Cherubini

Faniska is an opéra comique in three acts by Luigi Cherubini. The German libretto, by Joseph Sonnleithner, is based on the melodrama Les mines de Pologne (1803) by René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt.

In the second half of 18th century, keyboard music in Tuscany was flourishing. Many composers wrote music for both the fortepiano and the harpsichord: the former, which was invented just before the turn of the 18th century in Florence by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), rose to an incredible degree of popularity in the last decades of the century at the expense of the latter, which experienced the last moments of its glorious history. At any rate, it was by no means uncommon that composers published music intended to be played on either instrument, as almost all keyboard pieces written in Tuscany during the 1780s were explicitly addressed per il clavicembalo o fortepiano (for the harpsichord or piano).

In the second half of 18th century, keyboard music in Tuscany was flourishing. Many composers wrote music for both the fortepiano and the harpsichord: the former, which was invented just before the turn of the 18th century in Florence by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), rose to an incredible degree of popularity in the last decades of the century at the expense of the latter, which experienced the last moments of its glorious history. At any rate, it was by no means uncommon that composers published music intended to be played on either instrument, as almost all keyboard pieces written in Tuscany during the 1780s were explicitly addressed per il clavicembalo o fortepiano (for the harpsichord or piano).

Luigi Cherubini - Missa Solemnis in D minor
Patricia Wells, Lou Ann Lee, Maureen Forrester - The Clarion Concerts Orchestra & Chorus / Newell Jenkins
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 379 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Vanguard Classics # 08 5026 71 | Country/Year: US 1996, 1971
Genre: Classical | Style: Vocal, Choral, Sacred, Classicism

Luigi Cherubini (8 or 14 September 1760 – 15 March 1842) was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries.

In 1824, while waiting for the the ninth symphony it commissioned from Beethoven, the Philharmonic Society of London ordered a backup symphony in D major from the Italian-turned-French composer Luigi Cherubini. The Society had been founded ten years earlier to perform music by ‘the greatest masters’, notably Beethoven, Cherubini and Carl Maria von Weber.

Cherubini’s major sacred works are generally quite marvelous. The two Requiems have a distinguished history on disc. Toscanini recorded the C minor, Markevitch the D minor, and my colleague David Vernier praised the recent release of the C minor piece on Carus. They are both truly excellent: grave and austere, but also dynamic, moving, and well worth hearing. The same is certainly true of the large-scale Masses: the Missa solemnis in D minor and E major and the Mass in F are especially memorable. Their grandeur never strains for effect and is always leavened with the composer’s Italian lyricism. Cherubini may not have been well-treated by history, but he knew what he was doing.

Cherubini is not known for keyboard music, and, indeed, wrote very little of it. The six sonatas for keyboard were composed while Cherubini was living in Milan in 1780, studying with Giuseppe Sarti, the Maestro di Cappella at Milan Cathedral. They were published in Florence three years later and remained his only keyboard music to go to press. The sonatas are therefore early works, very much in the ‘Classical’ style and all consist of only two movements and all are in major keys. While the sonatas …….

Peter Wells @ musicweb-international.com

At the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France in 1815, tributes to the executed Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were frequently offered, and two of the most important compositions used for their belated memorials were Luigi Cherubini's Requiem in C minor and Charles-Henri Plantade's Messe des morts in D minor. Cherubini's work was performed at a ceremony in 1816, shortly after the monarchs' remains had been moved to the royal crypt in St. Denis, while Plantade's score was revised and performed in 1823 for the thirtieth anniversary of Marie-Antoinette's death.

Luigi Cherubini, buried next to Chopin in Paris, was universally hailed as a great composer during his own time; even Beethoven admired works like the Requiem in C minor of 1816. It's easy to understand Beethoven's reactions; in an age when lightness still ruled, Cherubini's mature works had great seriousness of purpose. The works on this release are a bit different. They date from the 1780s, before and just after Cherubini moved to Paris and scored his first success there with Démophoon.

These six Sonatas represent some of Cherubini's earliest published compositions (Florence, c1783). The disc therefore offers the opportunity to experience and assess another side of a composer better known for his operas (especially Médée of 1797) and liturgical music (amongst which two Requiem Masses figure highly). All the works are in two movements. There is much to enjoy in these charming Sonatas, not least a spirited joie de vivre, an appealing wit and an almost all-pervasive charm.