Peter Holman

Although accorded a substantial article in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the German-born composer John Frederick Lampe (1702/3-51) remains largely unknown except to connoisseurs of 18th-century English music. Yet on the evidence of this disc, such neglect is hardly deserved, since Lampe possesses a rare gift for writing genuinely comic opera. The basis for his Pyramus and Thisbe of 1745 (subtitled ‘a mock opera’) is the famous play-within-a-play sequence from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Praetorius devoted most of his life to church music: he published more than twenty collections, mostly of settings of Lutheran chorales, and a number of others are known to have existed in manuscript. He also planned a series of collections of secular music named after the various Greek muses, including Euterpe (Italian and English dances), Thalia (toccatas and canzonas) and Erato (German secular songs). Unfortunately, in the event he managed to publish only one, Terpsichore, musarum aoniarum quinta (1612), consisting of 312 dances in four, five and six parts.

Under the expert guidance of Peter Holman, as formidable a scholar of the period as he is experienced executant, these performances by the Parley of Instruments remain as fresh and incisive as on their first appearance over a decade ago. With no special interpretative axe to grind, they remain classic accounts, deserving of a place in anyone’s CD collection, specialist and general listener alike.

Peter Holman is a conductor known particularly for his interpretations of post-Renaissance English music, but he has also received acclaim for his performances of the works of European masters of the Baroque period, including Handel, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Monteverdi. He has recorded extensively for the English label Hyperion and has established parallel careers as a harpsichordist, organist, teacher (Royal Academy of Music and Colchester Institute), and music journalist.

Handel arrived in Hamburg in 1703, aged eighteen. He spent four years in the city and wrote several works for the town's opera house. Hamburg opera was a rather eclectic beast at the time, drawing on Italian and French language and instrumental style alongside the native German. Handel fell happily into this genre; this CD brings together a selection of the delightful orchestral music (which tends to be in the French style) that Handel wrote there, some of it recorded for the first time.

For much of the Baroque period, there was no useful distinction between orchestral and chamber music. All music, unless performed in church or on some festive occasion, was cultivated in the home, and even the concertos of Vivaldi and Bach rarely require more than a dozen people for an adequate performance. These "sonatas," which consist of single movement compositions with several linked sections, variously employ violins, violas, trumpets (and drums), cellos and continuo instruments (harpsichord, organ, lute). Biber had a unique ability to come up with catchy tunes and arrange them in formally satisfying way. The music is brilliant and consistently engaging. So are these performances.

The intervening dozen years since I reviewed Hyperion’s initial release of four English Violin Concertos (66865, 20:2) may not have witnessed a surge of interest in these works; nevertheless, the panache that Elizabeth Wallfisch brought to them in her recording sessions in January 1996 has hardly paled with the passage of time. These violinist-composers, contemporaries of Viotti and Mozart, wrote in an Italianate style, with woodwind splashes (all four concertos include oboes and horns, and Linley’s adds flutes as well) that enhance the kind of concertante symphonic sound which Paul Stoeving noted in Viotti’s concertos.

There's no grand, large-scale music on this exceptional disc–only psalms and hymns for soprano, tenor, bass and strings in various combinations. Typical of the music are three settings of "Confitebor tibi, Domine" (Psalm 110): a jaunty but graceful setting for soprano and tenor, with athletic runs and a gorgeous slow ending; a moderate but charged setting for three voices, each singer delivering a verse in turn before joining dramatically at "sanctum et terribile" ("holy and terrible"); and a setting for soprano and strings combining enchanting delicacy with astonishing virtuosity. That description fits the singing of Emma Kirkby perfectly here; Ian Partridge and David Thomas make ideal partners. After fifteen years in release, this remains one of the best Monteverdi records in the catalog.

These five sonatas which form the Armonico Tributo make the best possible case for Georg Muffat as a composer of the first rank. He apparently drew together the French, German and Italian styles in a way that was unprecedented, and the result is surprisingly moving and brilliant, likely to make new listeners wonder: Muffat where have you been all of my life? In fact it is deeply seductive, often with beautiful harmonies and exquisite grace notes that really get under the skin in this fantastic ambiance. They are in effect like double violin sonatas with a small chamber accompaniment in which each part is taken by one instrument. Roy Goodman leads with aplomb in a period style that has no lack of emotional weight, and contributes a useful note that puts this neglected name into the context of his time, being born 40 years before Bach.