Ambergensis Commedia Musicale

The services of Matins and Lauds in the Roman rite for the last three days of Holy Week, the so-called Sacred Triduum are – or were before being replaced by the vernacular liturgy – beautiful and complex. Matins for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday consist of psalms with antiphons, readings from the Lamentations of Jeremiah and versicles and responsories related to and reflecting upon the events of those days. Over the centuries they have proved fruitful inspiration for music, even in post-reformation England, where the Book of Common Prayer continued to prescribe readings from Lamentations and settings of them, often in Latin, continued to be sung in cathedrals and collegiate churches.

Throughout the 19th century, the chamber music of Georges Onslow (1784-1853) was afforded the same respect as that of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. According to one source, “his work was admired by both Beethoven and Schubert, the latter modeling his own 2 cello quintet (D.956) on those of Onslow and not, as is so often claimed, on those of Boccherini.” While Onslow was known as “the French Beethoven,” his string quartets/quintets fit neatly within the quatuor brilliants genre that arose from Louis Spohr. This type of string writing gives the first violin freer rein as a soloist; a concerto for violin and string quartet, in other words.

The conventual franciscan Orazio Colombano (c.1554–after 1595) hailed from Verona and came to the ancient city of Vercelli, in Piedmont, east of Turin, in 1579 to take up his first professional appointment as Moderator for Music at the Cathedral, a thriving cappella musicale under the House of Savoy, established in 1495 with a choir of six children, adult singers including a number of Flemish and French musicians, and organists, cornetto, sackbut, theorbo and string players.

​The Concerti of the violinist-composer Francesco Venturini (c.1675-1745) are a real discovery - melodious, virtuosic, elegant and dance-like, combining Italian and French stylistic elements to form a "mixed taste", as Telemann described this mélange. Inspired by the pulsating cultural and intellectual life at the Hanoverian court, Venturini wrote ambitious orchestral music full of joie de vivre, defined by numerous concertato passages for both wind and string instruments.

Among the dozens or perhaps hundreds of available recordings of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, a subgroup of recent ones has emphasized its very operatic style. Within this group, performers have gone in various directions, but a single one is represented here: sheer vocal beauty of a sort that just doesn't come along every day. The vocal line trumps the dramatic meaning of the text here, but the duets between soprano Véronique Gens and countertenor Gérard Lesne are so gorgeous that you just won't care.

The Father, the Son and the Godfather is a snapshot from a time when art music escaped from the courts and churches. Domestic music-making in the company of close friends became a treasured extension of social interaction, and the resulting boom in ‘market opportunities’ offered composers a tremendous freedom in their choices of genres and styles, as demonstrated by this colourful programme. It features three composers whose music could not be more different, taking into account that all works were composed during the span of only two generations by authors who knew each other better than just well: J.S. Bach (the father), C.P.E. Bach (the son) and Georg Philipp Telemann (CPE’s godfather).

Depuis plus d'une décennie, Gérard Lesne poursuit un splendide travail de redécouverte du répertoire baroque sacré, qu'il chante avec sa voix merveilleuse de haute- contre, accompagné de son ensemble Il Seminario Musicale. Ce disque est l'occasion de les retrouver dans de très beaux Motets de Scarlatti - Alessandro Scarlatti, le père de Domenico, l'auteur des fameuses 555 sonates pour clavier. Tout est subtilité, douceur et expression, comme toujours avec Gérard Lesne.

I cannot help feeling that Alessandro Stradella is possibly still one of the major unexplored talents of baroque music. I say this, not because I personally know of piles of forgotten masterpieces by him, but simply because when there is so much of his music that has not been recorded or made available in modern editions, and when what one does get to hear suggests so much talent (the powerful oratorio San Giovanni Battista, for instance), it makes you wonder just what else there might be waiting to be discovered.

Handel's stay in Italy between the years 1706 and 1710 resulted in a time of intense creative activity, and he quite naturally gravitated towards the cantata.