Arcadia Publisihng

Alessandro Grandi - born in Venice in 1590 - was an extremely precocious talent. Appointed deputy of Monteverdi in 1627 in Saint Mark’s Basilica, he is regarded by scholars as “the greatest motet composer of his time”. After the highly praised Grandi’s motets album “Celesti fiori” (A464), Accademia d’Arcadia now presents Lætatus sum: a selection from the three extant Psalms collections. Grandi ventured in the field of Psalms with large-scale writing only at the end of his life, his collections of Psalms were undoubtedly intended for grand occasions: the relationship between soloists, tutti, and instruments is very modern, as successive portions of the text are set in sharply contrasting textures and styles. Recorded in the sumptuous Palladian church of San Francesco della Vigna in Venice, this recording features magnificent and compelling masterpieces by an author considered by his contemporaries as equal to Monteverdi in the field of sacred music.

For this the second volume in their series of Weinberg’s string quartets, the Arcadia Quartet again presents three quartets from contrasting periods in the stylistic development of the composer. The first quartet of the self-taught teenager, written in 1937, in what Weinberg later described as his ‘neo-impressionist’ style, was heavily revised later in his life, and eventually republished as Op. 141, in 1985. (It is this revised version that has been recorded here, the original version surviving only in manuscript form, in places virtually illegible.) The seventh quartet dates from 1957, after a gap of twenty turbulent years that had witnessed the emigration of Weinberg from Poland to Russia, his introduction to Shostakovich, and his experience of censorship and imprisonment in 1953. In contrast to his earlier quartets, the mood is more intimate and withdrawn, yet defiant. The eleventh quartet was composed between 13 October 1965 and 25 December 1966, at a time when Weinberg was mulling over the composition of his first opera, The Passenger. It is dedicated to his first daughter, Victoria, and was premièred by the Borodin Quartet on 13 April 1967 in the Chamber Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire.

The Italian Steffani spent most of his fabulous career as a composer, spy, and diplomat in Germany, in München and Hanover, with a prolonged visit to Paris to the court of Louis XIV. In terms of the prevalent national styles of music in the late 17th C, Steffani was "all over the place" – his overtures are thoroughly French, his arias sparklingly Italian, and his mastery of counterpoint profoundly German. Does that stylistic Duke's Mixture ring any bells? A certain pair of Germans born in 1685, one revered for his cantatas and the other for his operas, were both indebted to Steffani for his synthesis of Italian, French, and German fashions.

Les deux chasseurs et la laitière, a oneact opera by Egidio Romualdo Dun, was premiered in Paris by the company of Théâtre de Comédiens Italiens, in July 1763. This work, staged then many times at the Opéra Comique, was soon published and its popularity among European theatres reached its peak between the 1780s and the beginning of 19th century.

The seventeen string quartets of Weinberg span nearly half a century, from his student days in Warsaw to the end of his career in Moscow, and show his development as a composer more clearly than his work in any other genre. The Second Quartet, composed in 1939 – 40 whilst studying in Minsk, was dedicated to his mother and sister, who he would later learn had not survived the German invasion of Poland. Quartet No. 5, of 1945, was the first in which he added titles to each movement, and reflects the influence of Shostakovich over the young composer. The final quartet in this programme – No. 8 – was written in 1959 and dedicated to the Borodin Quartet. For many years the best-known of Weinberg’s quartets in the west, this single-movement work is divided into three sections with a coda.

At the centre of these world premiere recordings is what is believed to be the only surviving work of Franz Xaver Hassl (1708-1757), a composer barely known to us these days, Hassl wrote the trio sonatas whilst director of music at the Prince-Bishop's court in Pruntrut/Porrentruy where they were most likely performed within an ecclesiastical setting. The sonatas are framed by three sacred arias found in a song collection by Zurich's town trumpeter, Johann Ludwig Steiner (1688-1761) and a selection of canzonettas by Johan Freidrich Agricola (1722-1774) illustrating the secular side of this charming 'galant' music.

As with the previous volumes in their survey of the quartets of Weinberg, the Arcadia Quartet have selected a pair of works from contrasting stylistic periods of the composer’s output. The Fourth Quartet was composed in 1945, shortly after Weinberg had moved to Moscow. The Quartet presents an abstract, psychologically universal picture – a testimony both to the composer’s artistic maturity and to the affinity that Weinberg had discovered with Shostakovich.

The Arcadia Quartet’s acclaimed survey of Weinberg’s String Quartets continues with this fourth volume containing Quartets Nos 6, 13, and 15. Quartet No. 6 was composed in 1946 in Bïkovo, a town some twenty miles from the south-eastern perimeter of Moscow. Weinberg dedicated it to his friend Georgiy Sviridov, whom he had met in Shostakovich’s circle. The Quartet is a summit of his early achievements, and its musical language is strikingly advanced in relation to traditional Soviet works in the genre. It was banned by the authorities, and as a result, Weinberg wrote no more quartets until after the death of his mentor Shostakovich, in 1975.