos of Corelli actually represented a simplification of experiments carried out by earlier composers, the Bolognese Giuseppe Torelli central among them. Torelli is usually associated in Baroque listeners' minds with a few trumpet concertos, two of which (labeled sinfonias) are heard here. The short concertos for one or two violins (mostly six or seven minutes long, for three movements) are rarer but very attractive. They don't have the clean symmetries of the Vivaldian concerto, instead exploiting various ways of breaking up a movement into solo and tutti. Although short and essentially compact, each movement has an aspect of free imagination that is nicely brought out by the veteran English early music conductor and violinist Simon Standage, who joins with several other well-known soloists from Britain's historical-performance movement.

Dioclesian is the tale of a simple Roman private, Diocles, who fulfils the prophecy of Delphia (a prophetess, and hence Dioclesian's alternative title) that one day he will become emperor. In the meantime, Diocles avenges the slaying of the previous emperor and becomes a hero. With ambitions realized he discovers the he has over-played his hand by responding to Princess Aurelia's advances in the place of a nice homely girl called Drusilla, whom he had agreed to marry. The prophetess, who happens to be Drusilla's aunt, plans his come-uppance before he realizes the emptiness of his aspirations, abdicates and returns to nature and Drusilla.

This important release follows Hickox and Collegium Musicum 90's award-winning recordings of the Masses of Haydn and Hummel. It continues the Esterházy theme since Beethoven's Mass in C succeeded ones commissioned by the prince from Haydn and Hummel. There are few recordings of this repertoire on period instruments, and with the addition of the two rare cantatas, this CD is especially important.

Albinoni might be described as a specialist in the medium of the Concerto a cinque, of which he composed 54, published at intervals during almost half his productive life. The first six appeared in his Op 2 (1700), together with six sonatas from which they inherited some structural features, and were followed in 1707 by the 12 of Op 5. They were 'halfway houses' on the road to the violin concerto per se as we know it – and as Vivaldi established it four years later.Virtuoso passages for a solo violin appear only en passant in flanking movements and 'symmetrically' in the Adagios of Nos 3, 6, 9 and 12. Each Concerto is in three-movement form and all the finales are fugal, as they are in the Op 2, though in their simplicity they sound rather like rondos.

Recorded in 1990 at Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead (London), this beautifully produced CD contains six lesser-known works for violin(s) by Germany’s most prolific 18th century composer, Georg Philipp Telemann, who was, during his lifetime, considerably more famous (and more in demand) than any of the Bach dynasty. But as Nicholas Anderson points out in his rather brief introduction to this music, “Telemann did not altogether avoid in his own music those features which he criticised in others; sometimes his harmonies seem sparse, his passagework perfunctory.” Telemann was a great musician, but the violin “seems to have been that in which he was least fluent”. It is also well-known that Telemann’s facility in composing has gained him a reputation for producing quantity rather than quality – a reputation which, on the whole, is undeserved.

Handel's music is never more winsome than when it's written for special occasions, not least operas. Several of the items in this programme are arias, but they aren't sung. Like today's musicals, though not for calculated commercial reasons, some became what we would now term pops, and Handel reworked them as instrumental pieces, so no liberty has been taken here in presenting them in that form. The charm of this music hasn't escaped the notice of others in recording studios, but it has never been more persuasively captured than it is by Collegium Musicum 90. Other recordings exist of the complete operas and some of the individual instrumental items, but Arminio is represented by only one aria; there's nothing run-of-the-mill about the fugal subject of the Overture, or its treatment, and the Minuet is winsome and light of step.

Here is another fine recording of Telemann’s magnificent Thunder Ode, a work inspired by the catastrophic earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755. It is coupled with one of the composer’s most jubilant cantatas, and both still impress as works that should be heard much more often, perhaps in lieu of an overplayed composition by Handel or Bach. They are surely in that league. This CD, re-issued in Chandos’ “Chaconne” line, faces inevitable comparison with the performances on Capriccio, conducted by Hermann Max, although the couplings are different. Max’s Thunder Ode is given a whole CD to itself, while his cantata recording contains two additional, and magnificent, Telemann compositions.

There are many other highly recommendable recordings by Collegium Musicum 90 under Simon Standage on the Chandos early music label, Chaconne. If you’ve heard a reasonable cross-section of the music of Vivaldi and would like to experiment with some of his near-contemporaries, their recording of Alessandro Marcello’s six Violin Concertos, Op.6, known as ‘La Cetra’, together with an extra Concerto in B-flat, would be a good place to start.